JamPlay

A review of JamPlay from a Fingerstyle Guitarist's viewpoint.

JamPlay could be considered an online guitar school. It's what's called a subscription site. With a subscription site, you enroll as a member and are charged a fee for the membership.

You'll find options for monthly, quarterly, or yearly payments. You can end your enrollment at any time.

There are 3 different levels of lessons. The first level is for brand new players. The second level is geared toward styles (fingerstyle, jazz, blues, etc...) and the third level teaches specific songs.

The song selection ranges from acoustic blues to metal to gospel and are all taught by style specific instructors.

Course Author / Instructor

This program has several instructors, who teach a wide range of material. Each of the instructors seem to be very familiar with their subject matter.

Fingerstyle teachers include well known players like Mary Flower, Kaki King and Orville Johnson. All of the teachers deliver their lessons in a easy to follow manner.

Course Contents - What You Get

JamPlay packs a lot into their video lessons.

The basic lessons all show, well, the basics. They all start with things that beginners need to know.

Topics covered include things like how to hold the guitar and how to press down the strings. There's also an introduction to chords and music theory. Any beginner who learns what's offered in this section will be well prepared for what comes next.

The next section is called Phase 2 (Genre Teaching). This is where it starts to get really interesting.

In this section you'll find extensive lessons in several different musical styles. These musical styles include Blues, Fingerstyle, Hawaiin Slack Key, Bluegrass, Rock, Celtic, Classical, Country, and Jazz.

Each style has anywhere from 20 to 290 lessons. Even better news for fingerstylists is that so many of the lessons are fingerstyle oriented.

The Classical section is, of course, dedicated to a fingerstyle approach. So are the Fingerstyle and Hawaiin Slack Key sections.

There's also a fingerstyle portion in the Jazz, Blues, and Country sections. In all, there's a lot of fingerstyle specific material in this course.

Along with the video lessons, each section has supplemental information that you can print out. There's a forum for questions and comments.

You can also contact the instructors with any lesson related problems that you might be having.

Another, very personal, feature is the Video Q&A section. You send in your question and their instructors make a video response to it.

Support

Communication seems to be a big factor with JamPlay. There's a FAQ section and upgrading or cancelling your subscription is easy to do.

In fact, to research their program, I subscribed to the site. As part of the research, I wanted to see just how easy it was to un-subscribe. It proved to be dead simple.

After a monthlong membership, I cancelled. Easy to do and totally pain free.

Our Verdict

Overall, I enjoyed my membership with JamPlay.

I found their teachers to be knowledgeable and the course materials extensive.

This is also a very cost effective way to learn fingerstyle guitar, especially compared to private "in person" lessons.

If you're thinking about on line lessons, JamPlay is definitely worth looking at.