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Jamorama is one of the most popular digitally downloadable guitar instruction programs.  With over 40,000 users, it’s obviously a popular course.  But just how good is it?  Will it really help you to learn guitar?

To answer that, let’s start by taking a look at what’s in it.  You can divide the Jamorama guitar instruction program into 2 parts: the core materials, and the bonuses.  The core materials include ebooks, divided into different ability levels, and featuring lessons annotated with hints, tips, advice and even little trivia and philosophy sections.  The core materials also include video demonstrations of each lessons, with a close-up on each hand and a small diagram of how the lesson is fingered.  Once you have got the general idea of a lesson or an exercise, there are some audio jam tracks that you can play along to to consolidate what you know against a real musical accompaniment.

There are also some bonus materials, including a software metronome, a short guide on how to tune your guitar, and a guitar chord kit.  There are even a couple of games included, one of them an ear training game and another one of them a music reading game, allowing you to develop these skills in a (somewhat) fun and entertaining way that’s sort of halfway between an introductory music theory course, and space invaders.

The best thing about Jamorama is that it’s fun, easy, and eminently approachable.  You can start learning as soon as you have downloaded the course, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve never even touched a guitar before.  The core materials are very structured and linear, giving you one lesson to complete before  you move onto the next one.  For beginners, this is in a excellent way to learn, because it’s always very clear exactly what you should be doing.  Jamorama doesn’t offer much in the way of theory, which for people with certain musical goals might be very frustrating, but as a basic introduction to playing it is excellent.