|
|
|
|
Computer Times
Editors' Choice Music eMeida Guitar Master Reviewed by Terry Kibiloski
eMedia Guitar Master (Retail $39.95; Win/Mac CD-ROM) is well named because it is like having a guitar master living in your home, willing to give you personal tutoring whenever you desire. The only thing left out of this product is a microchip to embed in your brain to instantly make you a master guitarist. While mastering any musical instrument takes many hours of practice, eMedia Guitar Master provides all the assistance you can possibly imagine, or desire, to make your guitar mastering journey as easy as possible. eMedia Guitar Master is a no-nonsense tutoring system that is packed with over 100 audio- and video-enhanced rock guitar lessons. Even if you are picking up a guitar for the first time in your life, the unique teaching style will have you playing songs, chords and riffs within minutes. Soon you’ll be playing hit songs found in Guitar Hero® and Rock Band™, including “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath and “You Really Got Me” as by Van Halen. This is not a product designed by a bunch of geeks who never touched a guitar, this product is designed by instructor Charles McCrone, a graduate of the cutting-edge Guitar Institute of Technology with over 25 years of playing and teaching experience, who takes you through all the techniques you need to play rock, punk and metal. These include movable power chords, barre chords, effects pedals, yanks, hammer-ons, pull-offs, palm muting, distorted riffs, the blues scale, using feedback, the whammy bar and much more. All these techniques are applied to playing hit songs, with an animated fretboard guiding you through fingerings as the music plays. You are in total control, and can begin each tutoring session wherever you choose, which is ideal for both the advanced player and the beginner who wants to begin where they left off in the last session.
“Paranoid” by Black Sabbath “You Really Got Me” as by Van Halen “Lake of Fire” by Nirvana “Tired of Waiting for You” as by Green Day “All Day and All of the Night” by the Kinks “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Öyster Cult “Tomorrow” by Silverchair “All Right Now” by Free ... and many more. Plus, songs in the style of Blink 182, Rage Against the Machine, AC/DC and many others.
The animated fretboard (shown above) displays fingering positions as the music plays. It also shows fingering for any chord or note you double-click, featuring right-handed, left-handed and mirror views.
As shown above, you will also find over 50 full-motion videos, where host Steve Rock demonstrates techniques, using split-screen videos to provide close-ups as needed. 
eMedia Guitar Master will highlight the music and lyrics as they're heard makes it easy to follow along on the bass, plul variable-speed MIDI lets you slow down the audio to any tempo, while the animated fretboard shows song fingering as the music plays. This allows you to learn at the pace best suited to your skill level.
A handy automatic tuner helps you tune your guitar quickly and easily. A precision gauge lets you play into your computer's microphone and immediately get feedback to see if you're too high or too low. Full audio reference notes are also provided.
A feature that we felt was invaluable was the chord dictionary that includes fingering charts and recorded sounds for over 250 chords. This is a guitarist’s dream to help in quickly learning songs with new chords. This feature alone is worth the price of the product.
To keep you from running away, or from slowing down, the digital metronome lets you set a tempo and work on your picking speed, rhythm and timing. Providing both visual cue and/or audio tick, and offering a full range of tempi, from largo to presto, this tool will greatly assist you in truly mastering the guitar.
The digital recorder is simply a prettier and more convenient control panel for your computer’s built-in sound recorder, which uses your computer’s microphone to record sound. Don’t expect any high quality recording here, as it is the same old recording that your computer has always been able to do, picking up any background noises at a rather low sound quality. But, it will provide enough quality to give you adequate feedback in your learning to master the guitar. eMedia Guitar Master will work on either the Windows or the Macintosh platform with the following minimum system requirements. Windows®: Windows XP/Vista 16 MB of free RAM, 78 MB of free hard disk space PC soundcard, CD-ROM Macintosh®: Power PC (or faster), Intel OK Mac OS X 10.1 or later 16 MB of free RAM, 78 of free hard disk space CD-ROM |
|
Send mail to
comptimes@aol.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|
