How does it feel like to have Sting or Norah Jones as your private music tutor?
It might have been impossible a few years back, but with GarageBand and a couple of downloads, fans can now learn how to play music from the very people who made those tunes famous.
Artist Lessons, part of a new feature in GarageBand '09, can be purchased individually from Apple from within the application. Each lesson costs $7.93 and consists of three parts - instructions, a performance of the full song, and a short interview on the background story of the song.
Purchasing the song was straightforward and easy as long as you have a credit card, but I ran into a few glitches while downloading, resulting in my repeating the process three times before it was successful. Each lesson is some 500MB in size, and takes a good 20 to 30 minutes download even on a fast broadband connection.
I tried learning one song on the piano, "Thinking About You" by Norah Jones; and to give myself a little challenge, I decided to see how well GarageBand could teach me how to play a guitar, an instrument I always wanted to learn but never had the time to.
Picking up a brand new song from Norah Jones was easy; I could follow the lesson in real time while playing on a keyboard.
The keys and notes are displayed clearly and I liked it that each step was explained carefully and in detail. Some repetitive parts of the tune were taken out, which I thought saved time, but might be a little confusing for someone who has still yet to master the basics or is unfamiliar with the song.
Reading music would be a tremendous advantage when learning tunes from this GarageBand lesson, though with the virtual keyboard displayed, ambitious Keyboard Mania-trained users might want to give it a go.
Picking up a new song on an instrument I know was pretty easy, but what about something I never learned before?
John Fogerty's "Proud Mary" was one of my favourite songs of all time. Prior to taking the Artist Lesson, I took the basic guitar lessons that come free with GarageBand first.
Two days and a few lessons later, I was ready to give playing "Proud Mary" a go. Even though the lesson was set on the "Easy" level, it was no simple task for me to play the song, with only a crash course under my belt and a borrowed guitar to pull it off.
But it was fun, and if I found Norah Jones a very good teacher, I found a very patient and encouraging one in John Fogerty. It might be a taped lesson, but the rocker's smile and his "very good" comment did lots in encouraging me to keep on practicing.
Easy artist lessons might already feel like a pretty daunting task for a guitar newbie, but I downloaded Sting's "Fragile", which was an advanced guitar lesson. While the lesson itself was difficult to follow, I did however pick up a few tips from the legendary musician that could be applied to other songs.
The Verdict
Taking music lessons in front of your computer screen was a very new experience for me, but the freedom of learning at your own pace with these well made lessons did come across as both enjoyable and stress-free.
My only gripe was that there aren't enough lessons on offer at the moment, but hopefully this increases with time.
If you do find a favourite song or an artist you like in the GarageBand lessons, you might want to give it a go.
You never know if you'll pick up something new, with lots of star power to boot.
