For any aspiring guitarists out there, here is a site for you. iVideosongs is launching at DEMO today after two years in the making. It offers video tutorials on how to play guitar from world-class instructors, musicians and sidemen. You won’t find instruction videos from Slash here (yet), but there are guitar videos from Graham Nash, John Oates, and Alex Lifeson (the guitarist from Rush). This site seems to be aimed squarely at the aging Baby Boomer male who still wans to play guitar. And there are a lot of those. But, actually, anyone can learn from the videos, which are quite good. The videos are large and clearly show closeups of exactly what you need to do.
The startup was founded in 2006, and has raised $3 million in angel funding. It’s spent the past two years licensing rights to song libraries from all the major music publishers. The site offers some free tutorial videos, but most cost $5 (for instructor videos) or $10 (for artist videos). Compare this to $35 to $40 an hour for guitar lessons.
That’s the beauty of the Internet: you can be taught by the best instructors at a fraction of what they would charge you for a one-on-one session. With each download, you get one song, broken up into bite-sized chapters for learning a song’s intro, verse, chorus, bridge, and outro. Artist videos also include interiews where they talk about their influences, guitar-picking history, and inspiration for a particular song. The site is launching with a catalog of 50 songs, plus 25 free tutorials. By the end of the year, it hopes to have 1,000 different songs. Instructions for how to play the drums and keyboard are available as well.
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Nice idea but a couple problems.
First off, $9.99/song is not going to work. Beginners are going to get on there, get frustrated with a song, figure they are out $10 and never come back.
It should be a monthly subscription where you have access to the whole site and promote 3-4 popular NEW popular songs every month like Guitar magazine etc.
Also, the videos seem well done, but they really need realtime graphics of the chords as they are being played, with the name of the chord next to it - watching chubby fingers is difficult for beginners, and for some chords intermediates too.
iVideoSongs is just one of the sites included in the “How Do I?” tutorial custom search engine: http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/howdoi
For example, How do I - play complicated by avril lavigne
http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/howd.....earch#1036
I just bought my first guitar yesterday and have done some digging around for sites like this. As cool as this looks to be, I wouldn’t be willing to drop $5 or $10 a song for the very reason Seth said above. If I was to pick something to difficult for my level, then get frustrated and move on to a different song, I would certainly feel out my $5 or $10 and wouldn’t be very inclined to pay for another song.
Seth also made another good point about having real time graphics of the chords being played. I’ve found a few instructional vids that have this, along with close ups on the finger position on the neck of the guitar and it is much more helpful as fingers do tend to make it a bit harder to get a clear view of exactly where to position yourself.
I have to agree with Seth again that a monthly/6-month/1-year subscription option would be much better.
Ok… Congratulations for this idea. But I think that the first classes we must take face to face.
I’m not going to entirely nay-say: I think this is a great idea; it’s like the itunes music store of musical instruction (rather than having to buy an expensive DVD/Video of a favorite artist playing a whole bunch of his own songs, you can spend the same amount on a number of different tracks, and different instruments as well.)
However, some problems: $10 is a bit steep for one song, although the quality of instruction itself is quite good (if the preview to Limelight was any example). Plus, iVideoSongs is probably the worst name for a decent website I’ve seen in awhile. But kudos otherwise!
Thanks to everyone for the comments. We respect and value the input. Please keep it coming. You are all making great points. Let me address a couple thoughts. We do include chord grids and tab with the download. Each segment of the song has both of these features at the beginning of the respective chapter.
The download vs subscription model is the result of customer feedback around the idea of control. People told us that they didn’t want to necessarily be connected to the internet when working with the content. So, we present the downloads without DRM which enables you to view the content on a mobile device, laptop or TV without need of a connection. You own it and control it.
We are not a replacement for a face to face teacher. We just augment that experience. One of the challenges with the face time model is you have to remember everything you saw and heard. So, we try to bridge that gap.
I would suggest you guys download some of the free tutorials. Get a feel for how the product works and then decide if you want to try a song. Meanwhile, thanks so much for the feedback. It is really important to us and will help us make improvements going forward.
It should be a monthly subscription where you have access to the whole site and promote 3-4 popular NEW popular songs every month like Guitar magazine etc.
Wow, this is a great idea, and that $5 price point sounds fine to me for a good, long tutorial. $10 is pushing it but that might be because I’m a beginner. (As an aside, I’m surprised expert online video training hasn’t caught on more, for all sorts of things. How to Dance, How to change your oil, How to put up drywall, etc.)
Right now I’m learning the basics with something similar called iPlayGuitar (for the Mac) and I am loving it. It’s perfect for the absolute beginner because it goes slowly & methodically through the absolute basics with step-by-step videos, even for things like how to hold your guitar, how to restring it (which I just did last night for the first time), etc. I *really* have fun (maybe too much fun) with the “jam track” feature… it’s like playing along with a backup band. It has four different simultaneous camera angles which I didn’t see on iVideoSongs. You can also export the track and record yourself playing along with the songs in GarageBand. I thought that was something I wouldn’t use at all, but it does help to hear myself play and find out where my weak points are.
I just tried out the “Alternate Bass Patterns” video on iVideoSongs and I’d say it is good for where I am, but definitely not for someone who just picked up a guitar. I was hoping they would have a series of videos for newbies and some stupid-simple songs to practice along with. I’ll come back when I have the ability to play Rush & Eric Clapton.
Hi, I have been playing guitar for maybe 4 years now on and off and just found this site and think it works great. When I took guitar lessons I would spend anywhere from $30-$60 on an hour lesson while only learning one or two songs each session, thats $30 a song!!
This site is amazing in that you can buy the song, and you will own the lesson, so whenever you want to come back to it in a week, month, or year from now, it is still there waiting for you to perfect it. Not to mention these lessons are perfectly accurate, they aren’t false tabs from random websites, this is perfection.
I think this is an amazing idea, and think the prices are good for the average guitarist. Also, the free tips and tutorials is a great way to check out what the site offers and how the video is produced.
Overall, I love it!
Gah, no bass. The bass never gets respect.
i think it’s great. when it gets more songs in the library it will be much better, but hypothetically could replace music lessons if the site teaches all the basics
I heard they have bass, banjo, piano, guitar and thousands of songs! I’m gonna have to take a semester off
I can’t believe how consistent these videos are. I’ve bought 3 and got a bunch of free tutorials and I’ve noticed that even the tutorials are like the videos I bought. It’s taken me hundreds of $ in lessons here in NYC just to learn a song and I’ve already forget most of it.
FYI I loaded it into iTunes and had iTunes convert it to an iPod video and carry my videos on my iPhone
Zoe
Geez I can’t believe anyone would complain about learning the coolest song on the planet, Jessica by the Allman Bros., from the rock and roll piano god Chuck Leavell for 10 bucks. You guys are nutz!!! I live in the O.C. and it costs $100 a hour for lessons and nobody teaches you a song in an hour like these guys. Not only is 100% correct, it’s yours to keep forever and I can look back at it anytime I want!!!
This is life changing
Willing to sell iPlayGuitar.com - all offers accepted.
iPlayGuitar.com
Please contact iVideosongs.com
Have to pay??!! Ok tell me one thing how does it battles with the guitarpro and those chord softwares, which you need to buy one time only and then download the chords for them and voila, u can play SLASH.
I cant get it that why would anyone purchase (except some rich ones) when there is YOUTUBE where people like “justin” and others post their videos for various guitar tabs. Just prove this PAYMENT way to me.
$5 or $10 is a COMPLETE STEAL! A single guitar lesson costs around $40 to $50 an hour.
These are complete and accurate and in some cases taught by the composer/performer. The rest seem to be taught by excellent teachers with extensive professional credentials.
You can find low res versions of alot of the content on the itunes store etc… on youtube as well. $5 is well worth the upgrade to accuracy and better resolution.
I’m a music teacher and this could put me out of bizness. haha. I want on board this is great and the more talent they acquire it will only get better.
What a wonderful way to learn songs accurately. This is way more authentic than a tab from some random dude.
All these comments are really useful — we have just launched a similar site called http://www.icanplayit.com where you can get full courses across a range of instuments taught by top level musicians.
My posting was triggered by Eric’s note — Eric we have a great Bass course, taught by Guy Pratt (of Pink Floyd/Roxy Music etc). It costs either £9.99 per month or £29.99 for the full course, and consists of 28 video lessons covering techniques, styles, as well as some interesting anecdotes from Guy about legendary bass players past & present.
We’d love to hear feedback, as we are a very very small outfit (only 4 of us!). We are busy producing new courses at the moment, and are launching a new site next week which is browzer based so the tech is much simpler and the mac users aren’t left out….
Thanks for the note, Rebecca. Looking forward to checking it out.
And since when did people get so explicit about astroturfing the TC? Jeremy, Bobby, Zoe, Lloyd, Pickboy — you’re not fooling anyone.
Your product has a lot of potential, can’t wait to check back for some new releases. Do you guys have a letter you send to customers about new stuff you are releasing? I think that’s a great idea. It also engages me and introduces me to new artists as well as keeping me going back to their store.
I introduced a few of my friends to your site and they loved it. Although they had never heard of it before. You guys should start marketing to get your site out to public, specifically geared toward the musician demographic. Thanks for such an incredible product.
Tommy C
Very cool site. I downloaded a few of the tutorials yesterday and learned a lot. Very detailed and easy to follow. Im about to purchase some of their Beatles tunes, my favorite band. Thanks for the content!
This site is cool. I downloaded a free vid this morning. I look forward to taking my time and seeing it all.