Last January Apple released iLife ‘09, the latest addition to its highly regarded multimedia suite that ships with every new Mac. At the time, much of the media attention went to iPhoto and iMovie, which introduced impressive facial recognition and video stabilization respectively. But me? I was captivated by the GarageBand Lesson Store, a virtual marketplace built into Apple’s music authoring program. The store features song lessons taught by the artists who wrote them, including established musicians like Sting and John Fogerty. Combined with an extremely polished platform for delivering the lessons, I thought that Apple’s Lesson Store might be the company’s next revolution in digital music.
Was I a little overenthusasitc? Probably. But I’ve toyed around with quite a few of the learning programs and videos out there, and the GarageBand lessons have serious potential. And with lessons going for $5 a pop, even if Apple only saw a tiny fraction of the sales it sees on its other stores (as would probably be the case), it could still drive substantial revenue from lesson purchases alone.
Perhaps even more important, at least from Apple’s perspective: a robust lesson store would serve as a perfect marketing vehicle for driving more Mac sales. Imagine a commercial with John Mayer or Eric Clapton wailing away on their guitars for thirty seconds. Close with them saying, “You want to play like me? I’ll show you. Only on Mac”. Sure, most people would never actually get around to playing through too many lessons (after all, learning how to play an instrument takes some hard work), but the knowledge that they could work through those lessons would be enough to drive even more computer sales.
Unfortunately, Apple hasn’t really done much with the Lesson Store since its debut in January. At launch, it featured 18 ‘basic lessons’ (nine each for guitar and piano), along with ten ‘artist lessons’ which feature accomplished musicians showing how to play their songs. It was a decent selection to begin with, but it was hardly comprehensive. But it had potential: Apple surely had the clout to attract more major artists, and we were bound to see frequent updates, right?
Not quite. Since January there has been exactly one update, which introduced a whopping three new artist lessons, bringing the grand total to 13. Given how varied musical tastes are, I’d be surprised if any one person was interested in more than four of them. So much for that idea.
Aside from releasing more artist lessons, Apple would do well to release a tool that let independent artists and teachers build lessons on the GarageBand platform. Apple could take a cut of each lesson sale as it does on the App Store, and users would get a much broader array of material. Now, I’m well aware there are quite a few music lessons stores scattered across the web, including NowPlayIt and iVideoSongs, which offer high quality video lessons, some of which feature the artists themselves. But for every quality site there are countless spammy sites, and it can be hard to tell the good ones from the bad at first glance – not to mention the fact that many fledging musicians don’t know these sites exist in the first place. A unified storefront from Apple, complete with user reviews, could be a boon for teachers and students alike.
So come on, Apple. Let the music play.
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I guess I’d need a mac to even know it existed :P
Cool concept, I was actually surprised someone like apple would do something like this AND it remain as quiet as it has for this to be the first place I heard about it.
Always something to make me like Mac’s more and more, still waiting on some reason to actually own one though.
When it competes with PC and not just pop culture, I’ll get one. When it can actually run a game.
So game compatibility is your most important criteria? Then no, the power and flexibility of UNIX and UNIX like OS’s are not for you. Of the current four machines running in my house, the only one that sits in the off state is the Windows box for games. Mac is the desktop, Solaris it the fileserver and FreeBSD is the web development server.
Let’s be honest here:
Who really bothers with PC gaming anymore outside of hardcore enthusiasts and MMO addicts?
99% of the market is happy with the PS360Wii or whatever flavor of console happens to be hot at the time now.
With Sony’s shares going into the shitter, I can see Apple possibly stepping up to produce a games-console if Sony retires their gaming division since Nintendo vs Microsoft would leave no middle-ground between retarded 5 yearold and retarded frat-boy (I of course say this having enjoyed both of them but stereotyping, hey, whatchyougonnado(tm)?)
It is well known that the Garageband Team at Apple totally ripped off this idea from the folks at iVideosongs since the iVideosongs team has been in discussion with Apple for over 4 years …
iVideosongs is currently in the iTunes TV Store in the Non-Fiction Genre. All one has to do is search within iTunes for “ivideosongs”.
The begging questions are:
What is Apple’s intent?
Why have they buried iVideosongs in the NonFiction area of their iTunes TV Store?
If you visit http://www.ivideosongs.com you’ll see hundreds of titles, so why are there so few in iTunes?
I’ve purchased all of the lessons from the lesson store, and they are incredible. The quality, and variable pace control of the lesson, along with the integration into Gargebande is worth much more than the asking price… but I did wonder why there weren’t more to buy… thanks for the article.
its surprising and a cool concept.
wonder why they didn’t speak about this one.
It is a great idea. I should get my guitar and try those lessons out now. I remember them being in they Keynote a while back, but I forgot about them. They need to advertise this feature a bit more.
I think GarageBand would be a lot more interesting if I could record, mix, and publish -into- iTunes Music Store without having to use TuneCore, ReverbNation, etc…
I paid ~$25 to have a single track of my own music put into iTunes Music Store using TuneCore. I just need to sell 34 more copies on iTunes and I’ll be in the black ;-)
Link me here and I might help you out :D
Jay, you paid $25 for a SINGLE? Something’s wrong, that’s not our price. Should have been $9.99.
Write me!
–Peter
peter@tunecore.com
I had completely forgotten about this new feature of Garageband, thanks for reminding me how it hasn’t changed. They really do need to work on it.
What about rap lessons! We got a ringer!!
http://www.tuna...er-of-all-time/
Great reminder. I as well had forgotten about this foray into instruction. The general quality of guitar lessons/transcriptions on the web is mediocre at best. Some of the comments and article point to ways Apple could make this work for them and us. Let’s just hope they do.
Or maybe, they’re thinking of porting this over to a Coherence/SproutCore web App or something awesome, and are waiting till WWDC.
Agreed, I think this is a hidden feature that not a lot of people know about. I found it the other day while messing around with Garageband and was blown away.
Cool idea, but artists have been doing this since the 80’s on vhs. Lets not give Apple too much credit here. Anyone can build an online store.
cool idea indeed
They need to open up the store’s content to real music educators and not just “celebrities”.
But then it wouldn’t be “cool” and “trendy”.
Dude, you need lessons for RAP? You’d be the first to go that route.
Give it some time people, their will be more lessons.
ITunes is cool and trendy because of what it does. Go back to your Zune.
What is it that iTunes does do….(say that three times fast) What make it so special?
I haven’t used Apple’s product, and it looks pretty nice, but I’ve found youtube to be a good resource for learning guitar. Most pop songs have several video tutorials and while they’re not taught by the original artist, they are generally very high quality. I don’t think I’d be willing to pay for Apple’s lesson when such a quality resource exists for free.
I’ve found some decent tutorials on YouTube. I play the Hammond B3 and the quality of some videos is lacking in actual instruction. Granted the B3 can have a lot going on but if you’re doing a tutorial registrations, voicing and other settings have to be explained. Sometimes the keyboard isn’t shown from a usable vantage point, and almost no one displays concurrent note information. Musicianship tends to be the focus and the instruction gets lost.
My hope is simply that were Apple to make the product available to say the YouTube “How To” community, tutors might better understand instruction method. Since the early days of the Apple Human Interface guidelines, Apple has always excelled at getting developers to consider a “core” way of implementing features, that has been great for users. If they did same with this platform, ideally the minimum standard of quality would be higher and worth $5.
The quality on the lesson store is very good.
As a beginner I like being able to slow it down and go back and forth easily.
Also the quality and angle of the shots is far better than anything else out there.
No idea why it is being neglected by Apple.
They need to get on with it.
I upgraded to get the feature and purchased 3 guitar lessons. Happy to spend more.
Cheap compared to a nice guitar !
Mr P
Look at things like GuitarPro; better way to learn how to play any song.
I think the idea of having an ad with some celebrity telling me I can play better guitar, but only if I buy a Mac, is exactly the sort of elitist persona that Apple tries to (smartly) steer clear from. The second you’re “too cool,” you’re way lame.
Totally agree here, I was tempted to get a new mac seeing that garageband is not compatible with powerpc. Apple, this is a unique opportunity to drive creative-ism away from the PC and I can imagine the “hi I’m a mac, and I’m a PC” ads showing off garageband’s potential. (have they even focused on this aaspect of the mac before??)
http://www.songsterr.com is nice for guitarists.
Good point about the UGC lessons.
This is a FANTASTIC thing in Garage Band and the lessons with the ACTUAL musicians are INVALUABLE… We need some Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, Kieth Richards, Bruce Springsteen…. I would go BROKE….
As a guitar beginner myself I use http://www.justinguitar.com which has awesome free video lessons including tabs from Justin Sandercoe. The vids are also accessible directly via youtube. Highly recommended.
Go find a good instructor in your local neighbor hood!
Unless you happen to play for a philharmonic.
I actually profiled this feature in Episode 2 of my podcast. (http://www.soni...es-and-The-Pope) This was one of the cooler things to come out of MacWorld this year to me and I’m quite surprised it hasn’t taken off. I gotta put the blame on Apple for this one, though. I think 3 updates since January is pretty sad. The thing that is going to drive this is the musicians releasing the lessons – not the beginner and other kid of lesson stuff. As many people have listed here there are lots of really great, free ways to learn how to play already available on the internet. Its the fact that you get to learn it from the original composer that will get this to go anywhere.
I don’t have a mac, but I was actually considering buying one when apple announced the launch of its guitar lessons with the starts. But it turned out to be overhyped, so no mac :-) I download guitar pro tabs to learn songs, as well as a site called http://www.theguitarlesson.com.