The subject of this review is the revamped, modernized version of Jamorama, launched in October, 2014. They have definitely taken things forward from V1 of their product: you might not know, that there was an old version of Jamorama. It was basically a 200 page ebook, and a few videos of chord fingerings. It was a thorough, yet stone-aged course left behind a long time ago in our interactive, multimedia online world.
The new and improved version of Jamorama is made up of online video lessons, supplementary tablature, and backing tracks. They also have a new and improved face, Mark McKenzie, who not only spends a lot of time with his guitar, but apparently at the gym as well. You’ll see what I mean when you watch closeups of his fretting hand 🙂
Let’s have a look into the details of the Jamorama guitar course, and whether it works or not.
Jamorama Quick Review Sheet
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Ease of use - 8/108/10
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Quality - 6/106/10
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Support - 8/108/10
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Price - 5/105/10
Summary
The new Jamorama series of lessons is aimed at beginner guitar players. At present, it includes around 200 videos (10 hours), with accompanying tabs and backing tracks, where needed. All of the lessons are filmed in HD.
Once you gain access to the full Jamorama guitar lessons area, you’ll be able to view any of their video tutorials, download the supplemental tabs to each lesson, and listen to the backing track accompanying the respective lessons. Note, that not all lessons have backing tracks. You cannot download Jamorama video guitar lessons.
At present, they have 4 main categories of lessons, and within those, 8 different courses, lasting altogether around 10 hours. The owners of the site say they will upload a new course every month. You will also get access to their old bonus material, which is a compilation of not-so-useful guitar software. We’ll list those later.
(Updated on Nov/20/2024)
The price of the Jamorama guitar course is currently discounted to $60 per year!
Screenshots
What you’ll learn with Jamorama
Let’s start our Jamorama review by looking at the lesson set offered by the site. Jamorama is clearly aimed at beginner guitarists, so if you are an intermediate or advanced player, stop reading now and have a look at GuitarTricks or Jamplay instead.
The members section of the site is divided into 4 main categories. Within that, you have courses, and within the courses, you have separate video lessons.
Here are the main categores you’ll find on Jamorama at present:
- Beginner courses – 3 courses, with 5 hours of video
- Beginner guitar chords series
- Beginner Guitar Method – Stage 1
- Beginner Guitar Method – Stage 2
- Genre Courses – 1 fingerstyle genre course, with almost 2 hours of videos
- Fingerstyle guitar
- Skills and techniques – 3 courses, with 3 hours of videos
- Lead Guitar for Beginners
- The 1 Hour Workout
- Speed Picking
- Maintenance and care – 1 course, with 30 minutes of videos
- Acoustic guitar maintenance
Adding it all up, you get around 10 hours of videos on Jamorama at the time of this review, which isn’t much as compared to other guitar lesson sites. For example, under genre courses, they just have a fingerstyle course…
The amount of lessons is just enough to teach fundamental guitar techniques, but I feel it’s not enough to get beginners to actually start practicing them.
Sample videos
Here is a sample video from the Beginner category > Beginner guitar chords series > D major chord.
And here is another sample video, which is somewhat more advanced, this is from the Skills and techniques category > Speed picking series > Palm muting with distortion lesson:
Ease of Use
During our analysis of the Jamorama website, we found that navigating it is straight forward. You have your courses, and within those, your videos. However, the supplemental content and backing tracks aren’t grouped according to each lesson, rather listed for each course. This isn’t very intuitive.
What You Get with Jamorama
- 10 hours of video lessons (not downloadable)
- Supplemental tabs (downloadable)
- A few backing tracks
- Guitar software
- GuitEarIt! – Ear training game to develop sense of pitch and tone
- Jayde Musica Pro – software that teaches you how to read music
- Guitar Tuner Pro – Guitar tuner software
- The Jamorama Metronome – Metronome software
Pros:
- HD quality videos
- Mark McKenzie has a good teaching style
Cons:
- Not enough lessons
- No song lessons
- Courses not as detailed as they should be
Support Services of Jamorama
If you have any questions, you can turn to a forum for answers. The Jamorama staff answer will answer in a few days. You can have a look at the live forum here.
Setup/Compatibility of Jamorama lessons
The lessons need a broadband internet connection, there is no software to install. To install the extra guitar software, you’ll need a PC.
Warranty
30 day no questions asked money-back guarantee, and a 60 day guarantee provided by their payment processor, ClickBank.
Price
- $10 per month
- $60 per year: Sale alert! Discount from $120
Payments are handled by ClickBank, a reputable payment processor. You can pay with any major bank card, or PayPal.
Conclusion
If you are a beginner and you like the teaching style of Mark McKenzie, than Jamorama is right for you. You will learn the basics of playing guitar. If you are at an intermediate level, Jamorama won’t have anything to offer you.
The new Jamorama was launched in October, 2014 with a limited number of lessons (around 10 hours worth at the time of this review). This does not put Jamorama on par with other guitar lesson sites, who have been producing videos for years. At the moment, Jamorama does not have any real competitive advantage, other than it’s new face, Mark McKenzie. As an alternative, you should consider GuitarTricks or TheGuitarLesson.com if you’re a beginner, or JamPlay if you’re intermediate-advanced.
The newly re-launched Jamorama is still in it’s infancy, and has much catching up to do if it wants to compete against other established online video guitar lesson sites.
Old Jamorama course review (with Ben Edwards)
Jamorama is a downloadable guitar lesson course designed specifically for beginners. It utilizes a combination of written material, audio tracks and short videos of a guitarists (Ben Edwards) hands to show you exactly what you need to do to learn the guitar. During our review of Jamorama, we were pleased to see that it is a well structured course, which systematically teaches beginners all aspects of playing the guitar, from chords, to strumming, to playing songs. It’s not a guitar theory intense course, but it covers the basics a beginner guitarist will need.
The course runs on a new interactive, multimedia software. The software loads each lesson contaning the written material full of pictures and tabs, and is complemented by audio and video, all loaded timely by the software.
(Updated on Nov/20/2024)
The price of the Jamorama guitar course is currently discounted to $49.95!
Each lesson contains step-by-step instructions on what you should be doing and why, so Jamorama is definitely designed for the beginner guitarist. The lessons are very thorough in providing everything the new guitarist needs, so you won’t have any holes in your set of knowledge if you complete the course from A to Z.
A negative aspect we found during our review of the Jamorama guitar course, is that the videos are short, and don’t contain any speech, only demonstrations of what you should be playing in the given lesson. You have to read most of the information, so if you prefer video guitar lessons, this course isn’t for you. A big positive we found was the ability to turn off the guitar track when playing the jam tracks, a very nice feature.
Screenshots
What you’ll learn with Jamorama:
The Jamorama kit contains a lot of content. You’ll learn about pretty much every aspect of playing the guitar, but instead of summarizing it, I think we’ll just give you an exerpt of the main chapters in the course
Part 1.
Lesson 1 – Introduction to chord diagrams, chords A and D, strumming
Lesson 2 – Introduction to guitar tablature, jam track No. 1.
Lesson 3 – Notes on the treble clef, time signature, notes on the 1st string, notes on the second string, jam track No. 2.
Lesson 4 – E major chord, the repeat sign, jam track No. 3, notes on the 3rd
Lesson 5 – G major chord, C major chord, jam track No. 4, notes on the 4th string, jam track No. 5.
Lesson 6 – A minor chord, turn around progression, jam track No. 6, jam track No. 7, notes on the fifth string
Lesson 7 – Eighth note rhythm patterns, F major chord, the chromatic scale
Lesson 8 – Dominant 7 chords, A7 chord, D7 chord, E7 chord, jam track No. 8.
Lesson 9 – Silent stroke symbol, jam track No. 9, notes on the sixth string, jam track No. 10.
Lesson 10 – G7 chord, C7 chord, two bar rhythms
Lesson 11 – B7 chord, blues in E major, jam track No. 11
Lesson 12 – Notes on stave: irst position, bass note picking.
Lesson 13 – Time signature, jam track No. 12, bass note picking in, jam track No. 13.
Lesson 14 – Suspended chords, Asus4 chord, Dsus4 chord, Esus4 chord, jam track No. 14, scales, the major scale, C major scale, jam track No. 15.
Lesson 15 – Asus2 chord, Dsus2 chord, jam track No. 16
Part 2.
Lesson 1 – D Minor chord, bass note runs.
Lesson 2 – Major seventh chords, F major 7th, C major 7th, 16th note rhythm patterns.
Lesson 3 – A major 7, D major 7, G major 7, chromatic notes – First position.
Lesson 4 – B minor chord, triplet rhythm
Lesson 5 – Major six chords, A6 chord, E6 chord, the A major scale
Lesson 6 – Barre chords, F barre chord, root six barre chord
Lesson 7 – Percussive strum
Lesson 8 – Root 6 minor bar chord
Lesson 9 – Key signatures and scales
Lesson 10 – F dominant 7 chord (Root six), music rests
Lesson 11 – Deadening, eighth note rest within a strum
Lesson 12 – Major root 5 barre chords, staccato strumming
Lesson 13 – Chord progression concepts, blues pattern 1, blues pattern 2
Lesson 14 – Root 5 minor barre chord, 12 bar blues pattern 3
Lesson 15 – Palm muting
Lesson 16 – Advanced rhythm techniques
Lesson 17 – Root 5 dominant 7 barre chord, blues in D
Lesson 18 – Reggae strum
Lesson 19 – Minor scale
Lesson 20 – Minor 7th chords, Fm7chord, Bbm7 chord.
Lesson 21 – Major 6 barre chords, F6 chord, Bb6 chord
Lesson 22 – Power chords, F power chord, Bb power chord
Lesson 23 – Accents, compound meter
Lesson 24 – C shape barre chords
Lesson 25 – Suspended barre chords, Bbsus2, Bbsus4
Lesson 26 – Root 6 and root 5 major 7th barres.
Ease of Use
Each one of the Jamorama guitar lessons is based on written material, which includes details, pictures and exercises. There are usually audio and video recordings that supplement the given lesson, which can be accessed easily. During our review of the Jamorama guitar course, we found that the material is very easy to read and follow, and accessing the multimedia content is simple as well. All of the content is aggregated by a Jamorama software called Jamorama Maestro!, which is a major improvement over the earlier delivery method. Everything you need for each lesson is available from within the software (see screenshots).
What You Get with Jamorama
- The Jamorama Beginners and Jamorama Advanced books: 44 chapters and 252 pages of lessons
- 148 video lessons complementing the written material
- 26 “active” jam tracks (you can turn turn the guitar track on/off)
- GuitEarIt! – Ear training game to develop sense of pitch and tone
- Jayde Musica Pro – software that teaches you how to read music
- Guitar Tuner Pro – Guitar tuner software
- The Jamorama Metronome – Metronome software
- 30 day access to SongPond – a video guitar lesson site teaching popular songs from a big range of artists (The Eagles, Johnny Cash, Led Zeppelin, Jack Johnson, Pink Floyd, Metallica, AC/DC, etc.)
Pros:
- Step-by-step lessons, easy to follow
- Guitar track can be turned off in jam tracks
- Nice array of bonus software
- The included music learning games are fun, and present an intuitive way of learning
- Multimedia presentation method
Cons:
- The course is based on an ebook, and only supplemented by audio and video snippets
- The videos are very short, each being about 1-2 minutes long, and only contain quick technical demonstrations without speech
Support Services of Jamorama
Email support, maximum 48 hour response time
Setup/Compatibility of Jamorama
Easy to install on any PC, compatible with Mac. eBook comes in pdf format, jam tracks in MP3, videos in QuickTime.
Warranty
Jamorama has a no questions asked, 8 week money back guarantee. If you don’t like the course, just email them and you’ll get a refund.
Price
- $49.95 – Sale alert!
Conclusion
Concluding our Jamorama guitar course review, we can say that the lesson course is a thorough set of information for beginner guitarists. The lessons are based on written material, audio and video, with emphasis on the written content, and too little video material in our opinion. The included software is easy to use, and makes navigating the lessons simple. The bonus games are a nice way of learning theory without the hassle.
Jamorama is designed for the very beginner, so if you are an intermediate stage already, than this course is not for you. Overall, Ben Edwards of Jamorama did an acceptable job of creating an entry-level guitar learning kit, which is easy to use, contains step-by-step instructions, and a good starting point for beginner guitarists.
Jamorama offers an affordable, step-by-step method of learning the guitar for beginners. It is a multimedia bundle, which relies heavily on written material.
Thanks for this review. Quick question about the video lessons that jamorama gives, since you write that its only “supplementary”. So aren’t they like real video guitar lessons, or what do you mean?
The videos are not real lessons, like they have on GuitarTricks or TheGuitarLesson.com. The videos that come with the Jamorama course are short demonstrations of what you should be playing in the given lesson. No verbal explanations, just the chord diagrams and closeups of the hands playing.
Hope this helps!