Guitar MX Blog

An article appearing on the Telegraph web site discusses technology’s role in influencing people to take up musical instruments, especially the guitar. For example, the number of British students who are choosing music in their secondary education (GCSE) has increased by 23% since 2000. This is according to the Telegraph article ‘So you wanna be a rock ‘n’ roll star?’.

Joining the growing group of online guitar instructors is former Beatle Paul McCartney, who recently recorded an online guitar, bass and drum lesson for his current single “Ever Present Past”, which will soon appear on the music instruction site Now Play It. Now Play It is a new web site that provides instructional music videos that display graphical tablature and piano keys, along with anecdotal commentaries by the artists themselves.

So far, Now Play It has sold about 2,000 tutorials, without spending a penny on advertising.

The article also includes comments from David Taub of NextLevelGuitar. David is so busy working on online guitar courses and DVD’s, that he no longer gives personal guitar lessons. The articles talks about the copyright dispute NextLevelGuitar encountered after teaching known songs on their popular YouTube channel. To avoid any copyright disputes, Now Play It works directly with the artists, and makes sure that the artist’s and label’s get paid for their work. ‘It’s important artists get paid, it’s important labels get paid, for the music industry to survive. You probably make more money out of one of these downloads than you would do from a normal single, because you get paid for the actual lesson, but also the publishing’s doubled because there’s sheet music on there’ said Now Play It founder Ant Cauchi.

Also mentioned in the article is the success of Guitar Hero and its impact on guitar instruction. Guitar Hero doesn’t offer much help in making a novice guitar player sound like a pro, say some guitar instructors, but it can certainly create a spark to learn to play a real guitar. ‘From an entry standpoint it’s pretty cool.’ David Taub told the Telegraph.

You can read the complete Telegraph article by clicking here.