Impressions: iLife '09 - GarageBand Lessons

For this post, I'm going to blog my experience of trying out the Lesson Store in GarageBand.

Upon launching GarageBand, there are six main options:

1. New Project
   
2. Learn to Play
   
3. Lesson Store
   
4. Magic GarageBand
   
5. iPhone Ringtone
   
6. Recent Projects
   

The exciting new feature I wanted to check out is the Lesson Store.  There are Basic Lessons and Artist Lessons.  Under nder Artist Lessons, there were 8 artists available right now.  The lessons are each $4.99.  And the preview clips look nice.  One might buy it just to see the artist perform.  

Purchasing a lesson

Since I play the piano, I'm going to try lesson for Apologize (OneRepublic).  The lesson is noted as Advanced.  I added it to my cart, and I checked out.  It then opened the browser and loaded the Apple Store.  I logged in, but I had to enter a payment method and billing info.  Looks like it's not pulling the information from my iTunes account.  It comes up to $5.40 with the tax... bummer.  After it processes my order, a pop up comes up, and I could download it.  The file is 769 MB.  

The lesson with Ryan, lead singer of OneRepublic

So the lesson is broken into three segments Verse, Chorus, Bridge.  There's a keyboard that shows what he's playing on the piano in the video.  And there is also the music notation with a play bar that shows where he's playing.

In the Verse section, he begins with explaining the key of the song and then the chords for the verse.  

In the Chorus section, he dives into explaining how the original song is played in an arpeggiated manner.   That's too complicated for now, so he goes on showing a simpler version.  

And then he explains how to play the bridge.  And he then explains about how he arranged the songs and some arrangement theory.  Very interesting and informative!

And that's the end of the lesson.  Now it gives you some more options:

• Learn how to play an advance version of the song
  
• See Ryan sing and play the full song using the simple version of piano chords in the lesson
  
• See Ryan sing and play the full song using the advanced version of piano chords in the lesson
  
• a story option
  

When you play the song, you can configure the volume of Ryan's voice, piano, the band, and the sound of your own keyboard (if it's hooked up ).  

So was it worth it?  

I'd say yes for the price of 5 bucks.  By the end of the video,  I learned how to play something in E minor scale.  Moreover, I got a performance of the song, a short bonus clip on how the song came about, and lesson videos.  

Can't wait to check out other lessons.