Apple makes online music lessons easy with GarageBand

ByABC News
February 18, 2009, 12:25 AM

LOS ANGELES -- Colbie Caillat's 2007 hit Bubbly is so popular online that about 800,000 people have watched YouTube videos of musicians teaching how to play the song on guitar.

Only one problem: Most got it wrong.

"They do a nice job," says the singer/songwriter, but "most don't realize it's in open D tuning and has totally different chords."

Now Caillat gets to show how it's really done. She is one of nine artists offering video music lessons at $4.99 a pop via Apple's GarageBand, the music-editing software bundled into its iLife suite of programs. Among others, John Fogerty teaches Proud Mary and Norah Jones shows you how to perform Thinking About You.

Many sites offer video music lessons now. A year ago, iVideosongs was launched with artist tutorials from Graham Nash, John Oates and Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell. And there are thousands of free instructional videos on YouTube produced by young guitarists and teachers. Some even feature well-known performers such as Paul McCartney, Police bandmate Andy Summers and Queen guitarist Brian May. Longtime guitar-maker Gibson even devotes a page of its website to the YouTube lessons.

Apple's high profile and heavy promotion of the video lessons within its 250 retail stores brings the idea of learning music online to higher prominence. "It's a fantastic idea, and I hope they do more," says British guitarist Justin Sandercoe, who offers free video lessons at Justinguitar.com. "The idea you can have the guitar lesson with the actual artist who wrote the song is terrific. Now, a great artist may not be a great teacher they won't be familiar with the act of teaching but the fact is, it's Sting teaching you Roxanne."

A ministudio

GarageBand is a minirecording studio tool that often gets overlooked by Apple computer owners. As part of an overhaul for the iLife '09 program suite (free with new Macs, or $79), Apple added an instructional component to capitalize on renewed interest in playing music spawned by popular "rock band" video games.