Gigajam Review

Marketed more towards UK schools, Gigajam is an online music training school based out of the UK. They teach bass guitar, and also have separate courses for other popular band instruments such as the keyboard, guitar, and the drums.

One thing Gigajam is not lacking is choice. For each of the instruments they teach, they have downloadable lessons, paperback books (same content as the downloadable lessons), and a video-only course which has aired on the Musician's Channel. They allow you to watch the 2-part introduction video for each instrument free (I found the second video on the bass guitar especially helpful as it explained how to use their BassXtractor software). In our review we will mainly talk about their bass guitar downloadable courses, as they are the most cost-effective of the above options.

Terry Gregory, the author the bass guitar course, has played and taught music for the last 20 years. He is a university lecturer in popular music performance, and has played extensively with several music bands including the Steve Hackett band.

Features

The Gigajam course will take you from a complete beginner to a moderately competent intermediate bass player. It's a very good course to give you a solid grounding which you can build on later.

The lessons are a series of .pdfs with hyperlinks that point to the various videos, sound files and their interactive BassXtractor modules.

I found what Gigajam had to offer on their site was a little confusing, so I will break it down for you. They have 3 Levels of Bass Guitar Instruction, each with 10 lessons. You can buy each level separately. However, if you buy all 3 lessons together you get what works out to be a 17% discount.

Level 1
10 Computer-based lessons
55 instructional videos
54 Play-Along files

Level 2
10 Computer-based lessons
89 Instructional videos
66 Play-Along files

Level 3
10 Computer-based lessons
61 Instructional videos
60 Play-Along files

Gigajam's software, called the BassXtractor incredibly innovative. It takes the MIDI sound files used in your lessons and lets you mix the various instruments playing on the track. So for instance, you could mute the bass guitar and play along with the rest of the instruments. You can also vary the tempo and even transpose the music if you wish. The advanced use of BassXtractor allows you to record and track your playing against the lesson in MIDI format. Unfortunately, it takes special equipment to properly utilize. If you have an MIDI enabled bass guitar, and the other necessary hardware, this course is a no-brainer. Realize though, that the software doesn't make or break the course, and you still don't need the proper equipment to benefit from the BassXtractor, but it's very cool if you do. If you are interested in getting the required hardware to enable your bass guitar, you can check out their FAQ pages.

Guarantee/Support

Gigajam has a 30-day advertised warranty on their site.

Gigajam's support options are pretty good, as they have a dedicated phone number as well as the usual email address .Unfortunately, their phone number is in the UK, which means if you are from North America, you may be paying through your nose to call them. One thing they don't mention on their main site is that they do have a fledgling support forum, much like Bass Guitar Secrets does, only smaller.

Ease of Use

Gigajam is very easy to use, as all related lesson material is hyperlinked to right from the lesson. Very smooth.

There were no installation problems. However the software did act up on me when I was using it. I kept getting a script error, which I emailed them about. When you access the BassXtractor directly from within your lessons (which is what you will be doing), you won't have those problems. When you open the help file with their software, there was no way to close it, unless you close the software, which admittedly was rather annoying. There will be a new version of BassXtractor coming out at the beginning of 2008, and it's free to download. We were told that all the bugs reported in v 3.08 will be addressed then.

The BassXtractor software does have issues with Windows Vista ®. There is a workaround published on Gigajam's site though, so hopefully this isn't too much of a problem.

Recently Gigajam's software was made compatible with the Mac as long as it is running OS X 10.3 or later.

Conclusion

For the price of a single, private lesson, you can get all the guitar basics under your belt. While the price is a little higher than our value pick, this course is well-suited for the average beginner.

If you are brand new to the bass guitar, want a slower pace, and not so steep a learning curve, Gigajam is a very attractive choice. However, for a course with better value and that will take you farther on the bass guitar, check out our review of Bass Guitar Secrets.

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