Mastering Music Through Online Instruction: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...type=printable "With 3.3 million electric and acoustic guitars sold this year -- nearly three times the number just 10 years ago -- the guitar is the best-selling instrument in the United States. (The growing interest in the guitar no doubt helps explain the wild popularity of a much-noted video on YouTube.com featuring a young Taiwanese guitarist playing an exceedingly difficult rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon.)"
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'Guitar Hero' changes music industry http://www.austin360.com/music/conte...sicheroes.html
In December, music publisher Hal Leonard Corp. launched a Web site called GuitarInstructor.com. It calls the site "the next step for 'Guitar Hero' fanatics." The company is also publishing song books featuring tracks from each game and is offering tablatures (musical notation for guitars) and videos showing how to play those songs on its Web site at 99 cents and $1.99, respectively.
Jeff Schroedl, vice president of product development for Hal Leonard, says the site is benefiting from the renewed interest in playing music that the games have generated. There's so many more people exposed to guitar playing through the games," Schroedl said, "Between the song book and the Web site, we're trying to tap into that as best we can."
He says, however, that shredding to "Run to the Hills" in the expert mode of "Rock Band" won't make you a real guitar hero. "There's not an obvious segue between the two other than the fact that the songs are popular and that if they're hearing the guitar parts of the game,
they're more apt to want to learn the songs on guitar."
Although Schroedl says
interest in guitar playing has grown fastest, lessons for other instruments are also benefiting from the wave of music games. The market is strong," he said."More people are wanting to play music."
Online learning exists for many instruments -- notably electronic keyboards, which interface well with computers and the Internet --
but nowhere does it appear more prevalent than with the guitar.
Dave Sebree, owner of the Austin School of Music,
said he had 190 new students sign up for lessons in January and February, "It's crazy," he said, "we can't keep up with them all."
Looks like quite a good growing market to me.
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