One of the more interesting (to me) additions to the new version of GarageBand included in iLife ’09 is the Learn to Play feature. So now, not only can you put together loops, synthesized music, and your own instrumentals, you can learn to play any instrument you might want to record. Want to add a piano track to your musical opus, but don’t know how to play? Well, Learn to Play probably isn’t for you since it will take you quite a while to really learn the piano; but it’s a start!
Along with Learn to Play are Artist Lessons, where leading pop musicians will give you prerecorded instructions on how to play some of their songs on their instrument. Gizmodo has a good review of Artist Lessons, and they sound like a really good deal to me.
It’s all about the price point. At five dollars, these artist lessons are an impulse buy. Five dollars is around what you would pay for five minutes of a lesson with a less-than-average instructor in the real world. While it doesn’t give you the personalized training that another person would, it gives you enough to get started, and enough tools to improvise from the one song you learn to progress.
If I had access to iLife ’09 and a piano of sorts, I would be all over it.