Learn how to play guitar in your browser (in 3D)

Apple's Macworld announcement about professional and celebrity music instruction as part of GarageBand '09 may have been impressive, but what might be a little more eye catching (and ultimately useful) is iPerform3D. This browser-based music learning system shows users how to play guitar in 3D, and works on both Macs and PCs.

iPerform3D eschews A-list music celebrities like Sting and Sarah McLachlan in place of guitar-playing veterans who have undergone motion capture recording of their entire bodies (fingers especially) to teach you various lessons. To learn, you get control of a 3D video player that lets you change vantage points, as well as slow down or speed up the lesson.

The service's claim to fame is that this 3D viewer gets rid of some of the limitations that come from simply watching someone play in a video or over a Web cam. You can zoom around behind the neck of the guitar and see through where your fingers are supposed to go. It's pretty neat, and a lot easier than trying to reverse the image in your head to do what you're seeing. Each video comes with three view presets, although you can simply click and drag around with your mouse to adjust each angle further.

iPerform3D's player lets you zoom around to whatever angle you want, and includes three button presets to let you skip to ones that cover finger placement. Click to enlarge.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The service offers both a beginner course ($40) and three different monthly membership subscriptions ranging from $30 for one month all the way up to $140 for an entire year. These give you access to set of intermediate lessons and "jam tracks" which serve as background loops for you to practice what you've learned.

One thing worth noting is that the service won't work without the installation of the Unity-3D rendering engine (which isn't just a simple browser add-on). The upside of this is that once it's installed on your machine you can run the lessons from almost any of your browsers, although IE, Firefox, and Safari are the only ones "supported."

Here's the video pitch:

Related: JamLegend turns your keyboard into a guitar

[smartjuice]

now this is a good application, keep the innovation roll

[Seanathome]

But GarageBand has a nice interface (with either the guitar or piano) as well as REAL celebrities and people... not motion-captured artists. The bad news about GarageBand? Mac's are SO EXPENSIVE!!

So, this is the cheap version... ;)

[lekum]

Agreed!

[assman]

Sweet, I was just thinking about finding online guitar lessons the other day. I also saw the Apple keynote where they showed the new Garageband tutoring feature, which looked awesome. That's why I installed MacOSx86 on my HP laptop to install garageband later on.

But for now I'll try this.

[assman]

OK, I'm totally doing this after school today..

[lekum]

yup me too

[7even2]

The free trial at the iperfrom site is pretty good, once you install the plug-in. The lessons are a little bit over my head for now tho... Make something for the newbs!

[sportav]

Even though this may give the mechanical breakdown of how to play a given chord or a riff, if you don't have a decent ear it ain't gonna make anyone a musician.