by SHANE SINNOTT

Looking through a smattering of press releases this past week, my eye was caught by one with the subject “Elvis Video: Play like the King,” for a new Web site called ivideosongs.com. The site sells downloadable instructional videos that purport to teach you how to play a song in its entirety on guitar. The videos range from around $4–$6, and you can put them on iPods and other portable devices once you’ve downloaded them. The selling point is that the company has acquired full rights to the song, in order to teach you the “definitive” version.

The video I downloaded is taught by Rob Schumann, who teaches courses in things like Classical Guitar at the Atlanta Institute of Music. He’s quoted on the company site as saying, “I really benefited from learning a wide variety of styles. For instance, the sustained melodic style of Carlos Santana really influenced my approach to soloing. And my college experience of memorizing and performing challenging classical arrangements aided my development of practice technique.” So when I booted up the video and began to watch Rob teach me the Avril Lavigne song “Complicated” (credited to “April Lavigne” on the site), I was confident I was getting the proper instruction.

The song blows, of course, and the teacher is incredibly overqualified, but to be fair (or at least less of a dick), I think once you’ve watched this video, you’re going to be able to whip out “Complicated” at parties for the rest of your life. The video is divided into segments, and begins with Schumann painstakingly describing the tuning of each individual string, playing each three times. There are about a dozen sections in total, breaking down every aspect of the song, and each with a corresponding display of tabs and chords, as you would see in a guitar magazine.

No doubt these videos work, but to me it takes the fun out of it. Why pay $5 for a lecture when you can find free tablature online and play along to the CD the old-fashioned way? I’m sure a certain type of person wants videos like this, but it sure ain’t me.