My seven year old son is learning to play the guitar at school and so when I read about the launch of “academy of guitar studies” I thought I’d take a look. I have been playing guitar on and off myself for about 25 years and this year decided to learn lead guitar, having been primarily a chord monkey so far. The press release suggested this website would be a resource for anyone learning or playing the guitar and so I thought it would be useful to both of us.
One of the most useful resources for learning to play guitar is YouTube. I know a number of people who log in to view video lessons that show how to play different riffs and chord sequences and providing you can either read music or use tabs then you can get pretty much everything you need with a bit of diligent searching. The problem is that you have to wade through a lot of irrelevant stuff to find the good. I have also used About.com:guitar which provides a wide range of resources and through this website you can access a range of additional websites that provide video guitar lessons, product information, and much more.
So back to the grandly named “academy of guitar studies”. The site is a dissapointment as it is essentially an online shop dedicated to books about learning to play the guitar. The homepage doesn’t communicate what the website proposition is at all other than through the misleading tagline “your one stop shop for guitar education and accessories”. Clearly it isn’t.
It is handy to have all the books in one place and the menu structure has some interesting categories in it that assist you with finding music for special occassions or different types of music, but there is no search function. Also, you have to sign up to see a newsletter rather than get a look at why you might want to sign up (I didn’t). The price check I did against Amazon came out on par so if you are a regular Amazon customer I can’t see any reason why this website might make you order from it. Search yes; order no.
So not a one stop shop unless all you need is a new book and you are having trouble finding something specific.
Blunden Consulting – it’s alive!
12 01 2012Now that I have customers, I suppose I have to come clean and reveal that “Blunden Consulting” is up and running and open for business. I have created a page in my blog that offers a bit more information about what I actually do now that I am an independent consultant, and thanks go to the advice and guidance of colleagues and friends as I have nailed it down – you know who you are.
I plan to blog a little more (I am not sure doing much less would be possible) and change the content I write about to include some of the areas I am working in that are not user and customer experience. Twitter will no doubt continue to be my channel of preference however. (@pblunden by the way)
I am grateful to the clients who have already engaged me, and my thanks to you all; it has made the transition from full time CEO to independent consultant so much easier to cope with. I can of course fit a couple more in and so if you feel you can benefit from my particular brand of advice, please do get in touch.
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Tags: advisor, Blunden Consulting, Independent consultant, Management consulting
Categories : General Comments, new website