Play Guitar With Ross Bolton (Windows 95-Rom)

Play Guitar with Ross Bolton is a Windows® 95 CD-ROM that teaches basic guitar.

The merits of the CD-ROM as a surrogate music instructor are best seen in this program's interface, which adds unlikely conveniences to such computer inevitabilities as small-screen video clips bordered with written music and tiny on-screen buttons.

For one, the windows themselves can be moved, so the screen can be organized to taste. The videos, which include demonstrations of chord forms, melodic passages and technical advice, can be shuttled in real time like a VCR, allowing for an examination of the teacher's fingerings. The options for viewing the program's animated guitar neck are panoramic: Dots dancing on the fretboard can be seen from overhead, from directly across, from a birds'-eye view and even from the vantage of a lefty.

Subtle frills aside, Play Guitar excels at putting forth pivotal music fundamentals, but here again, the features are nearly unprecedented. In the performance videos, the instructor's guitar can be muted so you can practice the material backed by a band of real musicians rather than synthesized digital accompaniment. A loop feature lets you select with precision those passages within the section that you wish to hone.

A formal practice mode ends each section, and a virtual mixing console allows complete control over the blend of the background music. In on-screen text, underlined words, when clicked, fly you into a glossary of terms defined through voice-overs, staves and sound samples.

This is also one of the few CD-ROM's available that does an adequate job instilling the concept of triads and the idea that a common chord "grip" is but one voicing, or arrangement of notes, that characterize a given chord. Armed with this understanding, you maintain a good chance of escaping the prison of rote finger motion that locks so many players into always playing chords in the same way. A personal history menu shows you the topics you have already covered, which really helps in a program with so many lessons.