Instrument Master Review

If you’ve been looking on the internet for an online method to learn piano, it’s quite possible you may have stumbled across InstrumentMaster.com. Though undoubtedly many people are put off by the site’s over-the-top sales pitch, some are attracted to the all-in-one approach to learning piano. Other tempting factors include the inexpensive price tag and the added bonus of the included guitar, bass, drums, and violin courses at no additional cost.

The truth is that Instrument Master is nothing but a thinly disguised scam that has very little to offer those who truly want to learn piano. Instrument Master makes no shortage of promises on its website, but disappoints in virtually every respect, as the review below illustrates.

Features

First, let’s look at a couple of the promises that Instrument Master advertise on their site.

• Access to “1000s of Lessons” in Instrument Master’s database – Now this could have been a misprint as they seemed to have added a couple extra ‘0’s. Hmmm… or maybe they just outright lied about it. *Gasp… they wouldn’t do that, would they?
• “10 Styles and Genres of instruction” for each instrument they teach – Unfortunately, the mini-lessons are too busy teaching you the location of middle C to worry about anything as advanced as playing styles.

So what do you actually get with Instrument Master?

• 13 QuickTime movie files: Instead of the “hundreds of videos” that Instrument Master promises you get 13 short QuickTime movie clips. The video quality is simply atrocious. It made me a little dizzy in fact as the camera kept moving around during the filming. The audio is muffled and distant. Between all of the video "lessons", you get approximately 33 minutes worth of video. (The average file length is only 2:30 long) There is also no structure or logical progression to course whatsoever. Just a random series of video clips that have little so say about anything.
• 13 MP3 files: These audio clips mimic the video audio in the QuickTime movie clips entirely. This is completely redundant and unnecessary, as you can’t see anything that is being discussed. Imagine that your teacher asked you to play certain chords for the first time, but you can’t see what he is playing. Yeah, it’s pretty slick.
• 4 scale illustrations: These .jpg image files show the notes in a few widely used scales.
• 4 music theory .pdfs: Explains some basic music theory and concepts such as rhythm, pitch, basic chords, and intervals.
• Jam Tracks: Absolutely laughable. After downloading and listening to all 10 jam tracks in the membership area, we discovered that they are all rap/hip-hop beat tracks that are from Jay Dynasty’s Beat365 site. Just try playing the piano to these gems!

Even though Instrument Master says they “upload new lessons and techniques every week”, we soon discovered that what you see listed above is all you’ll ever get.

The co-conspirators of Instrument Master are Jay Dynasty and Greg Evans. Greg does the piano and violin lessons while Jay covers the guitar, bass, and drums.

Support

Though Instrument Master states that they “hang out with their members all day”, chances are you’ll never hear back from them once you’ve paid your membership fee. We haven’t.

Ordering Information

Instrument Master Pro uses a 3rd party payment processing company called Clickbank. This is a really good thing if you’ve had the misfortune of being tricked into previously purchasing this course since you can contact Clickbank for a refund which will be issued back to whatever payment method you used. (PayPal or Credit Card) Note that you only have 60 days to file your refund claim. Don’t waste your time trying to contact Instrument Master for a refund, as most people report that you won’t get any response.

Conclusion

Poor quality teaching, amateur-shot video footage, non-existent support all add up to the worst piano course we’ve seen to date. Avoid at all costs.

Check out our Editor’s Choice for learn-at-home piano courses here.