Fender Play Review - Initial Thoughts (Weeks 1-2)
Fender Play App Review
All right, hey, guys. What's going on? It's Dave from Beginning Guitar Online hitting you up with this latest episode. So, one of the things that I wanted to do, since Chris and I have talked about being the guides to all the great stuff for beginning players that’s out there, was to go out and actually test out some of the things that are out there. So with this episode, we're going to do a deep dive into the Fender Play app.
What is Fender Play?
Fender, a year or two ago did a review of the guitar market and had some really interesting insights in terms of the turnover for beginning players. And out of that came this Fender Play platform with the idea to get more people playing and to the next level where people will actually continue to play after the first year, or continue to buy Fender guitars and amps.
It is an app with both mobile and desktop versions. For me, one of the disappointing things, right out of the gate, is that they don't have an Apple TV app. Most of my practicing is either, you know, in the home studio or out on the couch and it would be great to have that Apple TV app. But I did discover the other day that actually the app does allow you to cast the lessons to your TV. So if you have an Apple TV or you have a Chromecast you can stream it from your phone, or tablet, a laptop onto a bigger screen if that's how you prefer to digest it. So you can tailor it to whatever works with your preferred lesson in a setup.
Fender Play on Apple’s App Store (Affiliate)
What Does Fender Play Cost?
Inside the app, it’s split into a number of different areas, but before we get into that, we'll cover some of the stats around the thing. So they offer a seven-day free trial if you’d like to try it out. There are student and military discounts for the subscription that you can get through the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
According to Fender’s Support website, a monthly plan will cost about $10 US, or £10, per month. An annual plan, which is the one that I chose, is $90 US, or £90, per year and since the subscriptions are handled via the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, they will be recurring subscriptions through your store profile if you do not shut them off.
Now there may be an extra amount of tax on top of the stated amounts depending on where you live, so to figure out what it will actually cost you head over to Fender Support.
Where is Fender Play Available?
Again, according to the Fender website the app and web versions are available in the following areas.
Americas
Canada
Mexico
United States
Asia Pacific
Australia
New Zealand
Europe
Denmark
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Sections of the App
Song Tabs and Transcriptions
The app is also split into different sections. So if you want to learn only songs, they have tabs available for guitar bass and ukelele. They also have an entire section under a My Songs Area for specific riffs. So if you want to learn a main theme, you know, the one thing that really sets apart that song from every other song, then that will be there too. Those are fun to learn, but long-term, you should just learn the full song, right? Because you're not about to go gig or play a coffee shop, you know, open mic with riffs, right? I’ve learned a couple of strummy songs. You know, one was a Pink Floyd tune, one was a Salt-N-Pepa riff, you know, just the main theme from their famous song.
That's one of the things about this platform that I think is nice is that it has a really broad collection of tunes that you can learn, and be confident in the tabs that are there. With a lot of the other guitar tab sites, it might be Joe Schmoe in the basement that either is really good at figuring out how to play a song or is kind of close but went ahead and posted how to play the song anyway. So, you know, the quality of the tabs or the transcriptions you find elsewhere online can be hit and miss.
But with Fender putting its name behind it, I would trust those tabs. They are really simplified. This app is really targeted to the beginning player, which is nice when you're in that area. For me, or a slightly more experienced player, I feel like if I wasn't looking to broaden out my skills in a particular genre that I'm completely unfamiliar with, the app would be lacking and I would go elsewhere.
Skills, Theory, and Collections
There is then another section called Skills, where it covers, you know, tone ideas, like how do you get a specific tone? That's a nice way for Fender to show off all their gear. So if you're into Fender gear, obviously this app will be good for you.
There is also music theory, different exercises, or techniques if you want to do a deeper dive into that. Like what is the CAGED methodology? What's strumming?
There's another section called Collections that's more based around genre-specific things or, you know, collections of artists that they want to spotlight. So, obviously, there's a lot of Fender artists there that they're showcasing.
Learning Paths
The Fender Play app is set up to have different learning paths that you can select, based on the style of music that you’d like to learn. There’s a hierarchy of content once you select a path. So you have the overall path for rock, acoustic, blues, country, and I think one other one, that you can go through. There are different levels within that path, and then within each of those paths are the different courses. Subsets of those courses are the different activities that you have to pass. For example:
Path > Levels > Courses > Activities
I went ahead and opted in for the electric guitar, country music path that they have, and for the country music path I chose, there are five levels and the first level is 15 different courses. It sounds kind of complicated, but once you're in the app it totally makes sense.
One of the things that I do really like about the way that they have it set up is that you can mark each course complete. So if you already know that skill or you did it on, you know, another device and it didn't log over, you can just, you know, click a checkmark and mark the course complete. So that's a nice handy way of knowing, okay, yeah, I have this. I've completed these different tutorials.
Another thing that is nice is that you can mark a thing as a favorite so that you can come back to it and relearn what's there or troubleshoot what you have learned thus far.
But once you get through one or two different courses, they then have a song that you can learn, or it might be a particular riff, or a theme of a song that showcases, you know, to those abilities and the things that you've learned. So, the first song within the country path, at least as it is, with my app is Dolly Parton's 9 to 5, which is a fun tune.
Another nice layout of the path piece is that it's laid out so you learn one or two different skills and those things are reinforced with the riffs or songs. One downfall however is that the lessons may not really be hammered in because, you know, it is a self-directed platform, so you have to have the motivation to actually go in and practice and be honest with yourself about whether or not you've captured the technique.
Courses and Lesson Activities
Now, the reason for me that I picked country is that I have very little knowledge of country techniques and I don't typically listen to country. I have a few kinds of novelty riffs under my fingers that I can throw in there if I want a kind of a flavor or do a musical joke. But I've never really done any kind of deep dive into that sound or into those different techniques. So hoping to learn some of those flavors, some of those different techniques to incorporate into my own playing.
But it's been interesting. You know, I've been playing for 18 years. So some of the things like “here's how to strum,” I've skipped over. But if you are an absolute beginner, this app will be good for you and a nice way to track your progress as you go through the lessons.
Now, the really nice thing is that there are some practice modes within each of the activities where you have the lesson where you have an actual teacher that will show you the different chords, or scale shapes, or whatever else with the tab, and then they have a practice mode where you don't have the teacher, you can just affect the playback speed.
So if you can't play it at 100%, if it's too fast for your abilities, you can scale that back to half speed or three-quarter speed, which is a really nice feature. They only show you tabs so you don't get that relation between music notation and the tab, which for me is kind of disappointing, but I think for 90% of most players will be totally fine.
If you're just looking to learn a technique or a song, you really only need the tabs, especially when you actually can playback the tab and you can play along with it to gauge where you are. They also do have controllers for whether or not you want the click-clack or the metronome, whether or not you want some time to count in from when you hit play to then get set to work on it, which I really like. As well as whether or not you want the digital, fake guitar to play along with you.
Personally, I like having all those things on because then you can hear whether or not you're keeping up or if you hit a wrong note. For those of you who like notifications, personally, I don't have any notifications on my phone. But they do have a parameter for practice settings which could be a really nice feature. That said I'm only two weeks in and I haven't had a lot of time to practice, to be honest, over the last two weeks.
Conclusion
So this is my initial take, I’m only two weeks in. I'll record some other videos to track my progress with the app. But I think it's going to be good for a majority of people who just want to learn, just want to get to some quick songs under their fingers. If you have a more specialized taste like me, if you're into, you know, things like After the Burial or the more modern metal stuff, you're not going to find that here.
They do have some things for metal, but again, it's beginner and you're not going to sit down and learn a Lamb of God tune or if you're into the Swedish death metal scene, you're not going to find any of that. If you're into the top 40 from the last 40 years, 60 years even, then absolutely, you will find that. You know, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jason Aldean, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, you know, Stevie Ray Vaughn, those types of things are going to be there.
So that'll work out for a lot of people that just want to get something going. But yeah, if you're into more specialized music, then, you know, take it for the skills, take it for the techniques, but, you know, learn your song somewhere else.
They do have a Fender Facebook group, but I haven't checked that out yet. So that is available for you if you're into that kind of thing. They have split up the app into a couple of different areas. So I talked about, you know, "my path," right, like I'm doing the country courses.
So initial feedback is that this is going to be great for beginners. I like the idea of being able to dive into a specific genre, especially if you're trying to branch out from your main one further down the road. But again, this really does focus in on beginning players.
I have a feeling, and I think I've seen this in some of the other reviews…I have a feeling this will ring true for me as well, but if you know what you're doing or you go through a number of the paths and you get happy with the success that you're getting, I feel like you're going to outgrow this app pretty quickly.
We'll wait and see what happens with that. I think next time I might play around a little bit more once I get my fingers tapping away on the phone and the iPad, be able to comment more on the layout.
I think one of the things that I am disappointed with this now that I'm talking about it a little bit more is there's so much content that organizing the content in a way…and I think a lot of guitar sites suffer from this is just being able to have an easily navigated experience for the learner. And I don't think anybody's actually figured that out yet. So, just pointing that out, maybe it's more intuitive for you. Definitely go check it out.
And yeah, happy shredding!
I hope this was helpful, and we'll come back with some more check-ins after using the app a little bit more. So, like, comment, subscribe, all that Youtube stuff. And, you know, be sure to sign up for the Woodshed Newsletter on the BGO website, where we aggregate lessons from around the web and tell you what's going on every two weeks. So that comes right to your mailbox.
It's been a lot of fun checking out all these websites, finding the best lessons for beginners. So hopefully you can check the Fender Play app out and that'll be helpful to you. So, all right, keep shredding, have fun. Thank you. Take care.