Edible Apple

TechCrunch reports that the GarageBand Lesson Store could be the next big thing:

Apple’s Lesson Store is the perfect compromise. Each lesson offers a lengthy video of the artist discussing how to play their song section by section, which is displayed alongside the music being played (either in tab or traditional notation) and a diagram of where your fingers should be on your instrument. And because you’re dealing with the original artist, you know you’re learning the song as it was meant to be played.

True to Apple tradition, the interface shines. You can quickly jump between sections, slow down video playback to half speed without distorting the notes, and can easily set the program to loop any segment of music until you’ve got it down. I honestly can’t think of anything that would make it any better.

We’ve yet to play around with iLife ’09 yet, but we can’t wait to get our hands on it.  Aside from iPhoto, which has seemingly been getting most of the coverage, there are some interesting updates to GarageBand and iMovie as well.

Also, note the difference between GarageBand which actually helps you learn how to play an instrument, and Microsofts foray into the market with Songsmith – an app which essentially sucks any semblence of creativity out of the song creation process.