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Anyone here ever bought any of Duanne Shinn's DVDs or materials at www.playpiano.com looks interesting but expensive.

Hi Tony,
I seem to remember TonyB has a certain set of Shinn's course (may be the full year course.) You can try to pvt msg him to get his opinion, since he may not catch this thread.

I am thinking of buying his chord software program.

Anyone using it?

Yes, I have a couple of Shinn's courses. The one year course is the closest self-study course I have seen to taking "real" lessons. It is quite structured, with 52 video lessons that give assignments each week out of the accompanying books.

That course is really what you need to have under fingers before tackling many of the smaller courses that many people have felt went over their heads.

His materials are fine, but his web site is confusing. Whenever I have read a negative review of one of Shinn's smaller courses, it is always a complaint that the course assumes a certain level of proficiency. There is someplace on his site where he says that the best place to start is with the one year "crash course", but it is unlikely that you would run across that recommendation BEFORE encountering most of his courses, so I am certainly not faulting anybody who had that experience.

Shinn's course are expensive, until you compare them to the cost of "real" lessons. I doubt there is anything that would replace having a live teacher, but among the self-study crowd, these are the next best thing.

Tony