So recently I finagled my way into an invite to the private beta of JamLegend and gave it a try. If you don’t know what it is think Guitar Hero, free, online, and no guitar. I don’t really think this free web service is anything to go crazy about but it has potential. Read on to find out more (including Luofei’s thoughts).

My main problem with JamLegend is that I have played Guitar Hero, and I love Guitar Hero. Probably the best thing about Guitar Hero is the guitar, which JamLegend has ripped out and replaced with a keyboard. They have some weird thing where they tell you to flip over the keyboard and hold it like a guitar, but I’m sorry, that just doesn’t do it for me, especially because I use a laptop 99% of the time. I put a picture in to the right of the two ways they let you play the guitar. So far I’ve only been able to try Chill Style but I don’t think Jam Style is really that great.

I like that it’s free but the only drawback of this is that the only songs available are probably from artists that you’ve never heard of, but this wasn’t such a big deal to me. So far there only seem to be 19 songs, which is kind of a small number considering how enormous this service could be.

Now for the best part, the multi-player. There are 2 kinds of multi-player modes, turn based, called duels (work well so far), and real time, called showdowns (would result in an error when i tried to start one). These seem to be the killer features of the service. It also looks like in the future other instruments will be available for play, these being the bass guitar, drums, and keyboard. Once these are released there could be some kind of band mode that would probably be awesome. There are also tournaments on the site and a ranking system based on your performances, which seem cool.

So right now overall it’s not that amazing a site but it has potential to be even bigger than Guitar Hero if it developed some cheap guitars, or made it easier to use existing Guitar Hero or Rock Band controllers with it (which is apparently possible) but as of right now there is only the keyboard.

[In a first-ever dual review, Luofei shares his thoughts.] I concur with everything Evan has expressed.  This is a good idea, but needs some seasoning.  JamLegend has also taught me that I am even worse at Guitar Hero without the guitar.  I am avoiding the inevitable showdown with Evan for fear of embarrassment.

Finally, I have one invite available to join the private beta community at JamLegend.  I am making it available to the first person who emails me at luofei@justplaintech.com.

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