A good website should provide useful and correct information about your chosen subject matter.
Links should reveal the sources of information. All links should also work.
Graphics and design should be attractive, clean with some white space and no “clown pants.”
Typefaces and layout should flow well and lend themselves to the subject matter.
There should be evidence of use from other viewers; if there is a bulletin board or forum and only a few people have visited, then the value of the site is questionable.
Best Website for Monday:
NPR Music: Tommy Emmanuel, Finger-picking Good
This is an informative profile, with audio samples of one of the great fingerpicking stylists: Australia’s Tommy Emmanuel.
Worst Website for Monday:
Also called, “How to play like a pro,” this annoying site tries to sell you a learning system. After about five seconds on the site, a floating order form appears and there is virtually no free information provided.
Best Website for Tuesday:
This site of Flatpicking guitar magazine includes vivid photos, various audio samples of proficient flatpickers and links galore to players’ sites. It is very informative and speaks with authority.
Worst Website for Tuesday
The Guitar Style of Maybelle Carter
This site is attempting to sell an instructional CD for learning to play like Maybelle Carter, a pioneer in country and folk styles. The site provides very little information about the artist or why she was a pioneer.
Best Website for Wednesday
The Wes Montgomery Sound: Sonoric Individuality in Jazz
This site is an academic paper about the style of one of the jazz world’s most influential players, the late Wes Montgomery. Replete with 42 footnotes of sources, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of Montgomery’s style. It is written by a PhD associated with the University of Montreal in Canada.
Worst Website for Wednesday
While this site is chock full of information, the real turn-off is the presentation. The layout consists of one long run-on paragraph after another. It’s painful to read. When scrolling down, there are no photos or graphics after the leaving the top of the page.
Best Website for Thursday
This is a well laid-out and well organized blog site about mostly rock styles. YouTube videos are included along with links for navigating to other posts, previous posts and to an RSS feed.
Worst Website for Thursday
Live Leak: Fingerstyle Guitar Playing
This site includes a YouTube video of an impressive fingerstyle player, but the site is disjointed with ads blended into the site. Ads are positioned between the caption and the video. One ad shows scantily-clad women and promises “New Amazing Video Community.”
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Checkered Trousers and Guitar Solos: Randy Burton’s “Players and Pickers” « Socratic Questions // October 8, 2008 at 5:16 pm
[...] he mentioned useful content, appealing design elements, and active use. On the last point, I liked this quote: There should be evidence of use from other viewers; if there is a bulletin board or forum and only [...]