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GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

kickstarter.com

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Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#51

Post by ChuckMcM »

polemic wrote: post #50
ChuckMcM wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you are under estimating the 'early reward' effect. For those who don't know it, the theory behind early reward is that you create a teaching system which rewards early and often and gradually ramps and you can get more people taught. The thought is that lowering the threshold to success gets you more participants. Its used a lot in game play to draw you in. That being said, when Guitar Hero came out for th…

I think it's fair to say that one reason guitar is so popular is because of the early reward effect. For this sort of price a beginner can go buy a pretty decent electric guitar and amplifier with some built in effects. Give them an hour or two and they'll be belting out a recognizable Teen Spirit in a few hours. Seriously. Meanwhile: > "...detect exactly what you're playing in real-time and relay each note to your i…

"From the iPhone speakers? Um... no thanks."

Given what looks like a resonant cavity, and the 'short' battery life of the guitar body, I'm guessing they have an audio amplifier built into the guitar and they pick up the signal from the docking connector.

Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#52

Post by mckilljoy »

steve-howard wrote: post #6
pfraze wrote: post #5

I'm 50% excited by the idea of an assistive guitar. And I'm 50% excited by having LEDs all over my guitar neck.

I'm sure it could be done in a regular guitar, though you'd destroy the tone.

You can get one of those LED kit to put on your guitar, which would work if you don't want any of the other functionality.

Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#53

Post by gtani »

polemic wrote: post #50
ChuckMcM wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you are under estimating the 'early reward' effect. For those who don't know it, the theory behind early reward is that you create a teaching system which rewards early and often and gradually ramps and you can get more people taught. The thought is that lowering the threshold to success gets you more participants. Its used a lot in game play to draw you in. That being said, when Guitar Hero came out for th…

I think it's fair to say that one reason guitar is so popular is because of the early reward effect. For this sort of price a beginner can go buy a pretty decent electric guitar and amplifier with some built in effects. Give them an hour or two and they'll be belting out a recognizable Teen Spirit in a few hours. Seriously. Meanwhile: > "...detect exactly what you're playing in real-time and relay each note to your i…

for There aren't other "real" instruments that can be mass produced like this in a few factories in China and Indonesia.

Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#54

Post by dhugiaskmak »

njharman wrote: post #18

Neat. But hyperbole makes me an anti-customer. "Anybody (with an iPhone)" is a far smaller set than "Anybody". Also some peoples fingers are just too short which nothing can help and/or they lack musical "sense" (hearing, rhythm, whatever it is that makes me suck at anything musical) which I doubt this setup helps.

It's definitely possible to learn to be "musical" if you're willing to put in the effort.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/15/guitar-zer...

Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#56

Post by polemic »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #51
polemic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that one reason guitar is so popular is because of the early reward effect. For this sort of price a beginner can go buy a pretty decent electric guitar and amplifier with some built in effects. Give them an hour or two and they'll be belting out a recognizable Teen Spirit in a few hours. Seriously. Meanwhile: > "...detect exactly what you're playing in real-time and relay each note to your i…

"From the iPhone speakers? Um... no thanks." Given what looks like a resonant cavity, and the 'short' battery life of the guitar body, I'm guessing they have an audio amplifier built into the guitar and they pick up the signal from the docking connector.

It looks like it's a solid body guitar. Also:

> "Since the gTar is entirely digital, it doesn't care whether the strings are in tune or not."

I can't even see any pickups, so I'm guessing it simply checks what fret you're holding and detects strumming/picking some other way.

That seems to be supported by "...cannot be retrofitted onto a traditional guitar...". So, basically, you're stuck using your iPhone as the only interface option.

All up - isn't this just a solution looking for a problem?

Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#58

Post by CWuestefeld »

gtani wrote: post #53
polemic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say that one reason guitar is so popular is because of the early reward effect. For this sort of price a beginner can go buy a pretty decent electric guitar and amplifier with some built in effects. Give them an hour or two and they'll be belting out a recognizable Teen Spirit in a few hours. Seriously. Meanwhile: > "...detect exactly what you're playing in real-time and relay each note to your i…

for There aren't other "real" instruments that can be mass produced like this in a few factories in China and Indonesia.

An oddity of guitar is the way a cheap guitar affects one's ability to learn.

In most any endeavor, it's true that working on your skills is much more important than upgrading your equipment: practice is the way to improve, you can't buy your way into being better.

But this is significantly less true at the bottom end of the guitar spectrum. Cheap guitars really are worse -- not just in the quality of their sound or their durability, but in their playability. It is much more difficult to get a really cheap guitar to work right. A $100 guitar is going to be much more difficult to play than a $500 one.

That's primarily due to the "action" -- the height of strings above the frets. On a cheap guitar, the (im)precision of the components -- the bridge and its springs, the neck tension bar, etc., conspire to make it so that the higher frets have much higher action (or else the lower ones buzz). That forces the player to squeeze the strings harder to the neck, which is painful, and is less forgiving about finger placement within the fret, requiring that fingers go closer to the fret rather than allowing more space behind it.

The end result is that a new player, not wanting to invest too much money in something that he doesn't know if he'll like, is more likely to be discouraged and give up. If he'd had a better tool from the beginning, success would have been more likely.

Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#59

Post by aiscott »

bradleyland wrote: post #20

This is relevant for me because I just started trying to teach myself to play guitar at the beginning of 2012. For me, the hardest part was definitely not figuring out where to put my fingers, but putting them there without touching other strings. Even if your finger is just a little bit too close to another string, it can push a note flat or sharp, making the chord sound bad. Learning the mechanics of finger placeme…

Yes, I agree, physical dexterity is a large task to surmount when learning. Possibly the largest, although this will vary from person to person.

I can see some neat applications for GTar, like illuminating different modes for a key.

As it is, gTar seems to me to be the hackertyper.net of guitars.

Re: GTar: The First Guitar That Anybody Can Play

#60

Post by nknight »

smountcastle wrote: post #4

This seems like an interesting concept and the LEDs should make it easier to see which strings need to be played. I'm curious how it compares to the Rocksmith video game which is played with a real guitar (which I haven't tried). There is considerably more risk with this project than many other Kickstarter projects as the lowest tier is $350 -- if the project fails and the GTar is never made that's quite a bit more m…

While more money is at stake, I'd say the risk is actually substantially lower unless they're lying about everything (I have no reason to believe they are).

These guys aren't totally green, they have multiple working prototypes/pilots, the software is done, manufacturing is ready. This isn't really much different from any other pre-order. They're saying "The product is tested and ready, give us money to buy a bunch of parts and put them together."

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