61–70 of 100 posts
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To where?
It just looks like it should be at the top rather than the bottom. With this setup you always have to look over your hand to see the iphone screen.
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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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Most of the cheap guitars are not worth buying, especially for fretwear, warped necks, wonky trussrods or poor neck routs in the body. I also tell people to avoid cheap Floyd Roses, active electronics and 5 string basses (poor tension on low B
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I also had a 'guitar god' friend with me that day, and I thoroughly recommend taking a friend who can play along to buy your learner instrument.
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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.
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.
The "lights on the fretboard that show you what to play" thing has been done; and while it generally gets good reviews I don't think it's revolutionizing learning guitar or anything. Likewise plugging into an iPhone for effects, etc.
The hardest part of starting guitar is simply building up your hand/finger muscles and muscle memory. Having lights on the fretboard makes it nominally easier to place your fingers, but reading tabs isn't hard to begin with (this is essentially just tabs on the fretboard anyway) and learning to look at a tab (or sheet music) on paper/a screen and translate that to finger positions is an important skill to develop as a musician.
This will encourage beginners to look at the fretboard when they play, which is a bad habit to get into.
I also have concerns about this feeling and responding like a real guitar. This doesn't operate like a normal guitar, so there will probably be a lot of little areas where it differs so someone who's played this may pick up a real guitar and find that they are making all sorts of horrible squeaking and finger noise, aren't used to the action of a real guitar, etc etc.
If it was a choice between this and a real guitar for a beginner, I would go with the real guitar no question. If you happen to have ~300-500$ that you can just blow on cool gizmos, sure it'd be fun to play with.
If you've never touched a guitar before, this might get you from 0 to "Smells like Teen Spirit" slightly faster than otherwise, but I doubt by much. I think the returns will diminish over time, and this might even ultimately hurt you.
The main neat thing is using it as a midi controller/ to make cool sounds but there are plenty of other options in that area already.
Enjoy the 'fruits' of your labor.
On the other hand, I echo some of the sentiments expressed by others who have experience actually playing guitar. I play classical guitar and have been teaching my kid the same.
Once you get past what I call single-note-at-a-time pieces progress into more interesting music requires real work. On the guitar, just like the piano, fingering is of paramount importance. Without developing an understanding for this you'll twist your hand into a pretzel and simply will not be able to advance. Then there's proper right hand technique, which is different between and electric with a pick and classical or finger-style.
The guitar has weird and difficult simultaneous left hand finger motion that one must drill and learn. I suppose they could include such drills in the app. My favorite source of pain for both left and right hand training is "Pumping Nylon" by Scott Tennant. Most who know the subject would probably agree.
Reading written music is, in my opinion, very important and --I'll venture that far-- the only way to go. Tab is cool, but why go there if reading actual musical notation isn't that hard at all. As someone mentioned, there's a ton of information in a score. Scores written for guitar, particularly at the beginner level, include right and left hand fingering as well as all sorts of other notations. All of my sheet music has copious notes on pencil as I learn the pieces.
A neck full of LEDs just can't take you very far at all. I'm sure I could be fun, but there's a real brick wall that'll make the fun stop pretty quickly.
That said, if something like this inspires the player to move up and learn the right way then I am all for it. I might actually get one just because I'm a sucker for gadgets, but it will be just that: a fun gadget to bring out, show off and possibly take camping. I believe that because of this, they have a good chance of becoming the next million-dollar-plus Kickstarter project.