I feel like this could be a great thing but the way it's presented doesn't convince me that it is. Is the gtar an instrument for making music or is it something to help you learn to play a real guitar. If it's the latter then how does it compare with other learning methods, what are the advantages etc. If it's the former then it would be nice to hear how it sounds and what it can do. Other than the last few seconds of the video I have no idea about what the thing sounds like.
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 money to lose than a ~$20 video game.
The money isn't taken out of your account until the project is successfully funded so even if you contribute $350 that $350 doesn't get taken out if the project fails to reach its goal (at least this is what happens with other kickstarter projects)
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."
I own Rocksmith and I can say it's definitely good. The game started me playing real songs right away. The difference is that it limits what you play as well as the speed. As you progress, you get to play more and more of the song. There are some really fun mini-games as well.
The game with guitar USB adapter runs for about $70, while I got my electric guitar for around $100. Of course, you need an Xbox 360 or PS3 and that runs from $99 - $299.
I'll just add my agreement to Rocksmith. I've found it to be a lot of fun aside from the learning aspect. It's a fun game albeit with a quirky interface.
The fact that it lets you plug in your real guitar is definitively nice. It handles bends, chords, slides etc... is super nice (not sure that the gTar supports these from the video).
I will say the tech isn't perfect it sometimes will let you get away with things it shouldn't but you can be your own police too.
If you already own a guitar it's a cheap investment I feel. If you don't I really don't but want to learn. I believe you'll be better served with this than gTar. You'll have a real guitar at a minimum. I can forsee a upgraded gTar with a 3/4 plug etc... I'd wait and see. Plus the iPhone requirement makes it's it non workable for many people.
(I don't think this should discourage the gTar folks, I'm sure they will have enough early adopters to improve the concept.)
Not only that, but the idea of a guitar that "teaches" you with lights in the neck has been done before (see fretlight guitars, etc). The only new thing here is the iphone.
As a guitarist, I don't think this is a useless tool for people learning how to play, but "the first guitar that anybody can play" is a ridiculous title.
Anyone with two working hands and no cognitive disabilities can learn how to play a guitar already. It takes effort, but if you keep at it, learning how to play is inevitable. What they are promising with the title is that this device will take all the effort out of learning, so that even those who don't want to put any effort in can learn how to play.
But it will still take effort to learn. Lots. It's not just having to learn where to put your fingers. It's learning how to make your fingers move the way they should. It's learning to keep going even though your fingers just refuse to do what you tell them to do when you first start out. It's also learning rhythm, and musicality, and a whole host of things.
I'm sure this tool would make it somewhat easier to learn how to play. But you'd still have to actually learn how to play before you could play.
This was my first reaction, then I realized that for people who are trying to teach themselves guitar, this would be way easier than learning to read tablature, and even easier than watching youtube videos (since the mirror effect can be tricky at first).
On the other hand, you risk becoming a guitarist who struggles to read tablature or learn by watching other guitarists, so the trade off is arguably high. At the very least, one should learn these things after getting off the ground with gTar.
Of course, you're right that there's more to guitar than putting your fingers in the right place, but at the very least I think we can say that for learning individual songs, this would be a big improvement on tabs.
For learning individual songs, learning to read real music would be an improvement over tabs.
The problem with arguing that the GTar is easy for learning songs (and it is) is how much information is lost. Sheet music contains a ridiculous amount of information. Tablature does not. Lights on a wooden stick contain even less. At what point are you doing a disservice to the aspiring guitarist by taking away information?
Reading music is a valuable skill, but not one (evidently) that aspiring guitarists are inclined to tackle, even now. I know a lot of amateur guitarists, and the only ones who can read music are the ones who learned to do so while learning some other instrument. I read music, but almost never apply this skill to guitar, because it just isn't how the (non-classical) guitar community communicates.
Which isn't anything to be happy about perhaps, but does seem to be the reality of the situation. I'd put reading music in the same category as tabs etc: "You should really learn this, sooner is better than later, if you're serious about guitar". But a lot of people struggle to get off the ground with guitar at all, so I can still see value in something like gTar. Though I do see it as a niche market (musically struggling, iPhone owning technophiles).
It depends really. For someone learning an instrument for the first time, reading music isn't the problem - guitar tabs are really easy to read anyway. The issue is learning to co-ordinate hand and finger movements.
Once you're more comfortable playing the guitar, you can move onto more complex things like reading sheet music, or composing, or whatever tickles your fancy.
Think of it like programming: we recommend beginners start on languages like Python, Basic or Pascal to ease the mind into that way of working.
I disagree with you on sheet music vs tab. GOOD tab is more informative than sheet music. Specifying which string to play a note on isn't something sheet music is very good at, and from a tonal perspective, it _matters_. A 4th string 5th fret "A" on a bass is VERY different from the same note played on an open 3rd string, for instance.
You're clearly not familiar with actual guitar sheet music. There's a lot of notational conventions for string indications. Along with fingerings, positions, barres, etc.
By lowering this barrier doesn't it introduce learning bad technique. When you play guitar and your hands are not physically capable of performing certain chord voicings, the end result is a bad sounding chord. However, with practice you develop the flexibility, finger independence, and strength to perform the chord properly. Where is the incentive to gain proper technique if everything you play sounds good or is very forgiving.
I reckon this has mostly come about through the shift of guitar being seen as an instrument and more as a faux artistic accessory of a person's identity. Like those people who have guitars hung on their bedroom/living room walls, or on a stand but never play.
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 the Wii I got a copy, realized that they had captured some of the 'feel' you get when you are playing for real (my nominal instrument is trombone but not a lot of call for that :-) and found it fun. So I took the open source bluetooth driver for the Wiimote and created an app that basically let you play a song and pace it with the 'strumming'. Its great for kidding around but not as satisfying as having to work the frets etc.
So here we have a guitar that can do a bit of both, play 'fake' where only the correct notes play, or play 'real' where all notes play. Cool idea.
The price though. Ouch. Lets look at that for a minute.
After they build their first batch, guitars will be $450 each. And they need an iPhone to work at all. So a used iPhone is maybe $100 so you are looking at $550 all up. A student guitar is $60 and lessons are like $100/month so call it 5 months of lessons.
I'm guessing that if you don't even know if you like to play the guitar its going to be too much of a 'risk' to invest in it. That will greatly limit the market. If they are successful I hope they come out with a dedicated built in compute unit.
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 iPhone, which then produces the actual sound."
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.
> "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?
for < US $250, you can buy playable solid body electrics from Yamaha, Ibanez, Peavey or Axl, new. For $100 you'll find something that's tolerably playable on Craigslist in most large markets.
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.
You are correct. I've spent a lot fo time in instrument shop, craigslist and pawnshops (California, Seattle, Ohio, Wisconsin), looking at pianos, fluets/sax/clarinets and double bass/cellos, in addition to guitars and bass guitars. I'd consider Ebay if the seller has refund policy
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
Addendum: i have a Korean Squier strat ($79.95) and a Samick fretless bass ($220) that I'm very fond of. I have another cheap guitar and bass that are just meh.
Also i'd add Squier Classic Vibes to the list of mfrs with at least passable QC but not their Affinities
When I started with guitar, I said to the guy "I'm not sure if this is a phase or not, let me try the cheapest guitar in the store". He tuned it, walked all of five meters around the counter to hand it to me, I strummed it, and even with my unmusical ear, I could tell it was already out of tune. "I think I'll try your second-cheapest guitar!"
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.
Having a knowing friend is the only real way to shop for a guitar. I was lucky at the time when I was starting that I had my brother-in-law help me choose between the cheap guitars and we found something for under $100 that sounded "good enough". Straight away he told me: "start with this, if you don't get bored in 2 months sell it and buy a $300 guitar".
Failing that, you can head to a small music shop where the guys selling (sometimes they have an in-store technician) can give lend you a hand at choosing something worth your money. Never buy your first instrument from a big shop where the guy behind the counter doesn't know shit.
I've only played acoustic and I'm still a beginner, but I believe I've encountered this with my (cheap) guitar - after trying a friend's higher-grade guitar I was shocked at how much easier it was to play. I've found that a capo mitigates most of the pain, as well as making it sound less "muddy", if that makes sense. Also, now I have giant finger callouses from pressing down so hard. :)
This might have been true about five or ten years ago, but CNC machines have really revolutionized the cheap guitar industry. The cheapest Squire strats today are on par with what you would have paid over $600 for ten years ago.
I've owned a lot of cheap guitars, starting with a plywood no-name electric, and I wish the stuff that's available today had been there 25 years ago.
I think it's also because guitars are relative cheap and portable. That and tablature - which basically takes away 1 pain point of learning an instrument - that of having to learn to read music at the same time as learning the physical skill.
But, this is exactly what learning programming is like. And, from what I've read, learning code and learning music is cognitively similar from a didactic standpoint.
Programming tutorials force you to physically type examples in verbatim to get a specified result. The result is a compilable program. Put your hands in the right place on a GTar, and at the end you're that much closer to learning a song.
This device seems to make it easier to learn where to put your fingers to get your result. It's illuminated tablature transferred directly to your fretboard.
I agree, music and programming really aren't that different. Just for fun, consider this analogy:
Staff => C++
Tabs => Python
gTar => codeacademy
Staff, like C++, can be quite flexible/expressive, but is loaded with historical baggage and redundant nonsense, and is not easily portable (it was clearly designed with piano in mind). And it has been the defacto standard for a long time (ok, this is a bit might be slightly less analogous).
Tabs, like python, are clear, practical, concise and to-the-point, but lack some information and rigidity (dynamic typing), and need certain requirements in order to be useful (a python VM / fretted instrument)
meanwhile, the gTar looks to be more of a learning environment like codeacademy: it guides you through step-by-step and lets you pick up the basic idea of what it's like to play/program, while still giving you a slight sense of freedom. But of course, it is still just a specialized learning environment, and not a 'real' guitar/programming-environment.
I saw these guys present today at TechCrunch disrupt NYC (which is why I think the link made it here) and they seemed to have a vision for bringing the learning curve of guitar down to the masses and providing some area in between guitar hero and the real thing.
I'm also a guitarist and at first I agreed with your sentiment, but then I realized: it's a toy. Forget the positioning as a guitar learning tool, it's not a guitar. It's advanced-guitarhero for your iphone.
First, if you don't tune it (the write up strongly suggests that tuning is optional), the strings will still make a sound, and that sound will be awful. I think the optional-tuning should be kept on the down-low, since taking advantage of it is sort of a bad idea.
Second, I don't think muting wrong notes is actually helpful, since you lose auditory feedback. Knowing whether the note you just hit was too high or too low is a valuable thing for a guitarist to be able to hear instantly.
Lastly, does it do string bends? Video isn't working for me and it's not mentioned in the write up. If not, somewhat serious limitation.
Might not look cool, but if the iPhone dock was on the top part of the body (on the thin surface, rather than on the body surface), then you would be able to look at the iPhone as you're playing. Currently, you can either look at the strings or on the iPhone, where you almost have to look backwards to look at the iPhone. As a beginner guitar player, learning would be easier if I could see the tabs and my strings at the same time. my 2c.
If I were to use one, I'd use Chord Buddy because there is an extremely objective learning process: take one chord-helper out at a time until you need none.
Having a source for songs to learn might be cool for some people, but the drawback of having to learn by site rather than touch makes the gTar something I'm not interested in.
Given the audience, I'm surprised that this is the first mention of the Chord Buddy. I first saw it on Shark Tank (it's a helper on top of a real guitar that has you playing immediately, and removing the 'training wheels' one guitar string at a time).
I'd much rather something like this, which helps you learn how to play a real guitar...
The thing that gets me about a lot of these products being built around the iPhone, iPod, etc... is what happens if the next generation changes the physical form factor? It may mean getting a new iPhone also means having to replace 10 other gadgets you have come to enjoy.
Edit: looking closer this one does seem to have a module the phone sits in so it may be future upgradable however... you still require the upgrade, and it seems the module isn't much wider than the iPhone4... not much room to adapt if the phone gets bigger.
At least on the prototypes they're showing, that whole panel appears to easily unscrew. I could see it possibly being practical to replace with a more accommodating piece for a few tens of dollars.
Seems like a more extensible/future-proof approach would be to have some sort of built-in storage that was accessible via USB. I'm not sure precisely what part of the iPhone is required to make this work, but it seems far easier to not tie it so directly (i.e., the physical enclosure).
Plus then you have the benefit of not limiting the product to only those people who have an iPhone. :)
It seems like they're using the iPhone for pretty much all intelligence, which makes sense. Custom embedded systems are non-trivial to design, manufacture, and bootstrap software for (I've been involved in some capacity with several). You'd save significant effort and trivially enable many more features by relying on something as powerful and mature as an iPhone.
We literally got buried by all of the outreach and attention due to layering the Disrupt / Kickstarter launch, so sorry about the crazy delay...
The dock is removable, you can pop it out using a flat head screw driver pretty quickly. There's a cavity in the body and we're actually making a small change to the design of how the electronics are integrated into the dock itself instead of the underlying assembly so that if the 30 pin changes we can adapt to it. Another benefit is that through a generic expansion port we could also support other phones / devices.
The ability to dock the phone into the body was a really awesome experience, which is why we did it even with the risk of making people concerned with the form factor dependency. However, the gTar has a USB port so you can hook it up to any device that supports USB hosting. This is possible with most iOS devices with the aid of a camera adapter kit. We might eventually be able to produce such a special cable allowing you to hook it up directly to an iOS device.
The gTar tech was not originally intended to be for iPhone, that was a bit of an unintentional pivot we made when we met with a particular iOS app company we had a lot of respect for and wanted to impress them. Long story short, they weren't impressed but our next investor meeting went much better than those before it.
"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.
This is a classic excuse and complete BS. My hands are much smaller than average and I adapted. Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath) lost the tips of 2 of his fingers in an accident and still manages to play!
I don't think it is true, I believe it's a matter of stretch - pros of my size who practiced for years can play more demanding stuff, I even met a girl who was way shorter than me, but could play bigger intervals on piano.
> and/or they lack musical "sense" (hearing, rhythm, whatever it is that makes me suck at anything musical) which I doubt this setup helps.
I don't think it's true either. Hearing, rhythm can be improved by exercises. Probably some people are born with better hearing/feel, but practice makes a huge difference. Professional musicians usually do ear training for years (ie most schools incorporate this kind of class); you can also use some software for that - I'm pretty sure I wasn't born with any sort of talent/sense, but did lots and lots of training and got to reasonable level where I can improvise and play by ear. Many musicians that didn't have formal training claim that they listened to radio and just tried to play what was there - this is also some sort of ear training, though it is rather painful, I think. Some ear training software I used are GNU Solfege (free, works with linux) and EarMaster (paid, windows).
I'm 6'6" with giant hands. I was struggling with a 5-fret stretch for a chord, and thought it couldn't be done. My guitar teacher was a tiny gnome of a man with small hands and stubby fingers, and he played through the same stretch without a problem while showing me something else. I asked him to show me and he said "yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, that one", but it hammered home that it's more about practice than physical limitation.
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 placement is more difficult than learning the basic locations.
The other difficult thing is developing the muscle memory to move quickly between chords. At this point, I can play simple passages from songs, but complicated chord movements are what's most difficult, not figuring out what finger placement is required. This means sitting down and playing the same passage over, and over, and over, and over... You get the idea.
Having played instruments all through school, this isn't a surprise to me, but for a lot of folks it is. Playing an instrument is a skill just like many sports, or even video games. Think of how much better you are on hour 30 of playing a FPS game than you were in hour 1.
The gTar seems to solve the most rudimentary of the challenges, but I can't see where it gets you to "playing songs" (in a real way) much faster.
For $500 you could have a great guitar teacher for almost a year's worth of lessons (maybe more in some areas). As someone who learnt music in the old-fashioned laborious way and know how fortunate I am to be able to sight-read on several instruments, I would hesitate to give this to a child rather than some actual lessons on a real instrument. For a teenager or adult, I'm sure it's great to give you that satisfied achievement feeling but maybe I just think too much of kids and their ability to stick through a few lessons. I've seen how in awe they are when they start to make music just 'happen' through their own musical ability.
It's simple, if you cannot endure the frustration and sometimes physical discomfort that is required to learn the guitar then you never will. These toys that make you sound great from the start, never miss a note, and play like a rock start from day one will never truly prepare you for learning the guitar. It cannot replace hours of monotonous practice. Or replace playing bad notes which can force you to clean up your playing. Or replace the feeling of connecting with the strings and fretboard, which help define your personal sound. Lots of people would like to play the guitar but the truth is there are no shortcuts and many people don't have the patience for it. It takes dedication and no cool toy can bypass the very kind of effort it takes to learn the guitar or any instrument. That tenacity to learn despite the frustration is what separates those who'd like to learn to play and those who have. gTar is just a toy.
I think the price could be a problem. I know lots of people who 'wanted to learn to play guitar', bought the equipment, and gave up within a month or two. They didn't really lose out as you can get a second hand guitar and amp for under $100. This is around $450 (not to mention the cost of the iPhone) - not really in the price range of someone who wants to learn guitar. You can get some nice 'real' guitars for that price.
I'm curious how playable and hackable it will be. The Kickstarter page says it's MIDI compliant, but MIDI is a terribly restrictive protocol not really suited to the range of expression you have on a guitar.
I want to take this seriously, but I just can't stop laughing at the picture of the stereotypical college guy trying to impress girls. If this thing gets made, I want to hear from the first guy who gets laid with his gTar on easy mode.
I'm well up for more people learning to play an instrument. I am a musician myself (though less proficient with a guitar than with my drum kit), and inspiring others to learn is a good thing.
That being said, you also want to encourage people to play and write your own music. If all this does is teach you how to play your favourite songs (by other artists), that is all you'll learn.
I notice it has a 'free-play' mode, where it turns into what looks like a Kaoss pad. This is also good, but I'd hope it'd have some sort of learning mode where you're taught chords, and basic chord progressions, and barre chords.
I'd see more value in that than the Guitar Hero, 'mash out epic rock and roll guitar solos' style of game it shows at the start.
Edit: I suppose the form of this will make parents a lot happier than they would be if they bought their kid a Strat and a 300W guitar amp.
Last time I checked, Fretlight didn't have an open API that anyone can use, but reverse engineering the protocol and providing open tools would cost way less than $100K.
Ditto Rock Band "Pro" guitar controllers, including one that is also a "real" electric guitar and can be used as such. Playing Rock Band with one probably comes out to about the same as this, but with more functionality (though less portability).
Paused the video when it showed the iPhone being docked into the guitar and a certain interesting use cases came to mind.
Imagine having beats as you play your guitar along, or maybe a strumming pattern to pick a lead on or to be even more ambitious, you could even think of sampling music live, a la Zoë Keating.
From a beginner's perspective, I could see some immediate wins, a built-in metronome, an auto-tuned guitar, an intimate yet digital "teacher" etc. These are things I'd definitely have loved when I started out learning.
Its great, the barriers to entry into creative fields are being lowered. Its happening well with programming and this could really encourage people to get into music. Even if it does not churn out professional musicians, just the joy of playing your own music is worth it.
PS: Been playing/learning on my humble acoustic guitar since 5 years.
This is probably a good tool for a few aspects of getting someone started on the guitar, but honestly I think it's the minority. Hitting the right string while holding down the right fret isn't that hard. The problem is doing it in such a way that you can raise your speed or start hitting multiple strings at once with different fingers. And doing that isn't that hard, but it requires good instruction and a daily investment of a small amount of careful practice by the student (about 10 minutes to start, 20 or 30 minutes a day later -- once the technique clean, then you can begin the long ramp up to being the kind of monster that can play 8 hours a day).
I taught someone the equivalent for violin in 6 months (and the initial learning curve on violin is absurdly long compared to guitar). That wasn't the limiting factor, though. The limiting factor was the music: timing, ear training, articulation, dynamics, how to shape a melody, how to read music, how to write music, a body of carefully studied examples to be able to work on...
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadThere 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 money to lose than a ~$20 video game.
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."
The game with guitar USB adapter runs for about $70, while I got my electric guitar for around $100. Of course, you need an Xbox 360 or PS3 and that runs from $99 - $299.
The fact that it lets you plug in your real guitar is definitively nice. It handles bends, chords, slides etc... is super nice (not sure that the gTar supports these from the video).
I will say the tech isn't perfect it sometimes will let you get away with things it shouldn't but you can be your own police too.
If you already own a guitar it's a cheap investment I feel. If you don't I really don't but want to learn. I believe you'll be better served with this than gTar. You'll have a real guitar at a minimum. I can forsee a upgraded gTar with a 3/4 plug etc... I'd wait and see. Plus the iPhone requirement makes it's it non workable for many people.
(I don't think this should discourage the gTar folks, I'm sure they will have enough early adopters to improve the concept.)
Anyone with two working hands and no cognitive disabilities can learn how to play a guitar already. It takes effort, but if you keep at it, learning how to play is inevitable. What they are promising with the title is that this device will take all the effort out of learning, so that even those who don't want to put any effort in can learn how to play.
But it will still take effort to learn. Lots. It's not just having to learn where to put your fingers. It's learning how to make your fingers move the way they should. It's learning to keep going even though your fingers just refuse to do what you tell them to do when you first start out. It's also learning rhythm, and musicality, and a whole host of things.
I'm sure this tool would make it somewhat easier to learn how to play. But you'd still have to actually learn how to play before you could play.
On the other hand, you risk becoming a guitarist who struggles to read tablature or learn by watching other guitarists, so the trade off is arguably high. At the very least, one should learn these things after getting off the ground with gTar.
Of course, you're right that there's more to guitar than putting your fingers in the right place, but at the very least I think we can say that for learning individual songs, this would be a big improvement on tabs.
The problem with arguing that the GTar is easy for learning songs (and it is) is how much information is lost. Sheet music contains a ridiculous amount of information. Tablature does not. Lights on a wooden stick contain even less. At what point are you doing a disservice to the aspiring guitarist by taking away information?
Which isn't anything to be happy about perhaps, but does seem to be the reality of the situation. I'd put reading music in the same category as tabs etc: "You should really learn this, sooner is better than later, if you're serious about guitar". But a lot of people struggle to get off the ground with guitar at all, so I can still see value in something like gTar. Though I do see it as a niche market (musically struggling, iPhone owning technophiles).
Once you're more comfortable playing the guitar, you can move onto more complex things like reading sheet music, or composing, or whatever tickles your fancy.
Think of it like programming: we recommend beginners start on languages like Python, Basic or Pascal to ease the mind into that way of working.
That being said, when Guitar Hero came out for the Wii I got a copy, realized that they had captured some of the 'feel' you get when you are playing for real (my nominal instrument is trombone but not a lot of call for that :-) and found it fun. So I took the open source bluetooth driver for the Wiimote and created an app that basically let you play a song and pace it with the 'strumming'. Its great for kidding around but not as satisfying as having to work the frets etc.
So here we have a guitar that can do a bit of both, play 'fake' where only the correct notes play, or play 'real' where all notes play. Cool idea.
The price though. Ouch. Lets look at that for a minute. After they build their first batch, guitars will be $450 each. And they need an iPhone to work at all. So a used iPhone is maybe $100 so you are looking at $550 all up. A student guitar is $60 and lessons are like $100/month so call it 5 months of lessons.
I'm guessing that if you don't even know if you like to play the guitar its going to be too much of a 'risk' to invest in it. That will greatly limit the market. If they are successful I hope they come out with a dedicated built in compute unit.
Meanwhile:
> "...detect exactly what you're playing in real-time and relay each note to your iPhone, which then produces the actual sound."
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.
> "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?
There aren't other "real" instruments that can be mass produced like this in a few factories in China and Indonesia.
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.
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
Also i'd add Squier Classic Vibes to the list of mfrs with at least passable QC but not their Affinities
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.
Failing that, you can head to a small music shop where the guys selling (sometimes they have an in-store technician) can give lend you a hand at choosing something worth your money. Never buy your first instrument from a big shop where the guy behind the counter doesn't know shit.
I've owned a lot of cheap guitars, starting with a plywood no-name electric, and I wish the stuff that's available today had been there 25 years ago.
Anyway, good luck to them.
Programming tutorials force you to physically type examples in verbatim to get a specified result. The result is a compilable program. Put your hands in the right place on a GTar, and at the end you're that much closer to learning a song.
This device seems to make it easier to learn where to put your fingers to get your result. It's illuminated tablature transferred directly to your fretboard.
Staff => C++
Tabs => Python
gTar => codeacademy
Staff, like C++, can be quite flexible/expressive, but is loaded with historical baggage and redundant nonsense, and is not easily portable (it was clearly designed with piano in mind). And it has been the defacto standard for a long time (ok, this is a bit might be slightly less analogous).
Tabs, like python, are clear, practical, concise and to-the-point, but lack some information and rigidity (dynamic typing), and need certain requirements in order to be useful (a python VM / fretted instrument)
meanwhile, the gTar looks to be more of a learning environment like codeacademy: it guides you through step-by-step and lets you pick up the basic idea of what it's like to play/program, while still giving you a slight sense of freedom. But of course, it is still just a specialized learning environment, and not a 'real' guitar/programming-environment.
First, if you don't tune it (the write up strongly suggests that tuning is optional), the strings will still make a sound, and that sound will be awful. I think the optional-tuning should be kept on the down-low, since taking advantage of it is sort of a bad idea.
Second, I don't think muting wrong notes is actually helpful, since you lose auditory feedback. Knowing whether the note you just hit was too high or too low is a valuable thing for a guitarist to be able to hear instantly.
Lastly, does it do string bends? Video isn't working for me and it's not mentioned in the write up. If not, somewhat serious limitation.
If I were to use one, I'd use Chord Buddy because there is an extremely objective learning process: take one chord-helper out at a time until you need none.
Having a source for songs to learn might be cool for some people, but the drawback of having to learn by site rather than touch makes the gTar something I'm not interested in.
Awesome project, though. Godspeed.
I'd much rather something like this, which helps you learn how to play a real guitar...
Edit: looking closer this one does seem to have a module the phone sits in so it may be future upgradable however... you still require the upgrade, and it seems the module isn't much wider than the iPhone4... not much room to adapt if the phone gets bigger.
Plus then you have the benefit of not limiting the product to only those people who have an iPhone. :)
The dock is removable, you can pop it out using a flat head screw driver pretty quickly. There's a cavity in the body and we're actually making a small change to the design of how the electronics are integrated into the dock itself instead of the underlying assembly so that if the 30 pin changes we can adapt to it. Another benefit is that through a generic expansion port we could also support other phones / devices.
The ability to dock the phone into the body was a really awesome experience, which is why we did it even with the risk of making people concerned with the form factor dependency. However, the gTar has a USB port so you can hook it up to any device that supports USB hosting. This is possible with most iOS devices with the aid of a camera adapter kit. We might eventually be able to produce such a special cable allowing you to hook it up directly to an iOS device.
The gTar tech was not originally intended to be for iPhone, that was a bit of an unintentional pivot we made when we met with a particular iOS app company we had a lot of respect for and wanted to impress them. Long story short, they weren't impressed but our next investor meeting went much better than those before it.
"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.
This is a classic excuse and complete BS. My hands are much smaller than average and I adapted. Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath) lost the tips of 2 of his fingers in an accident and still manages to play!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Iommi
I don't think it is true, I believe it's a matter of stretch - pros of my size who practiced for years can play more demanding stuff, I even met a girl who was way shorter than me, but could play bigger intervals on piano.
> and/or they lack musical "sense" (hearing, rhythm, whatever it is that makes me suck at anything musical) which I doubt this setup helps.
I don't think it's true either. Hearing, rhythm can be improved by exercises. Probably some people are born with better hearing/feel, but practice makes a huge difference. Professional musicians usually do ear training for years (ie most schools incorporate this kind of class); you can also use some software for that - I'm pretty sure I wasn't born with any sort of talent/sense, but did lots and lots of training and got to reasonable level where I can improvise and play by ear. Many musicians that didn't have formal training claim that they listened to radio and just tried to play what was there - this is also some sort of ear training, though it is rather painful, I think. Some ear training software I used are GNU Solfege (free, works with linux) and EarMaster (paid, windows).
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/15/guitar-zer...
http://sivers.org/15-years
The other difficult thing is developing the muscle memory to move quickly between chords. At this point, I can play simple passages from songs, but complicated chord movements are what's most difficult, not figuring out what finger placement is required. This means sitting down and playing the same passage over, and over, and over, and over... You get the idea.
Having played instruments all through school, this isn't a surprise to me, but for a lot of folks it is. Playing an instrument is a skill just like many sports, or even video games. Think of how much better you are on hour 30 of playing a FPS game than you were in hour 1.
The gTar seems to solve the most rudimentary of the challenges, but I can't see where it gets you to "playing songs" (in a real way) much faster.
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.
I'm curious how playable and hackable it will be. The Kickstarter page says it's MIDI compliant, but MIDI is a terribly restrictive protocol not really suited to the range of expression you have on a guitar.
That being said, you also want to encourage people to play and write your own music. If all this does is teach you how to play your favourite songs (by other artists), that is all you'll learn.
I notice it has a 'free-play' mode, where it turns into what looks like a Kaoss pad. This is also good, but I'd hope it'd have some sort of learning mode where you're taught chords, and basic chord progressions, and barre chords.
I'd see more value in that than the Guitar Hero, 'mash out epic rock and roll guitar solos' style of game it shows at the start.
Edit: I suppose the form of this will make parents a lot happier than they would be if they bought their kid a Strat and a 300W guitar amp.
Playing the guitar is "valuable" because not everyone can do it.
Last time I checked, Fretlight didn't have an open API that anyone can use, but reverse engineering the protocol and providing open tools would cost way less than $100K.
From a beginner's perspective, I could see some immediate wins, a built-in metronome, an auto-tuned guitar, an intimate yet digital "teacher" etc. These are things I'd definitely have loved when I started out learning.
Its great, the barriers to entry into creative fields are being lowered. Its happening well with programming and this could really encourage people to get into music. Even if it does not churn out professional musicians, just the joy of playing your own music is worth it.
PS: Been playing/learning on my humble acoustic guitar since 5 years.
I taught someone the equivalent for violin in 6 months (and the initial learning curve on violin is absurdly long compared to guitar). That wasn't the limiting factor, though. The limiting factor was the music: timing, ear training, articulation, dynamics, how to shape a melody, how to read music, how to write music, a body of carefully studied examples to be able to work on...