Where is the Double-Bow? No Led Zeppelin without it!

SWEEEEET!

I can't wait to play it with one of these from my small collection.

[farm3.static.flickr.com]

They can't get this to market soon enough. I want to play it with my Fender Jag..

Pretty cool idea. I'd definitely switch off of guitar hero for this, depending on the quality and licenses (even though we all know there would be homebrew versions of popular songs anyways a la Frets on Fire)

I love video games, but have played a real guitar for over 25 years(i'm only 32) and just dont get guitar hero. Its funny to watch geeks bang away on the buttons on the toy plastic guitar, when I actually could play most of those songs (for real) when I was 13. Just a further decline in civilization.
Guitar Rising will only be useful if it can teach you to play jazz, flamenco and classical guitar. Any idiot can figure out smoke on the water.

If they manage to get decent rock songs, I'm all over this one. My wife (who is a musician) will finally stop making fun of me for playing Guitar Hero.

Why wasn't this out 10 years ago and why aren't I already a freaken virtuouso. Want it now!

Wow -- very cool! I can hook to my MacBook -- wonder if it would be possible to simultaneously connect to my amp to get good sound. It would suck to have to listen to my Fender Strat on computer speakers when I'm used to a Hot Rod Deluxe amp (VACUUM TUBES, baby!)

I dont' know if this will fly... Maybe it's early and I'm bitter having not had enough coffee yet, but seriously... is there a SINGLE KID these days that has ANY interest in doing ANYTHING real? I don't think there is.

I salute this product! I also cannot understand rock band, guitar hero, or whatever the 'fake-flavor of the week' is, but I don't have faith in anyone into that sort of thing to want to do anything real-life....

Anyway, I'm going to play some WoW... (hopefully adding an appropriate ammount of irony to my post)

This is pritty cool and I would consider buying it. Just wish it was also for PS3, Xbox, and Wii.

@gunnk:

Yea, you probably can. You would just need an interface like the M-Audio Mobile PreUSB. You can either hook your ax straight into it or you can run through your effects, and amp then output to this the Mobile PreUSB for the sound your looking for. This is what I'm planning to do when they finally release this game..

@jackrabbix:

You haven't been paying attention to the REAL Guitar sales that have skyrocketed since the release of Guitar Hero.

Guitar Hero is a gateway drug to turning kids into real rockers. Its the best thing to ever happen to Gibson and Fender. Why do you think those two guitar manufacturers are so on board with that game?

I never got the whole Guitar Hero, Rock Band and their fake guitars playing thingie, which require so much practice to master that you may as well use a real guitar to become as good as Satriani.

So very not true. Learning to play "guitar" on GH or Rock Band is an order of magnitude simpler than learning the real thing, which is *why* it's so popular.

That said, this looks exceedingly cool, and would almost certainly help me motivate myself to practice.

@jackrabbix:

Screw the kids, as a violin player all through school I'd *love* to learn the guitar like this. Mom wouldn't let me play even though my dad played acoustic for the church. Just in time for an almost mid life crisis too.

@ TREKKIE:

Awesome plan man! Let us know when you get it, we'll net-meeting or use my phone bridge and rock out!

(I'll bring my bass)

@SgtBeavis: I guess for sales they will take the good with the bad. For the big guitar makers this is purely a marketing move to sell more guitars, that doesn't necessarily make it a "positive" thing.

i really really think this will be huge. ive been saying this since i played gh2 the first time.

this would work especially well with drums. i mean, rock band drums are at least similiar to real drumming. i mean, if you put me at a 5pc kit and colored some drums. i would play something decent...right?

I'd be interested to see if it tracks notes well. If not, it will just be enormously frustrating, especially so for people who already know how to play and are looking for some fun.

I'm a guitar player and can't see myself sitting down and doing this

@gunnk: You might have a problem hearing the background music on the MacBook over your amp.

With solid state amps you could just go headphone out to USB to get the tone into the computer. Don't know if your tube amp has that option.

If they're smart, they probably have tone modeling software built into each song to match the genre, so that if you plug a guitar directly in, you're not stuck with the same dry sound on every song you attempt.

@Rhainor: As someone who has no interest in playing fake instruments, I acknowledge the fact that playing a button-pushing video-game is much easier than learning the real instrument and becoming good at it.

Which is why I predict that this product will be no more (or less) successful than the usual crop of "new way to make learning an instrument easy and fun!" products. That is to say, it'll pick up a small market. It misses the entire point of GH's popularity- accessibility. Anyone can pick up a GH guitar and play the game; from there it's all timing. It's a hyper-advanced SIMON game, really, much like DDR.

OK, this is an awesome idea and I can't wait to get my hands on it. I've been "learning" to play guitar for 10 years now, if you can call playing very small parts of my favorite songs learning. I love playing Guitar Hero, but I'd much rather use a real guitar because then my wife wouldn't make fun of me (so much).

I will buy this if it comes out but I have my doubts. First of all I think it will be insanely hard, what kind of notation/tab will they use? Trying to keep up will be a problem of it's own and playing without looking at your left hand is far from easy (or even advisable) for a beginner.

So I think the difficulty and the need for A. a guitar and B. a way to plug it into your PC will limit the potential sales of this which in turn will limit the songs they can license and the effort they can put into producing them to the standard that we're used to from Guitar Hero.

So I think it's likely to be "On Top of Old Smokey" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" but I still want it.

@t3knomanser: The Simon Comparison, I love it!! Its kind of sad that this whole issue/game is even associated with real musicianship.

@trekkie: Kudos on wanting to pick up an axe and try this out but the bit about your Mom (and Dad) is sad, so very very sad.@Chimera: I make fun of my wife and her brother for the exact same reason. This would have me all in.

Awesome idea. But...you really need to work on the game aspect of it lol. Just having scrolling dots is probably going to get boring after awhile...need more graphics, a story mode, maybe challenge mode...etc...etc. But yet...I'd definately be interested in something that can combine gaming with learning to play a real guitar.

@Cyborg28: Yeah, well you would still suck, just like you do at Guitar Hero!

"as good as satriani"? Satch? Well I guess your right. People should aim low. Keep a reasonable goal. Because honestly, trying to be as good as santana,beck, or page is just asking for failure. And God forbid you try to aim at being a REAL GUITAR GOD like Clapton, SRV, or Hendrix. No no no. Let's keep our dreams reasonable, right?

I've watched the video three times now, and I can't figure out how you tell where on the neck you're supposed to be playing. Also, how do they handle chords?

I did notice that the little colored dots correspond to the colors on the strings. Nice touch.

Looks pretty cool. I think I'll have to try it.

does anyone care about the aspiring bassist?

@glaeven:
nobody even cares about real bassists.

@FredicvsMaximvs: I think there's a fret number on the each dot, but it's hard to tell from the video. You can definitely see a zero in one shot when the guy plays an open string.

BWAHAAHAHA ...no.

@OENOPHILE: Same here. If it has intricate leads I can slow down and learn note for note, then I might be interested because it would actually help my skills. Otherwise, it holds no real value to me.

There's probably a tuner built into the game to make sure all guitars are tuned the same, but there's still a huge variance of intonation between guitars, so I do wonder how effective the game will be at detecting the player's notes.

You seriously underestimate the time it takes to master the guitar if you think playing Guitar Hero could be easily substituted for learning Guitar. Honestly, how many times will people have to whine "Why don't you learn the guitar?" I expect this boring prattle from Kotaku commentators, not Gizmodo posters.

Its a video game. I'm sure with the time I spent playing GTA, I could have been out murdering actual prostitutes, but I didn't do that, either.

There are other pc-based guitar learning systems. See www.fretlight.com for a system based on a guitar that has LED indicators of where/how to play. That looks pretty cool, though expensive -- not that any electric guitar worth the name is cheap.

@SgtBeavis: Yeah, guitar sales have gone up, but just wait. In 2 years, every used section at every Guitar Center in the country will be flooded with barely-used guitars, sold back by the thousands of dejected Guitar Hero wannabes who learned the hard way that real guitar is real work.

I for one will be eager to snatch up great deals on guitars that have been sitting in closets, untouched while their owners crawl back to Rock Band.

While Guitar Hero will not teach you guitar, it can help work the fingers of someone who knows how to play. I hadn't touched my guitar for about a year (with special thanks to moving/getting married/etc etc etc... hooray for growing up! :p) but i had gotten some GH time in during that time. I snagged my axe and realized my fingers were moving faster. Twas a fun realization :) (it was really sad though that i hadn't touched my fender in a year... and i've been playing since 1990. Luckily, after that much playing and a short break, its just like riding a bike :)

As for control for this game... yea, there are colors for the 6 strings... but where on the neck do your fingers go?!

I'll be interested in checking this out either way :p

@BStu: While I applaud you for your restraint in regards to your aforementioned murderous rage towards ladies of the night, I will contest your implication that it's THAT much more complicated to learn guitar.

Slap multi-colored stickers on the first five frets of a guitar, and number the dots coming down the screen in Guitar Hero, and you've got a learning tool. Yes, it takes a little more technique because you've got to get used to holding your fingers for correct intonation instead of slapping down buttons, and yes, you have six "flippers" instead of one, but by the time you're up to "Hard" on Guitar Hero, surely you're competent enough to work patterns vertically as well as horizontally.

Learning those first five frets gives you multiple scales and all the chords in first position. You won't be a guitar expert, but you'd be competent enough to fake through most tunes.

So, maybe it's six times as hard, but I'll contest that it's 100 times more likely to get you laid.

@dqkennard: true, those "gadgets" have been around for years. If you are at all serious about learning guitar, you will dig into books, take lessons from a master, or simply just practice. The only gadgets I have ever really needed were Mel Bay/Hal Leonard books, guitar and a transistor radio. And above everything, developing your ear is the most fundamental piece to music. Average hobbiests will never develop this with silly video games, but its a start, a small start that is.

What's not to understand about Guitar Hero? It's just a fun game to play when your drunk with your friends. This Guitar Rising does look like it'd be useful for actually learning guitar if that's what you wanna do.

good election of real guitars there boyz!!

it will be good to look back on the Guitar Hero craze. Its worth buying a perfect one and putting it in storage for the kids now.

@jackrabbix: You couldn't be more wrong. I love Guitar Hero and Rock band, but I'm also a drummer and guitar player who likes to write his own music.

Guitar hero is fun because I can play things that are outside of my ability, with all the pay off of playing it right with a real band (well, not all...but it's fun anyway)

Rock Band is fun because it turns my non-musician family into a band. It's always fun to play music with people, this gives them the opportunity to be able to participate in that.

Guitar Hero fun and all, but people play music to express themselves, not entertain themselves. So people will still want to play instruments.

The other advantage of learning guitar this way is that you can pick out the easiest combination of notes to muddle through a song, like easy in guitar hero. That way, you feel like you're accomplishing something (even though the song would be unrecognizable to anyone listening to only your guitar)

Then, you can slowly build up to playing 50%, 80%, whatever of the notes in the song as you progress. It doesn't make learning any easier, but it can make it a little more gratifying. Which, for a lot of people, is a big barrier to entry.

I am waiting for Piano Hero.

Its so difficult to understand. The piano that is?

You press on a key and get a note. What a concept!!

Its not the comprehension that is the problem again, its the lack of effort in getting there.

Should be more like 'Guitar Lameboy'.

@BStu: LOL - awesome.

@Izim1: Are you really so insecure that you have to post comments to prove that you know the names of good guitarists? If you want to show your elitism, try not using such pedestrian guitarists that everyone has heard of. Try a John Scofield or a Pat Martino or something.

And you know, I'd be willing to bet that Satriani has had a more successful music career than you have.

I can never pick up a guitar again. Metal ruined any chance of me ever being satisfied with anything i play.

That's it in Piano Hero - you open and shut the lid in time with the Elton John's hits.

Lots of bright lights and noises and we'll sell a million.

Hooray for video games.

@WildWon: As for control for this game... yea, there are colors for the 6 strings... but where on the neck do your fingers go?!

That's exactly what I was thinking.