Incident Technologies’ gTar is a cool Kickstarter project that has been getting a ton of attention this week. This combination of an electric guitar and an iPhone app teaches people how to play guitar. Things start off easy, with prospective Joe Satrianis only needing to hit the right string. Naturally, more advanced learning requires users to hit the proper frets and strings at the proper time. gTar is compatible with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Here’s a clip from the product’s Kickstarter page:
The gTar is a fully digital guitar that makes it easy for anybody to play music, regardless of experience. All you have to do is dock your iPhone in the body, load up the gTar app, and an array of interactive LEDs along the fretboard will show you how to play.
You may be asking yourself what it means for a guitar to be “digital.” While most guitars have pickups to amplify the sound of vibrating strings, the gTar has none — instead, we’ve designed the gTar with sensors that detect exactly what you’re playing in real-time and relay each note to your iPhone, which then produces the actual sound. This makes it possible for us to do all kinds of exciting things.
Judging from the product description and the video above, gTar looks like a pretty sweet product. It looks like it will be a fantastic educational tool beginners, but it also has tremendous creative possibilities for advanced players. Additional apps by Incident and other developers could make the gTar a wonderfully diverse digital guitar. As a longtime (and not very good) guitar player, I usually judge a guitar by its wood, craftsmanship, etc., but the digital nature of the gTar has me geeking over a six-string in a whole different way. This is some very cool tech and I’m happy to see that Incident has already blown past its Kickstarter goal.
Any thoughts on the gTar by Incident Technologies?
