subject: A Great Way To Learn Guitar [print this page] If you are thinking of learning to play guitar, I would highly recommend checking out the Self-Teaching electronic guitar from Pacific Digital. Now, anybody, all ages, girls or boys, can learn the technical abilities required to play the guitar by merely following lights on the fret board. Some of the features of this device include a selection of built-in songs and riffs for you to play along with. You can also download songs directly from your computer to the guitar.
You can also create and program your own material. I can now program a song in about 15 mins that used to take 3 hours. My music has a better "feel" thanks to the velocity sensitive "strings." I actually feel like the MIDI grid helped me out greatly when it was time to switch over to the real instrument. It's a little flimsy feeling though, but for the price, it isn't a deal breaker.
In addition to 9 realistic guitar sounds, Pacific Digital includes 8 bass guitar sounds, banjo, the Japanese shamisen and grand piano. It comes with a built-in speaker and headphone jack which can be connected to an external amplifier. An LED complex gives visual feedback as you play. There are volume, tempo, balance and capo controls as well. These cutting edge features help overcome many of the objections of beginner guitar players
I bought this to control my midi synthesis and I adore it. I don't care about it's internal sounds so much but they are still helpful. Using this with Sonar or Reason, I can create the sounds with my MIDI devices.
The strings have excellent sensitivity, and the button-style fret board isn't as bothersome as I thought it would be. You can turn off the internal speaker at any time, and as I mentioned above, you can just insert the MIDI inputs right into the computer when desired.
