Summer NAMM Spotlight: Guitar Apprentice

Guitar Apprentice

By: Brady Lavin

NAMM (National Association of Music Merchandisers) Shows are the place where companies showcase their new products, and both the hits and misses make appearances. This year’s Summer NAMM Convention had its fair share of winners, like some new acoustic electric guitars from C.F. Martin & Co and Roland’s amazing new Guitar Synthesizer, but those were definitely balanced out by some misguided attempts.

Guitar Apprentice is definitely one of the winners. It takes the Guitar Hero/Rock Band format that kids these days are so familiar with and uses it to actually teach beginners how to play a real guitar. It works without any gaming console, however, opting for a simpler and cheaper DVD format.

The entire fretboard comes scrolling towards the player, with color-coded dots (for each finger) on the corresponding fret and string, and the guitar part of the song mutes when the fretboard hits the “action area” (my awkward words, not theirs). That’s when, by virtue of their already-developed Guitar Hero reflexes, beginners hit the chord the screen showed them.

The DVDs feature 5 levels of difficulty, with each step up taking more of the guitar part out of the playback for players to fill in with their axe, and 3 speeds, for a total of 15 steps up to the final goal of learning whichever song is chosen. Each DVD comes with three songs, and they will roll out 6 DVDs of different genres on Oct 1st, including monster hits like ZZ Top’s “LaGrange,” the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” and Boston’s “More Than A Feeling.”

One of the best features of these DVDs are the video lessons given before each song, which teach any tricky techniques that are featured in the song. Since Guitar Apprentice is aimed at beginner players, they do need more detailed instructions than the color-coded dots provide, and the lessons, featuring two camera angles focused on left- and right-hand techniques are the solution.

Look for Guitar Apprentice to be a hit with kids this fall, getting youngsters into guitar as early as possible and playing real songs instead of exercises and scales.