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Fretlight: Learn to play guitar 10 times faster
Author Malcolm Gladwell said it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a creative genius, but who has the time for that?
Rusty Shaffer has a guitar and a digital tool kit that can turn you into the next Eddie Van Halen in a fraction of the time. Last week, Shaffer, the founder of Fretlight Guitar, visited CNET's office to show us how his FG-421 guitar worked.
A laptop with Guitar Pro 6 software preinstalled translated songs that had been downloaded from tablature, a site well-known in the music world for displaying songs in the form of instrument fingering rather than notes on a sheet. The song data is then feed into the guitar's built-in microprocessor via a USB connection. The LED lights on the fretboard change positions to show aspiring musicians where to put their fingers.
Before Fretlight Guitar added this feature, the guitar was limited to displaying different scales. That must have been boring, especially when it had to compete with options such as (now-defunct) Guitar Hero, which was, of course, a game not a learning tool. … Read more
