gTar is a guitar for your iPhone, go figure

“If you’re ever picked up a guitar for the first time and tried to play a favourite song, you know how discouraging it can be. The gTar completely changes that.”

That’s a promising quote from Drew Houston, the Dropbox CEO who muses about the gTar, an instrument that presents a monumental learning experience for any newcomer to the music scene. With an iPhone 4/4S and the gTar, users can learn and play the guitar. Simple as that.

It began on Kickstarter, as most tech does these days. To play the instrument, users dock the iPhone into the gTar, load it up and the start playing around with the US$350 instrument.

The app lights up LEDs on the fretboard, which indicates where the user must play the next note. The app is loaded with a number of songs, and more will be available for download in the future. The gTar is basically a giant synthesizer so various sounds can be incorporated into the device. Imagine composing a bass solo, then shifting seamlessly into a violin mode without missing a beat.

People harp on plench about “gamification”, but the gTar seems to actually take this to heart. There’s three difficultly levels. From easy to hard, gTar presents the user with an almost Guitar Hero-like interface. On easy mode, users need only hit the notes when the light up. Don’t worry about hitting the wrong notes though. “SmartPlay” ensures that no mistakes are heard and the song continues to play. When the user graduates to hard, SmartPlay is turned off and the battle of the bands begins.

At the time of writing, the gTar is now on US$116 390 with 34 days left to go. Idan Beck, creator of the gTar has broken past his minimum goal of US$100 000 so except to see this smashing device in the hands of happy hipsters in the days and years to come.