You Rock Guitar | CES 2010

Hot on the heels of the Fingerist, comes another marvel from the recent CES 2010 show, the You Rock Guitar by Inspired Instruments.


Designed with the real guitar player in mind, You Rock Guitar is being billed as 'a bridge between a real guitar and a game controller'.  Featuring a touch-pad fingerboard and 'real' strings which can picked or strummed, the You Rock Guitar is a step up from the colored-buttons-and-wiggle-stick-type game controllers for the Rock Band or Guitar Hero gamer. The You Rock Guitar works as a game controller on the XBox 360, Wii and Playstation 3.



You Rock Guitar also has a ton of features as a stand-alone digital guitar.  Check out this list from the You Rock Guitar site:

• 100 Guitar and Synth Presets – blends, mix sounds, levels, tunings, capos, tap mode, open mode
• 25 Sampled Real Guitars – Strats, Les Pauls, Acoustics, Nylons, 12-strings, Telecasters in 16 bit long samples
• 25 You Rock Mode™ Tracks – just the rocking start to learning all the progressions that changed the world
• 50 Alternate Tunings – From Hendrix and Hutchence, Mitchell and Hedges plus the classics.
• Digital Capo – No need to tune a single string
• Tap Mode – When you’re feeling like Eddie
• Whammy Bar – pitch bend up or down
• Vibrato Joystick – for that mushroom sustained amp feedback effect
• 1/4” and stereo mini output
• On-board recorder – take the You Rock Guitar anywhere and still save your creations
• MIDI and USB – the fastest and easiest, all 16 channels plus Mono modes on Channels 1-6 or 11-16 also works as a MIDI guitar controller with a USB port

I find the the MIDI and USB features particularly appealing.  The You Rock Guitar interfaces seamlessly with a MIDI sequencer like Apple's GarageBand without expensive additional hardware, allowing you to use the guitar to track MIDI parts, without the glitches normally associated with conventional pitch to MIDI converter systems.  

http://www.yourockguitar.com/