You Rock Guitar Launches at CES 2010

Hot on the heels of the Fingerist, comes another marvel from the recent CES 2010 show -- 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 YRG works as a 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 & Synth Presets – blends, mix sounds, levels, tunings, capos, tap mode, open mode
• 25 Sampled Real Guitars – Strats, Les Pauls, Acoustics, Nylons, 12-strings, Tele’s all 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 & USB – the fastest and easiest, all 16 channels plus Mono modes on Channels 1-6 or 11-16 also works as a MIDI guitar 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.  And without the glitches normally associated with conventional pitch-to-MIDI converter systems.  Very cool. 

http://www.yourockguitar.com/