PocketGuitar packs the playing power of a real guitar in the size of a guitar pick

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Originally published at: PocketGuitar packs the playing power of a real guitar in the size of a guitar pick | Boing Boing

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These things are “almost there”. The drum sticks are cool, and the fact that they are midi compatible almost makes them useful, but without the physical bounce from a drum head it does not sound right and the video demos just showed how “dead” the drums are. This is even less useful, since it appears to only do strumming in conjunction with a set of chords you set up on your phone. I like the idea, but they need to keep working on implementations.

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This is like Guitar Hero. Neither actually teach you how to play guitar.

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My god i can only imagine how stupid this product is. The description is unreal, you do what with your right hand? “The right hand performs the swing movement” what??

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These things are nowhere near there. Maybe they heard of “there” once, in passing, but it was probably just the wind in the eaves, or an owl dying in the attic. Their uncle’s friend’s cousin said he’d been to “there,” but that was the same guy who said he’d been abducted by aliens when they found him naked in the milking room at Lester’s dairy farm last spring. The only “almost” involved here is that these things are almost enough to awaken Kardok the Worldbreaker from its billion-year slumber to annihilate this planet and all of reality with its twin Gauntlets of Unmaking, just on the off chance that the next form of consciousness to evolve in the new universe would never develop something so soul-crushingly dismal and pointless.

Almost there.

[stares at Reply button]

Fuck it.

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Have they got a gadget for playing Pocket Billiards?

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I have a set of the Ohio Art Air Picks from a decade or so ago. Sounds like the same thing, just smaller, less flashy, and more expensive. They are silly. Here’s a link where someone is selling what looks like the same thing. I bet the batteries are dead unless these are still made?

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Not how I would have said it but I love your vibe.

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cute toy.

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I remember seeing Laurie Anderson in the 90’s basically wear a suit of things like this and blow people’s minds. Like I said, the implementations suck, but the idea of integrating physical movement into new musical instruments, and in particular instruments anyone can use or play is a cool idea.

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agreed. But saying it “packs the playing power of a real guitar in the size of a guitar pick” is truly false advertising.

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If you actually play guitar, especially knowing the songs in GH, you will score better in the game if you put it on mute.

The visual cues aren’t synced to the audio cues a musician goes by, I have found. You have to go solely on the visual cues in GH, if you go by your ear, you will suck at GH. After the first experience playing through a GH game entirely on mute, I never bought another one.

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I bought one of these for my son. It never worked at all. Such a massive disappointment.

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And thirst-quenching!

From the shop listing:

“Your Personal, Potable Guitar”

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This is like saying the game “Operation” is good training for surgery.

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This almost describes the Theramin, minus the “anyone can play” part. But I agree, and am excited to see what gets invented next

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I don’t understand and I don’t want to understand.

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I already have too many air-guitars at home.

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If you actually play guitar, try Rocksmith. I’ve been using it for years as an actual practice tool and it’s unbeatable. I still play almost every day, 10 minutes of random songs from my 200+ song library and there are a couple of thousand songs you can download.

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