The road to learning any musical instrument is littered with pain, heartache, frustration, and the nagging urge to quit. The last one is so great that most people do so, despite the myriad of benefits that come from playing a musical instrument.
While the guitar is one of the more accessible instruments, it also makes it the one most give up trying to learn. Guitar Now is designed to make it a lot easier to grasp the foundations of the easy-to-learn but hard-to-master instrument. It’s comprised of three parts: a collar that wraps around the guitar’s neck, a top plate that fastens to its front side, and a range of sliding inserts. Each of these inserts is key to the Guitar Now concept because each employs a design that guides a new learner’s fingers directly to the strings that need to be played, at once teaching finger, form, and chord placement.
Small circular targets spread the pressure of pressing down on a guitar string to make it more palatable for learners and help build calluses for more serious playing later. A package containing the Guitar Now along with G major, D major, and C major inserts is going for $30 and is expected to ship in July 2016. The Guitar Now Kickstarter campaign is looking for $7,000 to see success.
While it has more in common with the more successful Chord Buddy, another lo-fi guitar learning aid comes in the form of the Fret Friend, a product that is ultimately more useful in its versatility versus having to be restricted to buying whatever new chords the team behind Guitar Now decides to release. If you’re looking for a more digitally inclined teaching aide, the Kurv is probably up your alley.