'Guitar Hero' For Real Guitars

Having spent a fair amount of time rocking Guitar Hero like a hurricane, I’ve often wondered whether such a game would be possible using actual guitars.  With something like that, you could just play the song, rather than trying to figure out how to press a bunch of plastic buttons at the right times.  And if you didn’t know how to play, the game would teach you.

GameTank’s Guitar Rising game, slated for a late 2008 release, promises exactly this.  Here’s the video:

In pondering whether a real version of Guitar Hero would ever exist, I’d wondered what kind of musical notation would it use: musical noteson astaff, guitar tablature, notation something like what’s found in GuitarHero, or somesort of combination?

After viewing this video, I wasn’t sure how Guitar Rising‘s notation works, so I asked GameTank.  Here’s the deal, according to CEO Jake Parks:

Guitar Rising has six rows which notes travel down; the sixrows represent the six strings on your guitar.  Inside each note is anumber that tells you which guitar fret to press.  For example, if anote is traveling down the top row with the number "2" inside it, thiscues you to play your top guitar string with the second fret presseddown.  This is in essence guitar tablature notation that moves acrossthe screen.

Clever — I can’t wait to try this out.

Update (8/7/08): Guitar Rising’s Jake Park told me to check back with him in about three months (early November).

(via gizmodo)