Going Pro

About a month back, I wrote up my thoughts about Rock Band 3, leaving out the new Pro Guitar feature due to the fact that the controller for that was not available at that time for Playstation 3. Well, happy birthday to me when my Mustang guitar arrived at my door; I've spent the last few weeks playing with it.

A refresher if you're not in the know. The idea of Pro Guitar is to play actual guitar parts in the game. To do this requires a 17 fretted guitar with 6 buttons at each fret -- 102 in all -- and six "strings" for strumming. It's pictured there at the right. It even comes with picks.

The game is still divided into four difficulty settings. Expert is the actual guitar part for the song with all the correct finger positions. If you can play it, you can play it. Easier difficulties scale back down to Easy, which generally has you plucking individual notes from chords -- but still actually correct pieces of the whole.

This is a lot like guitar lessons. If that sounds like a criticism to you, then this isn't for you. I personally mean it as a compliment, and I'm loving it. You could still get pointers from a guitar teacher about proper placement on a fret, ways to pluck strings, how to arch your fingers, and such. But the game can even coach you on what finger frets which string, so it does a lot of the work of teaching you a song.

It has made me pull out my real guitar again on a more regular basis, as I've been taking song pieces I've learned in the game and trying them out for real. And yes, they're the real thing. There's some serious positive reinforcement going on here.

That said, it's damn hard. It's learning the guitar. You don't just play songs sight unseen on Pro Guitar. At least, not if you haven't been playing guitar for real for a while already, and are able to recognize chords by name. I've barely ventured out of the easiest songs in the game so far. But I really want to get better at it, and it won't just be for gamer bragging rights when I do.

It will be a long while though. Damn you, barre chords!