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You Rock Guitar

Practise aid, game controller... and MIDI instrument!

We wouldn’t normally bring you news of a controller designed to work with Playstation 3s, Nintendo Wiis and Microsoft Xboxes, but in the case of the You Rock Guitar, which is being distributed in the UK by Sound Technology, we’ll make an exception. While the You Rock Guitar is primarily aimed at gamers (particularly those who enjoy the current crop of music-based console games, such as Rock Star and Guitar Hero), it also works as a MIDI controller — and at its price of just £199, might well be the cheapest guitar-based MIDI controller on the market.<strong>You Rock Guitar</strong>

The idea behind the You Rock Guitar was to make the playing of the aforementioned games more realistic, by giving the controller real strings, frets and a full-sized guitar neck, and it’s precisely these features that could see it on the shopping lists of musicians who don’t even own a games console. In addition to being able to connect to games consoles, the controller also outputs MIDI via a five-pin DIN MIDI output, or the USB port, while the vibrato arm transmits pitch-bend data, potentially making the You Rock Guitar very useful for guitarists who want to use MIDI but don’t feel confident playing a keyboard.

The You Rock Guitar can also be used on its own with its built-in sound sets (of which there are 99, including 25 sampled guitar sound sets plus 50 synths), while other features include 14 ‘digital capo’ settings, 50 open tunings, and 8MB of memory for recording your MIDI performances.

Videos of the You Rock Guitar in action can be found on the manufacturers’ web site, and distributors Sound Technology say the controller will be available to buy from July.

http://www.yourockguitar.com

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