Guys who play guitar, well, are always a step ahead in the matter of impressing girls. You might feel jealous, but heck it’s a hard task to master the art of music let alone find a great man to guide you through the process. Even Joe Satriani started as early as a boy to train with jazz guitarist Billy Bauer and reclusive jazz pianist Lennie Tristano to transform into a musician he is today. Well in the age of smartphones, all you need is an iPhone app and a cool piece of hardware that resembles a guitar. gTar is here to teach you guitar and play with it. It gives you the thrill of playing real musical instrument even if you are an amateur.

A fully digital guitar and an iPhone app named gTar make guitar playing possible for anyone regardless of experience. The stylish body has interactive LEDs along fret board and an iPhone docking station on the body, comprising the working of the device. All you have to do is dock the iPhone, load the app and select a song. And you are ready for playing. The illuminating LEDs will guide you sequentially where to put fingers on the fret board. Sensors detects where you have put your fingers on and then send signals to your iPhone and it plays the sound accordingly. About compatibility, it works with iPhone 4/4S.

The gTar app comes with three difficulty settings – easy, medium, and hard, based on an intelligent feature called Smart Play. Easy Mode is for those who never played guitar before. You only have to play open strings in this mode. If you make an error, Smart Play mutes out the wrong string. After some experience with strings, one can move to Medium Mode in which frets have to be played alongside strings like normal guitar. Smart Play is in effect in this mode too thereby disallowing distractions with a faulty note. Once you are a pro, select the Hard Mode and start playing without the help of Smart Play. It gives you freedom to play whatever note you want, but still correct LEDs lighten up according to the song’s note.

They have included strap pegs so you can move around while playing. The body has a power button, an USB and a 3.5mm audio out. The USB is for charging up the device lithium ion battery which will give six to eight hours life on full charge, as publicized by the developers. The 3.5mm audio jack gives users flexibility to connect the device to a stereo or a pair of headphones. There are no speakers onto the body, only listenable through iPhone speakers if not using the audio out port.

Although gTar has some similarities with Guitar Apprentice and Tabber, it has a more hands-on approach to guitar learning with a steep learning curve. Wooden body, the strings and tuning pegs all are real deal making it look more authentic product not just a plastic toy. Tuning doesn’t affect the sound as the sensors on the fret board are responsible for that. To conclude, its a good educational device to play with.