On Wednesday I received the pro-mustang guitar for rock band 3 in the mail even though I have no idea how to play a real guitar. I decided to get the new peripheral with hopes that I'll be able to learn how to at least play the guitar competently. I have no real desire to be able to play some ridiculous, face melting solo, not at the moment at least, but just be able to pick up a real guitar and string some chords together into a song. So after I opened the packaging and took out the guitar I put in Rock Band 3 to see how this will go. 
 
I went into the training mode and went through some of the levels for pro guitar. Much like the pro keyboard they start you off with basic notes and how to move your hand up and down the guitar as well as some basic finger exercises. They then move on to intervals and octaves, power chords, first position chords and so on. I went through about five tutorial levels before I started to get impatient and by the time I got finished with the lesson on first position chords I just wanted to play a song. 
 
So I decided to jump out of the pro guitar lessons and go learn a song. I went to "Learn A Song" in the training menu where they then let you pick whatever song you want to learn. I wanted to choose a song that was fairly simple, was chord heavy and, of course, that I liked. I went with "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1". At first I decided I would start off with the game set on medium difficulty and while they do have you play more than just power chords, mainly C and G, I thought it was still a little to simple. So I jumped to expert. I mean I wanted to learn the song so why not actually play the full song and not some simplified version, right? 
 
The moment I jumped into expert I immediately thought to myself, "Oh shit." as I saw the note highway light up with chord after chord of things I had no idea how to play. Good thing Rock Band has a pretty good training mode that lets me slow down the song to something I can actually comprehend. Also, I was glad that the game stops the song and shows you how to play a chord, or whatever note, when it notices you're having trouble. After a little while I realized that most of the song consisted of five chords C, Em, Dm, F and G with Am thrown in there towards the end of the song making a total of six chords I had to memorize. Which I was able to do by singing the name of the chord as I played it which probably would of been embarrassing if someone heard me... Anyways, I found this to be much more fun than the lessons that I started out with.  
 
So yeah I guess this is basically the story of how I learned to play my first song on a guitar. I'm still working on transitioning between chords, especially going from F to G then back to F but I can play "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1" on expert and get three stars at about 75% percent as well as play "Living In America" with the same results. That's not that bad for just starting three days ago.

On Wednesday I received the pro-mustang guitar for rock band 3 in the mail even though I have no idea how to play a real guitar. I decided to get the new peripheral with hopes that I'll be able to learn how to at least play the guitar competently. I have no real desire to be able to play some ridiculous, face melting solo, not at the moment at least, but just be able to pick up a real guitar and string some chords together into a song. So after I opened the packaging and took out the guitar I put in Rock Band 3 to see how this will go. 
 
I went into the training mode and went through some of the levels for pro guitar. Much like the pro keyboard they start you off with basic notes and how to move your hand up and down the guitar as well as some basic finger exercises. They then move on to intervals and octaves, power chords, first position chords and so on. I went through about five tutorial levels before I started to get impatient and by the time I got finished with the lesson on first position chords I just wanted to play a song. 
 
So I decided to jump out of the pro guitar lessons and go learn a song. I went to "Learn A Song" in the training menu where they then let you pick whatever song you want to learn. I wanted to choose a song that was fairly simple, was chord heavy and, of course, that I liked. I went with "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1". At first I decided I would start off with the game set on medium difficulty and while they do have you play more than just power chords, mainly C and G, I thought it was still a little to simple. So I jumped to expert. I mean I wanted to learn the song so why not actually play the full song and not some simplified version, right? 
 
The moment I jumped into expert I immediately thought to myself, "Oh shit." as I saw the note highway light up with chord after chord of things I had no idea how to play. Good thing Rock Band has a pretty good training mode that lets me slow down the song to something I can actually comprehend. Also, I was glad that the game stops the song and shows you how to play a chord, or whatever note, when it notices you're having trouble. After a little while I realized that most of the song consisted of five chords C, Em, Dm, F and G with Am thrown in there towards the end of the song making a total of six chords I had to memorize. Which I was able to do by singing the name of the chord as I played it which probably would of been embarrassing if someone heard me... Anyways, I found this to be much more fun than the lessons that I started out with.  
 
So yeah I guess this is basically the story of how I learned to play my first song on a guitar. I'm still working on transitioning between chords, especially going from F to G then back to F but I can play "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1" on expert and get three stars at about 75% percent as well as play "Living In America" with the same results. That's not that bad for just starting three days ago.

Good to know haha, out of curiosity does the game talk about finger picking (Pima) at all? If not, you might want to invest some time into it, I know most guitarists have trouble learning that later on in their career.

" Good to know haha, out of curiosity does the game talk about finger picking (Pima) at all? If not, you might want to invest some time into it, I know most guitarists have trouble learning that later on in their career. "  

I will never be a successful finger-picker on the guitar because I destroy any traces of finger nails on my hands...

You sir, are a richer man than I

I was just thinking about this, having come off a random online QP with a Pro Guitarist and totally eyeballing his chart with intrigue for the entire session. The Pro Guitar really does seem like the real meat of this game, and leading up to the release, even Harmonix had convinced me that you'd be wasting your time playing on anything but Pro mode. With the weird releasing of these Pro instruments, I kinda forgot about them and what a big deal they were to the game. I am waiting to see how the Squier turns out before anything, tho.

" You sir, are a richer man than I "

So we are talking about the "real" guitar here, correct? I hope you stick with this through the first couple months. ?You are very quickly going to find that it makes your fingers raw. Getting those callouses is a right of passage for guitar players.
 
Also if you want to learn finger picking, this is a good song to start with. Its the first finger-heavy song that I learned, and while it seems intimidating it is a good way to train yourself to think in terms of finger-picking patterns.

@neozeke said:

" @NinjaHunter: Dee By Randy Rhodes (Ozzy Osbourne's first guitarist) was the first song I learned on the guitar and it's a pretty easy finger picking song, Blackbird by the beatles is another good one to look into. I'd avoid anything like Bach until you build up your chops a bit.
@ESREVER:  I generally use my finger tips lol "

" So we are talking about the "real" guitar here, correct? . "

" @nintendoeats said:

" So we are talking about the "real" guitar here, correct? . "

Negative  (That one releases in March) "

I can't believe anyone would even buy that at all.  I can't even read why you bought it just asking WHY?????

" You sir, are a richer man than I "

" I can't believe anyone would even buy that at all.  I can't even read why you bought it just asking WHY????? "

" @SlashseveN303 said:

" You sir, are a richer man than I "

Either that or less responsible with my money... 
 
@kingkorn69 said:

" I can't believe anyone would even buy that at all.  I can't even read why you bought it just asking WHY????? "

I wanted to learn guitar. I've actually tried through books before but I couldn't practice more than 5-10 minutes before I got bored. I ended up not actually learning anything. So I thought this would be more interactive and fun. Which, as it turns out, it is. For me at least. "

" You can name it Muttan!  I wonder how many people will even get the reference...  First starting to learn the guitar is a bit hard, but once you've played for a while it just gets real easy. Your fingers will move to the right frets/strings so much faster and easily with just a bit of time.  What i do wonder though is how the buttons on the thing compare to strings on a real guitar. Do they feel kinda weird? "

" @NinjaHunter said:

" @SlashseveN303 said:

" You sir, are a richer man than I "

Either that or less responsible with my money... 
 
@kingkorn69 said:

" I can't believe anyone would even buy that at all.  I can't even read why you bought it just asking WHY????? "

I wanted to learn guitar. I've actually tried through books before but I couldn't practice more than 5-10 minutes before I got bored. I ended up not actually learning anything. So I thought this would be more interactive and fun. Which, as it turns out, it is. For me at least. "

Can you at least slide down the fret while holding a bar chord?  I don't know how the guitar actually works.  If so, that is an easy way to transition from an "F" to a "G". "