Taking the guitar from the box I'm surprised by its weight, it's much heavier than I expected. While I'm no expert it feels pleasingly solid and well-made and it looks to my untrained eye pretty damn sexy. I'd read elsewhere that the neck was a bit bendy but I don't detect any flexing while holding it. I was expecting something a little bit shoddy to be honest but overall I'm very pleased with it. I'm sure that as a guitar it's not great but as a hybrid instrument / game controller I think it's pretty damn good. It's unlikely I'm every going to want to play outside my home anyway so as long as it's decent enough to annoy the neighbours with then it's all good.
Getting it all plugged in is easy enough and the game detects it and prompts me to start the pro-guitar tutorials straight off. Straight away though it becomes obvious that Rock Band by itself is not going to be enough to learn everything I need. After a few videos on how the game works it jumps straight into the first fingering exercise; there are no instructions on how to hold the guitar, hand positions, using a pick etc. As a complete beginner this is definitely information I need; I struggle on for a while but after a while it's obvious my posture is all wrong and I start to feel physically uncomfortable.
After a bit of a rest and some research on the internet I have another go and get on much better this time. The game mechanics themselves work pretty much identically to how I remember Drum Mania working. On screen, notes move down a representation of the guitar strings and you have to pluck the appropriate string as the note reaches a line at the bottom. A number on the note represents where to fret on the neck. As you press on the frets, the line at the bottom shows which one you are pressing so you get a visual indication of whether you are doing it right or not. I'm really impressed with the way the technology works; again I've read elsewhere that some people had trouble with the guitar not registering their actions properly but I haven't this so far, in fact I'm surprised by how well it works. I do struggle to hit the correct notes and get the fingering right but that's entirely down to my lack of skill.
After a couple of hours I've managed to work my way though the first set of lessons. Some of them I really struggled with and it was quite frustrating at times, but that only makes it all the more satisfying when I finally nail it and get the 100%. The next lesson is preparation for my first song: The Hardest Button to Button by The White Stripes. I'm tired though and fail hopelessly on the first lesson.
Coming back on day 2 I decide to run though all the basic lessons again before trying the song prep. Pleasingly, I manage to run through them all pretty swiftly, even the ones I struggled on previously. Hey, I'm already making progess! Moving on to the song prep lessons, these are more of a challenge. The basic lessons have instructions on which fingers to use and only used 3 frets; the first song lesson uses frets 1-5 and I'm not really sure which fingers I should be using for which. In the end I manage to get through all the lessons without too many issues but I'm not confident that I'm doing the fingering right. Is there even a right and wrong way in guitar? I have no idea.
Tomorrow (or more accurately later today as I'm writing this) I'm going to take on the song for real (on easy mode).
Overall feelings so far: I love it and woke up this morning itching to have another go, which is pretty fantastic considering all I've been doing so far is what would probably otherwise be pretty tedious exercises.
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