[b1ake]

We first launched here on HN 1.5 years ago, and we're pretty excited to share v2.

Our goal with Instinct is to add deep interactivity to any music lesson. We think that one day, every lesson on YouTube might have pitch detection, scrolling notation, a scoring system and personalized feedback.

This v2 is a big first step in that direction. We've teamed up with a bunch of online teachers to create fully interactive video courses, as a way of showing what's possible with the tech.

There's much more to do though! At this stage, we're looking for as much input as possible from users and teachers.

[it_learnses]

I bought a guitar 3 years ago and I've tried to learn it on and off but never really went past the c chord because I always lose interest.

I just finished my first lesson and this is superb for me. I love the scoring system which motivates me to try and do better each time and just the ease and simplicity with which I can immerse myself into learning it at my own pace.

Just a minor thing that confused me was that the music tab layout(maybe that's the standard) is different from the layout of the strings in the animation (which is the same as my guitar). I think both should be the same as the guitar.

[bmelton]

I haven't tried Instinct, but having learned guitar off and on many years ago, the biggest 'leap' I made between knowing a few chords, and a few riffs, and actually learning enough to pick up a guitar at a party without embarrassing myself occurred when I started learning full-length songs.

There are a plethora of very simple songs that are super easy to play, and if you learn some that people might like singing along to (even guiltily, like "Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive"), you'll likely bound ahead in skill by a lot.

To that effect, I'd recommend hitting up YouTube for an instructor like Marty Schwartz (user 'martyzsongs') and finding some of his easy tutorials, then learning a few songs to string together. Get 15-20 of those easy songs under your belt, and everything starts getting a lot easier from there.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=martyzsings+easy

[sliverstorm]

Have you ever heard of Rocksmith?

[b1ake]

Awesome, so glad that your first lesson was a good experience!

Yeah I agree about the layout of strings in tab notation being confusing as a new guitarist. We wanted to default to the standard layout for tab, but then it gets a little confusing because it's different than the guitar layout below.

One trick with Instinct is that you can flip the notation by clicking on the string names along the left side of the tab.

In the future, we also want to give you the option to flip the guitar, but so far we've only implemented that in our pro courses (i.e. the courses that have pictures of real teachers on them).

[unit009]

"Just a minor thing that confused me was that the music tab layout(maybe that's the standard) is different from the layout of the strings in the animation (which is the same as my guitar). I think both should be the same as the guitar."

I agree. Tabs are normally an inversion of the guitar, or more accurately, how you view the strings when looking down at the guitar in your lap (high string is on the "top" of the neck, low string on the "bottom" of the neck)

i also found the left handed guitar player a little weird :)

[linhmtran168]

Please add the function to see music sheet alongside guitar tab. It will be a great help for any serious guitar learner.

[natejenkins]

I've been learning guitar for about 5 years now and would consider myself a serious guitar learner (i.e. I could happily play all day given the time). As a reformed sheet music reader during my saxophone playing youth, I would disagree with the idea that serious players should learn to read music, at least not at first. Serious learners should work on the most important part of any instrument: their ears. I don't read sheet music or tabs on guitar, and while I'm not Slash or BB King, I am confident that I could learn either of their songs by ear without too much trouble. I might never get fully up to speed on a Slash solo, or have the nuance of BB King, but reading music won't teach you either of those anyway. I'd suggest getting a program that can slow down music without changing pitch, I personally use Transcribe and am reasonably happy with it, and try learning one of your favorite songs by ear.

It will be painful at first if you don't naturally have good ears, it was painful for me (which is why I avoided doing so on saxophone), but the payoff is huge. It changes you as a musician. I've heard songs on the radio where I knew the chord progression and thus knew how to play the song before even picking up the guitar, that is pretty cool. I might come up with a bit of a song in the shower or in the car and when I sit down at the guitar and figure it out. Neither of these would be possible if I hadn't put in the hours listening to bits of songs again and again.

At the same time, if you are a beginner or intermediate player, I'd recommend justinguitar.com to get started. His youtube channel is extensive, and he and Marty Schwartz were my two main guitar teachers.

Also, I've met people who have played guitar for some time but cannot play bar chords. This simply shouldn't happen. There will be a song you want to play where you will need a bar chord, and you will either have to learn how to play bar chords or learn a way to "cheat" on that particular chord. Bar chords are awesome, piano players would kill to have a movable shape that makes transcription trivial (they'd also kill for a capo). They are well worth the initial effort and once you can finally play them you'll realize that they aren't that hard.

[b1ake]

Great point, totally agree.