You know how you’ve always wanted to play guitar and serenade eager listeners with your perfect rendition of “Wonderwall” but you’ve never actually had the time or patience to truly learn the instrument?
Well, a new device is poised to make it a lot easier and practical to learn how to shred some gnar.
Fret Zealot is a small device you can attach to your guitar, then sync with its corresponding app, and LED lights from the device will guide your fingers along the guitar. Soon enough you’ll be ripping up some face-melting riffs.
Inc. broke down how Fret Zealot works:
“The device is simple looking: A long, thin vertical strip with a series of smaller horizontal strips hanging off of it, roughly in the shape of an oversized comb. One side is adhesive, so it can be stuck onto your guitar’s neck under the strings.
“Once it’s installed and synced with an app, the magic happens. The various horizontal strips have different colored LED lights that correspond with your fingers. If you’re a beginner, go into the app and choose the various chord progressions you want to learn. If you’re a pro, pick one of the songs in the app’s library and play along.”
Shaun Masavage, co-founder and CEO of Edge Tech Labs, who ideated the device, told Inc. that his own struggles with playing the guitar inspired his invention:
“I’ve been playing–poorly–for a long time. I started thinking, what’s my barrier? A huge thing was that it wasn’t easy to just sit down and instantly get back into it.”
Right now Fret Zealot has a pretty limited catalog of songs, but Masavage maintained that the app is about to grow exponentially. From Inc.:
“The company’s app currently has about 40 songs installed, but Masavage says an update in a few weeks will put that number around 1,000. Eventually, its goal is to include entire songs and not just the guitar parts–a tall order, since that will require licensing deals. Fret Zealot will be competing directly with products like FretX, a $59 LED device that serves the same function, though it’s more basic in design as it’s placed only on the first four frets of a guitar.”
Seems like it’s time to dust off the ax and get to strumming!