The YouRockGuitar device is a $200 guitar-shaped MIDI controller manufactured in China and designed by Inspired Instruments Inc. that does triple duty as a MIDI controller, a practice guitar, and also a game controller for Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. I have played with it a few days now, and have come to some preliminary conclusions.
MIDI
The YRG device connects to MIDI devices via its standard 5-pin plug, or with a USB cable to a computer running a software synth/sampler (cable included) such as Apple's GarageBand, or Cubase, etc.
As a MIDI controller, the YRG is amazingly accurate, with a major caveat: while it "tracks" your fingering very well, especially in "Tap" mode, the amount of picking effort is greater than one would consider acceptable in comparison to a real guitar. To be blunt, you have to beat the crap out of the strings to get it to register the note.
This is a serious problem; one that is so serious for me that I would consider returning/selling the YRG if it not for the fact that Inspired is working on a control panel application to adjust the settings for more/less sensitivity (currently in Alpha). Picking on the strings is a little disconcerting at first, especially with the percussive, dead sound they make when picked. But you get used to it quickly.
Firing up the control panel application shows how early it is in the game, but it also shows the potential for control that this unit will have. Unfortunately the string sensitivity adjustment is not working for me at this time, so I cannot comment on the level of improvement this may provide for regular flat-picking and finger-picking.
The "Tap" mode enables the users to simply tap the fretboard and it will sound the notes at a fixed velocity into either the MIDI capable hardware or the computer application. This works very, very well. Click here for a quick example I recorded in GarageBand yesterday.
It's quickly apparent that the YRG can allow the player to transcend what one can do on a traditional guitar, since it doesn't rely upon string and pickup dynamics to sound the notes. This mode is a lot of fun! Unfortunately for many things, the picking is still a necessity.
As a Practice/Teaching Guitar
The YRG has a lot of different guitar and synth sounds built into the device that can then be connected to either a guitar amp, headphones, or mixer. Acoustic guitars of various types, electric guitars, and synths are represented here.
The YRG is thus marketed as a teaching/travel/practice guitar because of this, because it "can't go out of tune" and doesn't hurt one's fingers.
I will say that due to the versatility that the MIDI functionality provides as well as the halfway decent acoustic guitar tones the YRG is an adequate travel/practice "guitar". However I put "guitar" in quotes for a reason: it is most definitely NOT a real guitar, at least not by most people's definition. It is for this reason I wouldn't think of using it to teach. I have been a student of various teachers and styles for years, and have now been teaching for a few years, and what I've found is that it is important for a student to learn how to tune their guitar, to learn string control, vibrato, bending, string to fret pressure, intonation, and picking hand control.
These are all aspects that are crucial to learning how to play guitar, and none of these factors are possible with the YRG. I feel as though it's a disservice to the student to hand them this unit to start off with, and say "this is a guitar, learn on this", because when they go to grab a real guitar, be it acoustic or electric, they'll be in for a huge shock, and quite possibly be turned off of guitar for good.
This isn't to say the YRG has no use in the teaching realm. I plan to put it to good use for notational purposes with Notion's Progression software, which does both traditional music notation as well as guitar tablature. It's incredibly useful for this, and will be one of the main purposes for me.
Also, I would encourage a student to buy a YRG for the reasons I've outlined above for MIDI. While it's not a good teaching guitar, the student can take what they've learned about playing a real guitar, and use it to compose using different virtual instruments, to see how different instruments can sound. It really opens up a new world for students, and that's a good thing.
As for the internal sounds, I must say that it's a bit of a mixed bag. While the acoustic guitar and synth sounds are fairly serviceable, the electric tones are bad. Laughably 80′s Casio keyboard bad. Also, none of the tones seem to react to velocity changes in a way that a multi-sampled virtual synth would, i.e. tonalities don't seem to change.
So while the intentions of putting these tones in here were good, I think I'll either stick to primarily the acoustic tones for practice, or most likely just using it with a computer triggering SampleTank, who's multi-sampled acoustic and electric guitar tones are far superior.
As a Game Controller
I can't really comment too much on this, because I actually detest Guitar Hero for the most part, and when playing Rock Band I prefer to play drums, since I am not a drummer in "real life" and find it more entertaining when playing a game with a group of people.
However I will say that these types of games are mostly frustrating due to how unnatural the paddle feels in lieu of picking, and the YRG would definitely solve this issue. That being said, I won't be running out to buy the latest Guitar Hero anytime soon. It's just not my thing.
Construction
The construction of the YRG is decent enough for a $200 device. It won't have me shelving my PRS or Ibanez guitars anytime soon though. The neck flexes a bit more than I'd like when chording, and it has an overall plastic-ey feel to it. Not surprising, since it IS plastic of course. The strings feel solidly attached and not flimsy. The membrane fingerboard is nicely made, and should hold up for quite some time. It's about as well made as something made entirely of plastic can be, I would think.
I do think it'd be neat if Inspired came out with a "YRG Pro" which forgoes any game/toy aspect of the unit and concentrates on its MIDI capabilities, while also being made of wood for the neck and body. This would be far more inviting to guitarists because it would feel more substantial as well as feeling and looking more familiar. Rumor has it that Inspired already has something in mind, but we'll see what happens.
In Conclusion
The string sensitivity thing is a major downside of the You Rock Guitar, and I'm trying very hard to be patient with Inspired as they work on the promised application to allow users to have the flexibility to increase this string sensitivity. If they can fix that one issue, this thing is going to be incredibly handy for recording different instrumentation that I otherwise couldn't do, such as piano, strings, synths, etc. For $200, it's definitely a great value.
The internal tones and game aspect of it I could completely live without, but since it doesn't really hurt the functionality of MIDI I couldn't care less if they included it or not. I'm sure someone will enjoy those features. Inspired probably did the right thing by trying to be more things to more people without hurting any one of the functions individually.
