Earlier today I got a live demo of Ovelin’s WildChords [Free], an edutainment musical game that never really had much reason to be on my radar. But using nothing more than an iPad, any kind of guitar, and some technical wizardry on their end, WildChords can teach you how to play the guitar. There are a number of fairly exhaustive overview videos on YouTube, and something like this is really better to just see in action, so check this out:
The crazy thing about WildChords, is that it really works exactly like it shows in the video. Watching someone play a guitar in front of the iPad, along to a game, that is able to recognize what chords you’re playing and slowly ramp up to teach you actual songs flat out feels like a mixture of magic and something you’d see in a sci-fi movie. Better yet, it’s totally free to try. You can download the app and get access to all of the early lessons, which will give you a great idea of just how well it works. It’s worth repeating that you seriously don’t need anything but an iPad, and a guitar. There’s no wires, accessories, or anything else.
After you complete the free content, additional lessons are purchased for $2.99 a pop via in-app purchase, and they have plans to roll out all sorts of additional IAP packages. The music recognition technology they’re using apparently has the potential to be stupidly exact with future possibilities of detecting whether you’re strumming with an upstroke or a downstroke, as well as all sorts of other nuances that flew right over my non-musical head.
I think there’s tons of potential in these kind of real-world musical instrument games. Imagine if instead of spending a cumulative week of your life playing Guitar Hero you invested your time in WildChords. You’d know how to actually play an instrument instead of just being especially proficient on pressing buttons. The cost savings are incredible too, as even if you bought every piece of IAP in WildChords, you’d likely still have spent less money than a single guitar lesson.
If you don’t have an iPad, or a guitar, but just want to see more of WildChords in action, check out the Ovelin YouTube channel. If you do have an iPad and a guitar, you really need to download WildChords.
