NAMM coverage of the YOU ROCK GUITAR.

GearWire stopped by to check us out.  Here’s the coverage.

http://www.gearwire.com/inspiredinstruments-yourockguitar-wnamm2010.html

Get on the Pre-Order List to Secure Your Guitar

OK, we understand it’s time to get rockin’.  We’ve got a list and were checkin it twice. If you name is on it when the You Rock Guitars start arriving, you get one. If not, good luck.  We’re definitely going to be in short supply. But there’s some other great benefits in Pre-Ordering:

FREE SHIPPING
REFERRAL DISCOUNTS (Get $10 off every person you refer to pre-order who actually orders)
BECOME OUR ROCK AND ROLL FRIEND FOREVER as an early adopter

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE PRE-ORDER PAGE

Guitar Hero Phenom Danny Johnson visits Inspired Instruments to try the You Rock Guitar for himself and provide input into it’s final stages of development.

Guitar Hero Phenom Danny Johnson, checks out the You Rock Guitar

Irvine – September 2009 – World-renowned 5-time Guinness World Record holder Danny Johnson stopped by Inspired Instruments this past week to try the YOU ROCK GUITAR and provide valuable insights into the final stages of product development.  “Danny is undisputedly the best Guitar Hero player in the world, but he’s also a musician.  That qualifies him uniquely to test and help us review the finishing touches on the YOU ROCK GUITAR” said Kevin Kent, Inspired’s CEO.  A 5-time record holder, with 3 more records awaiting approval, Danny is the only player in recorded history to score 100% on every Guitar Hero game ever made by Activision, earning him records, the title of Guitar Hero Guru, and featuring him at the forefront of a growing number of players that are continuously striving for challenges and excellence in the world of musical video games.

Danny’s sizable following exemplifies the shared passion by millions of gaming enthusiasts around the world.  Like many players, Danny progressively mastered each of the songs, games, and levels.  After hearing about the You Rock Guitar at E3 in Los Angeles this summer Danny decided he had to see it and play it for himself. Here’s what he had to say.

“The YOU ROCK GUITAR is awesome.  It goes far beyond what a traditional gamer can do, but it’s so much more. It feels completely amazing,” said Danny after trying it for himself.  “When I first started playing Guitar Hero, I thought about playing real guitar, but I couldn’t do it with what was available.”

“As an aspiring guitar player I never found enough opportunities to truly enjoy playing on my own.” Says JR deSouza, Inspired’s executive VP.  “The guitar was often too loud or out of tune, and there were few digital tools at my disposal back then.  There was a big gap between my aspirations and my reality.”  The YOU ROCK GUITAR is designed for just that.  It combines the instant gratification and ease of use of video games with the ability to play, create, and share real music of the digital instrument.  “It’s the best of both worlds, guitar gaming and guitar playing.” says the original inventor Cliff Elion.

Cliff went on to say, “in addition to the feedback, Danny’s input helped with the final tweaks of the gaming aspect of the neck – hand positioning when playing as fast as Danny does is critical. Gamers will be glad Danny stopped by.”

“The YOU ROCK Guitar is flat out amazing” says Danny.  “It teaches kids how to play real guitar by playing real strings and frets, not just buttons and a paddle.  Now that I’ve seen it, I realize this is what I’ve been waiting for!”

“It’s interesting to see the exact same passion and desire coming from both ends of the spectrum, the video gaming and music playing worlds.  The YOU ROCK GUITAR allows players anywhere on that spectrum, from gamers to professional musicians, to benefit from all that a digital guitar has to offer,” says Kevin Kent, CEO.

JR adds “I’ve been involved with a number of new-to-the-market products in my career, but few with as many immediately recognizable benefits.  And it’s not just Danny.  People look at this product and they get it.  We’re hoping Danny will help us spread the word, passion is infectious.”

YOU ROCK GUITAR… Have Fun, Rock Will Happen.

About Inspired Instruments

Inspired Instruments is dedicated to providing customers with innovation at every opportunity, real music for real gamers. You Rock Guitar and GameFlex™ are registered trademarks of Inspired Instruments, Inc.

Guitar Hero Phenom Danny Johnson talks about playing with the You Rock Guitar on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/YouRockGuitar

Get ready to rock – The Pre-Order List is here.  For you and your friends. http://www.yourockguitar.com/order-form/

Music Made Mobile for the Masses

First Timers:

• The You Rock Guitar is a great learning tool for anybody that wants to play because:

• No stringing required offers a smoother learning curve while maintaining the feel of frets & strings all the way up & down the neck.

• No tuning – Chords don’t sound ‘off’ because of the constant retuning requirements of strings.  The two features combined allow you to pick it up and play right away – no wasted time setting up or adjusting.  It’s truly plug & play.

• Ease of Use – Between the strings and the You-Rock Mode that auto-corrects common finger-positioning mistakes, early practice is a lot more rewarding as users sound good from the get-go.

• Versatility – It can emulate almost any instrument, providing the user with a wider choice of songs to play. The Chord-progression modes help the player growth and expand his/her musical horizons at their own pace.

Composers/Musicians:

The You Rock Guitar is a great compliment to any guitar player because:

It is small, lightweight, and portable – perfect for travel/on the road playing

Versatility of multiple sounds/instruments in one – don’t have to carry multiple instruments with me to write/compose different sounds on different instruments.

Plugs into headphones or amps so I can use it anywhere (plains, trains, automobiles)

Long battery life (~8 hours) – compose from LAX to Heathrow airports.

Fun; all the different effects, sounds, recourses of the instrument push the boundaries of creativity.

Video Gamers

The You Rock Guitar is the first instrument to truly bridge the worlds of gaming and real music, enabling you to use an actual instrument right from your game.

In 2009, those benefits are limited only by the games themselves.  While the instrument (combined with the Game Flex Module) works out of the box with existing games, there is no additional/incremental functionality to the experience other than hitting strings instead of buttons.

But as game developers/publishers takes advantage of a new peripheral that begins where today’s accessories end, there’s no limit to what kinds of innovation will be possible through the You Rock Guitar.  Here are some obvious examples:

Games will be able to offer modes that increase in degree of difficulty by more closely associating in game notes to real notes played in any song.

Speed, rhythm, number of notes, complexity of notes, chords, and songs, will enable a continuous transition from simple/easy beginners, to ‘playing along-side the real music’ as the actual performers would see fit.

Both developers’ and gamers’ creativity will drive game development and a natural evolution between 100% game (role play) and 100% performance (music play).

The game’s appeal will broaden, as more people of all ages & skills will relate to the experience.

Teachers/Educators

The You Rock Guitar makes teachers’ roles easier:

• The properties of the guitar inherently make it easier for students to immediately see results – the satisfaction comes quicker and hurdles are overcome more easily.

• Measure progress – when connected to a computer, the instrument can keep track of every note and chord that you play, and will provide you with ‘reports’ on what/how you did, what errors/mistakes were ‘corrected’, along with behavioral trends.

• Custom learning – The instructor can utilize the SDK to create customized learning plans that meet the specific needs of their students and that assist in measuring and analyzing their progress.

• Fun will drive more players into the market for real instruments; driving demand from more students and the desire for more lessons – translating into increased revenues.

The Guitar is mightier than the sword! From USAToday.

Within minutes, however, Lefcoski and an Iraqi bass player were working their way through Caravan, a classic by the American jazz great Duke Ellington. During the clinking of piano keys and the plucking of bass strings, Lefcoski said, they soon realized that “music was universal.”

The State Department wants to expand on that universal feeling with its new Musical Overtures program, which took Lefcoski and his band to Afghanistan, Armenia, Iraq and Lebanon in April.

Though U.S. musicians have visited other countries on cultural exchange missions for years, Musical Overtures is the first to take them into the dual war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, says Alina Romanowski, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for professional and cultural exchanges.

The State Department had wanted to send such delegations to both countries for years, but only recently have “situations on the ground” allowed for enough safety to send musicians, Romanowski says.

This kind of cultural diplomacy dates back to the Cold War, says Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Music was considered “a good cultural weapon” and the government sponsored jazz musicians specifically because “jazz was an internationally known, admired and a respected art form identified with the United States,” he says.

Sending jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie was one of the few ways to penetrate the countries behind the Iron Curtain, Morgenstern says.

The challenges for traveling ambassadors are different after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, though Alvin Atkinson — the lead singer and drummer of the band Lefcoski played in — says foreign attitudes toward the USA seem to be improving since President Obama took office. On a separate tour two years ago, he says, a man in Jordan called him a “bloodsucking imperialist” and demanded that he leave the country.

“With our new president, there’s a possibility to talk about things and not just assume things,” Atkinson says. “We now have the possibility of at least having an intellectual conversation.”

Funding for the State Department bureau that runs Musical Overtures and other cultural programs expanded under President George W. Bush from $900,000 to $10 million in 2008. The budget for 2009 is at $8.5 million.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has cited the need for cultural exchanges as part of the Obama administration’s emphasis on “smart power”: using non-military means as a way to expand American influence.

One of Atkinson’s most vivid memories from Afghanistan came in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where he danced on stage with Hassan Bismil, a famous local singer. Atkinson began to sing, and the crowd quickly grew from a few dozen to more than 300 people.

The locals didn’t know English, but they tried to sing along with him anyway, he says.