Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Las Vegas for the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show!  It was exciting to see what’s up and coming in the world of electronics!  Even though this show is focused on the general consumer, there were a few things specifically for musicians.  As you can see above, Gibson had a large tent full of their instruments.  Since I was attending as a representative of my daytime employer, I did not have a chance to browse through the Gibson offerings.

I did however, find a small startup company known as.

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Fret Zealot makes a guitar training aid designed to mount on any guitar fret board.  It’s a small flexible PCB with LEDs under each string, behind every fret wire.  It syncs up with a phone app, and uses the LEDs to teach you how to play guitar!  It has both common chord positions, and a small library of guitar tabs included.  The app plays the songs along with you, at 1/4, 1/2 and full speed!  There’s even a large selection of sounds available to match the song you are playing.

I find this worthy of mention here, because it’s the first system I have seen that allows you to use a guitar you already own for this.  No longer do you have to purchase a “training” guitar, and have to upgrade later.  The adhesive is designed to be removable and not cause damage to the fret board.  Any guitar from the Wal-Mart special to a ’67 Stratocastor can become a training guitar.  It’s designed to accommodate all major scale lengths.  I encourage you to check them out!