Learning guitar can be a very complicated thing. Your hands hurt from pressing the strings and contorting in ways that you are not used to. Hours of practice when you first start out can seem like nothing more than running in circles and that you not getting any better.

             Having your own private teacher can get expensive after only a few lessons. There are many things stacked up against you when you want to learn or get better on the instrument.

            The Fretlight Company attempts to easy some of these tensions and provides you with your very own tutor. Fretlight guitars use software on your computer and a unique fret board that lights up, illuminating where to play and what notes to hit next. It is almost like guitar hero with a real guitar.

            On each fret, there are six tiny LED lights (one for each string) which light up and tell the guitarist when to play a certain note. Once you download the software onto your computer and plug the guitar into the USB drive with a special cable, you are ready for a guitar lesson to begin.

            You can pick any number of songs to learn from the massive library that Fretlight has and play along to it. First the song will play with the guitar part in it, so that you can get used to how it sounds and the feel of the song.

            Then the background music will continue to play when you want to play along, but the guitar part will cut out and you will follow along with the song, being guided by the LED lights that flicker on and off. You can adjust the tempo of the song if it is too fast for you and slow it down to something more manageable.

            There are numerous types of software that you can download from the company to suit the style you want to play. If you just want to learn chords, there is software which teaches only chords.

            There is also software for how to get better at improvising, soloing, using different scales, and finger picking. The sound of your guitar plays through the speakers of your computer along with the background drums, bass and other elements.

             Fretlight guitars are perfect if you are just starting out and want to get used to playing simple notes and holding down the strings. The guitars are also great for guitarists how have been playing a long time and want to get better at a certain style. The guitars are also well made and sound great to play even when you are not using the teaching functions.