FRETLIGHT
FG-421
BY JOE CHARUPAKORN
DIN-to-USB cable
Ace Frehley had a guitar that lit up on command, Rickenbacker had its Light
Show 331, but the pairing of guitar and
lights has rarely been a practical affair. The
exception is the Optek Fretlight, which has
been around in several incarnations since
the mid 1980s. The Fretlight was never
aimed for the guitarist looking to impress
Lady Gaga at an audition (so don’t call your
wardrobe coordinator just yet). Rather, the
primary focus of the Fretlight has been the
less glamorous world of music education.
The concept behind the Fretlight is
simple—illuminate the fretboard to direct
the player where and how to play. It seems
simple, but part of the Fretlight’s success as
a learning tool is attributable to the quality of its software, and Optek continuously
focuses on software development. The
Fretlight FG-421 reviewed includes some
of the most up-to-date software (Guitar
Pro 6 Fretlight Ready, Fretlight Player, and
Fretlight Lesson Player). It’s also an easy-playing guitar that makes the interactive
DR15 PREMIER GUITAR JULY 2012
instruction component of the
instrument a lot more satisfying.
Turning You into a Pro
Optek teamed up with Arobas Music to
release Guitar Pro 6 Fretlight Ready, which
integrates the popular Guitar Pro software
with the Fretlight guitar. This application gives players accustomed to tablature
another outlet to be used in conjunction
with the Fretlight guitar and a trial version is included. There are several screen
display modes available in Guitar Pro 6
Fretlight Ready —Tablature, Scale, and
Chord Diagram. Tablature mode shows
you the tabs onscreen and as you play back
the files, and the Fretlight’s fretboard lights
up accordingly. A cool feature is that you
can download Guitar Pro files from, say,
ultimate-guitar.com, and use them with the
Fretlight guitar. In fact, on the Fretlight
website there’s actually a song finder that
finds Guitar Pro 6 Fretlight-ready files from
Ultimate-Guitar.com.
One thing that might be confusing for
a tablature-attuned beginner working with
Guitar Pro 6 Fretlight Ready is that while
tablature symbols that indicate specific
techniques like palm-muting, fret-hand
muting, in-the-crack bends, vibrato, and
Fretboard imbedded with LEDs
to hear audio clips of the guitar at
premierguitar.com/jul2012
CLICKHere…
hammer-ons and pull-offs, among others,
most of these details are not indicated by
the guitar’s lights (though a glance at the
accompanying tab would provide that).
The Fretlight only indicates note location and conventional bends (indicated by
three lights in a row on a single string),
so success in accurately replicating a part
using only the lights as a guide, might
depend on your familiarity with certain
guitar-specific techniques. It’s also, needless to say, unable to lend much assistance
with picking hand intricacies—there are
no light arrays to let you know whether
a passage is alternate picked or sweep
picked. Some things just require a human
touch, and for that Fretlight does also offer
video lessons.
Guitar Pro 6 is still pretty smart and
editable, however and the Fretlight adapts to
changes you make in the tab—a good thing
given how much free online tab is inaccurate. If you’re an astute guitarist, you will
likely end up noticing mistakes And if you
do, that change will also be reflected as the
guitar lights up on the new note location.
Scales and Chords
Since its earliest incarnation when it was a
self-contained unit, Fretlight guitars have
offered lit-up displays of scales on the neck.
Guitar Pro 6 Fretlight Ready’s Scale mode
takes this concept and integrates it with
tabs. Here, if you select a fragment from
