Jam Sessions
© 2007 Ubisoft, Inc.
This guitar simulator lets you brush the stylus (or your your finger) across a line on the Nintendo DS touch screen to hear a surprisingly realistic sounding guitar chord. The feeling is akin to an autoharp, with a one-button set of chords, controlled with the DS direction keys. To modulate up or down a step (or half step), you use the A and B keys. So it is easy to quickly strum out a four- (or eight) chord folk song, for example. In addition to the free play mode, there's a set of songs you can learn, presented one chord at a time. Because the chord notation is real, some of these skills could transfer to real music. For example, the program could be used for showing music students how chord changes work, minus the pain of the calluses. Other features include a karaoke mode (using the internal DS microphone), the ability to turn on or off features like distortion or reverb, and the ability to change the pitch of your guitar, say, to match your slightly out-of-tune piano. If you plug your DS into an external set of speakers, you can get a very big sound; but be forewarned that pulling out your Nintendo DS during a campfire sing-along could max you out on the geek scale. This title was originally called DS Guitar M-06 in Japan.
$30, Nintendo DS
Teaches: music, chord notation, pitch, guitar playing
CTR Rating: 88%