The creator of the new Magic Instruments guitar says it can play anything a real guitar can, but without having to learn the fingerings of a real guitar. Adam Balkin filed the following report.

This is not a guitar. Almost, but not quite. It’s a Magic Instruments guitar, created by Brian Fan, who was frustrated because as a classically trained pianist at Julliard, he thought he’d be able to play the guitar relatively easily. He couldn’t, so instead, he created an instrument for himself and anyone who doesn’t have the time or ability to play a real guitar.

"It’s played very much like a guitar. It sounds like a guitar. It looks like a guitar. But the main difference is, to play chords, all you have to do is use a single finger pushing a single button on the fretboard, as opposed to doing a chord fingering," Fan says.

There are 90 buttons on the fretboard, each representing a different chord and laid out according to music theory principles. Fan says it can play anything a real guitar can, but without having to learn those fingerings, anyone can learn any song in just a matter of minutes. In fact, the mobile app that links with it will teach you any song, only one finger necessary on the fretboard.

So if, like me, you’ve never played the actual guitar, will using this help you learn to play that one, the one with the actual strings? Sort of. If you play the one with the actual strings, will you be able to pick this one up right away and just use it no problem? Again, sort of.

“When somebody practices and learns on the Magic Instrument guitar, they will learn a bunch of skills that are transferable over to a traditional guitar. That includes things like strumming, finger picking, rhythm. However, we don’t teach you traditional chord fingerings. We’ve had traditional guitarists pick it up and play it. Sometimes, it takes a couple minutes to kind of reverse all those years of practice out of their heads," Fan says.

The Magic Instruments guitar is available for preorder now on Indiegogo for a little over $300.  It’s schedule to ship March of next year.