REVIEW – Most people love music, and many wish they could make music, but feel it is too difficult. Like everything else, it seems, learning music is easier if you are young, but a full-sized guitar is often larger for little hands and is also quite an investment. Enter Loog, a company that seeks to gamify learning guitar (and some general musical knowledge) with smaller-sized instruments, simplified chords, and fun interactive lessons and games on an app. Can this system spur budding musicians along? Let’s take a look at the full gamut and see.
⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: instruments start around $120 and range upward as they get larger and add more strings.
Where to buy: Loog online store
What is it?
Guitars built for smaller hands, and a simplified, kid-friendly teaching system. (They have a piano program, too.)
What’s included?
- Loog Guitar
- Chord cards
- String-changing crank
- Picks
- Stickers
- QR code to download their app
Tech specs
- Recommended: Ages 9+
- Compact size, ultra-light weight, and ergonomic contours for maximum comfort.
- Professional-grade string action and intonation.
- Nylon Strings: Gentler on the fingers, ideal for beginners.
- All-Wood build: smooth maple neck for rich tone, beautiful sustain, and lasting quality.
Design and features
The Loog guitar I was sent was their natural finished model. There are colorways that range from “Hello, Kitty” to “The Beatles” and other special models from time to time. I was sent the basic “Pro 6 acoustic”, which is their adult-ish model. They also have simplified models with three strings and smaller neck lengths and widths. (This is similar to the Suzuki method, which has half-sized and even quarter-sized violins!)
The guitar is smaller across neck than most nylon string guitars, and the neck is shorter (23” from bridge to nut, and 18 frets), but plays as well as larger models.
The finish is a smooth matte, and the natural grain of the wood is beautiful. There is a strap button on the tail end as well as behind the neck where it joins the body (rather than buckling a strap on the tuning head, like many beginning guitars do, where the neck gets stressed!) It arrives pre-strung, but the strings do need to be tuned.
The tuning heads are closed gears and hold the tuning fairly well. (New strings, of course, take a long time to stop stretching!)
There is a QR code to download their app, which takes you through the process of tuning each string. Once tuned, you get out to the main menu (where you can turn off the annoying background music) and learn chords, songs, general music knowledge, and other games. There are several modules that have elements of Guitar Hero, but it’s difficult to make a game that helps you play guitar without that. The big difference to me is that this app actually has you hitting the correct fret on the correct string, rather than just pressing color-coded buttons. (Not to cast shade on Guitar Hero at all! I have some friends who are wizards at that game who have never played guitar, and I am horrible at it, but I’ve played guitar since before they were born!)
There is a “Bedtime Stories” section where the narrator tells the story of various popular musicians, from the Beatles and Elvis Presley to Queen and Ed Sheeran. I was quite happy to hear the clear, fun stories of some of my favorite artists, distilled down for a pre-teen level. The “Rockstar for Parents” story about Taylor Swift was fantastic! A fun diversion from the “Backstage for kids” brand of the other stories of older bands.
Assembly, Installation, Setup
Unpacking and tuning are necessary, but then you’re ready to play!
Performance
I love this little guitar! I spent several years in undergrad in Music Education, and am familiar with Suzuki and other methods of teaching children, but this was a breath of fresh air. The teacher for the songs is a mom in her kitchen patiently walking you through each portion of a song one chord at a time, first slowly, then at “song tempo”. Along the way, she will toss in little tips to help your playing. Songs are popular numbers (Bruno Mars, The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Metallica – it’s a wide gamut!) A few are included with the app, but if you want more, there is a subscription to the full library for $5 a month. Purchase of an instrument gets you a discount on your subscription.
Final thoughts
I have been playing guitar for a long time, (since before the first Nixon administration!), and am often asked “Can you teach me how to play?” by well-meaning friends. (Just yesterday, I was telling someone about this article, and they asked that exact question.) Teaching something you have internalized for decades is difficult, especially if you didn’t learn in a classroom or through a series of lessons. This system makes it easier and much more accessible to younger learners. But even more mature learners can get a lot out of this if they want to. You could get the software and lessons without having to purchase a guitar. So if you just want to learn, go for it with that pawn-shop guitar you picked up!
What I like about Loog Guitar and their Backstage Pass
- High-quality instruments
- Fun interactive learning modules for general music and for the guitar
- Well-rounded series of songs to encourage learning beyond just the lessons
What needs to be improved?
- Can’t think of anything
Price: usually $169.00 Sale price $139.00
Where to buy: Loog online store
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Loog. Loog did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
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