As revealed at GDC, Ubisoft is bringing the Nintendo DS guitar non-game Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06 to the West as Jam Sessions, adding a unique guitar playing touchscreen tapper to the list of the system's unique software. We posted video and impressions of the game yesterday, but I'll tell you a bit more about the interface.

For those who haven't imported the original Japanese version, the game "plays" quite simply. The touchscreen requires only simple strumming, with quick strokes emitting louder strums, softer strokes for quieter chords. You can't play individual strings, mind you, just chords.

Directional presses on the DS d-pad will choose your chord, from a stable of eight, with the left shoulder button modifying that set for another eight. Those two chord palettes and the pitch of the chords themselves are completely customizable with the game's drag and drop palette editor. You'll also be able to save these custom chord palette's to your cart's internal memory.

Jam Sessions will let budding musicians record their performances to the game's internal storage as well, so if you've come up with some catchy toe-tapper or sappy folk tune, you can play it back later. The game will also ship with a bunch of popular tunes included in lyric and chord chart format, so you won't have to learn songwriting on the side.

A number of guitar sounds and effects (reverb, chorus, tremolo, high and low pass) are available which can be toggled with the right shoulder button for those moments when you need to kick up the distortion. Players can also tweak their effects processors, which are simple, two-knob pedals, and can stack a pair of processors for a wide variety of sounds.

The interface is quite simple, as you'll see in the screenshot gallery below. Michael McWhertor