Guitar Hero Is Big Hit With Bands

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "An unlikely but growing group of rock stars are also avid players of Guitar Hero, a PlayStation title that uses a miniature plastic guitar to let gamers pretend to be, well, rock stars, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Michael Einziger, the 30-year-old guitarist for the hard-rock band Incubus, says he was "shocked at how hard it was" to play the videogame's version of his song "Stellar." He admits he was handily beaten by his then-14-year-old sister, Ruby Aldridge, when the two of them squared off earlier this year. "It doesn't have anything to do with playing guitar," Mr. Einziger says. "It's all rhythmic." When the four members of the punk-pop band the Donnas got together to play Guitar Hero last week, guitarist Allison Robertson took some good-natured ribbing from her bandmates, says drummer Torry Castellano. That's because Ms. Robertson had a hard time playing along with the band's own song "Take It Off." "Expectations for her are pretty high because she's the guitar player and because she's so good at videogames in general," says Ms. Castellano.'"

Re:I Don't Understand

[Nos.]

Yup, it would be like learning to race by playing video games, or thinking you should be on the anti-terrorist teams because of your K:D ratio in Counter-Strike. Games are just that, entertainment. You may learn somethings, but its no substitute for real life.

Re:I Don't Understand

[twistedsymphony]

The point isn't to play along with the band, the point is to play along with your friends and have a good time. If you have friends who are musicians then you could probably all get together and have fun playing real music. Otherwise I think the majority of people (who are most likely not very musical) would prefer the video game version. Also I think it's a bit easier having one person carrying a slim PS2 and a couple of fake plastic guitars to your friends house then everyone hauling around heavy equipment... and then worrying that the neighbors will complain.

Re:I Don't Understand

[Xzzy]

why play guitar hero?

Because it's a fun game? Rhythm games are popular for a reason, because it's an extremely easy concept to grasp but can be extremely hard to pull off perfectly. Doesn't matter if you're a musician or a mill worker, if it's fun, there's no reason not to play it.

It in no way threatans or diminishes "real" music production, it's simply binding together two popular activities: Being a rock star, and playing video games.

Hi There

[ludomancer]

Hi, and welcome to the world of marketting.

This article was not written to talk about the bands in question and their love of playing a video game. It was written to give exposure to the Guitar Hero franchise of games, and bring attention to the impending release of the game's sequel, which is now an MTV property (who incited the writing of this article to generate sales).

Now that you realize your error for even giving it attention, please take your haughty "Hi I'm a real musician, allow me to tell you how much better I am than you" attitude elsewhere. It's really worse than the brainwashing corporations responsible for this kind of media in the first place.

Thanks.

Re:I Don't Understand

[tatonca]

"Which provides you with no guitar skills whatsoever. This summary hits it right on the head that it improves your rhythm..."

So either it does do something to improve playing skills (rhythm) or you don't believe rhythm is important to learning to play guitar. So which is it?

The number of guitar 'players' out there that have no rhythm at all is astounding. They play a collection of notes at random velocity - impressive when you're drunk or stoned at a party, but not terribly entertaining otherwise, and certainly very annoying to any one who has to play with them.

My daughter is new to playing guitar (I have been playing twenty years) and was having a very hard time relating the timing and rhythms required to play exercises and peices of music. As a learning tool for the raw bigger, it provides an alternate method of relating what you hear and what you are expected to play in a way that requires no knowledge of how to read music. Similar to tab, the interface for guitar hero provides an allegory of sight for the velocities of the notes you hear, and gives you a paradigm for fitting the two together. With additional input from myself, within the span of about 2 weeks, my daughter was able to better discern the relationships of the various note velocities. It was a break through for her that otherwise could have been very frustrating, but within the context of the game was nothing but fun.

 

Re:I Don't Understand

[Knara]

I play electric guitar, electric bass, and drums. I love guitar hero. Why? Because it's fun to play. It's skillset is also wildy divergent from the skillset required for actual guitar work (because, well, it's a rhythm game for your fingers, not a melodic instrument). Some songs are indeed much harder to play in GH than in real life (mostly due to the fact that you can't move vertically from string to string and all chording is lateral).

Whenever there's a GH post anywhere, there's always some pretentious moron who has to point out that he plays guitar/bass/kazoo in real life, and that people who play GH are wasting their time. I dunno what motivates their need to do this, but it always happens.

Wohh.. Watch it pal

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

O.K. I have a few things to say about that.

1. I learned to drive by watching movies and playing video games! (consequently, I earned a lot of speeding tickets as a youth, now I just drive a better car so I am "looked" at less)

2. I learned to shoot by playing CS, UT2K4, and Quake (1,2,3,4) My friend John loves to tell the story of my first time behind a rifle. Dead Center, First Shot.

Re:I Don't Understand

[Thorkytel Ant-Head]

Did you actually read the article? It mentions some musicians who have songs in the game, but also other musicians who are not affiliated with it whatsoever, and they are all obsessed with the game. I'm sure that your $300 starter guitar won't sound anything like Black Sabbath, even if you did take years practicing Iron Man. With Guitar Hero, you can spend a short amount of time practicing, and feel like a lead guitarist on tons of classic songs. Maybe I don't want to spend years learning to master the guitar. Maybe I just want to play for a while, feel like a lead guitarist, and then get back to my life. What's wrong with that? As to why a real guitarist would play this game, it's the same reason why my pilot friend plays flight-simulator games in his spare time: because it's fun. You might as well ask why someone would play a fighting game, instead of studying martial arts and becoming a black belt, or play a first-person shooter, instead of learning to operate a real firearm. No matter how long I practice, I will never fight hordes of enemies in hand-to-hand combat, single-handedly repel an alien invasion, or flawlessly play the entire solo to Free Bird in front of a packed arena audience. But like many others, I play video games as an escape, to do things I could never do in real life. And apparently, even Real Musicians agree with me.

Just confirms...

[JustNiz]

As a bass player who's played in many rock bands this just confirms what I've found.. many lead guitar players get away with having bad or even no sense of rhythm/time.

Re:I Don't Understand

[idobi]

Once again, I wasn't saying no one should play this game, I was just confused why a musician with unlimited resources would play it.

Because no matter what your resources are, it's pretty hard to get 3000 people to come to your living on a whim so you can play rock star.

Regarding The Backlash...

[HeavenlyBankAcct]

The "I play guitar in real life, so why would I want to play this game" are just symptomatic of a self-entitled attitude that I've found to be somewhat pervasive throughout the world of 'unsigned musicians.' After spending years and years and years slugging it out in several local music scenes (with marginal aptitude, at best, I admit), I have come to realize that many musicians, who subconsciously realize the real-world triviality of their pursuits, ultimately look to rationalize and justify their stake in the pursuit by painting their efforts as far more Herculean than they are. This is one of the main reasons why it's rare to meet a musician that doesn't consider his creations to be his "life's work" or to view his status as a musician as anything other than a divine calling or a reason for being. The simple fact is that many people are uncomfortable with the realization that what they do is, ultimately, entertainment and seek instead to find karmic value for their priorities by portraying the act of strumming a guitar to be somehow akin to finding a cure for cancer or (and this is ALL to common) actively working towards social change. Yes, I play guitar in real life, and yes -- I love Guitar Hero. Why? Because it's fun. Yes, I can plug in a real guitar and learn those songs and play them (if, of course, that was something I felt any desire to do), as can any moderately skilled player with an instrument and access to transcriptions of the tunes. But the simple fact of the matter is that Guitar Hero is a completely different kind of enjoyable activity than that of actual 'music making.' For some of us who exert a good deal of mental energy in their songwriting and playing, a game like Guitar Hero presents a refuge from intellectualizing things like "having fun." It's a way to enjoy myself casually and to do so using a skillset I'm already decent with (moving my fingers in a guitar-like motion) as opposed to something that's frustrating and foreign to my brain (first-person shooters and the like.) I firmly believe that those who feel the need to point out that Guitar Hero is somehow 'beneath them' because of their musical abilities are simply looking for a pedestal from which to impart "wisdom-on-high." No, playing Guitar Hero is not the same as playing a real guitar -- Hell, neither is checkers. But I'm still at a loss as to how those components could be even remotely analogous to anyone's mind unless they were merely searching for a "deeper meaning" where it doesn't exist.