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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.'"
I'm an electric bassist and personally, I care not for Guitar Hero.
... why play guitar hero? To play with the bands? If I want to do that, I strip the low end out of an MP3 on my computer and just play along with it.
... I can't imagine ever getting tired of those.
... so he buys Guitar Hero. Which provides you with no guitar skills whatsoever. This summary hits it right on the head that it improves your rhythm but does nothing for your melody or style of playing.
... but it's still a far cry from the coordination to play any other instrument.
I mean, I've got a freaking bass & a computer with Linux & audacity in my living room
I find it odd that someone who probably has their pick of basses/guitars & effect pedals would prefer the not as rewarding feeling of playing Guitar Hero. Well, to each their own I guess. I think the guitarist of Korn should go buy some Rickenbacker guitars
The funniest thing is that my friend wants to play guitar
PS2 + Guitar Hero = $300. Decent acoustic starter Yamaha guitar is about the same. Take your choice. I suspect Guitar Hero would be a great toy for working on your sense of tempo
My work here is dung.
male guitarist often make jokesabout women not being able to play guitar (we know it's not strictly true, it's just about a one to ten ratio in comparison to males) but the donnas couldn't play that song with real instruments anyway so they were bound to be at a disadvantage. (christ girls, there's more to the guitar than power chords)
It seems like the implementation might be a bit strange/broken when the person who wrote and played a song can't get a good score. Or is the controller too different from a real guitar?
/wonders whether to suggest being able to plug in a real or midi electric... at the moment my housemate, who is a little tone deaf, is attempting to learn the guitar. Apps on every platform can register a midi signal, and a real signal can be fouriered into played notes. Much of the implementation must be there in the code; would it be difficult to create a more... professional version? I for one would not be averse to my housemate being able to see where and what he was doing wrong!
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
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.
Just because you're an expert at Fight Night doesn't mean you can take out Mike Tyson in a real fight... or vice versa. It's just mindless fun. I don't think it was written anywhere on the box that it would turn you into a guitar god overnight (or if it did, you're an idiot for believing it).
As much as I love Incubus, I'd hardly classify them as "hard rock." When I think hard rock, bands like Metallica (Black Album era) and ACDC come to mind. Maybe that's just me, though.
The only relation Guitar Hero's controller -- with its five coloured plastic buttons, in single file, to be pushed when the correctly coloured circle is shown -- is that they're housed in a casing built to resemble a guitar.
You can play Guitar Hero 24/7, practicing until your fingers bleed, but at the end of the day, you still can't play guitar. It isn't Guitar Simulator, it's a video game with a miniature plastic guitar for as its controller. It has nothing to do with actual guitar playing skills.
GTA won't teach you the skillz to be an archcriminal, and America's Army isn't a replacement for boot camp.
I hope no one would argue that playing Guitar Hero would help you learn to play actual music on a guitar, but it does exercise your fingers pretty well and developing the coordination to be able to play on the hard and expert levels should translate in part to playing a real instrument.
I remember the first time I tried the game. And every other time. I refer to the game by its TRUE moniker, "Carpal Tunnel Hero."
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
"It's just DDR played with your fingers."
And DDR is just Simon played with your feet. It seems we've come full circle.
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.
Well, I was mostly just kidding. COORELATION != to Cause & Effect. It's true that I might have rare "natural" abilities, or am some kind of mutant.
But since you replied, could you please explain your response by clarifying the sentance: I really don't know what your trying to say here.
Also, How are you defining "GOOD"? Is a Good Driver one who never gets a speeding ticket, never has an accident but drives 59 in the passing lane? Is it the nice guy who signals, and lets people in all the time, but allways "California" stops?. Is it someone who has a chase to caught ratio of 100:1 or 100:0? How long does it take for a person to become a good driver? If a person had a few accidents but then went the next 10 years without? What about exercising the ability to execute a flawless J - turn in an emergency situation? (this really happened to me, I was going up a steep hill in a 4x4 on icy terrain, and well, ABS doesn't work going backwards (not on street roads either)
As for shooting expierience, I hit four out of my first 5 clay pigeons with a shotgun, the fith was thrown before I was set. My first Duck was shot on my first try also. (My brother in law took me out. I ate it, wasn't fond, and haven't hunted since) The rifle thing happened shortly after. I do think video games taught me to wait until I was 100% sure I would hit the shot before I took it. I can say that video games don't prepare you for the KICK or the shoulder pains. (Honestly, I was crapy with the handgun. The kick throws your hand all over the place, and I was never "set" for my second shot.)
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
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.