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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)
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.
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.