Guitar Hero Means Guitar Zero
Once upon a time, really not very long ago, if you wanted to know what it was like to play guitar you bought a guitar, learnt some chords and got sore fingertips before strumming out that first baby-steps, three or four chord song – usually “Knockin On Heavens Door,” “Smoke on the Water” or, if you bought a capo too, “Wonderwall.”
Then, as you progressed from strumming chords you could pick out individual strings and when you threw in a D and G you had “Everybody Hurts” and as the skill builds up you could tackle those songs that would make your wrist fall off with practice such as the circus like riff that opens “Sweet Child Of Mine.” With every Nirvana riff nailed a feeling of satisfaction would emerge and you’d become braver, tackling more complex sounding tracks such as Jane’s Addiction’s “Just Because” before your confidence was up enough to play with other guitar bashers – or, in technical terms: musicians – and learn more.
At least, that’s how I did it.
Not anymore though. This thing called Guitar Hero traversed its way from Japanese arcades to shop shelves. A miniature, plastic little guitar shaped controller with colour coded buttons in place of frets. No need to learn actual chords and riffs when you can push coloured buttons, as prompted along to guitar classics. Then there’s sequels and dedicated editions. Not to mention being able to hook it up with your mates games and have face-offs. If only you could do such things with REAL guitars.
Then there’s Rock BAND – to give you all the fun of being in a real band without any of that troublesome stuff of say, buying instruments, learning instruments, learning and writing songs and.. creating. Oh no, who needs that when you can spend upwards of 70 quid on a fake guitar or drumkit which, by the way, you look really cool playing, and PRETEND?! Wow, with one person singing, one person pushing buttons pretending to play guitar and another hitting colour coded drum pads it’s almost like you’re in a band! Wow.
Let me illustrate how I see this in terms of the devolution of music: imagine you’re walking down the street. You walk past a house and the garage door is open, inside a drummer twirling the bolts on top of the symbols and setting up while two kids churn out guitar chords and lanky kid with a bass (they’re always the lanky ones) tunes up. Two minutes later they’re in the middle of a slightly loose and ever so slightly out of tune cover of “Love Buzz.” It’s not great but they’re getting there and in a few months they’ll be playing it infront of people and calling themselves something like Plastic Glass and people will be jumping up and down. Teenage girls will be adoring them and soon they’ll be writing their own tunes and maybe, this is just a maybe mind as the record industry is in a scary state, they might even get to make an album.
Keep walking down the metaphorical street.
Now you come to a house with no net curtains, you can see straight through the window. Inside there’s a large tv and around it three young adults, one of them has what looks like a microphone in his hand, another has something resembling a stratocaster (it even says Fender on the headstock but you can’t see that from the street) and the other is sat behind what looks like half a drumkit but somehow.. not quite right. Then as images appear on the screen they start what looks like a game of make believe and dance around as if they’re pretending to be the band that made the music on the game. Never mind they didn’t write it, never mind that they don’t know how to really play but they are going to pretend they did. After three and a half excruciating minutes of watching these people pretend (just be grateful the kids in this house aren’t into it enough to dress up too) they do a little excited jump – perhaps even a little chest bump – and celebrate the fact that they got enough points to unlock another song they can pretend to play.
Now if people continue to do this instead copying songs at the first place you stopped how will music get made? Where will the soundtracks for your Make Pretend Game come from?! If you ask me, the only difference between Rock Band/ Guitar Hero and the old Harry Enfield sketch of Tim Nice-But Dim rocking out with his tennis racket to Dire Strait’s “Sultans of Swing” is that his racket wasn’t actually shaped like a little plastic guitar and could do something useful like play tennis.
It’s getting so bad that bands are actually releasing their songs ONLY via these games.
So yeah, if you wanna know what it’s like to be a gangster and blow things up then by all means by a game. And yes it may be fun and quicker than actually learning but if you want to know what it’s really like to play guitar, buy one. You can pick them up cheap enough to start learning on – easily as cheap as buying the game and controllers. If you want to get the rock band experience find a couple of friends that play instruments – not toy ones – and play with them. Trust me, it’s the most fun you’ll have.
Patrick is an expert Research and Travel consultant. His current interest is in East Midlands Airport Hotels and East Midlands Airport Parking
Economical Expert Guitar Lessons For Kids
With children trying on extracurricular activities at the speed of light these days, it’s hard for parents to decide what to allow them to try and what to forego. This is where computerized guitar lessons can help cut the costs for parents while their children try on this pursuit for size.
The truth is computerized guitar lessons can be very beneficial not only for the parents’ wallets, but also young learners, as well. There are some very big advantages to checking out PC-based lessons for youngsters and even teens:
* The lower cost and commitment of this type of guitar lesson can save parents a lot of money in the long run if the child decides the guitar isn’t their instrument of choice.
* Computer-based lessons are comfortable for kids. While most parents might not have grown up learning via a PC, their children have. The truth is a lot of children are very, very comfortable learning from computer programs. Math, reading, science and even music can be taught quite effectively through computer programs.
* Privacy. Some youngsters just aren’t very comfortable taking their first few music lessons with “strangers.” There’s a fear of performing poorly, sounding bad or just not “getting it.” Computerized guitar lessons can remove some of these fear factors and free youngsters to learn and enjoy. They do this while also offering solid instruction and the correct building blocks to help them advance if they so choose.
* Time. If a youngster decides lessons aren’t for them, there isn’t a huge time investment lost in hours and hours of paid instruction. On the converse, if a child thrives on guitar lessons, the PC based programs enable them to take as many hours of instruction as they want at no additional charge.
* Visual assistance. While it’s true nothing replaces a human instructor for lessons, computerized guitar classes come close. Since the lessons can and generally do include video clips, as well, young learners will still get to see the chords, where their fingers should be placed and so on.
* Pacing. By taking computerized lessons children are free to go as fast or as slowly as they’d like. This provides an individualized spin to learning that can be very important for building confidence and skill level while encouraging a child to keep on learning.
Music is an important part of life and many parents would love to see their children learn to appreciate it. The problem is there are so many after-school activity choices, some kids never find their groove.
For those with an interest in the guitar, computerized lessons can be just the ticket to help them learn without a huge risk for their parents’ bank accounts. Plus, if these lessons are successful, there are lots of other learning opportunities parents and their children can pursue without concern the interest isn’t really there.
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