I took my fictional metal band, Death 2 U, on stage last night. Packed stadium. Roaring crowd. Wetting-their-pants crazy to see us, just last week an unknown band playing in someone’s basement, cover Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows”.
No one knew how nervous we were. This song is HARD. Even on “Medium”.
I love Guitar Hero to death, but as this TeleFragged review points out, it doesn’t teach you much about playing a real guitar. But it gives you a helluva impression about how much work really goes into songs that don’t sound like they have anything going for them at all.
These guys really ARE musicians.
I don’t totally agree that you learn nothing from GH about playing a real instrument. You DEFINITELY learn about timing.
I play multiple instruments; flute, piano; I took violin in college and taught myself the pennywhistle. I have made my own arrangements of Rennaisance dances for flute and synthesizer (which I seem to have lost, by the way….) I know my way around a sheet of music.
And though I have metronomes and though my teachers urged me to practice with them without fail… well, it was always so easy to just shut them off when things got too hard. Slow down the hard bits. And when it came time for performance, well, if I hadn’t practiced enough, it would bite me.
Guitar Hero does not allow you to slow down the hard bits. If you screw up, you hear garbage out of the speakers. Nail it, and it’s sweet solo magic. SO yeah; GH is doing wonders for keeping me from taking it easy.
If I ever take up real guitar; I want something like that to help me for real. I just know I will be cursing it as I try to both change chords, AND read music; but it pays off.
