Since I wasn’t able to make it to CES this year (and probably won’t EVER get a chance to go) I get all my info about up and coming technologies from other web sites and technology-themed shows, like G4’s Attack Of The Show.
Some of the more interesting things that I heard were introduced at the CES were Midi guitar controllers, such as the YouRock guitar and Gambridges Z-1 Hybrid guitar, which can be used both with rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band AND be used as a controller for GarageBand on Macs. I had read about the midi guitar controllers courtesy of Technologizer.com which gives a pretty good description of the capabilities of both. I have not used them, but as someone who has played guitar for over 20 years, I have always complained that playing the games isn’t the same as playing music (much like being a DJ doesn’t make you a musician…it just doesn’t folks, sorry) and how some people treat the controllers like real guitars. It is absolutely ridiculous that there are game controllers made from the body of real guitars and that there are people that will spend an outrageous amount of money to buy them.
I bought my first real guitar, a Kramer Striker 600ST (I think, I’ll have to double check), which cost me about $350. It was by no means a ‘great’ guitar, due to the plywood body which made it both sound crappy and heavier than a cinder-block. It did, however, have a Floyd Rose tremolo and it was MINE. I loved that guitar and I still have it at my brother’s house. It was the guitar that I first learned to REALLY play on. The guitar I used before that was a Harmony Flying V that my brother got for Christmas and while I started to take lessons on that guitar, from no less than the late, great Bernie Brauswetter, my Kramer was the guitar I learned to solo and the first guitar I ever played on stage. Interestingly enough, I read somewhere that the Striker body type is being used as the body of a guitar controller for Guitar Hero. Oh, how the Gods of Rock mock me…
I have to say that I am not as big as an opponent of rhythm games as I first was. They have introduced me to some music that I would have probably never bothered listening to and introduced my kids to some great older music that they would have never been exposed to or would have dismissed out of hand because it wasn’t cool or it was ‘old music’. There is nothing more surreal than listening to your kids sing the lyrics of a song that came out over 30 years ago. To their credit, the games were always fun and are a great way to enjoy music socially and interactively. In the past the only real way to do this was to learn an instrument and hit an open jam (Orphan Annie’s on a Sunday night!) or get a bunch of friends together and bang away on an acoustic guitar. I often think of old movies where someone would jump on the piano and everyone would gather around and sing some old standard. You know why you don’t see things like this anymore? No one can play an instrument. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band allow people who can’t play a way to enjoy music socially again and allow those of us who can play a way to enjoy music interactively with our kids. In fact, my son got so into playing Rock Band with his friends at one point, he actually picked up my guitar and asked me to show him a few things. A year later, he has his own guitar and continues to play to this day.
That brings me back to my original point. My biggest problem with a game is that all the time and energy spent learning the button sequences to a song in the game could be put toward learning the song itself on a real instrument. Some of the sequences are truly difficult when the game is set to ‘Expert’, ‘Through The Fire And Flames’ by DragonForce is a prefect example of what I’m talking about. Look it up on YouTube if want to see what I’m talking about. I was in the car the other day and ‘Heart Shaped Box’ by Nirvana came on the radio and the first thing that came to mind was the graphics of the game, mainly because I had hear that song more while playing the game than I had ever heard it on the radio, even when the song was first released. He mentioned that if he closed his eyes, he could still remember the button pattern to play the song. Crazy, huh? If you are going to spend time memorizing something like that, why not just learn the song?
That being said, the game’s drum controllers go much farther in teaching someone the basics of playing real drums. Since I can’t play drums myself, I can only say that it seems like a good way to build the coordination that it will take if you were to make the jump to real drums.
If rhythm games are going to continue to be popular, they are going to need to keep the challenge up. I can’t think of a better way to do that then to inject some of the elements of real instruments into the game. 20 years from now there might be a legion of rockers who owe their entire coreers to Guitar Hero….
