I saw this letter in this month's Total Guitar, and I nearly barfed.
From Danny C and the Gingerbread Man, Belfast
We feel it our duty to stand up and be counted in reply to the letter in your last issue entitled 'Guitar Hero Chumps'. It is far too easy to ridicule those of us who have spent hours playing a small plastic guitar without considering the benifits it may have had on us as actual guitar players. Take my mate and I as an example. We both have been playing guitar for five years or so and have learned most of what we know from Total Guitar. We are both fairly average players and have found that the hours we have spent playing Guitar Hero have improved our actual guitar playing immensely. Finger strength and independance are unquestionably improved. Soloing technique can also be translated directly from Guitar Hero to a real guitar, with our understanding of phrasing, particularly, benifitting. As for people who have never played guitar before, Guitar Hero can definitly be of benefit. The simplest chords in guitar hero require using index and ring finger to hold two 'frets' at once. Are simple barre chords not the first thing we learn to play? And what about the wide variety of musical genres covered in the games? How many other ways can you think of to get 10 year olds to listen to Cream, SRV, Black Sabbath, and Rush? Anyway, the point is that we all know that GH ain't gonna make Slash suddenly burst out of us and take over, but it really can help your playing! We believe it so strongly that we will put our names to it, unlike your previous anonymous reader...
Are you shitting me. This is easily the most idiotic letter I have ever seen featured in a magazine, Total Guitar should be ashamed to show it.
Where to start....
"Finger strength and independance are unquestionably improved." Oh really? Strength? It is a button. You are not building any callouses on that. Independance? The controller is modelled around ONE STRING. ONE. JUST ONE. That is building as much independence as tapping your fingers on a desk, it is nothing compared to the four to six strings you find on most basses and guitars.
"Soloing technique can also be translated directly from Guitar Hero to a
real guitar, with our understanding of phrasing, particularly,
benifitting." Oh dear god. How in the world could GH improve phrasing? There are five buttons, all of them pulling double duty in being used for many, many notes. This cannot improve your phrasing at all, unless you are talking about the actual song itself. If it is, then why don't you just listen to a song? Do you have to run it through a $300 system while concentrating on massaging an elctronic dildo to listen to a song?
"The simplest chords in guitar hero require using index and ring finger
to hold two 'frets' at once. Are simple barre chords not the first
thing we learn to play?" ONE STRING. JUST ONE. It is impossible to form a chord on the controller!
"And what about the wide variety of musical genres covered in the games?
How many other ways can you think of to get 10 year olds to listen to
Cream, SRV, Black Sabbath, and Rush?" Really? You are preaching the ability of bringing the most popular and recognizable guitar-based songs of all time into one package so that people can "discover" them? If the GH player does not know the songs on the game, he really needs to get out of the house.
"We believe it so strongly that we will put our names to it, unlike your previous anonymous reader..." Oh really? Why don't you introduce me to your friend, the "Gingerbread Man".
This letter fails on so many levels. GH has NO application to guitar playing whatsoever, and the only point you had was bringing popular songs to the masses, but the songs were popular to begin with, so I don't really consider that a valid point. This letter is disgusting.
I will say guitar hero has helped my playing a hair. 1st off, it's much easier to warm up with than a real guitar. For soloing, if you think about how the notes are coming up and how they flow, I have actually noticed myself thinking about how speed and note selection come into play. I will say guitar hero has actually helped that out some. Finger independence, maybe a little not enough to make me any better in actual playing though.
I do agree with just about everything you said though. GH is rediculous, and the addicted players are even worse.
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Rant #6: I hate Guitar Hero. (Cont.) blog
