As you may, or may not, know, I work for a large musical instrument manufacturer...and certain discussions revolving around two familiar game titles have really got me thinking lately. One of the hottest topics in our industry this last year is how much of an impact (positive or negative) that games like
Guitar Hero and
Rock Band have had on the music retail (instruments, not CD's) industry.
Some of my colleagues think that games like this are stealing potential guitar customers from the stores and sticking them in front of the TV just to have the experience of playing a guitar, yet without all the work involved in actually playing an instrument. Many of them have believed that this, in turn, leads these potential shredders away from ever actually purchasing and learning to play a real instrument.
Well, Boo says I! And I can say that, because without a doubt, the opposite thing is happening...people are walking into music stores asking to take lessons on a real guitar because they love playing
Guitar Hero so much. And the kicker? 12 year old kids are starting music lessons and asking their teachers to show them how to play
and
. Now that's flippin' sweet in a Joe Dirt kinda way. Kids wanting to play 70's guitar cock-rock music...niiiice!
I'm getting these kinds of reports all over the country too, this is not a regional situation. Kids are dying to learn all of the songs they enjoyed so much in
Rock Band and
Guitar Hero, buton
real instruments. In fact, the creators of these two games got together with a well known music publishing company,
Hal Leonord, and put together tab books (tab is a dumbed down written music language for guitarists...trust me, we need it dumbed down! See
) that contain the most popular songs from both games (see picture above, taken by me today in a music store in northern Virginia).
So for all the naysayers out there that think no good can ever come from a video game that mocks the real exercise of playing an instrument, think again.
Guitar Hero and
Rock Band are not only the swift kick in the ass that the retail music industry needed, but a wake up call that great guitar rock is still timeless and that if we put the language of the old into the technology of the new, the riffs will continue to be played for generations yet to come.
Rock on! :rawk: