Can Guitar Rising Teach You Guitar?
No matter what anyone says, Guitar Hero is not going to teach how to play the guitar. It is not going to make you better at the guitar in any way, shape or form. However, Gametank is looking into making a game that will be able to make you a better guitar player, and it’s called Guitar Rising.
Guitar Rising aims to take the flying colored dots of Guitar Hero, and apply them to an actual guitar. It also includes varying difficulty levels, and the ability to slow down songs or sections of songs to make them easier to learn. The game will supposedly be fun and challenging for the non guitar player all the way up to the expierienced shredder.
So will this game be fun? I think it can be, if done properly. Details are a little sketchy on how exactly it will detect the notes your playing (their site says by USB chord or microphone.) This kind of game could be easily ruined by poor note detection. However, if they do that well, this game has a lot of potential.
Can this game make you a good guitar player? I think that if you play it a lot and work up the difficulty levels, this game could make you a better guitarist, but I don’t think you’ll become great by just playing this game. If you are the kind of person that enjoys keeping score and having definable levels to move up, then this could be a great tool for you. This could also be a great way to younger kids into playing guitar.
So, do you think this game will be fun, and help people improve as guitarists? let us know what you think. Here’s the trailer so you can see it in action:
Call me a puritan, but I think that if you want to play guitar, you should pick up a guitar and bang out some god-awful notes and jump around like a fool, checking yourself out in the mirror to see how your rock star look is coming along.
Then, realize that jumping around like a fool only makes you… well, a fool. Then work on your god-awful notes, trying to transform them into something your family can stand to listen to.
When I got my first guitar, I felt like I had magic in my fingers. I sounded terrible, for sure. But I had been studying guitar magazines for months, learning tabs in my head for songs I’d play once I got it. Then I worked them out, badly at first, then less badly.
But having that hunk of wood and metal in your hands is magical. Even the most advanced electronic doodads and whatzits will never replicate that, no guitar game will ever give you the feeling oh having the almighty electric guitar in your hands.
Guitar games are fine for non-musicians… leave ‘em to the gamers though. Prospective guitar players need to play guitar.
Mad Stratter, I think you misunderstand the game itself. It isn’t like Guitar Hero or Rock Band where you use a plastic guitar controller, the game’s whole hook is that you use an ACTUAL guitar to play the actual music (or at least a simplified version on lower difficulties and note for note version on higher ones).
That being said, I’m sure no shortage of traditional musicians would still scoff at the concept and insist that if you really are serious about learning an instrument you should just take your lumps and scrape through it until you can work up enough skill to keep you motivated.
I think that’s the problem though, not everyone learns the same way and not everyone can get excited about struggling to play along with a CD while reading off a tab or notation sheet. With a game they have a (hopefully) rich practice tool that can have a much gentler difficulty curve and offer personal rewards earlier in the learning process.
I guess another argument that could be posed is that those types of people shouldn’t be diluting the prestige of being a musician in the first place, which I suppose is a valid point as well.
As for the game in question, I suspect Guitar Rising is possibly dead in the water as there hasn’t been a single update to their site or press release since it was announced. Disney has recently announced something very similar called Disney Star Guitarist that seems to use a USB guitar, however.
I recently wrote a blog about TABs and how TABs, when you just learn to play the song without learning WHAT you’re playing, is basically like playing Guitar Hero.
The blog is located here: http://epiphoneblog.wordpress.com/
I honestly don’t see this as being too different. Yes, it could teach you to play a song, but the chances of it making you a musician don’t seem to be that strong.
It’ll be interesting to see how it develops. They are going to have to convince old school learners that it’s a good way to learn. Of course there is also a “new generation” of players out there too.
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