Interesting concept.

Newsweek's Steven Levy bemoans the fact that nowadays hopeful guitar heroes don't need to sell their souls to the devil to obtain otherworldly chops, they just need to turn on their Playstation 2.

The fear Levy has is that if teens can feel the power of jamming without ever learning the skill, will they take the time.

Clearly, Guitar Hero is fun. But by bestowing the rewards of virtuosity to those who haven't spent years to earn it, is it dumbing down musicianship? If a teenager can easily become a make-believe guitar hero, does that mean he won't ever bother to master the real thing?

Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, says that the intent of Guitar Hero is to provide the thrills of real musicianship to those who would not otherwise have the opportunity. "Almost everyone who takes up guitar quits after a few months," he says. "For me, learning to play the guitar solo to 'Bark at the Moon' would take five years, and even then I couldn't do it right. But spending two or three weeks learning to do it on Guitar Hero is not too much time—and I'll really be able to feel like I'm playing it." In that sense it's no different from other experiences made virtually accessible by the computer, from being a World War II sniper to playing golf like Tiger Woods.

What's more, as digital technology becomes deeply integrated into "real" instruments, we can expect the shortcuts to virtuosity that we see in Guitar Hero to become commonplace in music. "One of the issues that musical instruments have is that they're difficult to learn," says Henry Juszkiewicz, CEO of Gibson Guitar, which is aggressively integrating computer technology into new product lines. "Building calluses and painstakingly learning all the musical fingering is not creative, but is the discipline to get the creative rewards ... In the future we want to reduce the crap you have to deal with to allow people access to that creativity." It sounds great—just as the Devil's offer must have struck Robert Johnson at the crossroads.

Bah! Brian Crecente

The Low Cost of (Guitar) Heroism [Newsweek]

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