Let’s kick things off with a simple game: Have a look at the following quote and see if you can guess which internationally known rock star muttered it:

"…so kids: start rock bands. Set down the Guitar Hero, learn how to play an actual guitar and start a band."

Did you pick him? Well here’s another multiple Grammy-winning sage for you:

“Guitar Hero was devised to bring the guitar-playing experience to the masses without them having to put anything into it... I mean, what would you rather drive, a Ferrari or one of those amusement-park cars on a track?”

Give up? The first quote is from Chad Kroeger, the Nickelback frontman with the face of the Cowardly Lion and the voice of Gabby Goat. The second comes from MOR titan, winner of the inaugural Twitchy Guy from Seinfeld Award for Race Relations (and approximately the 23,374th person alleged to have shagged Jennifer Aniston since, ooh, around last Tuesday) John Mayer. As you can tell, neither of them like Guitar Hero.

Honestly, I could end this article in victory right now, because anything that pisses off these two artistically atrophied shitwits has to be fundamentally a good thing, simply in obeyance of the laws of Nature Itself.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who agree with them. Guitar Hero and its rival series Rock Band not only revolutionized video gaming and the way people interact with music, but has also had a huge influence on modern music distribution. What many don’t realize is that these games are simply the latest evolution in a long tradition of rhythm-based video games, from arcade dance-sims like Dance Dance Revolution to the wildly popular Singstar (which is basically karaoke with high scores).

But it all seemed to be fun and games until someone threw instruments into the mix, incurring the wrath of insipid musicians everywhere. Video gaming still hasn’t completely shaken off the ‘kid’s stuff’ stereotype that has existed from their birth, and many musicians take their craft way too seriously to tolerate anything that may be perceived as cheapening their vocation. This is because obviously, no-one should have the right to play No Sleep ‘til Brooklyn in any form whatsoever until they’ve spent six years fumbling with a guitar because... well, just because they did, and doing it by any other method is cheating (hello, Mr. Mayer). What’s more, the fact that these games are sold as a chance for people to live out their rock star fantasies is seen by many musicians as nothing more than a placebo, a pale illusion of rock n’ roll wish-fulfilment that will sap kids’ motivation to learn to play, and thus destroy future generations of guitarists before they’ve even had the chance to get started (and hello, Mr. Kroeger).

Both of these attitudes betray a basic misunderstanding, not only of these games, but why people take up music in the first place. If someone is really that determined to get into music they’ll take up an instrument no matter what. These are games and they operate like games, and guitars operate like guitars; you’ll know the first time you pick up a real guitar whether it’s for you.

It’s the same decision that faced by every person to touch a musical instrument in history, and it involves a desire for personal expression that exists in human nature that video games, as sophisticated and mature as they have become, cannot yet even dream of approaching. You don’t see budding novelists ditching their craft so they can read Choose Your Own Adventure books, do you?

If anything, the ‘rock star’ element has always been the worst part of these games, unless you were dreaming all along of becoming a spew-green-haired indie kid in death metal facepaint who looks like they were drawn up by some double-digit IQ marketing wanktank. (“He’s got a Mohawk! Because he’s edgy!”) Trust me, nobody’s dream of rock stardom is being a character in a Guitar Hero game.

Conversely, just because someone wants to grab a copy of Guitar Hero it doesn’t automatically mean they ever planned to learn to play the real thing in the first place; hold on to your britches for a solid gold, fifteen megaton shock revelation here: some people play video games for fun. In fact, the whole Guitar Band Heroism genre is manna from heaven for music buffs, as it has now given us a whole new way to interact with and enjoy our music. If I cue up, say, Elvis Costello’s Radio Radio on Rock Band, I’m not just listening to a song I’ve loved for years like I’ve always listened to it; I’m actually involving myself with the song in the moment, helping it to be played.

In fact, playing these games can even raise your appreciation of the songs and reveal things you’ve never heard before due to the way they handle the music. Game versions of songs require the use of the original master tapes, with each instrument captured from its original track and individually charted for playing along with. This means that a song cued up in Guitar Hero or Rock Band is not simply a .wav file but a collection of sound files dedicated to each instrument and vocal track. Suddenly, you can hear these tracks in their entirety, including things that were previously buried in the mix and even entire tracks that were pretty much inaudible in the original versions; predictably, bass tracks comprise the majority of these forgotten gems. (I’m looking at you, Metallica.)

Even the stuff you could always hear sound fresh since the act of playing a part makes you focus on it like never before. One of the most interesting aspects of the praise heaped on the excellent Beatles: Rock Band game –itself one of the strongest arguments for guitar games as music geek porn, stuffed to the gills as it is with Moptops-related trivia and curios – was how it contributed to a renewed appreciation for Paul McCartney’s innovative and melodic bass work. Playing through the Beatles’ career on bass on the harder difficulties is an outright joy, simply because it lets you study his lines in detail and provides the visceral thrill of pulling them off in a game context.

Speaking of spectacular fretwork, this brings us back to the idea of how playing those cheesy plastic instruments relate to the real thing. Contrary to popular belief, these games do involve some very basic fundamentals of playing. All three of the people in our house play; we have a drummer, a guitarist and I play bass (Making me the Sting of the house. Kill me.) We all love these games, partly because it gives us limited but significant rhythm training. It’s essentially one big digital metronome that can be extremely useful in mapping out varieties in things like meter and syncopation, thanks to the visual element of the ‘chart’ you play to.

Even the play technique can be useful. The ‘one pluck, one note at a time’ nature of the guitar controllers, for example, serve as a natural analogue to rudimentary bass, and the higher difficulties utilize such techniques as open notes, finger muting, sustain and hammer-ons/pull-offs. For those wanting to practice your strumming, the ‘strum bar’ lever can be triggered with downward and alternate picking strokes. All you have to do is pinch your thumb and forefinger together like you’re holding a pick with the tip of your thumb poking slightly over so it hits the bar. It allows faster play, gives your picking hand an authentic rhythm workout and looks much cooler than that dorky flat-palmed ‘thumb flop’ everyone seems to use.

While you’re still in the realms of fantasy when it comes to your average Flea or Geddy Lee bass line, cue up Blitzkrieg Bop (Which is included in the first Rock Band game) on expert difficulty, and you won’t actually be doing anything that technically different from what Dee Dee Ramone played. Likewise, playing drums is almost exactly like playing drums in real life, aside from the small number of pads on the drum controller. It certainly teaches you to coordinate your hands and feet, possibly the most fundamental principle of the real thing.

Ironically, the thing guitar games are weakest at portraying is actual six-string guitar, though some of the plucking and fretting techniques mentioned above also apply here. You can even buy real guitars modified to be played with the games, blurring the lines between real world and virtual technique even further.

All in all, it might not be that bizarre a notion that we’ll see more and more music teachers using these games in the future to introduce the above techniques to students of the real thing. It certainly makes sense from an educational standpoint as it’s making use of skills with which most students will already be familiar, and directly relates to what they want to teach.

Hey, even if all this stuff has done nothing to sway you and you still hate guitar games, then that’s fair enough. Just buy one anyway. Why? Because science has shown that if the total sales of these things reaches $2bn, John Mayer’s pickle knob will become sentient, drop off then immediately jump down his throat to block his windpipe and remove his pestilent influence once and for all.

You want it. I want it. Let’s do the right thing.

Written by Cav Gallagher