Why "YOU ROCK!" May Never Actually Be True
"Music is spiritual; the music business is not." - Claudio Monteverdi
On a hot, dry night in June, amidst a fog of hookah smoke and booze, a group of friends burst into song. Led by the seemingly omnipresent Ricardus, and accompanied by an unknown combination of fake guitar and synthesized drums, echoes of the words "Say it ain't soooooooo..." fill the air. Though the sounds are artificial, the feelings that they elicit are not.
No one is silent.
No one is moving.
No one is judging.
The games Guitar Hero and Rock Band are very cleverly named; when one plays them, they feel like a guitar hero, they feel like they're in a rock band. What the makers of these games know, and what the players will never fully realize, is that playing GH/RB has nothing to do with making music.
I once tried to explain to my roommate how I'm "so good" at playing "those triplet things." The first thing I explained was that they weren't triplets, they were an off-beat, two-sixteenth/one-eighth combination. He had no idea what I was talking about. "The lines," I said, "represent the beats. You can tell the way that they are spaced that they're not triplets. Plus the sixteenths aren't on the beat."
"What the Christ are you talking about?" he asked. Five (long) years of studying music, is the only answer that I have.
You see, I'm a musician. Well, I can claim to be; I have a diploma that says so. I COULD claim to be "pretty decent" at Guitar Hero, but there are many out there who are far better out there than I am. The problem is that I attempt, at every opportunity, to make a correlation between the two. The larger problem is that there is no correlation.
No, I don't play guitar, but I have taught my share of guitar classes/lessons. No, I don't play bass, but I know my way around a cello. No, I don't play drums, but I can (almost) do a paradiddle. No, I don't sing, and no, I won't ever harmonize as well as Blood does. None of these things take away from the fact that I can pretend to strum and hold down three fingers, or slam on an "electronic drum set," or sing along to a series of relative pitches in such away that Rock Band or Guitar Hero thinks that I know what I'm doing.
Should I ever make this claim to a serious Guitar Hero player, they will inevitably ask me how many times I've beaten "Through the Fire and the Flames,"and I will be forced to answer that I have never beaten it, and they will scoff in their musical superiority; they will ask what instruments I play, and I will say "All of them." I will ask what they play, and they will say, "I don't play anything."
The irony of this situation is not lost on me.
I'm not saying that all good Guitar Hero players end up being terrible musicians. I know a guy named Andy who, one day, picked up an out of tune Banjo, and played the Dueling Banjos song from Deliverance (both parts) and maintained the correct key. HE TRANSPOSED DUELING BANJOS BASED ON HOW THE BANJO WAS TUNED. Then, we went home, and he absolutely obliterated "Cowboys From Hell" on Guitar Hero. I stared in awe, and he just shrugged. "That was fun." Andy is also the bass player of the best Rock band you've never heard of, and sings for a bluegrass group. He shouldn't really count, but I like telling this story. Also, I think Andy just understands the ultimate purpose of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero: sometimes, it's not about proving you're a great musician, sometimes it's about having fun. That's probably the only thing Rock Band and Music have in common: sometimes, they are just fun.
Sometimes they're not.
Three or four days before I began preparing for my senior recital, a girl I had dated for a (short) while, and with whom I was (for reasons unknown) madly in love, broke up with me for no reason. This resulted in me opening my recital with a piece of music that can really only be described as "angry." I played that fucking sonata three hours a day, seven days a week, for 5 months, but it was good to take my anger out on something non-tangible. At the end of the day, though, I still needed something to get my mind off of her. It usually ended up being Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, usually a mix between "La Grange," "3's & 7's," and "Cliffs of Dover."
But an odd thing started to happen. I started to get better. At both. I came within one note of an FC of "3's & 7's," and the hardest lick of my recital (measure 9 of Scaramouche) suddenly became easier. Something was becoming clear: while there is (definitely) no music involved in GH/RB, there is (certainly) technique. Because of Guitar Hero, there is very little that I can do on the saxophone that involves the five fingers of my left hand. Where music becomes involved is where it starts to get hairy.
The only things musical about Rock Band or Guitar Hero the whammy bar on guitar, and the drum fills on drums. Those are the only two things left up to the player. Everything is not only pre-decided on, but deemed "wrong" if you play it incorrectly. Hell, you lose points if you over-strum, playing extra notes. I once received extra points - for my whole band, not just for me - for playing extra notes in a saxophone solo. The magic of music is that every performance is different, no matter how hard you try to replicate something. The magic of Guitar Hero or Rock Band is that it is exactly the same thing every time.
In Guitar Hero, if you want something different, you have to play a different song. In music, if you want something different, you just do it differently. In Rock Band, if you do something wrong, the game will tell you. In music, if you do something wrong, it's probably still right.
I once told a student of mine that the best thing about music is that, once you play a note, you don't have to worry about it anymore; once someone hears it, you can't go back and change it, it's out of your hands. On the contrary, if you miss a note in Rock Band, all you have to do is hit start, down strum twice, hit the green button, upstrum once, hit green again, and wait for the song to start over. Ask anyone who's played "Welcome Home" with me.
No matter how hard Harmonix tries, Guitar Hero and Rock Band will never be more than just video games, with an infinite number of re-do's. Anyone who expects to get any music out of it is out of their dome. But, no matter how hard someone like me tries, no amount of studying classical music makes me a rock and roll star. Anyone who stands on a stage and plays Bozza's Divertissiment and feels like Slash is probably a ritard.
I played 98% correct notes in "Welcome Home" not too long ago, the highest percentage of correct notes I've ever played for that song. A year prior, I played about 96% correct notes in my senior recital. Of which do you think I'm more proud? If you guessed my recital, you guess absolutely correctly. Granted, there were far more notes in my recital than in "Welcome Home," and when I played that song, and when I played that many right notes, I felt like a God damn rockstar, and I liked it.
Also, I was completely trashed. But that's not the point. Or maybe it is.
No one is silent.
No one is moving.
No one is judging.
No one is sober, but that's beside the point. Or maybe it is the point.
What began as an attempt of four guys trying to watch Game 7 of the NBA Finals has turned into an excuse to play pong, an alcohol-induced, smoke-filled, sweaty sausagefest, a rager of epic proportions. The few that are not playing pong are in the living room, and the sounds of Rock Band never cease. The hoses and the controllers continue to exchange hands, and all are content.
"Oh, I love this song! I love Weezer!" Rich exclaims, and a cloud of smoke echoes its agreement. In a few short seconds, the entire room will be yelling the chorus at the top of their lungs. Well, almost the whole room. The one girl and the one guy who doesn't know the lyrics sit on opposite couches, little half smiles on their faces. Their eyes never lock, that might be awkward, but the feeling remains. Right now, everyone, the four guys at the pong table, the three guys playing instruments, the one guy who can't put his phone down, and the one chick who wishes she was somewhere else, right now, we all feel like rock stars.
The games Guitar Hero and Rock Band are very cleverly named; when one plays them, they feel like a guitar hero, they feel like they're in a rock band. What the makers of these games know, and what the players will never fully realize, is that playing GH/RB has nothing to do with making music.
I once tried to explain to my roommate how I'm "so good" at playing "those triplet things." The first thing I explained was that they weren't triplets, they were an off-beat, two-sixteenth/one-eighth combination. He had no idea what I was talking about. "The lines," I said, "represent the beats. You can tell the way that they are spaced that they're not triplets. Plus the sixteenths aren't on the beat."
"What the Christ are you talking about?" he asked. Five (long) years of studying music, is the only answer that I have.
You see, I'm a musician. Well, I can claim to be; I have a diploma that says so. I COULD claim to be "pretty decent" at Guitar Hero, but there are many out there who are far better out there than I am. The problem is that I attempt, at every opportunity, to make a correlation between the two. The larger problem is that there is no correlation.
No, I don't play guitar, but I have taught my share of guitar classes/lessons. No, I don't play bass, but I know my way around a cello. No, I don't play drums, but I can (almost) do a paradiddle. No, I don't sing, and no, I won't ever harmonize as well as Blood does. None of these things take away from the fact that I can pretend to strum and hold down three fingers, or slam on an "electronic drum set," or sing along to a series of relative pitches in such away that Rock Band or Guitar Hero thinks that I know what I'm doing.
Should I ever make this claim to a serious Guitar Hero player, they will inevitably ask me how many times I've beaten "Through the Fire and the Flames,"and I will be forced to answer that I have never beaten it, and they will scoff in their musical superiority; they will ask what instruments I play, and I will say "All of them." I will ask what they play, and they will say, "I don't play anything."
The irony of this situation is not lost on me.
I'm not saying that all good Guitar Hero players end up being terrible musicians. I know a guy named Andy who, one day, picked up an out of tune Banjo, and played the Dueling Banjos song from Deliverance (both parts) and maintained the correct key. HE TRANSPOSED DUELING BANJOS BASED ON HOW THE BANJO WAS TUNED. Then, we went home, and he absolutely obliterated "Cowboys From Hell" on Guitar Hero. I stared in awe, and he just shrugged. "That was fun." Andy is also the bass player of the best Rock band you've never heard of, and sings for a bluegrass group. He shouldn't really count, but I like telling this story. Also, I think Andy just understands the ultimate purpose of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero: sometimes, it's not about proving you're a great musician, sometimes it's about having fun. That's probably the only thing Rock Band and Music have in common: sometimes, they are just fun.
Sometimes they're not.
Three or four days before I began preparing for my senior recital, a girl I had dated for a (short) while, and with whom I was (for reasons unknown) madly in love, broke up with me for no reason. This resulted in me opening my recital with a piece of music that can really only be described as "angry." I played that fucking sonata three hours a day, seven days a week, for 5 months, but it was good to take my anger out on something non-tangible. At the end of the day, though, I still needed something to get my mind off of her. It usually ended up being Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, usually a mix between "La Grange," "3's & 7's," and "Cliffs of Dover."
But an odd thing started to happen. I started to get better. At both. I came within one note of an FC of "3's & 7's," and the hardest lick of my recital (measure 9 of Scaramouche) suddenly became easier. Something was becoming clear: while there is (definitely) no music involved in GH/RB, there is (certainly) technique. Because of Guitar Hero, there is very little that I can do on the saxophone that involves the five fingers of my left hand. Where music becomes involved is where it starts to get hairy.
The only things musical about Rock Band or Guitar Hero the whammy bar on guitar, and the drum fills on drums. Those are the only two things left up to the player. Everything is not only pre-decided on, but deemed "wrong" if you play it incorrectly. Hell, you lose points if you over-strum, playing extra notes. I once received extra points - for my whole band, not just for me - for playing extra notes in a saxophone solo. The magic of music is that every performance is different, no matter how hard you try to replicate something. The magic of Guitar Hero or Rock Band is that it is exactly the same thing every time.
In Guitar Hero, if you want something different, you have to play a different song. In music, if you want something different, you just do it differently. In Rock Band, if you do something wrong, the game will tell you. In music, if you do something wrong, it's probably still right.
I once told a student of mine that the best thing about music is that, once you play a note, you don't have to worry about it anymore; once someone hears it, you can't go back and change it, it's out of your hands. On the contrary, if you miss a note in Rock Band, all you have to do is hit start, down strum twice, hit the green button, upstrum once, hit green again, and wait for the song to start over. Ask anyone who's played "Welcome Home" with me.
No matter how hard Harmonix tries, Guitar Hero and Rock Band will never be more than just video games, with an infinite number of re-do's. Anyone who expects to get any music out of it is out of their dome. But, no matter how hard someone like me tries, no amount of studying classical music makes me a rock and roll star. Anyone who stands on a stage and plays Bozza's Divertissiment and feels like Slash is probably a ritard.
I played 98% correct notes in "Welcome Home" not too long ago, the highest percentage of correct notes I've ever played for that song. A year prior, I played about 96% correct notes in my senior recital. Of which do you think I'm more proud? If you guessed my recital, you guess absolutely correctly. Granted, there were far more notes in my recital than in "Welcome Home," and when I played that song, and when I played that many right notes, I felt like a God damn rockstar, and I liked it.
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