*Note: The opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily represent the views of Press The Action Button, only me, malcolmchaos7, one of three bloggers for this site*
I was in a Gamestop recently, when, after I made some derogatory comment regarding Guitar Hero, an employee there told me that “Guitar Hero is the best thing to happen to the music industry in twenty years.”
It is not.
Now, at the time, I was unable to produce a coherent argument, since my mind was fried. I was shocked. That statement still confuses me – the music industry has made giant strides in the last twenty years; Nirvana produced Nevermind in 1991, which, whether or not you think is good, changed the course of rock history; filesharing tehnology brought exciting, underground music to the mainstream in a way that wasn’t possible before, forging massive creativity perhaps never seen before in the industry; In Rainbows was released by Radiohead, without a record label, allowing people to choose to pay whatever they’d like for the album; and Herbie Hancock won Record of the Year at the Grammys – one of only a handful of jazz musicians to be honored with the award.
Note that every single one of these achievements was an achievement against the bland, corporate machine, something Guitar Hero practically represents.
The argument presented by this gentlemen was, essentially, that, since it gets some people to pick up a guitar, it must be good for the music industry.
Besides that fact that this argument pales in comparison to the argument made for any one of the achievements listed beforehand, that statement itself is questionable, because I am sure for every kid that would have picked up a guitar and learned how to play there are three who picked up a guitar hero controller because you don’t really need to stick to that. I actually know kids who played guitar before Guitar Hero came out, but stopped because it was easier to play their favorite songs on a plastic controller.
And even if that isn’t true, there are a lot of things out there that make a kid want to pick up a guitar. Evil internet Baron Tom and his Myspace has made it possible for more kids to make and present music than ever before; if that doesn’t motivate a kid to pick up a guitar, I don’t know what does. Wouldn’t that make Myspace the best thing to happen to the music industry in twenty years? I think we all know the answer is no.
Even if more kids do learn how to play, it’s still bad for the industry. I don’t care how many learn guitar because of it, when people pick up a guitar because of Guitar Hero, they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
They’re doing it because of the caricature that Guitar Hero is – they want to turn themselves into a “Guitar God” or a “Legend of Rock.” Guitar Hero is packaged as a campaign – play music, make money – lots of money.
If In Rainbows has taught us anything, it’s that commercialized, packaged musicians are destroying the industry. The last thing the industry needs is an army of kids who know three chords and an AFI song who are willing to do anything to “break into the undustry” and be a “Legend of Rock.”
Corporate musicianship is bad for this industry, and corporate musicianship is what Guitar Hero is all about. Guitar Hero is nothing but a list of songs for the MTV generation to play along with on a fake controller, because the MTV generation doesn’t want to take the time to learn an instrument, they’re too busy watching The Real World, which, by the way, isn’t real anymore.
Why is it bad, you ask? Because it hinders creativity, and is based not on expression or representation of one’s musical taste, but is an attempt to market something to the mainstream. And marketing to the mainstream is not what is good for the music industry, because it’s not good for musicians; it’s good for record executives, but that’s about it.
Basically, if you want to support the music industry, buy In Rainbows. And pay what you think it’s worth, which is a lot. It’s really, really good. Take the money you would have spent on Guitar Hero, and buy a cheap guitar yourself, or a bass, or a set of drums. That’s not a bad thing – it only gets bad when you inject money and ego into the process, and Guitar Hero does both of those things.
Meh. Myspace is actually quite good for musicians. It is easy to use and gives ordinary people who dont know how to pirate a way to hear underground bands.
I fukcing hate guitar hero tho. the timing is always off which bothers the fuck out of me.
I’m torn on this issue. I’m sure many people have been exposed to songs they never would have gotten into (more guitar-based music) like Slayer. I agree that many people gave up on playing guitar as well.
As a shredder, I can’t say that Nirvana and newer bands are that great for guitarists – playing out of tune guitars with a few chords and really bad solos. The whole grunge scene dumbed down the technical playing of the 80s. Many songs don’t even have solos these days.
Will
http://willkriski.com
http://trueguitarhero.com
I understand how you feel. I was torn for awhile too. I am just tired of people saying it’s “the best thing to happen to the music industry” in x amount of years, because it really isn’t.
Like I said, whether or not you thought Nirvana was good, they changed the course of rock music. While some 80’s rock was more technical (even though I personally believe a lot of it really wasn’t as great as people made it out to be), Nirvana evoked that “spirit” of being a band consisting of everyday people, whereas 80’s rock was kind of filled with people with big hair riding around in limos with champagne and tight leather jeans. There was no way it was going to sustain.
I also disagree when you say songs hardly ever have solo’s anymore. I think there’s a kind of resurgeance in good technical play that we’ve seen in the last few years, even though it may not have made its way into mainstream alt rock yet – bands like Queens of the Stone Age and more recent Foo Fighters stuff shows that, and I think modern prog metal as a whole, a growing genre, also has some good technical play.
Either way, I think we can agree on one thing – music is a living, breathing art, and few of us have any control over its progression. Nothing happens in a vaccuum, and nothing forwards the cause as much as people say it does, really.
I agree with you Alex. For 80s shred I meant yngwie, greg howe, jason becker, some other guitarists like randy rhoads, jake e. lee, etc. For solos I meant the popular stuff these days, not prog. rock – there’s still cool playing going on like Symphony X, Dream Theater as you mentioned. I have seen hints of technical playing coming back in the pop scene as you mentioned.
Here’s a gray area to think about. For fun, I recently bought an xplorer guitar controller and plugged it into the computer. I wrote a java app to trigger notes and short licks (a sweep arpeggio for example). Each button or combination triggers a note/lick. If you had a huge library of licks that you could combine in creative ways would that be music? Pushing a key on a keyboard can trigger a note nowadays that are actually wav samples.
I’m trying to be open to all things that involve music although my instinct is to bash these types of games.
I’d have to agree with what Will said about Guitar Hero introducing people to music they never would have gotten into. I’m was never really big into music, but since I started playing Guitar Hero I’ve started listening to a lot more music and appreciating it more.
Speaking of industries that have been ruined by games though, what about the turtle stomping industry? Ever since Super Mario Bros. came out on the NES everyone and their friend thinks that they can just run outside an jump on wildlife for coins. It used to be about putting the fear in nature, not the money.
I found this when googling for: guitar hero worst thing ever.
I’m a multi-instrumentalist, I play guitar, bass, drums and keyboard, and I agree that guitar her/rock band are probably the worst things… EVER.
I live near a shopping centre, so everytime I pass, I see probably half a dozen kids watching three losers playing Rock Band and feeling like actual rockstars.
I have played that thing, yeah, just to try it, and I realised I wouldn’t want to waste my money and time on it, I prefer to spend time learning the songs I like instead of playing the ones I’m forced by the machine… Besides, with a real guitar you can improvise things while playing, but if you do that in guitar hero/rock band you die, wow, thanks for supporting our creativity.
I disagree with “Will” in his comment about Grunge.
I’m not a Nirvana fan… I just like 2 of their songs and that’s it, all the others bore the hell out of me. But I must say that “technical playing” is even WORSE than bad solos.
I have been very open minded about music, I’ve listened from Jazz to Flamenco, from Pop to Death Metal, from Classical to Ska. And my tastes have evolved. I used to enjoy technical players, but now I’m basically bored by them.
Oh, yeah, a 15 minute solo by John Petrucci, wow, he’s doing like 100 different scales! Is it over now?
A guitar player must put real feelings into what he plays, transmit something to people; make you happy, make you sad, make you start headbanging like a demon, make you want to stick it up to “the man”, anything but “kill you of boredom”, which is what many technical players do.
Sure, they play awfully good, but after a while, all their songs sound the same and that’s when I move on to other types of music.
Remember, technical doesn’t mean GOOD… You can learn all the scales as a machine, but if you’re not innovative and if you can’t transmit anything, then you’re useless. That’s why Kurt Cobain became important, he was innovative even if he couldn’t play 20 notes per second.
Besides, who said “solos” are compulsory for a song to be good? They fit in some songs, they don’t fit in others, if all songs had solos then it would be monotonous and stupid, don’t you think?
Thank You !
um…I don’t see one thing in that whole page that means guitar hero is bad for the music industry…
As a guitarist myself, I couldn’t agree more. I think that the whole guitar hero craze is kind of ridiculous. The game store worker’s comment is in my opinion, ignorant.
It’s certainly not the best thing to happen to the music industry, but it’s definitely not one of the worst, either. Sure, kids might not want to take the time to learn an instrument, but at least they’re being exposed to rock music.
Kurt cobain proved that you didn’t need to be a competent musician to become famous. He lowered the bar.. alot.
Also, kurt shooting himself in the head was the best career decision he could have made for dave. Dave is ten times the front man kurt ever was.
The real issue with all this type of shit is that everyone has their own opinion and seems some what fucking hell bent on trying to force everyone else to see things the same way
The fact is that there is enough music out there for everyone to listen to.
There is technical music, simple music, whatever you want to listen to it exists. Although the internet has made more music available to people, made learning the guitar easier etc etc
The biggest thing the internet has done is gave a million narrow minded faggots a platform to bitch and talk shit at other people with out being smacked in the mouth
To summerise, listen to whatever you want, play whatever you want. Don’t get in pointless arguments with people who have a different opinion to you and try and make them see things your way. Be excellent to each other
And grow some balls
and if you don’t agree with me..you are wrong, i am right and that’s that
/sarcasm off
“The biggest thing the internet has done is gave a million narrow minded faggots a platform to bitch and talk shit at other people with out being smacked in the mouth”
That doesn’t sound like it’s the most open-minded thing on the internet, there, chief. Tone down the hate speak next time, please, at least on my posts.
I’d just like to say that Dave Grohl is modern fucking rock – whether or not Kurt killed himself, he was destined for greatness.
I guess it’s all about what you prefer. Personally, I like good music, so I listen to that. There’s no formula for it – Simon and Garfunkel is good, even though they use a formula very different from the one, say, Lamb of God uses, which is different from what John Coltrane does. Still awesome, though.
guitar Hero sucks
guitar hero does suck, and guitar solos are the worst thing ever to happen to music
I would of never bought an ipod if i never found out there is a game that you play giutar. as it intruduced me to lots of cool bands if i was you i would be saing lime wire is worse then gh but that is me… but i use it for my movies and music so yea as im 15 and have no
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