Splicetoday

Music
Jan 08, 2009, 11:53AM

Time to dumb down the guitar

What, with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, et al, it's time the real thing met the colored-buttoned version in the middle.

Right?:

In other words "real" guitarists like Mayer want to keep rock stardom like a sort of medieval guild, where entrance is only granted to those willing to suffer the tedium, frustration and savagely blistered fingers of an arduous apprenticeship – years that could surely be better spent miming songs, dressing up in your mum's clothes and practising some really cool moves in the mirror.

Rather than making Guitar Hero guitars harder or more "realistic", surely the success of Guitar Hero means that the onus is now on the manufacturers of "real" guitars to make them easier (in other words, more like the ones in Guitar Hero).

Why are they still making guitars with "real" strings that are difficult and boring to learn how to play and really make your fingers hurt? What is the point? Do we still slaughter our own cows? Dig our own wells? Work in the turnip fields for 18 hours a day, six days a week? No. Buttons have proven themselves to be much easier and more efficient. Plus, with the button guitar you can still use the instrument for its main purpose – pretending that it's a penis or a machine gun.

Please note the link embedded in the word "penis" at the end. Unbelievable. How does the saying go? Rock out with your...

Discussion
  • No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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  • Well, why stop there. Good people, follow me here, for I have a vision -- a vision of a world where we no longer have any of the tired unwieldy instruments of old -- why do saxophones still have reeds? I say, a button is in order. It has all those other buttons anyway. And don't even get me started on the piccolo. Now the keyboard, way too many buttons. You see, the Guitar Hero guitar is smart, only 5 buttons (and with 12 notes in the chromatic scale, how DO they do it???) -- if we could somehow make the keyboard just one big button that you can repeatedly mash with your fat lazy fucking hands, and maybe a wheel that you can spin to change the note, well... the 21st century might just be alright.

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  • guitar hero made me sort of resent whoever came up with musical notation. i would have learned to memorize songs so much better if the notes had been color-coordinated. also, following the sequences of rhythms on guitar hero makes it a lot easier for me to conceptualize them.

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