William on Electric Guitar -- 1D III & EF 85mm f1.2. Click for larger
When we bought the game Guitar Hero, the kids loved it. In fact, they won't a couple of prizes in the competition, and William won the third prize competing with the big boys in Brantford. I wrote about it here last year. But, they gradually got tire of it. the guitar in Guitar Hero is not a real guitar. Few days ago, we bought a similar game, called Rocksmith, which my colleague Ian told me about. This game plays with a real electric guitar, and naturally, it's a lot hard than the 5-buttons on the Guitar Hero guitar.
So far, the kids seem to like it, but not as enthusiastic as they were when we got the Guitar Hero game. I am especially surprised that William is playing really well. Since Dillon plays a base guitar in the school band, it was a bit easier for him. Regardless what Rocksmith claims, that it teaches you how to play a guitar, it really doesn't in the traditional sense during game play. In some ways, it's very similar to Guitar Hero where you have to pick/Press the right notes on the guitar, and both games shows only the position of the incoming notes, not the notes themselves. Perhaps, I don't know enough to write about it, and there are ways to display the notes as real notes. In fact, I don't know music, so if I am wrong, take it easy :)
Rocksmith is right in that it learns you how to play guitar, it does not claim to teach you how to read music, most people who look for tab music don't and don't have to either.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that playing Guitar Hero will only teach how to play Guitar Hero, if you play Rocksmith enough it will teach you how to play a song on a real guitar without a game, it teaches you techniques and chords too.
I have been playing for almost a week now and have not come across a setting that displays the notes too, there is already a lot of information on the display, displaying note information would be a bit overkill I think.