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Guitar Hero Widens Musical Horizonsby George Ziemann -- January 1, 2009 My 12-year-old daughter, Mackenzie (aka Mac) really wanted a Guitar Hero game, so I got her one for Christmas. She's already into Expert Mode. I still struggle with Easy. More importantly, in a week, we both have significantly widened our musical horizons. A teeny bit of background or Guitar Hero fans will have questions. I bought Mac the Guitar Hero World Tour, the latest version. Unfortunately, I got her all set up, only to get a disk read error. So the next day, we went out and found a copy of Guitar Hero 2 (game disc only) so she could get started on it. I'm still working on getting the World Tour disc replaced. That's a minor detail. It was all still new to her. There's also a discussion about whether Guitar Hero is good or bad vs. playing a real guitar. Completely different animals. Watching Mac play along with Eddie Van Halen in Hard Mode still looked like shredding to me. But here's the interesting part, although it qualifies as stuff you really already knew -- If you listen to a song 20 times or more, you will probably start to like it. Maybe not, but the repeated listenings give the songs a chance to grow on you. There used to be this thing called radio that helped that process along. Guitar Hero 2 is probably 2 years old now. There are awesome songs on it that I had never heard before because I don't buy or download RIAA music. My favorite is "Psychobilly Freakout" by Rev. Horton Heat. I've seen his name before. Never heard one of his songs. There is a Foo Fighters tune on there that I like and "Heart Shaped Box" by Nirvana I may have heard once or twice on the radio. But there are a bunch that I didn't even recognize the name of the band. Mac has developed an appreciation for the Rolling Stones, Cheap Trick and the Allman Bros. Ozzy doesn't fare so well. Maybe it's the song ("War Pigs"). She also realizes that "Free Bird" is really a good song, but it's like running a marathon with your fingers. We talked about this today, how we both appreciated new music as a result of Guitar Hero that neither of us would have otherwise discovered. Remembering she is only 12, she started complaining how "those idiots at Warner" had taken all her favorite YouTube videos down. "So even if you already like them, you still can't hear them or tell anyone else to check it out." Her grasp of the situation really surprised me (she never reads my site). She is a 12-year-old fan of a Warner act. As a result of her favorite videos disappearing, she found out why, knew the whole YouTube story and had decided that the record label was being idiotic. I didn't even know about record labels when I was 12. I guess the RIAA's "education" program is working after all. |
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