5 ms·

Did you learn to play guitar playing guitar hero? No, you didn't. You're straw manning an argument that doesn't exist in the article

by sumeno 1mo ago

chaps 1mo ago
Not the argument you're looking for, but I've been playing drums for over ten years now because of Rock Band. Even used the sticks that came with it on my first e-kit. The game didn't teach me how to drum, but it taught me that I had a much deeper interest in playing drums than I'd ever imagined. That led into years and years of practice and I've actually become pretty good.
- latexr 1mo ago
  And that scenario is covered in the post, in the seventh paragraph. Nowhere in it is Scalzi saying Guitar Hero can’t give you an interest to pick up the Guitar, quite the opposite. The point being made is that when you do pick up the Guitar, you’re starting to learn from scratch, your years of playing Guitar Hero don’t really give you a head-start.
  - chaps 1mo ago
    The paragraph in-question: Sure, it’s all gamified and fun and even addictive, but at the end of the day no outside, transferable skill accrues to the player. To do that, you have to set the controller down, pick up an actual guitar, and start another, entirely different journey. And perhaps some Guitar Hero player did or will, which is awesome. It means at some point they were not satisfied with pretending to play the guitar, following someone else’s rules and set-up. They still started, effectively, at zero. There was a whole new skill tree to be learned that had very little to do with the game, outside of the shape of the controller. I get the point, but I think it's not great. A lot of what's said here can also be said about cover bands or learning to play other peoples' music.
  - TheOtherHobbes 1mo ago
    You've had years of listening to music and practicing a very rudimentary form of sight reading. I'm not aware of any studies proving or disproving that this gives beginners a head start, but it would be an interesting thing to investigate. A categorical "Nice try, but you've just been wasting your time" seems overconfident.
    - scarecrowbob 1mo ago
      As a person who plays several instruments (including drums) in professional situations, and as a person who enjoyed Guitar Hero, I always find it strange when folks are able to take the "experience" of Rock Band / Songstar /etc as a proxy for the experience of practicing music. I actually do sight read for a couple of instruments- nothing in any of those games has literally anything to do with that. Hell, my (very good) reading for clarinet and double bass has nothing to do with my (very poor) ability to sight read on piano. Whatever gets folks interested in stuff is great, but to me it's like saying "I watched 10K hours of MTV in the 80s and that was very helpful in my career playing jazz"... The same thing is true with writing and other skills replacements- much of my ability and desire to write comes from the experience of using it as an adjunct to thinking. Having to figure out how I should connect ideas and state them in a way others will understand clarifies my own thoughts, so the idea that I am somehow gaining idunnowhat by adding a bunch of verbal noise to my writing misses a lot of the reasons why I like to write. I'm happy to use LLMs to draft things like the contracts I need for the mechanical royalty payments I make when I record other folks material, but that's only because I am not trying to learn how to think legalistically. And further, creating documents via might spark an interest in legal language and how it get used, but it's not going to help me understand the underlying reasons for what's going on any more than watching a whole lot of porn is going to help me be a better lover...
      - chaps 1mo ago
        No true musician got their start in Guitar Hero, eh? I got my start in drumming from playing on Rockband. When I mentioned it to the folk that I bought my first e-kit, they rolled their eyes. Fine, whatever, I expect musicians to be pretentious. But yanno what? I still learned a lot. The controller itself was midi-capable so I was able to hook it up to my kit and play the game while practicing my form and timing. Was it perfect? Fuck no; it sucked. But it guided me into recognizing that I wasn't as good as I wanted to be, which led to lessons and many many hours of practicing. I owe a lot to rock band because it opened a world of play beyond the game itself.
ingvay7 1mo ago
Most people who gain any sort of playing experience or value cite Rockband (for drums or Guitar mode - Rock Band 3 that shipped with a real Fender Squier) not Guitar Hero which the blog refers to. I cant understand how GH can help anyone get better at anything musical and there's literally nothing transferable to a real guitar except miming holding a plastic instrument and pressing those grotesque buttons and fundamentally different mechanical motions. You'd rather spend the same time really getting better at the instrument. You have actual music to inspire you and don't need GH to be your gateway.

Did you learn to play guitar playing guitar hero? No, you didn't. You're straw manning an argument that doesn't exist in the article

by sumeno 1mo ago

Did you learn to play guitar playing guitar hero? No, you didn't. You're straw manning an argument that doesn't exist in the article

chaps 1mo ago

Not the argument you're looking for, but I've been playing drums for over ten years now because of Rock Band. Even used the sticks that came with it on my first e-kit. The game didn't teach me how to drum, but it taught me that I had a much deeper interest in playing drums than I'd ever imagined. That led into years and years of practice and I've actually become pretty good.

latexr 1mo ago
And that scenario is covered in the post, in the seventh paragraph. Nowhere in it is Scalzi saying Guitar Hero can’t give you an interest to pick up the Guitar, quite the opposite. The point being made is that when you do pick up the Guitar, you’re starting to learn from scratch, your years of playing Guitar Hero don’t really give you a head-start.
- chaps 1mo ago
  The paragraph in-question: Sure, it’s all gamified and fun and even addictive, but at the end of the day no outside, transferable skill accrues to the player. To do that, you have to set the controller down, pick up an actual guitar, and start another, entirely different journey. And perhaps some Guitar Hero player did or will, which is awesome. It means at some point they were not satisfied with pretending to play the guitar, following someone else’s rules and set-up. They still started, effectively, at zero. There was a whole new skill tree to be learned that had very little to do with the game, outside of the shape of the controller. I get the point, but I think it's not great. A lot of what's said here can also be said about cover bands or learning to play other peoples' music.
- TheOtherHobbes 1mo ago
  You've had years of listening to music and practicing a very rudimentary form of sight reading. I'm not aware of any studies proving or disproving that this gives beginners a head start, but it would be an interesting thing to investigate. A categorical "Nice try, but you've just been wasting your time" seems overconfident.
  - scarecrowbob 1mo ago
    As a person who plays several instruments (including drums) in professional situations, and as a person who enjoyed Guitar Hero, I always find it strange when folks are able to take the "experience" of Rock Band / Songstar /etc as a proxy for the experience of practicing music. I actually do sight read for a couple of instruments- nothing in any of those games has literally anything to do with that. Hell, my (very good) reading for clarinet and double bass has nothing to do with my (very poor) ability to sight read on piano. Whatever gets folks interested in stuff is great, but to me it's like saying "I watched 10K hours of MTV in the 80s and that was very helpful in my career playing jazz"... The same thing is true with writing and other skills replacements- much of my ability and desire to write comes from the experience of using it as an adjunct to thinking. Having to figure out how I should connect ideas and state them in a way others will understand clarifies my own thoughts, so the idea that I am somehow gaining idunnowhat by adding a bunch of verbal noise to my writing misses a lot of the reasons why I like to write. I'm happy to use LLMs to draft things like the contracts I need for the mechanical royalty payments I make when I record other folks material, but that's only because I am not trying to learn how to think legalistically. And further, creating documents via might spark an interest in legal language and how it get used, but it's not going to help me understand the underlying reasons for what's going on any more than watching a whole lot of porn is going to help me be a better lover...
    - chaps 1mo ago
      No true musician got their start in Guitar Hero, eh? I got my start in drumming from playing on Rockband. When I mentioned it to the folk that I bought my first e-kit, they rolled their eyes. Fine, whatever, I expect musicians to be pretentious. But yanno what? I still learned a lot. The controller itself was midi-capable so I was able to hook it up to my kit and play the game while practicing my form and timing. Was it perfect? Fuck no; it sucked. But it guided me into recognizing that I wasn't as good as I wanted to be, which led to lessons and many many hours of practicing. I owe a lot to rock band because it opened a world of play beyond the game itself.

ingvay7 1mo ago

Most people who gain any sort of playing experience or value cite Rockband (for drums or Guitar mode - Rock Band 3 that shipped with a real Fender Squier) not Guitar Hero which the blog refers to. I cant understand how GH can help anyone get better at anything musical and there's literally nothing transferable to a real guitar except miming holding a plastic instrument and pressing those grotesque buttons and fundamentally different mechanical motions. You'd rather spend the same time really getting better at the instrument. You have actual music to inspire you and don't need GH to be your gateway.