Can you actually learn to play music from video games?

i’ve been playing music gamesI’ve been playing music for over ten years and am fascinated by how much musicianship you can learn by playing video games.: some, and in an interesting way.

I’m not in the camp of musicians who sneer at the music game. For real I teach music guitar hero,etc. In fact, it’s good for teaching some basic skills —Great for keeping people interested in lockout. There’s no game that makes everyone a better musician, but it might get you started on that path.

We’ve categorized the three main music video game franchises.guitar hero, rock band When Rocksmith—Regarding what they can and cannot teach you.

Guitar Hero: Better Than Nothing

The original Guitar Hero game is the least effective game for teaching real music. On a real guitar, at the 22nd or 24th fret he plays six strings in combination. guitar hero A controller has the equivalent of one string and five frets. I haven’t done the math, but the guitar has to be hundreds of millions of times more complicated than the controller, so there’s not much that can be repurposed there.

I’m not saying you can’t learn everything About how to play the guitar guitar heroHolding the frets with one hand and strumming with the other gives you the basic sense of limb independence you need to actually play the guitar and learn rhythm. that too. through repetition, guitar hero It helps you internalize beats in a way that practicing alone can’t. (Unless you are religiously using a metronome, and we all know nobody does that.)

band hero, of guitar hero Including spin-offs, drum sets, basic strengths and weaknesses rock band’Aspects of the drum are detailed below.

Rock band: a little closer to real music

rock band’instruments (guitar, keyboard, drums) guitar herosingle instruments, and keyboards and drum controllers their realWorld equivalents than guitar controllers.

keyboard

of rock band The keyboard controller is a two octave keyter style keyboard. On the highest “Pro Keys” difficulty, play the notes of the song more or less, or as close as possible within two octaves. So, if you take your time, you can actually learn keyboard parts on this instrument, but there are some big caveats.

fingering: Rock Band doesn’t teach you how to play the keyboard efficiently. Which finger do you use when? This can lead to bad music habits that are difficult to break later on. This is not a big deal for me, but I’m not interested in playing “serious” music, I’m only interested in playing riffs in his garage his techno his band.

base: One of the challenges in learning to actually play the keyboard is integrating the left and right hands of the bass part. “Real” piano instruction uses both hands as soon as you start playing, rock band I don’t do left hand parts. To be fair, many real keyboard parts aren’t either.

listening: rock band You can’t hear what you’re actually playing. Nuance is lost, mainly because you’re triggering the music of the song by pressing keys. If you press and hold the note too long, rock band I do not approve. Are some parts too loud and others too soft? Also, since this is a game, rhythmic “hitboxes” are permissive. You can score points by consistently dragging or leading beats without realizing you’re not playing on time.

drum

Men Regarding transferable skills, rock band Drums are for beginners. The controller consists of four drumheads and a pedal that plays the bass drum.It feels like playing the drums on an electronic kit because it’s one: you can Convert your rock band kit into a functional electronic drum pad by soldering a few wires together.

But does it teach you to play the drums? a little. The main goal of any novice drummer is to develop a sense of rhythm. rock band Drill down into your body’s memory of “playing over time” rather than not playing rock band intention, You can still play sloppily though.

that’s the drum positive.drums here negative.

limb independence: rock band Drums require three limbs. need real drums four. This game excludes the foot used to control the hi-hat. So it’s definitely useful, but not all you need.

technology: rock band (When band hero) don’t tell me how the drums work :hHow to hold the stick, how to control the bounce, etc. As such, it’s easy to pick up bad habits that are hard to refuse and that you’ll need to learn later.

listening: You are For real You need to hear yourself when you play the drums. Before playing with others, you need to be able to control your own volume and intensity. You also need to know when you’re playing in your off time, even if just a little. rock band You can’t do either of these things. I won’t teach you how to rock with a bassist or drive a band’s engine. You’ve been kicked out of your apartment too, so it won’t tell you how to move into your girlfriend’s apartment, and a real drummer needs to know this.

Creativity: My friend is a very good drummer, but he can’t play rock band Because the concept of playing the “right” drums at the “right” times is diametrically opposed to how he approaches his instrument. rock band There is no “I’m playing great drums, but not the drums you told me I should play” setting. Instead, it penalizes creativity of any kind. See below for more information.

Bass guitar

You don’t need games or lessons to learn how to play bass guitar. (Fire, bassist!)

Locksmith: More serious.learn more

Ubisoft’s rocksmith, and just launched Rocksmith+ Subscription services straddle the line between “music lessons” and “games.”Includes interactive instructions and some mini-games, but we’ll focus on the main game here—Gamified music instruction is completely different from music games.

rocksmith Main game is basically guitar hero Use a real guitar: Use an electric guitar or bass as your ‘controller’ and your score is based on the accuracy of guitar or bass parts from thousands of songs. I’m playing a real guitar, rocksmith teeth way harder to master than guitar hero Also rock band, But after spending hundreds of hours, the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”

whole, rocksmith Perfect for beginners. When I first started playing the guitar, awkward— It’s not a natural way to move your fingers. Instruments are held differently. Fluidity (and octopus) is only achieved through repetition. rocksmith Step by step you will learn how to play a song with your fingers on chords, how not to mute other strings, how to use a pick, etc. You can now comfortably hold and use your guitar and move directly to actually playing music. a little.

rocksmith The main game doesn’t tell you anything about the subtleties that separate a good guitarist from a bad one. You have to focus on how your technique affects your sound, and this is hard to do without failing a song in a video game.

That said, at least you can hear yourself playing the guitar rocksmith, although you can also hear the guitar from the recorded music track. You will be puzzled until you get used to it, or play around with the levels until you can hear enough in the ‘band’. Beginners probably won’t make these adjustments. Because it makes the sound worse.

Then there’s lag.I played rocksmith On a console (PC should be better), I found that slamming a note and listening to it a few milliseconds later made the game almost unplayable.I fixed it by splitting the guitar signal so that I could hear myself through my amp and trigger the game, but this is something I don’t think newbies know they needed to.i think the newest Guitarists either give up in frustration or fill in the lag by hitting notes too early. This is not suitable for playing in the real world.

The missing ingredient in all these games is creativity

For me, the fun part of playing music isn’t memorizing and repeating the notes and patterns that make up a song. Gathering with friends in the garage making strange noises. Music theory, practice, and techniques are just tools to make weird sounds more interesting.

These games (especially guitar hero When rock band) is created to simulate Feeling You can make music with your friends. they are good at it. However, they are not really designed to teach music and should not be expected. are as follows:There is a generation of young guitarists here who, after mastering the guitar controller, were inspired to pick up a real instrument. Perhaps that inspiration is the most important music lesson.

(In fact, “learning to play on time” is the most important of all music lessons.)