Can Guitar Hero make me better at guitar?

If you grew up in the mid-2000s like I did, then you probably remember the absolute stranglehold that Guitar Hero and the rock band once had on our society. I don't know if it was just because this box became the default Christmas gift for most. children in 2007, but Guitar Hero 3 was the first video game to surpass one billion dollars in sales, roughly the equivalent of 500 wireless controllers, meaning that in less than three years Guitar Hero went from not existing to becoming one of The most financially successful video game series ever made in 2008, Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 came out.

These games added other instruments to the mix, like a microphone that turned your living room into a karaoke bar and drums that turned your downstairs neighbors into The People Who Considered Starting a Fire Together, these games sold over 6 million copies and with endless possibilities for expansion, it seemed like these two franchises would be staples of the video game industry for years, if not decades, so what the hell happened? I guess in a perfect world. You would have simply had to buy a game where you could continue to expand your song library through DLC at a reasonable price.

Unfortunately, that's not the world we lived in. Activision and EA chose to release games at full price not even once a year. every two months games that cost 60 US dollars and sometimes only included songs from one band, all of these games came out two years apart, it was like they were determined to saturate their own market as quickly as possible and most fans just didn't. I could keep up Look, I was 15 in 2009. I didn't have 300 to spend every year so I could pretend to play

guitar

. She had three dollars to spend each year and I used it to buy iced tea at 7-Eleven.

The companies were run by people who expected to keep making a billion dollars every time they released a game, without considering the fact that most of those sales figures came from expensive instruments that you only needed to buy once we wanted more songs, man . I don't need a different fake

guitar

, but despite being dead and buried for the

better

part of a decade, there's been a nostalgia-driven resurgence for Guitar Hero lately. There is a fairly dedicated online community that plays their own modified version. game, controllers are still as expensive as ever, although that's more of a supply and demand issue and when I went to Barcade a couple of months ago for my friend's birthday, it was one of the only games I had to buy line.

That's right, Guitar Hero fever is back, baby, and you might want to call a doctor because I'm showing symptoms. I get night sweats, heartburn, sometimes when I get up too quickly I get a little dizzy, so yeah, maybe my aforementioned friends' night. At the engine's birthday party, I went home and drunk bought Guitar Hero 3, a guitar for Wii, and a PC adapter, but as you saw from the title, that's not my end goal. I have a theory that if I put in enough time. playing this guitar I will improve on this guitar, how I don't know, I haven't made the video yet, move on.

I've been playing guitar for a little over 10 years, which sounds awesome as long as you don't ask me to play an E minor chord I don't know what that means or a pentatonic scale I don't know what that means or point out a guitar is this? no, that's a lamp starting, there was a I skipped a lot of things I probably shouldn't have done. I didn't take lessons. I didn't learn scales. I certainly didn't learn music theory. Why do I look like a nerd to you? Don't answer that I would just watch. I wrote tablatures for the songs I wanted to learn and then kept practicing until I could play them.

Tabs are great because they're like sheet music for idiots like I have no idea what this note is let alone where to find it on the guitar, but if you just tell me which string to play and where to put my finger, it's pretty hard to mess up. Most of the songs I learned at first were like simple arpeggios. You can really do a lot on the guitar just by playing three strings at the same time. for a while and barely moving my hands, good night, then I started trying to learn guitar solos for a while, but like the simple ones, I could actually understand it.

I can never do that part. The nice thing about learning a guitar solo is that they tend to use every note that works in any key of the song, so once you memorize you know where all the notes that work with the song are and then you can play whatever you want, dummy. , there are no rules here. There are still laws and you will be punished if you break them, but there are no rules to playing guitar, so have fun. All I ever wanted to do with the guitar was learn to write my own music. I enjoyed learning other songs, but mostly it was just using them as a gateway to understanding how the guitar works, so as soon as I felt comfortable enough to start writing my own stuff, which, to be clear, was very simplistic, I stopped trying to learn things and look back.

It was definitely a mistake, I think that has ultimately held me back from continuing to improve on a trajectory that would have been more fulfilling for me rather than working on some of the more tedious foundational pillars that you're supposed to start with. Yeah, but what if I just hit the guitar? That's great, right? I had so many little epiphanies early on and then I stagnated for a long time because I stopped trying to challenge myself, so with all that being said, why? I think Guitar Hero could help me get

better

at the real car if it only has five buttons and is made of plastic.

Well, timing number one, even if you're playing something simple and repetitive, the game will get mad at you for playing out of the ordinary, so I think it might help develop more of an internal metronome. The second is dexterity which I don't have enough of in my left hand and if I ever want to be really good at the guitar I have to be able to really move my fingers. Quick, that's just part of it. One of the big detours I took early in my guitar journey, before I became so proficient with using my left hand, was learning to play with my right hand.

I just did this all the time, yeah, I mean. I'm not playing music. I'm just venting. If I'm honest, one of the main reasons I learned to

make

this in the first place was because I thought it would look cool. The most important factor. When I learned to play an instrument, I also realized that since I'm right-handed, it allowed me to do more with the hand that I'm really good at doing things with and take some of the burden off my left hand, which is for the most part. stupid and useless part, like I'm trying to throw a frisbee with my left hand, it won't go where I want it, but I'm supposed to be able to do all this with it, who decided that's how I feel?

Much of my time playing guitar has been spent trying to

make

sure my left hand doesn't have any responsibility, even on the simplest thing I can play, my instinct is to reach out with my right hand to help because I'm afraid of what it might do. with my left hand. hand might do if I leave it alone for a minute. I don't trust it and my thoughts are on Guitar Hero. You have to use your left hand. The buttons are too far away for me to go back and forth, so if I leave it alone for a minute.

Being able to get really good at Guitar Hero will only be because my left hand did most of the work and that's my goal with this video. Nobody will care about this. The moment I opened this game, I was hit with a Tidal Wave of nostalgia from the two different songs playing on the menu even though there are like 75 songs in the game to choose from, just sitting there in awkward silence because you missed a note that was supposed to ring for a long time and that too. The thing about wanting to activate star power so you can get more points, but immediately making a mistake because you had to move your hand to do it and it threw you off, so you're actually getting less points than you would have if you didn't. you would have activated.

Firstly, the star power, all these memories crashed into me like a truck, but when it came to skill, it was clear that I had a lot of work ahead of me. I must be honest, I think I can make an expert foreigner, so I started working. For like 11 hours the first two days, knocking out song after song after song. It felt so cool, man, even though I almost failed most of the time. I must be honest. I'd rather just barely pass a difficult song with three stars than waste time doing it. this is boring let me pull out an easy song laughs wait a minute this is how from the beginning I never wanted to learn how to do scales because I thought they were boring and then I never ended up learning them at all and that's part of the reason why I'm making this video in the first place is that I'm simply destined to keep repeating the same mistakes.

I am stupid. Yes, I'm sorry. I just checked and I already have 17 copyright claims on this video, so I'm going to interrupt real quick. To tell you about today's sponsor, Sofi, who is helping me give away ten thousand dollars to someone who is watching this video right now, it could even be that person behind you, who is that guy, if you didn't already know that Sofi is the all in one. A finance app that helps you take out bank loans and invest in your checking and savings accounts can earn you up to 4.4 AP on your savings, which is 10 times the average national savings rate.

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The link for that is in the description. You can also access it by scanning the QR code on the screen, you could try scanning my face but as far as I know nothing will happen. My face is not a QR code. Big thanks to Sofi for sponsoring this video which will continue now, so I'd say it's my muscle memory at this point. It's definitely starting to come back. I've gotten through most of the difficult songs as a kid. I just like to venture into the difficult. I never tried experts. I got to a point where the medium was too easy for me, but I couldn't move forward. hard because on hard they add the fifth button and then you have to move your fingers, you can't just leave them in the same place all the time and as soon as I moved my hand once I would just forget where it was and it would be a total mess and then I would drown and I would cry, but I think now, as an adult, after having played guitar for a long time, I have developed a little dexterity in my left hand.

Now I'm smarter. Taller, maybe I'm like an inch tall. I haven't grown much since I was 15. Okay, that part is hard. As soon as I did the star power, despite making a lot of progress in the last two weeks, I seem to have hit a wall. It took me like 400 tries to even get through the last two songs and now I only have one left, plus I think like an encore song and I can't do it, man, I tried to practice it, I tried to slow it down. Can't I be too stupid? I don't know what to do.

I hit a dead end right at the end of hard but also about halfway through expert. I'm going to fail at this. I just know that I'm going to fail this friend. I don't think this is making me better at Guitar. I'm playing the notes, it's not me, it's the game here. I want to try something weird, so this is where I took a fairly long break from Guitar Hero 3 in favor of Clone Hero, which is a reimagining of the original game series, but anyone can add songs to it and, aside from the graphics of the Xbox 360 era and the Lego Star Wars style dialogue, which I really like, is very charming.

The clone

hero

is superior to Guitar. Hero in almost every way, mainly due to the amount of content people have added to it, playing songs on here that I never in a million years thought I'd have a chance to hear. It was an experience that would change my life.They had all this emo. on Guitar Hero when I was 16 and was extremely sad because I would never have left my room. Instead, I never left my room because I was playing Halo. I can't express enough how much this game feels like it was custom made in a lab specifically for For me, they have like all the Hail the Sun songs on here, that's my favorite band, they have songs from save us from the archon, a band I thought 12 people had ever heard.

They have life like Rascal Flatts Highway. I thought that song only existed. Within the universe of the Cars movies, part of the reason I've barely posted videos in recent months is because I can't stop playing this game. I thought I was going to make this video in April and now it's mid-July, what the heck? man, it's cool for me to be able to still be here and pretend to play contortionist songs and covet and the last dinosaurs and lady gaga. I'm kidding about that last one btw I thought I'd play poker face but who? You did this?

That's not how the song says. You cheated on me. It had been about two months of playing Clone Hero every day and I was feeling pretty good about my progress. I would get new things. My personal bests almost every time I played a song I became pretty consistent in achieving these big sweeps as long as the notes were in order otherwise my brain shuts down trying to figure it out but even though I I was improving a lot, something was still eating away at me. It was like I had forgotten the point of making this video in the first place.

Oh, I still need to finish Guitar Hero and you guys won't believe what happened next. I finally got through the song. This was the bane of my existence for a month. It's been a year and a half and now I quickly reviewed it on my first try. What the hell didn't I know that things could be improved? I've grown up, guys. This is disgusting. I guess it wasn't the game all along. Maybe I should stop blaming others for my shortcomings and just try to focus on being the best version of myself. Can't. I'm going to kill someone.

Okay, maybe I can't do that song yet, but that's okay. better in the game now I just can't do that thing and I don't mind being able to get through all these other songs except the one I have left to finish the game which doesn't make me mad or mad Outside of Me or whatever you're thinking right now , I couldn't care less. I think the guy who wrote this song should be in jail. No, you're right, I couldn't care less, which means I care a lot about how. It's been two months and I still can't do this at least I can listen to this over and over again oh maybe I should give up on this new tactic oh my god it's working why didn't I do this sooner?

God, I finally did it and all I had to do this whole time was stop trying to play it properly and instead just press a bunch of buttons and strum as fast as I could. I'm tricking the game into thinking that oh wait, I already did it. I never got that far, okay, the last note was made after two months of rocking. I'll be sure to remember this tip when I get back to regular guitar. When in doubt, play what you want and no one. You'll notice, it doesn't matter, that doesn't work, it only works in the game.

Sorry, okay, regular guitar update. I don't really know how to track my progress here. With Guitar Hero they give you a score every time, but this. The boy doesn't tell me. I think playing at least makes me want to practice every day more, as if it's a constant reminder that it's fun to play music that I sometimes forget and then don't play. my guitar for a long time, I wrote a new song so it's probably something that the other night I was playing and I found some chords that I liked and then I recorded them and then the next day I just played them over and over again until I found a melody which I liked and then I put the two parts together and uploaded it to Instagram and now that it's documented somewhere I can safely forget how to play it, in fact I already have it.

I feel like there's maybe a little more fluidity in my left hand now, but it also comes and goes. I would say my biggest takeaway so far is that at the very least clone

hero

is a really fun way to warm up your hands before moving on to practicing real guitar, there are a lot of finger exercises and there are little warm ups but I'm here to tell you Don't bother with any of that, just do this for 20 minutes, it's a lot more fun. I ran into another pretty big distraction that delayed this video slightly. I learned how to make songs in clone hero and now I can't stop doing it, it's a very slow and tedious process and it's probably the most fun I've ever had doing something.

I first decided I wanted to do one because this band called C in The Sky just released a new EP and it's great. I love this band. I think they are super underrated. You should check them out anyway. They have a short little instrumental song in the middle of the EP and I thought this is the perfect first time. song for me to graph to learn how to use this software, so I spent several hours doing it and I think it turned out pretty well. I had to modify it a lot because I had no idea what I was doing the first time, but I was very happy with the result, so I tried to make another song from the EP and this one was also going very well until I got to the guitar solo at the end.

I don't know, I just added a bunch of notes I had. I have no idea what he's playing and then I thought: I can't believe there are no Explosions in the Sky songs on this website. They are one of the most popular instrumental guitar bands of the last 20 years. I'll do my two favorites and It hasn't been nine hours. I realized why no one had recorded one of these songs before. It's probably because they all last 10 minutes. It is very difficult to determine which guitar part to focus on at any given time and also in the moment.

I'm done doing it, it wasn't even that fun to play. There are actually a few songs on Clone Hero that weren't as fun to play as I expected, but then even more songs that I thought were a lot more fun. More fun than I expected. A perfect example of this is this band called Intervalos that I like but I wouldn't say I love. They have a song that I love called Fable. It has a sax solo. It made me cry the first time I heard it. and I think it's cool that the bassist plays a solo every time they play that song.

Live anyway, this song is a lot of fun to play on clone hero. This game really makes you feel like you are playing the saxophone on a plastic guitar, but what? What I was saying is that even the interval songs that I wouldn't have said I really like are so fun to play in this game that it makes me appreciate them more and listen to them a little differently and I think that was something that happened in the original games. from Guitar Hero to Rock Band for many people; in a lot of cases it would be the first time you'd actually hear a guitar riff instead of just the vocal and you'd be like, oh, hey.

I never noticed that little Melody in there like, oh, that's cool, how do they mix that for the second one? verse, the bridge is the best part of Ocean Avenue, not the chorus, I'd say it's one of the lasting legacies of the Guitar Hero series, is how many people. It inspired me to pick up the guitar, learn to play, and just appreciate music a little differently, so hats off to the Guitar Hero series for inspiring a whole group of young people to learn to play guitar and form a band that then will create. absolutely no money because the music industry is in ruins as I was approaching the end of my journey, I got to the point where I only had one guitar battle left, of course, it was against the devil himself and it turns out he is Pretty good on the guitar, but I have a battle left. that I just had to get to the end and the game would be over and I couldn't do it.

I spent hours playing this song, but no matter what I did, he always beat me, got a new trick, man. I dropped my phone now. I have kind of an excuse for this: the attacks you do in guitar battles are scattered randomly and one of them does this thing where you can't play any notes until you hit the hit bar a few times, no big deal, TRUE? It's a big deal because even though for the rest of the game I have no problem using the hit bar for any reason, at this point the game doesn't register that I'm hitting it and I automatically lose, this battle brought me to my breaking point. got two, so I'm sorry to inform you that even after spending four long months trying to be the best I can be at Guitar Hero, I'm giving up right before the end on what I would say if I quit, so Better not, I'm sorry I got your hopes up .

I wrote that into the script hoping it would motivate me to finish the job. It wasn't like that, but then I thought: What if I set the bar a little lower? I'm going to try to do it. get a perfect score on this song so you can at least do something that will be awesome to anyone. I think I can get a perfect score on this song. This one has a pretty simple look. The stars look different. I've never seen them. That thing from before is maybe the easiest in the game, but I did it on Expert, yeah, so maybe I'm not the best at Guitar Hero and I never will be, but I'm pretty good at Guitar Hero and that's a lot more than I thought. could. let's say a couple of months ago, so no matter what all the haters and losers try to say about me, I don't care because I'm proud of myself, unfortunately, I locked myself in my closet, I decided because we knew the end of this video I should do something I've been avoiding for the last 10 years.

I'm going to learn a scale. The only other thing I wanted to do right now to prove to myself that I've improved is to write one last song about my journey, something that I felt would musically represent the ups and downs I experienced over the course of the Guitar Hero 3 Solo campaign, the bittersweet feeling that came from being so close to the end but still not being able to defeat the Devil because he tricked a foreigner. There's only one song left and I win is that the devil when the devil learned to play the guitar suck my ass devil I think I'm going to do it I'm going to beat the devil but I also knew that this video wouldn't be complete until I took everything I learned to the real world and played a show in front of a live audience, only then will I know how far I've come.

I've been working on this song for a couple of months and I'm a little nervous about playing it, but it's a song that means a lot to me and you know, I hope you like it too, because you know you sing it, so last night I went to a microphone opened in Casselberry, Florida, I hurriedly registered nervously until it was my turn and then I went up and played my heart out. I was very nervous beforehand about the performance and having to set up very quickly. I knew I was going to have to put my laptop on top of an empty case on top of a side table because that's what I had practiced at home.

Could I have taken an extra 10 seconds to connect to the Bluetooth speakers everyone else was using? Yes, but you know it was more intimate this way. You really had to be around to enjoy it. I have to be honest, I'm past it. For a few weeks I thought about all the possible outcomes for this and this was probably the best. Everyone was so excited that they clapped and sang. I mean, it's universally loved, so I was a little worried that they would get mad at me because they were like, real musicians there performing real songs that they wrote and then I went up to do a little bit for a YouTube video, but they were really nice about it. .

A big thank you to Suva Cava Café, everyone is amazing. I really couldn't have asked for more. Supportive environment in which to share my art. I think I'll end by saying this: If I can stand in front of a room of 29 confused strangers and pretend to play Rascal Flatts' Life is a Highway in its entirety, then you can do anything, thank you. to look at guys