Salon's Farhad Manjoo has an interesting take on the cultural phenomenon that is Guitar Hero in his technology column this week. He interviews several guitar instructors who claim that the video game is not only re-igniting in interest in guitar rock (songs that players rock out to in Hero include Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" and Boston's "More Than a Feeling"), but the skills used to master the game's plastic guitar simulator-controller actually correspond to skills essential to real-life guitar playing.
Manjoo contrasts Hero with an actual guitar-learning tool, the Fretlight, designed over the past decade by Optek's Rusty Shaffer. The Fretlight plugs in to a computer and lights up the fret and string positions as a song plays, and, get this, even pros like Journey's Neal Schon and America's Gerry Beckley practice with the Fretlight '' woah, slow down there, Rusty! As a guitar player who learned the ol' fashioned way (you know, playing along to MP3s I downloaded on Napster), I am wont to disbelieve Guitar Hero's ability to teach guitar-playing skills, but if playing a video game gets the kids interested in something other than playing a video game then, hey, play on.