Who? He was the drummer for the Rolling Stones back when they mattered. Now he’s just another musician who, like Prince, Jimmy Page and hopefully no other artists I like – just doesn’t get it.<\/p>\n
I’m talking about Rock Band\/Guitar Hero, of course. According to Entertainment Weekly, Bill Wyman says that he’s afraid that these music games will discourage kids from playing real instruments. From becoming real musicians.<\/p>\n
Look, I love these games but I’m not a real musician. The reason I’m not has nothing to do with video games, of course, and everything to do with becoming a real musician being really, really hard.\u00a0 I know a lot of musicians and all of them – all the ones who still play into their adulthood, I mean – play because they love it. They learned to play because music flows through them and has to come out somewhere. It has too.\u00a0 It’s like me with writing. It’s not really a choice and no game can take that desire away.<\/p>\n
Just as:<\/p>\n
Playing Madden 10 will not lower the amount of talented men vying for the NFL draft.<\/p>\n
Playing Tiger Woods 10 will not discourage people from picking up the clubs.<\/p>\n
Playing Need for Speed or Gran Turismo does not remotely feel like driving a real sportscar.<\/p>\n
Portraying a space marine will do nothing to limit the amount of people who become real space marines …<\/p>\n
Anyway, you see my point. Playing video games simulates playing the real thing, but doesn’t really simulate DOING the real thing.\u00a0 Rock Band will not keep a budding guitarist from playing real guitar because the experiences are vastly and totally different.\u00a0 One is about hitting falling notes in a manic approximation of the old electronic game Simon. The other is about channeling and interpreting sound within a beat. One is imitation, the other is inspiration. And we do these things for very different reasons.<\/p>\n
So, like Prince and Led Zeppelin, I fear it whenever some clueless musician misunderstands these games. I fear it mainly because I’d love to play Rock Band: Rolling Stones one day.<\/p>\n
Now, I will acknowledge that it does work the other way, I think. I know that after playing a car sim, I’m a bit more interested in driving the real thing. That a lot of my interest and desire to one day fly a biplane has a lot to do with playing Red Baron 3D a long time ago, and sometimes Madden makes me wish I’d been born with a more “football appropriate” body. But I can’t imagine the game taking away from the real.<\/p>\n
Or to put it another way – if your child prefers Guitar Hero to real guitar playing – maybe he’s just not that into being a musician. If he was, it’d be the other way around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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