Thanks for the comment. I am not familiar with music pedagogy, but I will look at the reference you listed.

As for your first point, about it simply being a different representation than standard music notation, don’t you think it is also a fundamentally incomplete representation?

Guitar Hero only features five fret positions, which are then reused for different notes. In that sense, it does not really function as a system for musical notation?

My own research is showing that youths are developing and/or building on their rhythmic intuitions (for more info on musical intuitions, see any of Jeanne Bambergers work). Also, the issue of motivation is also key to the importance of the game. From a cognitive (self) standpoint, games like Guitar Hero/Rock Band, have a tremendous impact on a players self-efficacy with it’s development of mastery skills (mimicking the actions of a musician), vicarious experiences (watching others succeed), encouragement from others, and physical affective states; all main points for developing efficacious individuals. From a social-cognitive perspective (the group), players, through legitimate peripheral participation, engage in a way that makes them feel as if they are learning to become a rock star.

I’m not suggesting that these games replace practices in classrooms or private lesson studios. However, these games could be an influential tool in getting youth more interested in music.

It’s simple, effective, and fun the way it is.

I love playing my guitar, much to the chagrin of my roommates and neighbors. (I’ve been playing for slightly less than two years now).

There’s a few things that I feel playing the game has helped with, however, it’s certainly helped me with the consistency of my strumming rhythm, and I think it’s been a help with my fretwork, since it’s helped me learn to move my left hand faster and helped strengthen my pinky and ring finger a bit.

Much more importantly, the opportunity cost would have been enormous. The programming team on Guitar Hero was very small, and we already were forced to cut important features (such as practice mode, which only made it in in Guitar Hero 2) to get the game out on time. But even for someone like me, who can sight-read musical notation more easily than a scrolling 3D track with colored gems, I think it would have detracted from the feeling of ROCK that Guitar Hero is all about.

Now that I think about it, The Axe (our first product, a PC “game” in which you could improvise musical parts over backing tracks using a joystick instead of an instrument) did have a mode in which you could see the musical notation representing the part you were generating. It was kind of cool but I think most people preferred the other modes.

In response to “I just suppose Harmonix was too busy coding the game?s badass-ness to think about how actual musicians might react to the game?s flippant use of the controller?s inconsistency.”:

A lot of us here are actual musicians. Some people here basically sight-read the notes (just reactively press the buttons at the right time), but a lot of us (especially me) “read ahead”, trying to grasp the rhythm of a whole measure at once, and ever since our first game Frequency in 2001 we’ve tried to serve both crowds. One issue is that people in the first group can get intimidated if there’s a lot of stuff on screen that is just there to help the second group.

You will notice that even though there’s no actual musical notation (and I think putting music notation in Guitar Hero would have been a big mistake, even if it would have been great for me personally), we mark bar lines, beat lines, and even half-beat (eighth note) lines, which is way beyond what most rhythm games do.

I totally agree that triplets are hard to parse, especially when a line switches between duple and triple (I think Frankstein in particular has that problem). We tried a couple of ways to make the rhythm more clear but nothing stuck.

That’s not to say the other comments aren’t valid (though I don’t agree with the ‘fear of music’ – it’s more about compressed learning curve), but this is a crucial aspect.

Just to be clear – there is a difference between performing and spectating in these games. I don’t think players really perform that much to the others – I think it’s more about building up your skill. The performance is almost a by-product, but that is nevertheless entertaining to watch.

Also, it largely depends on what skill level you set the game on. On Pro (I assume it’s Pro in English, I played it in German) you really have to play most of the notes. On the simple level it’s pretty much just muting the guitar track on and off.

“…our understanding of ?play? and ?performance? in both cases should be essentially similar.”

what I should have written was:

“…our understanding of both ‘play’ and ‘performance’ in either case should be essentially similar.”

(I don’t want to be misconstrued as believing that the two are essentially the same.)