Guitar instructors are beginning to notice the ranks of people both in the hardcore gaming and casual gaming spheres alike picking up a guitar-controller and rocking out to the songs of yesterday and today. Some of them are beginning to have dollar signs flashing across their eyes at the thought of many of these virtual rockers picking up guitars in hopes of becoming the real thing. Jay Skyler, a San Francisco guitar teacher, said he’s hoping for the same effect from the game that he found after the film School of Rock
came out: his number of students swelled greatly as practically everyone who saw the movie thought “hey, this could be really cool”. Other teachers aren’t so optimistic, including San Diego bass teacher David Hilton who rather melodramatically stated that this game is going to ‘kill music’. The pervasive concern is that since playing a real guitar is much more difficult and time consuming than becoming proficient at the video game, players would rather spend their time in front of their consoles

Much more likely to my mind is that this will be a blip on the radar. Maybe a large blip, but like many fads it will twinkle out. There might be some real musicians spawned by this phenomenon, while many will do what teenagers and adults alike have been doing for years: pick up a guitar, play for a while, possibly get bored and move on to other interests. Go to almost any college in the northeast and you’ll find a gaggle of guys who learned to play guitar a bit to charm girls. There will always be people interested in music. Just look at the absolute glut of amateur singer/songwriters, bands and djs hoping to get noticed via myspace.