Guitar Zero

I know that most people in the Western Hemisphere are familiar with this extremely popular series of games but I will explain it for the rest of you.  Guitar Hero is a video game in which you perform famous rock songs on a miniature plastic guitar by pressing the colored buttons on the neck (where the frets should be) to correspond to a streaming pattern of corresponding colors that are come at you on the TV while simultaneously "strumming" where the strings should be.  The more accurate you are, the better the song sounds and the higher your score.  It sounds more complicated than it is but I can attest that while the concept is simple, the game is not.

In looking for a picture to go with this post, I came across a cartoon which said, "When I'm in a rock band, I'm going to do a cool, mellow song.  Then in the middle I'll stop and announce, 'This is just to be a jerk to people playing Guitar Hero,' then flail wildly on the strings for 30 seconds."  Gotta love it!  I would have laughed out loud but everyone in my house is taking an afternoon nap.

This may seem like a non sequitur but indulge me.  We don't usually go out to church here on Sundays because the service is during Campbell's nap time and we would only understand a small portion of what was being said anyway.  We have resorted to listening to podcasts of churches from the US and are in the midst of a series on Philippians (is Apple from the devil because a common book of the Bible gets flagged by my Mac spell checker?) from Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI.  If you're curious how we got turned on the that, I'll clarify by saying that this is the church led by pastor/author/Nooma video star Rob Bell.  

Rob was talking about how the original Greek differentiates between knowledge about a subject and experiential knowledge of that subject.  He brought up Guitar Hero and made a very valid point that Sarah and I found poignantly funny.  To be good at Guitar Hero takes understanding the basic concept of the guitar.  You must understand that to make a desired note or chord, you must place your fingers correctly on the frets/strings and at the right time (in keeping with the rhythm of the song) strum the necessary strings.  All of this is essential for playing a real guitar and the game well.

Rob's point was that being good at GH3 (as the most recent version is called by gamers) DOES NOT mean that you can play guitar.  You thus have the knowledge of guitar concepts without any of the useful experience necessary to actually make music.

Further, he pointed out that it takes HOURS of practice to be good at the GH games.  Were a person to take that time and apply it to playing a real guitar, they may actually become a guitar hero.  Great point and funny commentary on our culture.  When I was in elementary school, my friend Blake made virtually the same point (well ahead of Rob Bell) in saying that if people are so excited about "virtual reality" (the big tag phrase of those days) he would just give them an oversized set of glasses and a broken Nintendo controller and have them play "Virtual Reality Reality" through their daily lives.  Why have a fake life (or skill) when you can have the real thing?

I guess insights like that are why Bell is a famous author and Blake is getting his PhD in philosophy from Oxford.