news-record.com

Jeff Swanson has been playing guitar for 27 years and says he doesn't need a virtual crowd to cheer him on. But he acknowledges that virtual crowds, along with virtual stages and virtual guitar strings are planting the seeds of musicianship in many of his students.

"A lot of my students play Guitar Hero all the time," the 42-year-old instructor said of the hit rock 'n' roll video game in which players strum a guitar-shaped controller. "And when they say they want to learn 'Surrender' by Cheap Trick, or 'Sweet Child O' Mine' or 'Rock You Like a Hurricane' the first thing I say is, 'Is it on Guitar Hero?' And nine times out of 10, it came from the game."

Guitar instructors in the Triad say the game has caused a surge in the number of people, particularly teenagers, taking lessons. According to the National Association of Music Merchants, an estimated 10 percent of Guitar Hero players will try their hand at the real thing. And with the release last month of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, instructors expect to spend plenty of time in the near future playing songs like "Back in the Saddle," "Love in an Elevator" and "Walk This Way."

But teachers and students also say that mastery of the game doesn't equal mastery of the strings and frets. And though playing the game is good for developing basic hand-eye coordination, most students still have to start at the beginning learning chords and reading music.

"Playing a real guitar, it's more complicated, more strings, more notes" said 12-year-old Orion Heiges, a student at Smith and Whitley Music Co. in High Point, and an experienced Guitar Hero player. "It's harder than what it looks like on Guitar Hero."

What it takes to be a hero

More than 14 million copies of Guitar Hero have been sold since the game was introduced for PlayStation 2 in 2005. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, the game's fourth installment and the first to center around one band, sold about 350,000 units in its first week, according to tracking service VG Chartz.

The other three editions feature classic rock, punk and metal tunes by artists such as Alice Cooper and ZZ Top.

The guitar shaped controller has on its neck five multicolored buttons that players press, while strumming a bar on the body, to correspond to with different colored "notes" scrolling down the screen. If the players miss too many of those notes or hit the wrong colored buttons, they will get booed off the virtual stage.

Asked if they play Guitar Hero, nearly all of the 35 students in Kyle Welch's Greensboro Guitar Summer Workshop class raised their hands. The class is titled "So You Want to be a Guitar Hero?"

"I played Guitar Hero in December and started learning (real) guitar in January, and it helps some," said 16-year-old Craig McRae, who was taking part in the Greensboro Guitar Summer Workshop last month. "You kind of get the feel for the guitar, makes it a little easier to warm up and I felt I caught on a little quicker than I normally would have. But the chords, those are hard, and you don't really learn about them (in the game)."

At Smith and Whitley, instructor Tim Fogarty said that whenever a new Guitar Hero game is released, "there is a big push for lessons."

"We've actually had parents who signed up their kids say, 'They've been playing the game and now want to try the real thing.' We've heard that exact statement," he said. "So the impact it's having on the industry is pretty good. We're selling more guitars, teaching more students."

James Forbis, who teaches at Smith and Whitley, doesn't play the game, but knowing most of Guitar Hero's songbook lends him credibility with his younger students.

"I find that if I just the take the hardest song from the game, which is DragonForce's 'Through the Fire and Flames,' and play it for them, they'll automatically think I'm a qualified teacher," he said. "Never mind the fact that I can read music and have years of experience. If I do that song, they're like, 'Wow, if he can play that, he must know it all.'"

Real vs. Virtual

A real guitar typically has five strings and 21 to 24 frets.

"There's no color code on a guitar, there's no striker bar," said Virginia Masius, who, along with Swanson, teaches at the Music Loft in Greensboro. "You've got to be able to get your pick and navigate your fingers from string to string, or, if you're playing chords, make sure you're playing the right number of strings."

Instructors say the game does help players count the beats in a song and develop good timing and finger coordination, but it doesn't teach much about creating music.

"With the game, you get used to synchronizing your right hand and your left hand, which is very important to playing a real guitar -- you're flicking something over here, while pressing something over there," Fogarty said. " But overall it's not very similar. It's just buttons on a stick."

The game does have detractors among guitar purists.

"Personally, as a guitar player, I think it's kind of foolish," said Welch, who in addition to teaching at the Summer Workshop, also works as an instructor at GTCC. "My thought on it is that if you buy the video game console, plus the game and controller, that's a few hundred dollars, which you could have used to go out and buy a real guitar. Also the time you spend playing the game, you could use to learn to play an actual guitar."

But many instructors enjoy the impact it's having on their business, as well as the fact that it's giving young people an appreciation for the hitmakers of yesteryear. On his shelf, 33-year-old Fogarty keeps a copy of the official Guitar Hero songbook, featuring music for artists such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Kiss.

"One of the things that we (guitar instructors) really like about this game is that it's showing kids all these different types of music that they haven't been exposed to much," he said. "Many 12-year-olds today wouldn't even bother listening to Boston or Danzig or Cheap Trick. But now it's presented in a way that they can easily rediscover it. For me that's the most exciting part -- that they're coming in here and asking to learn all these songs that I grew up listening to and that made me want to play guitar."

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com.