“That’s nothing like playing an actual instrument,” they sneer. “Learn to play a real guitar,” they taunt. “With all the time you waste on Guitar Hero, you could have learned an actual skill by now,” they smirk. “You wouldn’t have to play Coheed & Cambria if you had a real guitar,” they scoff. Okay, so they have a point on that last one, but music game aficionados are getting kind of sick of the other jabs at their pastime of choice. Maybe some of us just want to enjoy the simulation and have a little fun in the next five minutes, instead of spending months of practice just to be able to handle the chord progression from Smoke on the Water. And, of course, we have all our counter-arguments at the ready — we’re perfectly capable of enjoying Call of Duty without joining the real army, or Grand Theft Auto without knowing how to hotwire a real car, or Viva Pinata without… uh… I don’t know. Owning a real plot of land and hitting real bears with a shovel, I guess. Regardless, the argument might be true for some of us; perhaps someday we’d like to make the leap from Rock Band to actual shredding. We’re in luck: Gamers to Players, a new instructional DVD, promises to teach the guitar using methods based on the games, to make the transition easy and painless.
According to a press release issued this morning, the new Gamers to Players DVD “lets you transfer all the skills you’ve learned from the game to the real guitar, without all the hassle and difficulty of traditional guitar lessons.” I have to say, that’s a pretty tall order. I consider myself a fairly competent fake guitarist; I’ve been playing since Guitar Freaks and I regularly shred my way through Expert songs (Well, Rock Band Expert, anyway, not GH3 Expert). I also own an Epiphone Special II which I can’t even begin to use. I tried working my way through an instructional DVD, and the instant I was tasked with using multiple strings, my brain shut down, and I woke up choking on my own tongue.
Gamers to Players, on the other hand, promises to phrase its lessons in the “language of gamers,” focusing on the differences between the games and reality. Mark Sternal, the man behind the media, puts it thusly: “The problem is, learning to play guitar after learning the games can be difficult. G2P gives a gamer an advantage over beginners when making the transition from the controller to a real guitar. Our unique system cuts out all of what gamers don’t want, and gives them all of what they need to start cranking out tunes right away!”
Unique new teaching method, or gaming trend cash-in? We’re hoping to find out for ourselves.
The entire press release is reproduced below.
-Gamers To Players (G2P) Lets Game Enthusiasts Learn the Real Thing With Less Work-
Crystal River, FL - Attention Guitar Hero and Rock Band fans - Gamers To Players (G2P) now lets you transfer all the skills you’ve learned from the game to the real guitar, without all the hassle and difficulty of traditional guitar lessons.
You’ve played the games, now transfer your controller skills to a real guitar with Gamers To Players (G2P)… Gamers to Players (G2P) is the first and only method that will transform gamers into real guitarists! If you can play the game - even if you play it poorly - you can learn to play a real guitar.
In G2P, expert guitar instructor Mark John Sternal walks you through the differences and similarities of playing a real guitar compared to Guitar Hero (TM) by Activision® and other video games like Rock Band (TM) by Harmonix Music Systems®.
Co-creator Mark John Sternal said, “People of all ages love games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. These games have even inspired a number of people to take up a musical instrument as a hobby.”
Sternal continued, “The problem is, learning to play guitar after learning the games can be difficult. G2P gives a gamer an advantage over beginners when making the transition from the controller to a real guitar. Our unique system cuts out all of what gamers don’t want, and gives them all of what they need to start cranking out tunes right away! G2P speaks the language of gamers, and makes the transition from Easy to Expert fast and easy.”
Gamers To Players was recently released throughout the United States and Canada and is sold through music stores like Guitar Center and Sam Ash, however, the creators of the film hope to have it stocked everywhere popular video games are sold by November 2008.
Sternal has released several best-selling instructional guitar and bass guitar books and DVDs. View the G2P trailer at www.realguitarhero.net.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Don’t spend time learning about theory and musical techniques if you aren’t going to use them. Most private guitar lessons will start you learning the names of each string, then the notes on each string. This is very important for people who want to learn to play lead guitar, or plan on furthering their education. How ever if this isn’t you don’t spend time learning it.