RockSmith

[OldRod]

Not game dev related at all (hence, the posting in "Off Topic" )

I bought RockSmith last week for the PS3. This is the game where you can plug in a real electric guitar and use that to play the "game" rather than a cheap plastic guitar controller. I was skeptical how well it would work, but after a few hours of trying it out, this thing is great!

I bought a starter Epiphone guitar/amp about 5 years ago and scoured the internet for video lessons. Over the next few months I learned how to play a few chords and a couple of scales and then my interest faded because I just wasn't progressing like I wanted. With this game, in ~4 hours of playing it, I can play large parts of a couple different songs and it's awesome! Sure, it's not teaching me the perfect technique, but it's teaching me to play and it's teaching me to read what note to play and train my hands to play it. I love it!

[Jackolantern]

There is no such thing as "perfect technique", only "perfect chords", and as long as you get the latter, no one cares about the former. Look at Leo Kottke. He wanted to play the guitar, but instead of finding books or a teacher, he just locked himself in a room for 3 years and messed around until he could make nice sounds lol. No one else in the world has a style like him and he is considered one of the best 12-string guitarists in the world and a master of the guitar in general.

Pretty cool about the RockSmith, though. I am not much of a musician myself (others in my family are), but this still looked interesting when I saw it a while back.