The alluring danger of dilettantism
I’ve been puzzled by the popularity of the game Guitar Hero, for what seems to me like obvious reasons. It’s like karaoke minus the trouble of having to hear the sounds you make. If you want a more interactive way to enjoy music, why not dance, or play air guitar? Or better yet, if holding a guitar appeals to you, why not try actually learning how to play? For the cost of an Xbox and the Guitar Hero game, you can get yourself a pretty good guitar. I assume I am missing the point of it, the competitive thrill, but I can’t help but feel that Guitar Hero (much like Twitter) would have been utterly incomprehensible to earlier generations, that it is a symptom of some larger social refusal to embrace difficulty. (Sure TV shows may have become more “complex,” but these remain passive, albeit more absorbing.) A society that requires such short cuts and preemptive blows in the name of the short-attention span surely must be deeply broken, our progenitors probably would have thought.
Since, lamentably, what we do for a living tends to lack meaning for us personally, we rely more on our leisure and consumption time to supply our lives with meaning, to afford us opportunities for self-realization. But consumption and self-realization may be at odds. In his introductory book on Marx, philosopher Jon Elster (who I’d encountered before as a theorist of precommitment strategies) makes an interesting point about consumption versus self-realization:
Activities of self-realization are subject to increasing marginal utility: They become more enjoyable the more one has already engaged in them. Exactly the opposite is true of consumption. To derive sustained pleasure from consumption, diversity is essential. Diversity, on the other hand, is an obstacle to successful self-realization, as it prevents one from getting into the later and more rewarding stages.
Perhaps there is an optimal balance for these two impulses that, if Elster is right, are antithetical. But if living in a consumerist society subjects us to all sorts of marketing pressures (derived from the need to sell all the junk we make at our unmeaningful jobs), that balance tips precipitously toward consumption, and potentially destabilizes the economy and our own psychological well-being. (This is what Marx seems to be suggesting in his concern with alienation from “species being.”) Elster, paraphrasing Marx, writes, “In capitalism, the desire for consumption—as opposed to the desire for self-realization—takes on a compulsive character. Capitalism creates an incentive for producers to seduce consumers, by inducing in them new desires to which they then become enslaved.” (The word choice here suggests Elster’s skepticism.)
So, surprisingly, the way the loss of opportunities for self-realization plays out is not through a paucity of options but a surfeit of them, all of which we feel capable of pursuing only to a shallow degree before we get frustrated or bored. Consumerism and its infrastructure (meaning markets, market spaces like the internet, and the shopping-oriented personality type most readily developed within consumerism) keeps us well supplied with stuff and seems to enrich our identities by allowing us to become familiar with a wide range of phenomena—a process that the internet has accelerated immeasurably. (I encounter a stray idea, digest the relevant Wikipedia entry, and just like that, I’ve broadened my conceptual vocabulary! I get bored with the book I’m reading, Amazon suggests a new one! I am too distracted to read blog posts, I’ll check Twitter instead!) But this comes at the expense with developing any sense of mastery of anything, eroding over time the sense that mastery is possible, or worth pursuing.
With more “diversity” available, it’s becoming harder to evade boredom, which more and more seems to be engineered socially (by accelerating fashion cycles, by making us always aware of what we are missing, and by making every moment a purchasing opportunity) as opposed to developing from some idiosyncratic internal curiosity in an individual. Novelty trumps sustained focus, whose rewards are not immediately felt and may never come at all, as Elster points out, if our focus is mistakenly fixed on something ultimately worthless. (I’m thinking of my long investment in Cryptonomicon.) Rather than taking advantage of that “increasing marginal utility” that comes with practicing something difficult, our will to dilettantism develops momentum.
To take a trivial example, let’s say you decide you like psychedelic music and want to “master” it by having a deep familiarity with the genre. But then you stumble on the hardcore psych MP3 blogs, and you are probably at that point discouraged by the impossibility of ever catching up and listening to it all. There is simply too much that’s now available too readily. You might still download everything you can get your hands on—that costs nothing but disk space and a minimal amount of time—but you’ll never make significant use of the larger portion of what you acquire. Acquiring has supplanted inquisitive use as the self-realizing activity. You have become a collector of stuff as opposed to a master of psychedelic music.
This seems to happen generally, as what Elster calls “the marginal disutility of not consuming” grows stronger—i.e., we have a harder time giving up the thrill of novelty, of exposing ourselves to new things. We end up collecting things rather than knowing them, and we display our collections in the hopes that others will recognize us as though we actually do know them. Or perhaps we have already reached a point where we all figure we are all playing the same game and that that distinction between owning and mastering is unimportant. (If I own a cool guitar, maybe a replica of no-name Telecaster or the Jag-Stang that Kurt Cobain used, does it really matter if I can play it?)
Dilettantism is a perfectly rational response to the hyperaccessibility of stuff available to us in the market, all of which imposes on us time constraints where there was once material scarcity. These time constraints become more itchy the more we recognize how much we are missing out on (thanks to ever more invasive marketing efforts, often blended in to the substance of the material we are gathering for self-realization). We opt instead for “diversity,” and begin setting about to rationalize the preferability of novelty even further, abetted by the underlying message of much our culture of disposability. Concentration takes on more of the qualities of work—it becomes a disutility rather than an end vis-a-vis the stuff we acquire. If something requires us to concentrate, it costs us more and forces us to sacrifice more of the stuff we might otherwise consume. In other words, consumerism makes the will and ability to concentrate seem a detriment to ourselves. The next thing you know, everyone touts Guitar Hero as a reasonable substitute for guitar playing and mocks the fuddy-duddy nabobs of negativism who are still hung up on the difference.
Comments
Guitar Hero will no more be a reasonable substitute for guitar playing any more than Super Mario is a reasonable substitute for plumbing. Have you actually played Guitar Hero? You imply that it isn’t difficult - it is. It’s a timing game that relies on you having rhythm. You hit the buttons at the proper time *in time* with the game. It’s more than just air guitar. Rock Band is even more interactive with the ability to play more instruments. AND there’s a singing part where you do, yes, get to hear the sounds you make.
I play lots of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I *absolutely* have to concentrate at the higher levels of difficulty. After playing a particularly fast or difficult song on expert level on the drums in Rock Band I am sweaty and exhausted. How is that just air guitar?
Comment by Chris Furniss from seattle — January 9, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
Whatever the intrinsic challenges of a game like Guitar Hero, I think it can breed only frustration in both the ranks of those whose art it’s aping, as well as those who are tricked into believing they’re actually good at something musical. In the end, it’s mimicry. Think of the musical explosion that could’ve resulted had the designers simply settled on a more realistic interface (drums aside - i.e. a real guitar).
Alternate reality, entertainment, and escapism are all well and good - but to see the numbers who’ve wholeheartedly devoted themselves to mastering the game is a bit saddening. The mastery will end there for the vast majority. They will have learned rhythm, but nothing of technique. Repetition instead of creation.
Comment by vee device — January 9, 2009 @ 12:57 pm
Vee Device, You speak as if someone is suggesting that Guitar Hero with its guitar shaped controller is somehow being touted as a real musical instrument with those playing the video game seeing themselves as real “artists”. If anything, younger generations of music fans are finding out that there have been really great bands in the past even IF their parents liked it.
I agree with the author’s point on diversity. We are a consumer generation. But I would submit that playing a guitar game is just the same as playing video golf, football, baseball, etc. Kids don’t become athletes sitting on the couch with controls and the same is true of musicians.
The only difference here is you get to listen to some great music while pushing the buttons.
Don’t knock it. As a guitarist of 28 years I love Guitar hero. I also like taunting the kids to play the stuff on a real guitar ;-)
Comment by Rayven Fear from Southeast — January 9, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
My earlier statement came off as a bit too anti-Guitar Hero. I don’t deny that people can have fun playing it (I myself have done so). What’s more, I don’t think the people playing the game necessarily see themselves as artists - a la your video game sports example - point taken.
By chiming in, I simply meant to second what I saw as Mr. Horning’s lament for ubiquity. Everything is everywhere, and thus it becomes nothing. All too often it feels to me as if the specialist is dying out. But maybe it never existed on as broad a cultural scale as I’d like to think. Perhaps some of today’s Guitar Hero players will become tomorrow’s specialists creating more music for us all to pantomime with plastic guitar controllers.
Comment by vee device — January 9, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
Vee Device,
Agreed!
:-)
Comment by Rayven Fear from Southeast — January 9, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
Right, obviously Guitar Hero in advanced mode is extremely difficult, and it does teach you some skills that are transferable to playing a real guitar: rhythm, finger dexterity, muscle endurance, etc. To me, the radical move that Guitar Hero makes is to turn music into an objectively measurable activity that is more amenable to our Protestant work ethic. It brings the corporation’s focus on quantitative performance indicators to the domain of music, displacing the usual mode of subjective enjoyment.
Comment by alsomike — January 9, 2009 @ 8:31 pm
Well, I see playing the game hasn’t killed the art of philosophizing. Just want to comment on mastery vs dilettantism. There are those who groove on one and those who groove on another; I know both; we need both in society. Occasionally we find both in the same person: Thomas Jefferson, Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Franklin. The trick is to find which one is an inherent Element of Interest for you personally. And then there’s the question of whether Usefulness is an Element of Interest for you…or can you just do it to do it as with Guitar Hero. I need to post something about that on ThePowerOfBoredom.com and incorporate some ideas from you deep thinkers in my next seminar… thanks…
Comment by Letitia Sweitzer from Atlanta — January 10, 2009 @ 3:07 am
this reminds me of the way i feel about people taking pictures on their phone at concerts. it seems to me like theres some parallel between consuming as collecting and recording pictures as collecting.
i think people should close their eyes.
Comment by James Wise from oklahoma — January 10, 2009 @ 11:43 am
I think a large part of the appeal of games is that they give us a broader range of experience. We can enjoy simulations of things that wouldn’t otherwise be possible—Guitar Hero for non-musicians who want to riff, Gran Turismo for ordinary people who want to race and Medal of Honor for those who prefer not to be in a <i>real</i> trench.
Comment by Mark from Taiwan — January 10, 2009 @ 3:01 pm
Guitar Hero and other games of its ilk are essentially reflex games like dance arcade games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8En8Rl3dYKA
There is no musical aspect just as there is little choreography in the youtube clip above.
(Consumers are encouraged to think they are being musical of course, which reinforces stereotypes and fantasies about what real musicians actually do).
Comment by Oliver Marks from San Francisco — January 10, 2009 @ 4:33 pm
I’d like to address the Guitar Hero/Rock Band thing and the dilettantism thing seperately, because the former is only an example to serve the latter, after all.
For me, GH/RB isn’t about performing or creating music. GH/RB is a pop music appreciation class that keeps score beat by beat. Except you play it with all your friends, grooving together, rocking out. It’s a party game, for crying out loud- the modern equivelent of the people at the piano at those Victorian get-togethers. They weren’t masters, they were just people who learned to tinker out a few tunes that they wouldn’t die of boredom at Cousin Les’ next party.
Ahem. Now, to the dilettantes.
My question is this: Where is the individual in all of this? Capitalism is at work, but it must work upon something… Do you think there were no slackers, in feudal eras? No people who gathered forms rather than substance? Yes, modern technology has vastly increased the way one can be a dilettante, but you neglected to give evidence that dilettantism in on the increase. Are there fewer masters of music? Are the halls of Academia empty of nerdy eggheads studying abstract and highly specific phenomena for dissertations?
Or is this really just a rant about how, in your day, people had to work a lot harder even to fake being cool?
Comment by Caroline — January 10, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
I know when I play Guitar Hero or Rock Band (I actually prefer GH World Tour), my friends, family, and myself know we are just playing a game for fun and not real instruments. Getting a few of us together to play a game has provided hours of entertainment. Even more fun when us old foggies take on our kids to see who can get a better score.
See we realize we are playing a video game, not real instruments. Although we were getting into playing the songs from the 70’s and 80’s. Nothing like getting a perfect score on “Rambling Man”.
Comment by Wayne — January 12, 2009 @ 10:26 am
I play my guitar when I want to make music. I play Rock Band when I want to have fun with my friends.
Comment by Lone — January 17, 2009 @ 3:15 pm
Rob:
If I may offer a crass analogy:
“Guitar Hero” can be likened to a blow-up doll for guys who can’t get laid.
Thinking about it in these terms lends clarity.
Comment by T.G. from Parts Unknown — January 17, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
It’s really, painfully obvious which commenters have played the game and which ones haven’t. Absolutely no one thinks that Guitar Hero or Rock Band confers skill in playing instruments except for people who haven’t played it. Most of those seem to derive some sort of bizarre wankerish pleasure about whining about it on the internet. Frankly it’s rather embarassing to witness.
It’s just a video game. I know that. Why don’t you?
Comment by MBL from Indiana — January 17, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
— PopMatters sponsor —
I guess instead of letting my kids play Mario Kart, I should buy them racing lessons, or flying lessons instead of letting them playing flight sims. Idiot.
Comment by Matt — January 17, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
Wow, we are getting all fired up about a video game!
No wonder China, and India, is is kicking our students ass in Math and Science.
Try letting go of the iPod and American Idol for a bit—or will that kill you.
Comment by T.G. from Parts Unknown — January 17, 2009 @ 3:57 pm
Yes, TG, China and India “is” kicking our “ass” because of Guitar Hero. You’ve got it. Exactly right.
Rob masturbates incoherently into his keyboard for 1500 words, he gets two or three critical comments, and we’re the ones getting all fired up. Glad I had you around to make that clear.
Comment by MBL — January 17, 2009 @ 4:04 pm
Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books… whatever, this column is just “kids these days” + a bunch of gauzy intellectual-sounding marxist jargon.
Comment by mr x from portland, OR — January 17, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
A lot of you are missing a point. Sure, play GH if you enjoy it. But to get really good at it, you have to put in a LOT of hours. (I know because my son has done this). If you put this much time and effort into learning to play a real guitar (or oboe or whatever), you would go pretty far along that path. And then you’d have something.
Comment by jimmyraybob — January 17, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
Everything MBL said.
Comment by Brian — January 17, 2009 @ 4:27 pm
Guitar Hero is not a replacement of the guitar; it’s a development of video games. It’s taken what was once primarily solitary pursuit (same as learning the guitar) and made it social and fun.
As for difficulty, it took me weeks to be able to beat a handful of songs on expert—none of them perfectly. In fact, there’s pretty much only one guy in the world who has beat the hardest song on the hardest level with a perfect score.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/arts/television/10itzk.html?ref=arts
Comment by Ray from Charlottesville — January 17, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
“Why don’t you play a real guitar” is an undying refrain in all similar screeds against music games, but it’s a very easy one to dispute. The answer is very simple: I am not a musician. I do not have the talent or inclination to spend a lot of time learning the guitar in order to pluck out a few songs or start a real band. Trying to do that would lead to the actual dilettantism that the writer rails against here. What’s wrong with playing a game that deepens someone’s appreciation of and connection to music? The question may as well be, “If you like writing about gaming so much, why don’t you design a videogame?” Obviously, it’s a little bit harder than that!
Comment by Jason from Chicago — January 17, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
jimmyraybob, and every other commenter who hasn’t actually played Guitar Hero/Rock Band:
You seem to be assuming that those of us who play GH/RB *want* to learn to play the real guitar. This is not the case. I don’t play Gran Turismo because I actually want to learn to race. I don’t play Left 4 Dead because I actually want to shoot zombies. Yes, jimmyraybob, I could put the time spent playing GH/RB into learning the guitar and then I’d actually have learned it…but I don’t want to. I could care less about playing guitar. That’s not why I play Rock Band; that’d be stupid! I might as well, as you say, learn to play the real guitar!
No, I play Rock Band because it’s a fun party activity that incorporates some skill (mostly at rhythm-keeping and ‘choreography’, at least for button-pressing) to background music we like, with a slice of karaoke as an added bonus. The game has nothing to do with the actual instrument - a fact most of us who play the game seem to grasp, but which eludes those who do not.
Comment by anonymous from KC — January 17, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
The author seems to be under the impression that as a result of the popularity of these games, people will be more likely to play them instead of learning a real instrument. Surveys of game players suggests the opposite, that the simpler introduction that these games provide actually encourages more people to start playing a real instrument.
I also think that videogames present an interesting middle-ground to the consume/master duality he has presented. These games present a challenge to be overcome, and because this challenge is difficult (obtaining near-perfect scores on the highest levels requires an enormous amount of practice and coordination), it encourages mastery. It may not be mastery of a creative art-form that can be used to entertain, but the player is undoubtedly building their skill at the game while they’re enjoying it. Compare this to simply listening to music or watching movies and the difference that interactivity makes is clear. In the case of rock band and the latest guitar hero, the players are even tasked with working together, since they’re scored as a band rather than individuals. This act of building skills as a team for enjoyment has more in common with playing hacky-sack or tenpin bowling than it does with simply consuming media.
Comment by Rob Green from Wellington, NZ — January 17, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
It’s interesting how all the people who like Guitar Hero ascribe no relationship between a real instrument and the game, and yet almost always go on to claim that there are skills associated with it that are related to playing music (rhythm, at the very least).
The fact is that games are simulations of virtual environments, and to say that you could take away all aspects of the game that resemble the environment being simulated and leave the game the same is laughable. Tell me a flight sim would be the same if there was no attempt to represent similar controls to a real plane, or that Left For Dead would be the same if instead of zombies you shot moving targets against a day-glo untextured background.
Similarly, if Guitar Hero didn’t come with a plastic guitar controller, but was operated by pressing buttons on a normal control pad, it would just be another rhythm game of the sort that can be found in free applets all over the internet. It would never have been as successful. Yet because it’s similar ENOUGH to the real thing, it enables people who “don’t want” to learn to play a RL guitar to work out their rock star fantasies with none of the costs or rewards of playing a real guitar, while telling themselves that the relationship is a healthy one because it’s “just a game”.
Comment by Doug from UK — January 17, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
Very interesting and provocative post. I’ll share my thoughts on the Guitar Hero issue:
1.) Guitar Hero is really fun to play. It is a cool video game and the people who play it, myself included are not wasting our time any more than we would be reading a book or watching a movie or playing cards.
2.) With 2 hours a day of intense, concentrated practice, an average person can master GH in a matter of weeks.
3.) With 2 hours a day of intense, concentrated practice, an average person can master the guitar in a matter of years.
4.) “Mastery” of something is not always the goal of doing that thing.
5.) Some people prefer learning to play an instrument. They will often work long and hard at mastering it. This process is often frustrating and less than a million laughs. The gradual ability you gain allows you to play songs and this is THE FUN PART. You don’t generally run out of possibilities of new and interesting things to play on your guitar, and don’t get bored with having “mastered” it.
6.) Some people prefer learning to play GH/RB. They will often work long and hard at mastering it. This process is, by and large, THE FUN PART. After this process is over, the enjoyment diminishes with the game. You have to buy a new one.
7.) The person who chooses to play guitar could be the same person who chooses to play GH, only he or she is choosing to spend his or her time differently.
8.) I believe that the person who plays video games will “go through” them. She will master (or not master) game after game, constantly choosing to consume new and interesting and amusing products. The person who plays the guitar will have learned a skill set that she can build on pretty much indefinitely.
9.) Different strokes for different folks I say. I’m glad I know how to play an instrument. I like playing GH but I personally find it a little boring after a while. I feel like I’m having fun and yes, wasting time when I play Guitar Hero. I feel like I’m having fun and <i>being productive</i> when I’m playing the piano. My real rock band is playing a show at a local bar a week from Friday and lots of my friends are showing up to see us play. Speaking only for myself, I have WAY more fun on stage that I ever have playing Guitar Hero. I feel completely justified in saying you’re missing out on a much higher level of fun not playing in a band for real. I had to suffer through years of piano lessons though, so it probably evens out.
Comment by tweez from Chicago — January 17, 2009 @ 8:07 pm
I’m confused Doug from the UK. You seem to be critical of Guitar Hero, but what is the problem with indulging in fantasies that you would never even partially fulfill otherwise? It’s not keeping people from learning a real guitar, it’s taking people who would never have bothered a little bit of the way there.
Also I must be missing something in the psychedelic example given in the column. Why does the availability of so much information/material on psychedelic music impact your ability to master it? If there were no internet you’d have even less luck because you’d have very little available and what you could find, you couldn’t be a real master because there’d be so much out there that you couldn’t even get to you, you’d remain ignorant. From my point of view, this is arguing for some sort of odd self-deception.
Personally I don’t play these games, but I watch my GF and her friends play and I like to watch them. Re the end of the column, I’m not going to equate it with guitar playing, at least not yet, the controller’s not versatile enough for that, but if anything that should be a relief. It’ll mean the people with the real guitars all REALLY want to be there and are dedicated enhancing your own quality of existence or experience.
Comment by MNPundit — January 17, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
My oldest son has put hundreds of hours into Guitar Hero and doesn’t have the slightest bit of interest in learning to play the guitar. I think it would be cool if he did, but why is it preferable to playing the game? He enjoys the challenge of the game and is becoming an aficionado of great guitarists. Should I also tell him to stop reading so much and start writing his own books?
Also, why write a 1,100-word post on dilettantism when you could have written a much more comprehensive book about the subject? Embrace your difficulty.
Comment by Rogers Cadenhead — January 17, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
There’s no reason not to put in hundreds of hours learning how to play Guitar Hero, except the skill isn’t transferable.
If you put in 100’s of hours of musical practice you can use that for the rest of your life playing all types of music on lots of different guitars.
Guitar Hero is a transient dead end. An entertaining one, but of no ultimate value to the learner….
Comment by Oliver Marks from San Francisco — January 17, 2009 @ 10:31 pm
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For pity’s sake. Why exactly is it that people who know nothing about the actual history of something feel qualified to talk about it?
Mr. Horning, Guitar Hero has nothing to do with real Guitars. It was not designed as a guitar simulator; it is a Rhythm game. I’m not going to explain the history of these games here, but if you’re actually interested in understanding this phenomenon, then look up Parappa the Rapper and Dance Dance Revolution; the pioneers of this sort of entertainment.
What’s most amusing about your post and the ones it has generated in reply from other bloggers, is how utterly pointless this philosophical hand-wringing over it is. You are wrong about the basic nature of the game, your argument is one about the basic nature of the game and how it is enjoyed, and thus, your entire argument is invalid. It is based on a false premise. You never even bothered to learn anything about it before you expressed your views, and in doing so, you’ve made your self look foolish without realizing it. It’s exactly this sort of wrong-headed, smug ignorance that leads most gamers to, at best, roll their eyes at people like you and, at worst, respond with deliberately distracting and intemperate juvenility. Most people who actually know about the subject don’t even take arguments like yours seriously enough to engage them; that’s how off-base you are. Might as well go to NASA and tell them their ballistics models are flawed because they don’t take in to account space gnomes.
And you really shouldn’t be putting your intellectual trust in people who quote Hegelians like Marx. The only thing driving history is us, and as hard as he wished, Marx never managed to break the chains which bound his philosophy to the metaphysical determinism/justification of Hegel. Its all just superstition and bias calling itself science.
Comment by Julian — January 17, 2009 @ 11:41 pm
Hmm, no love for the drum kit? It’s no substitute for a real set, with a lot less things to hit, but the drum kit will develop the limb separation that is needed to play drums over time as well as hand dexterity and even upper body strength. There’s even a third-party drum kit that works with both games and can be expanded to a full electronic kit. There’s a strong correlation between actual drum-playing skill and the ability to succeed at Rock Band or World Tour drums, as well - the people who place highest on the leaderboards tend to be drummers with actual experience, while the same definitely isn’t true of the level of success real guitarists have at the guitar component of the game.
I would say it’s pretty unlikely that any kid who genuinely wants to play the drums will opt for Rock Band instead (and I imagine the statistics will back me up, when they become available). But the game will draw kids to real drums, and they’ll actually have a lot of the fundamental skills they need to play drums well-developed by the time they start playing their first real set. I don’t really see the downside, but then again, I haven’t heard what Marx would have had to say about it yet. But that’s why you’re here, right?
I will make sure to stay off your lawn, in any case.
Comment by JoeE — January 18, 2009 @ 12:59 am
This whole point is completely asinine. I read that whole blog to see if you would say anything that would stick with me, and I did. You are right, there is something sad about our short-attention spans and our unwillingness to go out of our way even a couple of minutes if it means that we will be pressed or challenged.
But it is easily as bad for someone who doesn’t understand something to begin making sweeping generalizations about the merits of that thing they do not understand and the people who derive enjoyment from it.
To say that Guitar Hero will, by some magical slippery slope that only can see, one day be considered on par with actual artistry is staggering.
What Guitar Hero is on par with? Listening to music. Guitar Hero isn’t a threat to people playing instruments, it is a threat to people wanting to listen to their music without being able to interact with it. It is asking a bit more from music other than a passive experience.
Guitar sales have increased, and retailers are citing Guitar Hero as the reason. I think that point alone should have you reconsidering every single word you typed.
I assure you, at least for people who are not music-snobs, that when people first experience a song on Guitar Hero it opens up avenues of hearing that song that they never considered before.
The brain is working along with the song.
I suggest you play a game called Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo DS. It is a music rhythm action game, and it has a soundtrack that only included two songs that I liked before hand. After playing the game for hours and getting intimately acquainted with the songs, I looked at them in a whole new way.
I guess, I came the long way around to make the point I already made.
Guitar is not tantamount to playing an instrument, and I think the only people who don’t see that distinction are people who have not given the game a chance.
Guitar Hero is about new ways to enjoy listening to a song. Oh. And fun. But that stuff is for the capitalist pig.
Comment by Jeffrey Grubb from Columbus, OH — January 18, 2009 @ 1:25 am
I made a ton of errors in my previous post, but I’m running on two hours of sleep. So you’ll just have to fill it in.
Comment by Jeffrey Grubb from Columbus, OH — January 18, 2009 @ 1:28 am
Oliver Marks, “value” is relative. There’s no inherent value to *listening* to your favourite album either, but I’m sure you—and I—do that anyway. Why merely listen when you could be making one yourself?
Of course, things aren’t that reductionist. The appreciation of the music is important too. How is that any different than what I do in Guitar Hero or Rock Band? (or a multitude of music games over the ages. Mad Maestro had me conducting a Dvorak symphony. Should I devote myself to becoming a orchestra conductor too?)
Does the added interactivity somehow diminish that?
The appreciation of the music is the end goal. Why is that
Comment by Orta — January 18, 2009 @ 1:29 am
Horning, let’s pin you down: have you actually played Guitar Hero or Rock Band for any substantial amount of time? More key, have you socialized with people who do so?
You don’t evince any awareness of GH/RB as a cross-generational cultural phenomenon, as a form of collaborative play, as an entry point into re-discovering our musical heritage (rock classics are enjoying a resurgence of appreciation and sales by the very young, as a direct result of these games’ popularity), and anecdotally at least, as a means of inspiring a percentage of players to try taking up real instruments:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0104/p12s03-algn.html
But leave all that to one side, because your not knowing those things only undermines this essay’s thesis. I want to know why you even felt qualified to start writing it in the first place. So again, the first question I’d like to know is, have you actually played Guitar Hero or Rock Band?
Comment by Wagner James Au — January 18, 2009 @ 1:30 am
hmmmm,
it took me months to learn to play my first song with my band. (picked up the instrument from scratch)
It took me months to beat Guitar Hero II on Expert.
I play Rock Band because it’s fun. I play music because it’s fun.
Except for the drums, there is no parallel between playing Rock band and playing real instruments.
Only people who haven’t played the game could say that with a straight face.
blah
Comment by mark from Atlanta — January 18, 2009 @ 1:46 am
I haven’t read all of the comments so forgive me if I am wrong, but it doesn’t seem to me that this is a scathing critique of Guitar Hero as people seem to think. The bulk of this post is describing a society of consumers that can not or will not find the time to thoroughly devote themselves to the things they choose to consume.
Guitar Hero (which I enjoy) is just used as an example of the kind of thing that is easy to consume in small bits. Yes you could master every song and even go on to play your own music, but the reality is (most) people get their quick fix and move on to the next bite sized consumer item that crosses their path. Guitar Hero is a game that fits easily into our already busy schedules.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. I have stacks of books, magazines, games, movies, music, etc that I’ve spent more time acquiring than actually using. We use the phrase “jack of all trades, master of none”, but it’s becoming more appropriate to state that we (consumers) are becoming dabblers in all and masters of none. The real problem is not Guitar Hero or games like it. The problem lies with a consumer society that, with the internet and constant marketing, makes that next purchase/hobby/interest much easier to pursue and even easier to set aside when something else interests us. We lack the time to pursue all these interests, and instead of improving ourselves we’ve just improved our collection of stuff. Thus the appearance of Dilettantism.
Comment by Dan Wisniewski — January 18, 2009 @ 2:13 am
I love how the author pretends that the digital age has any impact on a person’s ability to master a form. The author may think that it’s impossible, considering that he’s still struggling to write comprehensibly as he nears the precipice of irrelevance. Why write about a subject that you know nothing about? Because it will cause a shitstorm, which will earn this ugly site a few additional hits. That’s all. You music writers need to stay away from gaming, because you don’t know shit.
Comment by Vincent Graves from Rationality, USA — January 18, 2009 @ 2:21 am
You should also realize that a great deal of people that are now commenting here were directed here from twitter.
www.twitter.com/shawnelliott
Comment by Jeffrey Grubb from Columbus, OH — January 18, 2009 @ 2:28 am
First things first: This post reminded me of a talk I saw on “the paradox of choice”, which definitely rang true for me, and appears not to have been mentioned yet:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200
In response to James Wise’s comment about taking photos on mobile phones at concerts: That’s something that’s been on my mind for a while. As a friend of mine pointed out, when Iggy Pop invited the audience on stage at Glastonbury a year or two ago, most of them were standing there with their mobile phones. I can understand their desire to preserve a presumably once-in-a-lifetime experience, but in the misguided attempt to capture it, aren’t they missing a significant part of it? We seem to have difficulty with the idea that not everything is a commodity that can be owned and hoarded.
I don’t mean to imply any superiority over these people; I’m forever viewing the present through the lens of the future. When I’m watching a film, I’m always thinking about what I’m going to say about it afterwards; when I’m at a concert, I’m fretting about whether I should have brought my camera, or whether I should have bought a better camera that would take better pictures, or whether there will be a video recording of the whole thing, and so on. I think it may be because I realize that I’m having difficulty engaging with the moment as it happens, and am searching for some kind of backup. I barely ever look at the photos I actually do take at concerts.
I’ve been interested in randomness and generative systems and so on for quite some time, and on first contemplating all of the above I came to the realization that perhaps that’s something I can take away from generative or random art-works, something which previously seemed like little more than a gimmick. Perhaps those things are intended to encourage us to experience something for a moment, then let it go, safe in the knowledge that there will be more experiences to come. I suppose this could be seen as running counter to the emphasis on mastery over diversity encouraged by the main post above, but there is more stuff in the world than we could see in a hundred lifetimes, so it’s folly to try to own everything.
I wouldn’t want to take this stance too far—I don’t think collections are inherently bad or stupid. I just think we perhaps need some perspective on the matter. At the very least, I do. If I’m forever collecting things for properly pursuing later, I’ll be dead before I ever actually grant anything my full attention.
It should also be noted that I only got a short way into the comments before my compulsion to make my own opinions known became too strong and my patience too short and I skipped to the end. I don’t even have the attention span to master one blog post.
In response to those who are making the familiar argument that guitar games are not attempting to replace or even truly emulate actual guitar playing, perhaps the point is that the time spent mastering that game is time misspent. Can aptitude at this game ever give the same class of satisfaction as that granted by a lifetime’s investment in an actual instrument? Are people even seeking that? I’m not yet willing to subscribe to such an argument, as it also applies to most other computer games, which I still have interest in playing.
Or perhaps the argument is that in offering any sort of interactivity with music, guitar games are automatically presenting themselves as an impoverished substitute for learning an instrument. Yes, most of us know that the two things are very different activities, but by providing the momentary thrill of a very basic level of engagement with a song, the game is encouraging us to deny ourselves the “self-realization” of truly creating music.
Apparently guitar sales have been boosted by these games. While this is encouraging, I’d be interested to know how far all these kids pursue the matter. Perhaps Guitar Hero is giving us the rock stars of tomorrow; perhaps they’re being discouraged by false expectations. I don’t know. I failed to put enough effort into my guitar lessons well before the advent of Guitar Hero, so I hardly think kids’ lack of commitment to music can be entirely attributed to those games.
Ultimately, I think the focus on Guitar Hero probably distracted from the main point of this post. It brings with it a bevy of defensive responses. To those who are decrying this because, hey, we just want to have fun with a fun game, have you tried considering the more general message (which, despite what some others have been saying, is not nonsense or incomprehensible jargon)? Reflecting on your own life and experiences, do you not feel that, at times, the sheer breadth of stuff available to us—indeed, pushed on us—distracts and discourages us from ever becoming truly acquainted with a particular thing, to the degree that it could give us the rewards and satisfaction that we’re searching in our constant flitting and collecting? Perhaps it’s not a concern for everyone else. Perhaps they’re all satisfied and sufficiently masterful in the fields they wish to pursue. All I can say for certain is that this stuff applies to my life, and is a concern of mine.
Comment by James from Surrey, England — January 18, 2009 @ 5:48 am
While I agree with your argument on a number of levels, I find the Guitar Hero analogy rather weak. I’m certain that some individuals will play Guitar Hero and never pick up a guitar and they will be fine with that. However, I personally know a number of adults who fell in love with GH and subsequently purchased a guitar. I myself have been playing guitar (and bass) for over 15 years and I derive a lot of enjoyment from Guitar Hero (and Rock Band). I find new songs I would never have considered learning on the guitar and mastering a difficult song and the rewarding feeling of accomplishment helps me to pick up my guitar and keep sloughing through something. Basically, GH helps to motivate me.
Now, I realize I may not be the norm here, but I see no scientifically valid data supporting your argument. I will concede that I also don’t have any input from children or teenagers.
What I see GH and other rhythm based games allowing for is an interest in music on a new, more personal level. They get into the songs and pick out individual notes or chords of individual music. I already do this as my ear is trained to do so, but for many people this focus with music is a new thing, something of a learned trait.
In the end, people are being exposed to music, and I for one find that to be a good thing. If their only involvement with music is to play Simon says with a plastic instrument, well, that’s their loss.
Comment by Paul from Colorado Springs, CO — January 18, 2009 @ 6:29 am
Minor point: I am a classically trained pianist. I play piano nearly every day. Playing piano is a very personal experience for me, and I will never stop playing as long as I live. I also enjoy GH and play it frequently with my sons. After mastering GH on expert, I found that my sightreading improved marginally on the piano. The chords on a piano are much more complicated than the chords on GH, but I just seem to process the input a little more quickly now. Significant? Hardly. But there you go.
Comment by Wilbur — January 18, 2009 @ 10:39 am
Me and my partner are not musically inclined. We don’t play any instruments. We have a LOT of fun playing RB together (it is, in fact, the only video game my partner enjoys playing with me) and also with friends. We know we’re not ‘a real band’. We don’t want to be ‘a real band’. We want to have some fun. Along the way, I’ve been discovering music both new and old, and it also provides an opportunity to listen to music in a way you previously haven’t (as when you are playing the bass, for example, you suddenly ‘hear’ the bass as separate from the music in a way you usually don’t). Why stuffy snobs want to tear down a leisure activity is beyond me, but is also a bit like water off a duck’s back.
In other words, this:
http://xkcd.com/359/
Comment by Destructor from Melbourne — January 18, 2009 @ 6:56 pm
All these people that came out of the woodwork to defend Guitar Hero kinda missed the point of the article. It wasn’t really meant to insult Guitar Hero so much as the consumerist mindset that has been instilled on us by society. If you think about it a bit, what really makes Guitar Hero fun? Would it be fun to someone from another time period (like from the 1400s)? Our concepts of fun are derived from our experience as people. As a gamer, it’s fun to get high scores. As a person that enjoys music and socializing, it’s fun to play Karaoke and plastic instruments with friends. But part of that is conditioned into us by marketing instilling in us this sense of the next big thing. Collecting vs mastering.
Sure you can say it takes skill to master Guitar Hero, but that’s pretty much besides the point. He used GH as an example of the issue, rather than focusing on it as the issue itself.
We’re given tons of choices and variety is rewarded by quick satisfaction. Basically we’re packaging satisfaction into a product and convincing people that it’s what they actually want, which is fine if you’re into that, but we’re not really encouraging people to pursue self-actualization.
The argument about Guitar Hero is a huge derail. The article isn’t about that at all. And posting comments arguing that you play it because it’s fun, not because you want to play music pretty much plays into the whole idea of society/marketing determining what’s fun to you.
Comment by Brendon — January 18, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
— PopMatters sponsor —
There is a threat that Consumerism & Hyperaccessibility suck us into shallow experiences?
So that is simply the latest enviromental threat individuals must evolve to overcome. Rather that than a Secret Police, starvation due to crop failure in subsistence-farming cultures, or predation by lions in the jungle.
We can’t un-invent the internet, and must evolve to make optimum use of it.
Ultimately we are components of a greater engine of Maximum Entropy Production and that is all that matters… nature didn’t create us to ‘self-realize’.
Ultimately computer games & the internet are an energy-efficient, physically safe form of entertainment.. they have their place in nature..
Comment by the_shrike from uk — January 19, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
Wow, thanks everyone! Good thing you guys heroically stepped in before Rob passed a law banning video games!
Comment by alsomike — January 20, 2009 @ 6:27 pm
Guitar Hero / Rock Band is not a music teaching tool, although I would totally buy such a tool if it were made. It is not a substitute for learning guitar, as guitar sales have actually gone up since it became popular. It is not an activity that tends to self-actualization - you’re right on that one.
Rock Band is actually a better version of karaoke. It is a social lubricant that lets people have fun even if they can’t sing, lets more people be the performers instead of the audience, lets you improve performance on an objective standard instead of relying on the opinions of drunk friends, etc.
By choosing to play the plastic guitar instead of the real one, I am making a conscious decision to maximize my enjoyment per available hour. I’m a real musician, too, but I ran the numbers and concluded that learning the guitar would involve lots more effort for less ultimate payoff than this video game.
Comment by Rob Marney — January 26, 2009 @ 9:34 am
It bothers me that people who don’t play video games assume that people who play video games believe that they are reality. Furthermore, people assume that you are wasting your time by putting effort into something that is not “real”.
How much of what we put effort into in the “real world” is all that meaningful?
At least with video games everyone can succeed to some degree. In the real world, there are far more failures.
Trying to do something that you will never succeed at - to me - is the greater waste of time.
Comment by David Wu from Seattle — February 8, 2009 @ 12:29 am