by Smith Smith

Created on: February 16, 2009

It was a year that saw hurricanes in the Americas, bombings in Bali, riots in Sydney, the launch of YouTube and the death of the pope. However, one of the most enduring events of 2005, (it seems), was the release of Guitar Hero, a phenomenon that has become the Rubik's Cube of the twenty-first century.

The game - with its iconic, guitar-shaped controllers - has permanently established itself alongside the other perennial leisure-time legends: somewhere between karaoke for the tone-deaf and rhythmically-uncoordinated, and pool or darts as an activity to occupy you while drinking.

But how has Guitar Hero affected the object that it mimics?-that diverse and expressive instrument, whose students spend painful months just toughening the tips of their fingers before they can play a single note on it? I believe Guitar Hero playing alone will not make you a guitarist; you do need to put in the hard yards. But, for committed students of guitar, I believe the video game may provide some benefits.

One way in which the game has benefited the instrument is that Guitar Hero has brought on the return to popularity of the guitar-and on a larger scale, the revival of the once-revered ideals of rock 'n' roll. But aside from this wider cultural influence, some specific similarities between playing Guitar Hero and playing the guitar exist, which, I believe, are beneficial to a genuine budding guitarist. I will outline some of these below.

Let me begin by saying that playing the guitar is a different and infinitely more challenging and fulfilling experience to playing Guitar Hero.

On the most part, the similarities in technique between Guitar Hero and guitar are obscure-they can be likened to the similarities in technique between properly filleting a fish and smashing a fish with an axe. Nevertheless, I believe Guitar Hero can, in fact, improve a guitarists' technical skills in several ways.

One secret that skilled real-world guitarists discover is "don't waste any energy," meaning that fingers should move as little as possible from the fret-board and, even if duck-walking across the stage with fingers flying, hands and arms should remain as still as possible. This applies also to Guitar Hero, and this skill may be learned playing the video game.

Furthermore, the video game version of the guitar offers many opportunities to perform highly stylised "hammer-ons" and "pull-offs," to use the ring finger and pinky, and to use many combinations of the other fingers; all of which are actions

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