Guitar Hero

(a.k.a. the final forthcoming! column for JazzTimes)

John Scofield was onstage with his Ibanez at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, a cavernous basement in Times Square, sounding pithy and resourceful. He parsed his solos into sharply asymmetrical phrases, often smearing or scrunching a note for emphasis. At times he set off an electronic sampler, building a riff in layers. He was working at his usual high level; there was plenty to absorb. So why was I thinking, even for the briefest instant, about a Scofield edition of Guitar Hero?

You’ve heard of Guitar Hero, right? And its arch competitor, Rock Band? If you haven’t, that probably means you have no close family members between the ages of 5 and, let’s say, 25. Or it might mean that said family members are bookish, Amish or otherwise dead serious about their avoidance of modern pop culture. (It happens. At 14, I was way into Harry James.) But the phenomenal success of these home-console video games -- Guitar Hero alone has sold more than 25 million units worldwide -- is changing the music business on virtually every front. So in recent months I’ve often wondered about its implications for jazz. I’ve also caught myself fretting, so to speak, about the potential lack of implications, and what that could portend.

My own exposure to this juggernaut has been limited but memorable. Some months ago I played Rock Band for the first time at a cousin’s house, with a gang that included two teenagers (a bassist and drummer in their high school jazz bands, for what it’s worth) and a few relatives over 40 (some with professional musical experience). Some of us were clutching plastic mockups of Fender Stratocasters, with buttons instead of strings; the rest took turns with a microphone and an electronic drum kit. Our cues appeared on the TV screen as a scrolling series of “notes,” arranged to vaguely resemble guitar tablature. Together we played tunes by Cheap Trick, Beck and Fleetwood Mac.

It was contagious, addictive fun -- and musically engaging, strange as that may seem. While we weren’t playing real instruments or producing actual music, our interface with the game encouraged a kind of close listening. I began to understand the statistic, cited in a Brown University study, that more than 75 percent of Guitar Hero gamers end up buying songs they’ve heard in the game. Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt, as the history of popular music proves. And there’s now a generation of budding music fans poring over power riffs with Talmudic focus, which explains why bands like Aerosmith and Metallica have licensed their catalogs (and likenesses; see Fig. A below) for use in special editions of the game. “The way things are morphing, if you don’t have your music in a game, you’re going to struggle,” Metallica’s frontman, James Hetfield, told Ben Sisario of the New York Times. “That’s where most of it’s getting sold.”

Jazz partisans have reason to ignore this whole phenomenon, and many of us are. But at what cost, I wonder? If video game consoles are fast evolving into a primary means of music distribution -- hardly a preposterous idea, given the dwindling of record stores and even big-box retailers -- our ignorance bespeaks acquiescence. Record sales for jazz are dismal enough. Should someone be pushing for one Scofield tune among the hair-metal hits? Should we be clamoring for version 1.0 of Saxophone Colossus? Does the Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Long organization know how much action there is to be had?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the kids weaned on these games are also picking up real instruments. And while competency with a controller has little to do with actual guitar playing, the games are surely improving rhythmic standards in living rooms across the land. Playing drums at the expert setting in Rock Band was disconcertingly like playing the exact drum part in any given song: “Today” by Smashing Pumpkins, say. (Have you ever really studied Jimmy Chamberlin's syncopations in that tune? Me neither, until I found myself having to match them precisely.) Ages ago I learned how to play drums partly by playing to records. This was less tactile but in some ways more engaging. Apparently Hetfield, of Metallica, shares this opinion. “It’s pretty much the same thing as if Lars was playing along,” he said, invoking the band's drummer, Lars Ulrich. “With the guitar, you’re pushing buttons.” (See Fig. B) 

Every once in a while I daydream about what a jazz version of the game would be like. Instead of corseted leather outfits and Aqua Net hairdos, the onscreen characters would sport goatees and porkpie hats. Strong performances would elicit not a hackneyed exclamation (“You ROCK!!”) but some clichéd beatnik mutterings (“Yeah, man”). Rather than a hyperactive anthem by an obscure British speed-freak band, the highest level of difficulty would involve a romp through the Thelonious Monk tune “Brilliant Corners.”

Of course even in my most fancifully facetious mood, I can’t get past the fact that Guitar Hero and Rock Band rely on repetition, while jazz needs variation. Most every jazz musician worth his or her salt can recall hours of painstaking ear training and transcription, but that’s just a means to an end. You can master the fingering and intonation of John Coltrane’s solo on “Countdown,” but until you fashion your own path through the labyrinth, you’re doing the work of an automaton. (I’ve heard that charge leveled at a few musicians, but that’s another story.) Then there’s the matter of swing, a basic currency of jazz’s musical economy; given that it can’t even be notated, how could it possibly be translated into code? For now, I’d guess that even our most advanced computing technology isn’t up to the task of Jam Session: The Game.

This should be a matter of some reassurance in the jazz world, even if it reminds us of the niche dimensions of our taste. What happens on the bandstand is still something irreducible and inexact. I doubt that it’ll ever be reproduced in moving pixels. But I do believe that out of the billion or more alumni that the academies of Rock Band and Guitar Hero are going to produce, some portion will come away with an idea of active listening. Where jazz sits in the culture, going forward, will partly depend on whether some of them make the jump. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about how to extend a hand.

Comments

[Alex W. Rodriguez]

I first played Rock Band with my little brother about a year ago and also really enjoyed it. I love your Jam Session: The Game fantasy, but I think you're right that digital technology isn't quite up to the standard, so to speak, for jazz. Of course, one of the biggest challenges facing jazz is that it is a primarily acoustic music in an increasingly digital media world.
Still, that didn't stop them from making the iBone ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGqFk2cEoYc

[Vikram Devasthali]

"Jam Session: The Game" might not be so far out of reach; I was quite surprised at the rhythmic sophistication of Guitar Hero the first time I played it. Such a game might not inspire budding gamer/musicians to "fashion their own path out of the labyrinth," but then many who strive for originality perish within its walls.

Wouldn't it be great if someone developed a version of Guitar Hero that used an actual guitar as a controller? We'd have an entire generation of kids who could shred; and particularly precise performances could be rewarded--ala "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater"--with access to videos of real musicians interacting creatively and finding the notes between the computer's neat subdivisions.

Technology is our friend. Until the computers become self-aware and destroy us. At a jam session, I mean.

[Andrew Durkin]

I've never played Guitar Hero or Rock Band (I know, I know), but a while back I too mused about the possibility of a jazz version of the game (for totally selfish reasons) -- but was told by very authoritative folks that it would be awkward at best. Down in the comments here.

I do think jazz musicians / composers should be open to the possibilities afforded by the video game world (someone like Chris Schlarb has the right idea -- starting with video game soundtracks). It's an exciting moment, because it feels like there are some untapped possibilities...

[David Adler]

How about the moment in South Park's Guitar Hero episode, when the kids are "playing" Carry On Wayward Son, and Stan's father breaks out his Les Paul and starts playing the song for real, exactly dead-on.

The kids stop their game and look at him with a mixture of pity and disgust. Cartman snipes: "Playing guitar is for old people."

[Sara]

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Betty

http://electricguitarhowtoplay.net

[susan]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Susan

http://onlinegamesforgirls.net