Well, anyone bragging isn't cool, but Guitar Hero and guitar are not the same thing. I know people who are awesome at guitar but suck at Rock Band, as well as the reverse. It's incomparable. Just because it has a fancy controller doesn't stop it from just being a game. I wave a wii controller around like a boxer, but that doesn't mean I can beat you up in real life.

It's not something to be proud of in public. If they act like it's a way greater accomplishment than it is, let them down gently. If they're arrogant about it, burn them. If they're complete douchnozzles who think it makes them better than other people, bludgeon them with the nearest heavy object. It's for the good of mankind.

when people brag, yes its very annoying, but if he was just bragging to his friends that also play GH then so what, he wasnt trying to 1-up a real guitar player.
but to me its like when my friends are bragging about how great they are at Halo, then i tell them "well why dont you join the military then if you are so good at shooting people in a game"
so basically yes, you are not wrong that you got annoyed about him bragging, but ive had friends that play real guitar telling me how jealous they are because i can beat raining blood easily, i dont brag about it, i just play to have fun, now if they made a Piano Hero and i heard people bragging about how they can beat Fur Elise on expert, then i might find myself in your shoes

yeah, ive been playing bass for a few years, and its fun, and im not bad at it. i also play guitar hero, im not great at it, but i found it helped my fingering a bit, i find it does require a certain amount of skill to play guitar hero really well, but its not like you can write your own songs and play in front of people, so i guess what im saying is although guitar hero takes skill and raining blood is impressive on expert, your still just a big video game nerd haha

and on a side note, in case anyone thinks im a jerk for that last comment, ogre battle 64 is my favorite game of all time, so have at it hahaha

The problem with many of the analogies given in this thread is that they neglect the artistic and creative side of both creating new and playing existing music on guitar. There is a joy in creating great music from scratch and, for me, a sense of release that is hard to describe. But, when i hear someone bragging about how good they are in Guitar Hero i feel like they are indirectly cheapening the guitar experience. Its the equivalent to how an artist would feel hearing some guy brags about his ability to paint by numbers. Truth be told, it does take some skill to paint by numbers, but it is but a pale imitation of learning how to paint and creating work yourself, even when all you are doing is copying someone elses work.

That aspect aside, Guitar Hero is insanely popular for a good reason. Its a fun game, and getting expert on some songs is pretty tough - so in itself, such an acheivement is good. However, comparing Guitar Hero skills to real guitar skills is kinda like comparing the ability to pick up girls in a dating game to picking up girls in real life.. its much more fun in real life, and the rewards for success are infintely better.

I'd love to point out that I was great at GH and RB for quite some time. Even won a tourny and got a good bit of cash. But then I got a real guitar, and I realized that the better I got at a real guitar... the more I suck at GH/RB. I still practice the same amount on both, but to make higher notes my hand just wants to much further down. Now, a few months later, I've been reduced to only four staring (Thats doing OK for those that aren't GH fluent) some songs on expert. The thing is, I play GH / RB just to feel cool and have some motivation to actually learn the damn thing, because plucks/wails of a real guitar isn't all to inspiring... Plus, it -is- a really good way to blow off steam if you manage, god forbid, to 100% a song.

I dont really understand why so many people who play guitar get so defensive about Guitar Hero. Sure, lots of people brag about 5 starring Metalica on expert, but no one really takes it all that seriously. I can play a little guitar (meaning i can play Mr. Tamborine man and thats about it) so, yes guitar nuts, i understand real guitar is harder. But thats the point, the game is just for fun, it makes you feel like a rock god for a bit, and thats it.

thisnameok:
Piano Hero

Oh god did I laugh. And as an ex-piano player I can understand that pain, too.

copiae:
The problem with many of the analogies given in this thread is that they neglect the artistic and creative side of both creating new and playing existing music on guitar. There is a joy in creating great music from scratch and, for me, a sense of release that is hard to describe. But, when i hear someone bragging about how good they are in Guitar Hero i feel like they are indirectly cheapening the guitar experience. Its the equivalent to how an artist would feel hearing some guy brags about his ability to paint by numbers. Truth be told, it does take some skill to paint by numbers, but it is but a pale imitation of learning how to paint and creating work yourself, even when all you are doing is copying someone elses work.

That aspect aside, Guitar Hero is insanely popular for a good reason. Its a fun game, and getting expert on some songs is pretty tough - so in itself, such an acheivement is good. However, comparing Guitar Hero skills to real guitar skills is kinda like comparing the ability to pick up girls in a dating game to picking up girls in real life.. its much more fun in real life, and the rewards for success are infintely better.

The analogies are a bit off but not totally. Fighting is a skill, too; one that many soldiers are proud of. Combat is an experience as well; one that some must feel cheapened by some teenager bragging about his 1337 Halo 5ki11z. They'd still be prickish to shove a gun into an average FPS player's hand and say "dazzle me".
An analogy that is closer is if a published novelist were angered by a child's fumbling sentences, or by a teenager writing fan-fiction. It's understandable but he's still getting angry for no good reason. His skills are no worse and their's are no greater. Even the child and the teenager would admit the author is better but they didn't set out to write literature.

The only time I find it truly irritating is when they claim that it's harder than real guitar, and that it takes more skill. Because it really doesn't.

Darth Mobius:

The Franco:
Is it considered arrogant and/or rude to chastise someone for bragging about being skilled at guitar hero, when you are proficient at the real guitar? I get especially riled up when people brag about playing "raining blood" on expert when I've known how to play the song for 3 years now, and I kinda want to see if I was making more of an ass out of myself than usual.

I can't play it on Guitar Hero or a real Guitar.... So I agree. That is like someone kicking my ass at Gran Turismo (Cold day in hell...) And then saying that they are a better driver, even though they don't have a license... I can do stuff in an underpowered 1990 Mazda pickup that some streetracers can't do in their souped-up rice racers. Anyone ever drifted an 80 horsepower truck before? I thought not.

That is so cool I just might faint at the sheer awesome. Could you give me driving lessons?

copiae:
The problem with many of the analogies given in this thread is that they neglect the artistic and creative side of both creating new and playing existing music on guitar. There is a joy in creating great music from scratch and, for me, a sense of release that is hard to describe. But, when i hear someone bragging about how good they are in Guitar Hero i feel like they are indirectly cheapening the guitar experience. Its the equivalent to how an artist would feel hearing some guy brags about his ability to paint by numbers. Truth be told, it does take some skill to paint by numbers, but it is but a pale imitation of learning how to paint and creating work yourself, even when all you are doing is copying someone elses work.

actually the analogies are spot on that we're bringing up. just because it has nothing to do with the "creative aspect" of playing a guitar, it has parallels to the subject, such as driving a car at high speeds (yeah a bit different than normal driving) and playing a racing game, using athletic skill to play basketball/football and playing nba2kX/madden 2kX, boxing/mma skills vs playing fight night/those god awful ufc games, using a sniper rifle to kill a real person vs playing a sniper in the fps du jour

an analogy is a simple comparison for things that are similar but not identical, it's used to put an idea across so someone can grasp a concept better than they already are. such as comparing cpu speed and ram in a computer to horsepower and torque in a car, after doing that most ppl understand what the role of the cpu and ram are in a pc.

now as for guitarists and musicians, yeah i have played several instruments over the years, i'm also a HUGE music fan (i probly have more cds and forgotten more about music and it's intricacies than a lot of the "musicians" on here know) but i don't think that playing a real guitar has ANYTHING to do with playing guitar hero or rock band, the ONLY two parts of rock band that are anyway close to the real thing is drums and singing, more so on the singning part

like seriously do you see ANY pro-athletes, military personnel (both active and retired/inactive), race car drivers complaining about ppl playing games in their respective fields and saying how awesome they are at the job?

the answer is NO, so that means any guitarist complaining about someone bragging about how good they are at game is just a douche

the ONLY thing you need for guitar hero/rock band is just the ability to count the 8 steps of death in a song, yes ALL songs can be broken down into 8 steps, dj's use it to mix, and 4/4 time is just 2 bars to give you the 8 count

so seriously get a freaking life and stop being a douche cause someone is bragging about being good at a game

cleverlymadeup:

copiae:
The problem with many of the analogies given in this thread is that they neglect the artistic and creative side of both creating new and playing existing music on guitar. There is a joy in creating great music from scratch and, for me, a sense of release that is hard to describe. But, when i hear someone bragging about how good they are in Guitar Hero i feel like they are indirectly cheapening the guitar experience. Its the equivalent to how an artist would feel hearing some guy brags about his ability to paint by numbers. Truth be told, it does take some skill to paint by numbers, but it is but a pale imitation of learning how to paint and creating work yourself, even when all you are doing is copying someone elses work.

actually the analogies are spot on that we're bringing up. just because it has nothing to do with the "creative aspect" of playing a guitar, it has parallels to the subject, such as driving a car at high speeds (yeah a bit different than normal driving) and playing a racing game, using athletic skill to play basketball/football and playing nba2kX/madden 2kX, boxing/mma skills vs playing fight night/those god awful ufc games, using a sniper rifle to kill a real person vs playing a sniper in the fps du jour

an analogy is a simple comparison for things that are similar but not identical, it's used to put an idea across so someone can grasp a concept better than they already are. such as comparing cpu speed and ram in a computer to horsepower and torque in a car, after doing that most ppl understand what the role of the cpu and ram are in a pc.

now as for guitarists and musicians, yeah i have played several instruments over the years, i'm also a HUGE music fan (i probly have more cds and forgotten more about music and it's intricacies than a lot of the "musicians" on here know) but i don't think that playing a real guitar has ANYTHING to do with playing guitar hero or rock band, the ONLY two parts of rock band that are anyway close to the real thing is drums and singing, more so on the singning part

like seriously do you see ANY pro-athletes, military personnel (both active and retired/inactive), race car drivers complaining about ppl playing games in their respective fields and saying how awesome they are at the job?

the answer is NO, so that means any guitarist complaining about someone bragging about how good they are at game is just a douche

the ONLY thing you need for guitar hero/rock band is just the ability to count the 8 steps of death in a song, yes ALL songs can be broken down into 8 steps, dj's use it to mix, and 4/4 time is just 2 bars to give you the 8 count

so seriously get a freaking life and stop being a douche cause someone is bragging about being good at a game

QFT. And also, what are the 8 steps of death?

Saskwach:

QFT. And also, what are the 8 steps of death?

it's a term dj use when mixing songs, all songs can be broken into 8 beat counts or 2 bars of 4/4 signature. it makes things easier to mix and count so you can align the diffrent beats when mixing

most major notes and events (such as samples and start of vocals) in any song happen on the 1 and 5 beats, minor stuff in between those.

electronic is the best example of it, voodoo people by the prodigy is a good example of a song that follows it pretty well, the first drum beat is a 1 count and go from there, apollo 440 is another good example of a band that follows it to a tee, then again they are dj's

but this can easily be transported to other forms of music, just find the rhythm and you can find the 8 count. mind you there are a few exceptions to the rule as well and a couple caveats but all songs with a rhythm of some form can be mixed with any other piece of music.

it's not as hard as you'd think just remember what georege clinton said "free your mind and your ass will follow"

Wow, what a post, cleverlymadeup. Analogies are certainly intended to help understanding (and thank you so much for explaining that, truthfully i was a bit mystified about the whole thing), but a bad analogy fosters bad understanding of the concept at hand. Your analogy of cpu/ram in a computer to power/torque in a car is a bad one, for instance. In a car, power roughly equals revs x torque. More torque generally equals more power. In a computer, CPU speed and RAM (speed? quantity? i'm guessing speed) are linked in the sense that if RAM speed doesn't equal or exceed CPU speed then there is a bottleneck, otherwise there is not.. and these days, much of this problem has been circumvented via introducing caches and intelligent algortithms. RAM quantity isn't really relevant to CPU speed at all, as long as there is some. You give this analogy to someone, and there is a good chance they walk away thinking that more RAM (speed? quantity?) equals a proportionally faster CPU speed.. a misguided conclusion.

And thats the thing. Many of the analogies here have reduced guitar playing to just something mechanical and i am saying that creating music is more than just moving your fingers at the right moment. Its surprising that you are arguing this actually, considering that you have "forgotten more about music and its intricacies than most 'musicians' know".. Also, thanks for arguing with a point i wasn't making. Like i said earlier, getting expert on some songs in guitar hero is tough, and a good achievement. I do think that such an achievement pales in comparison to being able to actually play the song, but unless they are equating real guitar skills to guitar hero skills, rubbing that fact in someones face is poor form.

The Franco:
Is it considered arrogant and/or rude to chastise someone for bragging about being skilled at guitar hero, when you are proficient at the real guitar? I get especially riled up when people brag about playing "raining blood" on expert when I've known how to play the song for 3 years now, and I kinda want to see if I was making more of an ass out of myself than usual.

I don't find it rude if GH players think they're the 'leet shizzle' because they can 5 star a song. You're supposed to play games for fun, not to act tough, especially when it's only a game-surrogate to the real alternative. The only time I actually act tough at GH3, is when I'm holding a tiny party, since it's a damn party game. And they're impressed when I complete a song on Expert. I'm not even that good at all, but then again, I don't WANT to be the best and act all arrogant. I just want to have fun, as do all my visitors. Besides, everybody kicks my ass at SingStar anyways :p

copiae:
Wow, what a post, cleverlymadeup. Analogies are certainly intended to help understanding (and thank you so much for explaining that, truthfully i was a bit mystified about the whole thing), but a bad analogy fosters bad understanding of the concept at hand. Your analogy of cpu/ram in a computer to power/torque in a car is a bad one, for instance. In a car, power roughly equals revs x torque. More torque generally equals more power. In a computer, CPU speed and RAM (speed? quantity? i'm guessing speed) are linked in the sense that if RAM speed doesn't equal or exceed CPU speed then there is a bottleneck, otherwise there is not.. and these days, much of this problem has been circumvented via introducing caches and intelligent algortithms. RAM quantity isn't really relevant to CPU speed at all, as long as there is some. You give this analogy to someone, and there is a good chance they walk away thinking that more RAM (speed? quantity?) equals a proportionally faster CPU speed.. a misguided conclusion.

ok sorry but you're wrong and let me explain

1. many ppl draw that analogy of car's horsepower and torque to a computers cpu and ram, i wasn't the first, try reading some media, cpu is often called horsepower
2. it is 100% correct and draws the exact same parallel
3. most ppl, including yourself as you've demonstrated in your post, don't know the roll either horsepower/torque and cpu/ram play in their respective worlds

let me explain #3 a bit more

in a car you can have 700 hp and 100 Ft/lb torque, yes you will have a powerful roaring engine but it won't have a lot of guts to it and you won't go very fast because the torque is bottlenecking it

much like a computer with a 5GHz chip and 256 megs of ram, yeah it will be fast but it won't be anywhere near it's potential because it's being bottlenecked by the ram

now you take a car that has 319 Hp and 330 Ft/lb torque against that 700 hp car and the "faster" car by horsepower alone will be smoked pretty bad

same goes for a 2.5 GHz pc with 2gigs of ram will out perform that 5GHz pc

geez looks like my analogies line up, which means it was a correct analogy :)

now as for your "playing guitar being art" arguement, no it's not art, it's imitation. if you write your own songs, THAT is art, if you play raining blood by slayer on your guitar, that's NOT art, that's just playing something someone else created

to use an art parallel it's like saying you're a painter cause you traced over the lines of Andy Warhol's campbell soup can painting and then coloured it in.

cleverlymadeup:
now as for your "playing guitar being art" arguement, no it's not art, it's imitation. if you write your own songs, THAT is art, if you play raining blood by slayer on your guitar, that's NOT art, that's just playing something someone else created

You know, this is a good point. Someone, I forget who, once said something to the effect of (specific isn't it?) "Creating music is artistic, playing music is technical." Yes there's room for creative expression but that's pretty slight compared to composition and no one who plays GH is kidding themselves that they're doing anything other than pressing the buttons on time. They know that playing their little controller is a technical exercise of hand-eye coordination, just like guitar playing is to a much greater level.

lol mate, i've demonstrating a lack of understanding of power/torque and cpu/ram? Perhaps you should first not mix up the concepts of computer speed and CPU speed (yes, they are two very different things: one can benefit from more RAM, and the other one doesnt) and revisit your understanding of the power/torque relationship. Here's a nice article explaining it, but broadly, an engine with a lot of power and low torque has to be seriously thrashed to get peak output, whereas an engine with relatively less power but more torque doesn't.. The 700hp/100ft/lb engine specs you've given would likely have some serious real-world problems based on the crazy-high RPM's it would have to generate (vibration, sucking in enough air, etc) and this is why such figures are rare in engine creation. In theory though.. the 700/100 car would beat the 319/330 car, assuming it could get to the crazy-high RPM it needs to get those kind of power figures.

At any rate, the topic at hand is on guitar hero vs playing guitar. The point i'm making is not and has never been that playing all guitar is art. It's that there is a creative and artistic side to playing the guitar, and this is why musical pieces always sound a little different when played by different people. Also, even when you are just copying someone elses stuff, you are still creating music, a factor thats easy to overlook these days.

How do you do the 8 steps of death if the songs in 9/8? =P

copiae:

At any rate, the topic at hand is on guitar hero vs playing guitar. The point i'm making is not and has never been that playing all guitar is art. It's that there is a creative and artistic side to playing the guitar, and this is why musical pieces always sound a little different when played by different people. Also, even when you are just copying someone elses stuff, you are still creating music, a factor thats easy to overlook these days.

actually sounding different when other ppl play a song has a few factors

how the instrument is tuned
how you play the notes, i can play smells like teen spirit a couple different ways
what instruments are being used, including brand a fender strat and a gibson les paul have different sounds
what amp is being used
what effects pedals are being used
also if the person has their own playing style, this last one usually comes after years of playing and writing your own songs

a perfect example of that is stanley clarke playing silly putty and the primus cover of it, i've played them side by side and you can faintly hear the differences cause les tried to play it exactly like stanley, which is no small feat, but both of them use the same basses and both are extremely talented

same goes for jimi hendrix and stevie ray vaughn with voodoo chile, both are similar but both are a bit different

as for the hp/torque and cpu/ram comparison it's not exactly the same, it just has the same fundamentals behind it. and yes the pc with the faster processor but less ram than one that has similar amounts of cpu/ram could possibly beat it as well given the right conditions. whic just further proves my analogy correct

zen5887:
How do you do the 8 steps of death if the songs in 9/8? =P

you still can, other time signatures are harder, armand van helden's witch doctor famously has a triple beat, so it has 9 beats to the normal 8 and makes life really interesting when trying to mix but it is possible

So, what I gather from the first post...

1) You may not claim to be good at Mike Tyson's Punch Out in front of somebody who is a trained boxer.

2) You cannot talk about a cool racing game you've played in front of somebody with a valid driver's license.

3) You cannot claim to be good at a game like Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Smash Brothers, etc etc, because somebody may have been in a real fight before, and won.

4) You are no longer allowed to have fun playing The Sims, because the person next to you does just about everything you can do in the game, but in real life.

5) You are no longer allowed to talk about any of your achievements in Cooking Mama, Trauma Centre, Phoenix Wright, Call of Duty, or Grand Theft Auto, because you're not a real chef, surgeon, lawyer, soldier and/or criminal, respectively.

6) I don't care how good you are at Mario Brothers, because I eat REAL mushrooms.

7) You cannot enjoy playing Madden, NHL, NBA or FIFA games. I mean, why don't you go out and play in the REAL NFL, NHL, NBA, etc etc etc?

With those rules in mind, you can take just about anybody down a few pegs in order to boost your own ego by completely missing the point, but hey, if you're going to be a pompous ass, you don't care about any of that, do you?

How I see it is there is two ways it could happen

#1: he says "Hey guys! I can play Raining Blood on Expert in GH" if you put him down for that than you were being an asshole

#2: he says "I'm so good at GH I can play Raining Blood on expert, I bet I would be able to do it perfect on a real guitar now!" in this case it was him who was being an asshole

Of course the wording of these could vary quite a bit.

In my humble opinion, I think that the two are entirely different skills. Matching colors on a plastic guitar is nothing like actually playing a guitar. If it was, I'd be in a band already.

The only time it's appropriate to say "oh yeah, well I can play that on a real guitar" is when the person in question playing Guitar Hero is acting totally smug, and not realizing they're just clicking plastic buttons.