Videogames might get constantly ragged on for not really teaching you how to play music, but SouthPeak Games’ Music on the DS does exactly that, teaching you everything from the basics to letting you write your own compositions.
Screw you, Jimmy Page. Along with countless other professional musicians, Page has derided the popularity of games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band by saying they compare poorly to actually playing real instruments and are detrimental to musical education these days.
It’s a silly argument for a number of reasons, but it seems especially refutable now that there actually is a videogame designed to teach you about and how to play music in an authentic way. Music, published by SouthPeak Games, is designed by Shiro Tsuji, a composer and teacher who designed simple methods for anyone to learn music and has translated his book “Anybody Can Read Music,” into this videogame.
Like most educational games these days, Music teaches players through mini-games, quizzes and easy-to-understand lessons. You pass through 18 lessons and study 65 compositions, eventually getting to the point where you are apparently good enough to write your own pieces.
“[Music] transforms concepts that have been traditionally difficult into a format everyone can understand,” Richard Iggo of SouthPeak said. “It’s amazing to see someone start out learning the basics and end up creating their own compositions.”
SouthPeak boasts that by the end, players will now the difference between “an adagio and an aria,” which isn’t exactly something that takes more than a couple Wikipedia searches. I’m not sure how thorough the education Music provides is, but it’s good to know that the game actually exists, if only as it serves as a rebuttal to jerks like Jimmy Page. Okay, I take back that part, and the earlier “screw you.” The dude wrote “Kashmir.” I can’t say anything bad about him.
