Can guitar hero help you play?
On November 1, 2009, Mr. Paul Walters made an interesting post on the New York Times website. Mr. Walters apparently is a lifelong classical vocalist, and he's known around here more because he's a longtime performer on the Chapman Stick.
Apparently his 12-year-old son began playing RockBand -- a type of game with a controller that seems to deliver the visceral sensation of playing music -- and Mr. Walters bought that was kind of a waste of time, although Mr. Walters and his wife noticed that the sun became rather skillful at hearing the intertwining musical parts of the songs he is performing inside the game.
Then, when the son began to take lessons on Stick, the son was rather quickly able to realize both independence and interdependence of all the fingers on both hands. This is one of the trickiest aspects of playing piano or playing Mobius Megatar or other tapping instruments, although as always it becomes easier with practice and a good learning method.
Mr. Walters concludes, "as much as I personally despise such gaming devices, I have come to appreciate their use as a learning and developmental tool."
Wow! Now if we could only learn karate by watching action movies ...
Filed under: Chapman Stick, miscellaneous