Why My Father Is Wrong: A Defense of Guitar Hero

Why My Father Is Wrong: A Defense of Guitar Hero(whatever.scalzi.com)

33 points by Tomte 2 hours ago | 15 comments

Even better: pick up Rocksmith, or one of the many clones being built by people using <ghasp> LLMs, and learn to play a real guitar.

I did, and I now play bass in a hardrock/metall band. One of my guitarist started with guitar hero, moved on to Rocksmith, and here we are. Band practice tonight for a gig at one of the best little music venues in Stockholm, Sweden next month. (Which I am arranging.) Good things come from doing fun things.

happymellon 42 minutes ago | |

Oh, is Rocksmith now using LLMs?

It's been around since 2011 so for the majority of its life its not been that.

poloniculmov 34 minutes ago | | |

no, there's slopsmith, which is a vibe-coded alternative that's been embraced by the rocksmith community. It's turning into what everybody hoped Rocksmith+ will be.

wodenokoto 1 hour ago | |

Went to the website and I still don't really understand what it is, other than "learn to play the guitar/bass/keyboard for free", which can be a million things.

I assume you use a real instrument to play the game, but how? Do I connect my guitar to my PC? How? If not, how can it give me feedback? If I don't use a real instrument, then what?

happymellon 41 minutes ago | | |

Rocksmith requires a dongle to connect your guitar to the USB.

Hamuko 25 minutes ago | | |

>I assume you use a real instrument to play the game, but how? Do I connect my guitar to my PC?

I use Yousician on my Mac to learn the guitar and the bass, and you just connect your instrument via an audio interface to the computer, and it gets your playing from that. I use a fourth-generation Scarlett Solo as my interface. I presume the Rocksmith dongle is ultimately just an audio interface too. Probably a pretty cheap one too.

Yokolos 22 minutes ago | |

Not everybody wants to learn to play a real guitar though. I play Guitar Hero for fun and entertainment as she clearly states in her post. It's literally just a game and it never pretends to be a way to learn how to play a real guitar. And when I've played it for a few weeks, I can put it down and play another game from my massive collection without the guilt associated with buying a guitar and the USB interface needed for Rocksmith and feeling like I've abandoned yet another hobby. Guitar Hero is guilt-free fun. That's valuable in itself.

KingFelix 1 hour ago | |

Sweet!!! Go shred!!! post some music!

hrunt 1 hour ago |

These two articles remind me of the old Point/Counterpoint from the Onion[0]. I feel like someone wrote the first article so they could write the second as a bit of absurdity.

[0]https://theonion.com/opinion/point-counterpoint/

Ouman 40 minutes ago |

A lot of the tension around generative AI comes from the fact that the abstraction layer is often presented as interchangeable with the underlying craft

rcleveng 1 hour ago |

I loved guitar hero.

Back before my interview with Google, I was super nervous, so I played guitar hero for a few hours in the morning before going down to Mountain View for the interview.

It worked, I needed something to take my mind off of the CLR algo book I had been cramming to re-remember things forgotten. Fun times!

zirkonit 1 hour ago |

At some point, the rabid anti-generative AI crowd becomes tiring. This is extremely masturbatory and very intellectually lazy piece of writing whose only purpose is to raise cheers from the same echo chamber an author is in.

otabdeveloper4 34 minutes ago | |

It's a reaction. Nobody would be "anti-AI" if AI wasn't being shoved into everything while at the same time shaming you like you're stupid for not enjoying literal slop.

foo12bar 24 minutes ago | | |

Do you even fucking know what "literal" means?