Gamers Become Stars with Rock Band or Guitar Hero

Though Brian Bell, an instructor at Houston drum shop Percussion Center, hasn't played Rock Band, he disagrees with Rigopulos. "I can tell from my students that that's not true," he says. "They tell me that the foot pedal is different, and that three-pad setup doesn't sound like a real drum set to me. Also, the mother of one of my students tells me that her son plays wild and out of control on Rock Band, so I think it could be teaching some bad ­habits."

For Law-Yone, a pianist in real life, the process has worked in reverse. She cross-trains, using her real music piano background to enhance her virtual guitar playing. "If I have a hard time picking up the rhythm of a song on Guitar Hero, I'll go over to the piano and try to figure it on the keyboard," she says. "Of course, you have to hit a piano harder than a controller, so I know if I can do it on the piano, it will be easier on the game."
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"Real guitars are for old people."

— Eric Cartman of South Park

Or are they?

Rockin' Robin's Arnold is not as opposed to these games as he might sound. Guitar Hero specifically has sparked a sales boom at his shop. "They wanna graduate out of the game and get a real guitar, so it is kind of helpful for us. We get kids in here all the time wanting Gibson Les Paul Sunbursts, because that's the guitar in the game." (Actually, there are numerous Gibson models in the game, thanks to their canny endorsement deal. Wisely, Gibson's rival guitar-maker Fender inked a similar deal with Rock Band.) "I also had some of the [Guitar Hero] songbooks in here, and they flew out of here."

Arnold also says the kids are savvier about music than they were pre-Guitar Hero. "First of all, these kids have a knowledge of classic rock, like they've been digging through their dad's records, plus they know what a Les Paul Sunburst is," he says.

People are forming Rock Band combos that regularly meet for pseudo-gigs. Fans of bands with songs on the games now bring their controllers to shows for the guitarists to autograph. Subtly, it changes the way its players experience music in their lives. "I'm gonna see the Foo Fighters next week, and I always liked listening to the CDs, but now I am really gonna watch Dave Grohl play the guitar," says Edwards, one of the Rock Band players at Lucky's.

Few people under 25 bother with the radio, so for many, video game soundtracks have filled the vacuum. What's more, there's a difference in intensity between hearing a song through your computer, iPod speakers, or on the radio and experiencing it in an interactive music game. Pretending to play a song, especially along with or in front of your friends, is a much more visceral experience.

Record companies have taken notice. Labels love the fact that these games have a limited number of songs on the soundtracks and that players will hear each one many times over the duration of their interest in the game.

And so now there is a bit of a scramble to land songs on these soundtracks. It wasn't always such: On Guitar Hero I, the soundtrack was almost entirely composed of sound-alike recordings of famous (and many not-so-famous) songs, with a few utterly obscure bonus tracks coming from the bands of the game's programmers and their friends.

Since that game was such a success, the labels have been much keener to allow the use of master recordings. On Guitar Hero III, more than 50 of the 71 songs on the game are the originals, and even the notoriously protective and expensive Rolling Stones licensed a master to Rock Band.

Music retail is likewise getting aboard. iTunes has cobbled together 75 of the songs from each of the games in one of its "Essentials" playlists, so fans can find and download most of the songs with ease. Playable versions of songs are also available — for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 users, Rock Band offers new music for download every week.

And many of them have. In eight weeks, more than two-and-a-half-million songs were sold for use on Rock Band, and some of the charts have been host to a surreal invasion of old guitar rock.

Unless they have been specifically re-released to radio, as Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was in the wake of Wayne's World in 1992, Billboard doesn't allow old songs to recur on their "bricks and mortar" sales chart.