You hold a guitar-shaped controller which has 5 colored buttons on the neck. There is a single bar which you strum. There is also a "whammy" bar for extra points. You select a song, and a series of colored dots travels down an imaginary fret board on your TV. You press the corresponding colored dot at the same time as the dot on your TV screen reaches the bottom of its travel.
I watched several of my fellow SP residents play a few songs. They did OK. I figured I would have no problem since I've been playing guitar for 30 years, and know all the songs. Wrong. If there was a real guitar with which you played the actual notes, I would clean-up everytime. But that's not what this game is about. It's a total eye-hand thing. I found the game to be just enough out-of-sync with the music to make it nearly impossible for an actual guitar player to be comfortable trying to score points. My guitar student / friend Ethan did very well and was scoring serious style points. To his credit, he left the scene and went to practice with a real guitar.
Speaking of playing real guitars...I got together with "the hard rock band" on Sunday. It is really surprising how much musical talent is on-station this year. Everyone who showed-up to the hard rock band jam session has a lot of ability. Now we need to figure out what we want to play.
One of our previous summer residents left his $200 guitar here until he gets back in November. For $200, this is a pretty nice axe. I played so much on Sunday, that I actually got blisters under my callouses.
A friend of mine suggested I change my computer desktop background from a Triumph Rocket, which was causing me serious motorcycle withdrawls, to something else. I am now lusting for a Paul Reed Smith 513. I will now need to buy this guitar when I get back to the States.
There goes the bonus money...
