gTar: technology, entertainment, guitar!

guys, i hate guitar hero.

it's not about the videogame itself. everybody would like to be angus young and not only for his schoolboy outfit! and by the way i also am a guitarist and i obviously love to play on a stage.but guitar hero always seemed to me like a way to pretend to be a rockstar without any fucking chance of being one. i mean, you turn on the thing, play that plastic little guitar, do the perfect riff and get a million point. then? what do you get then?you get nothing, because that's where guitar hero fails. thinking that the videogame is somehow similar to playing in a band is like saying that doing cookies with your nephews is like running a three-star restaurant. "it ain't the same fucking ballpark. it ain't the same league. it ain't even the same fucking sport."

anyway this is different. someone finally add some tech to a guitar in a very useful way (not even that robot guitar by gibson ever conviced me 100%).the guys built a guitar, put one lights on the neck for each string and each fret, plugged it to an iPhone with a special app they built and that's it. it teaches you how to play, showing you where to put your fingers, muting the wrong notes if you want to and adding some drums, bass and other instrument to it.maybe it's not the perfect way to be the next guitar hero, but it's a great way to approach the instrument in a very easy way. i dig it!

click here to see what i am talking about!

Pay to play

in these last days i read a lot on facebook about this thing. vivo management seems to be selling out slots for total metal festival, the biggest heavy music fest in southern italy (here's the link to see the bill/cost). testament are headlining, but i don't know any other band in it. 

all right, i am not a walking metal-wikipedia but as far as testament are headlining i expect other popular bands to be in it. that's how festivals usually are. you bring a bunch of very popular bands and gather all their fans in the same place for one day or two. yep, it's that easy!

so why there are no other popular bands playing at total metal festival? probably because total metal festival doesn't really seem to be conceived as a proper festival, but more like a "pay to play with testament contest".

so, what is pay to play?

well, it's quite easy... you pay some money to play with your band in a specific gig, tour, show, etc. it's not something new, it's very common and most of the small bands you see touring out there with your favorite-super-mega-hit-band did pay some money to be on that stage. 

so un-drop your jaw, boys. pay to play is now, pay to play is real, pay to play is at your door!

what's wrong with it?

well, honestly nothing (ok, now drop your jaw). or at least it depends.

i don't think pay to play is such a big scandal by default - unless you pretend to make a festival to suck some minor bands dry - and i'm going to say why.

suppose that you love your band so much, music is your life (especially your music) and you want your dream to come true: you want to be a professional musician. 

well, we could say it's quite similar to running a restaurant. so you have your little restaurant outside your town, you serve superb food and you already spend some money on buying the gear that allow you to cook your dishes. you have been serving food for some time now and you have some "fan" that comes to your place, enjoy your food, headbang with you and vomit on your shoes. well, that's fucking great, what else should i ask for?

now a couple of years has passed. you keep serving your great food, headbang with your customer and clean their vomit off your shoes. well... that's a fucking nightmare! nothing has changed! you put so much passion, time and money (yes you did) in it and it's still the same fucking hole. 

you can't stand it anymore, you want something more, you want your restaurant not to be just a small town diner, but a proper world-famous "ristorante italiano"!

how to do it? well, first of all you have to invest some money. buy some books and learn more recipes, renew your gear so that you can actually do those recipes, do some advertising campaign and eventually move to a big fancy place in the center of the city. that's how new people will see your place, come to your place, become your customer, call their friends and come back to your great "ristorante italiano"!

now, let's go back to music life.

you have your band, you did a couple of good album (at least according to what magazines say), you have your own gear with your own sound, you have your fans. anyway this is not enough, you want more, you wanna go big, you wanna be a pro band. 

how do you think you do it? you must invest some money. you must take your music to a lot of people, you must promote your music both indirectly (advertising, reviews, interviews...) and directly (tour, tour, tour!), in other words you must move you restaurant to a big fancy place in the center of the town (and work for people to like your music... but that's another big theme we will discuss it in the future).

finally, is pay to play bad? there's no straight answer to that. 

if you're paying to take your small band in tour with the rolling stones for a couple of weeks, it's more than fair. you are no one and they are the biggest living band on earth. don't expect mick jagger to come begging to you for your band to support them. that's not gonna happen. ever.

instead, if you're paying to play a 20 minute show, in front of fifty people drinking beers waiting for the one and only popular band performing 5 hours later, well that sucks. a lot.

so the question is not "is pay to play bad", but "is pay to play worthy in this very specific occasion"?

consider the cost, consider your band, consider the chance you have: how many people will come to the show? is it a good crowd for your music? will they be interested in the genre you play? what can you get from this investment? what else can your band do with the same amount of money? so, is it worthy?

now choose and don't be ashamed of your choice, since you did with both your mind and heart.

a.