Ever since the original Guitar Hero came out a year and a half ago I haven’t been shy about putting the ‘fan’ in ‘fanatic’ over this game.  So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I was in the front row when a new era in gaming and music emerged in San Francisco this past weekend.  Literally.  The front row.  See? 

The full (and therefore even more awesome) version is on Metacafe HERE

I was lucky enough to witness this phenomenon from the official beginning so I was able to corner these nouveau musicians to ask some questions about their crazy-ass concept of using Xbox 360 Guitar Hero 2 controllers instead of real guitars.

First of all, THEY ARE REALLY PLAYING THOSE CONTROLLERS!  There is no prerecording going on. The guitarist (Owen) and bassist (Alex) are really creating sounds through their wireless GH controllers which are relaying to the receivers which are plugged into the USB ports of a laptop on-stage (also visible in the video). I believe that they were somehow cuing different sets of sounds that could then be manipulated with the five fret buttons, strum button, and whammy bar.  I deduced all of that by watching them and looking at the set-up, but I still don’t really know how the system works.  Hopefully they will provide more information about the mechanics soon because it would be really interesting to see more people making music through “instruments” that were originally designed to simulate making music.  It’s the good kind of mind-trip.

The guys are all musicians on instruments other than the GH controllers including “real” guitar, “real” bass, drums, piano, harmonica, trumpet, Peruvian pan pipes, and one of them even has a graduate degree in music composition.  Then add these legit music skills to the fact that they’re all gamers; they confessed to having played hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of Guitar Hero between the four of them.  Considering all of that backstory, it seems inevitable that they would combine their musicianship and GH exploits to take both to whole new level.  I’m just jealous that they thought of it first.

I would absolutely love to see these guys play live again and I think PAX would be the perfect venue.  Someone needs to start a petition on the Penny Arcade forum or something because I can’t imagine a better place for the Guitar Zeros to get the appreciation that they deserve.  Thinking outside the (X)box enough to think of this in the first place is pretty rad, let alone having the programming know-how and musical talent to actually do it in such a fun way.  I take my proverbial hat off to Owen, Alex, Christian, and Ryan for turning this awesome idea into reality and for doing it with such panache.  And for those who want to play rhythm guitar for them, don’t even bother.  I’ve already spammed them with applications.

P.S.  So far, of the three songs on their myspace page, my favorite song is Guitarro Bizarro.