In recent years, video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have entered the marketplace, ensuring everyone that if they spent enough time playing; they too would know what it’s like to be a rock star. The game allows you to practice your skills and experience increasingly harder levels, which ensures that you don’t get bored too quickly. It really does feel like you’re playing the guitar and rocking out.

But, what if you were to actually learn how to play the guitar and rock out. Would taking guitar lessons still make you feel like a rock star? Below we’ll debate the pros and cons on how to spend your time: Guitar Lessons or Guitar Hero?

Guitar Hero

When you play Guitar Hero, you can start playing with bands like Pearl Jam and The Who right away. The game gives the user immediate satisfaction and that great rock star feeling. But only on the easy level. To get to each successive level requires a lot of time and practice.

Admittedly, the songs on Guitar Hero are pretty fantastic, and depending on what video game system you have, you can always download more songs to suit your taste. But, you can’t just play whatever you want; you have to wait for the song to be developed for Guitar Hero. So, if you are a big Peter Frampton fan, and want to play an entire retrospective, you might just be waiting for awhile.

When you’ve made it to the expert level, it is quite impressive. Your fingers will have to move very fast to hit all of the notes, and you will get the feeling of sliding your hand up and down the arm of the guitar and hitting the whammy bar and strumming. But at the end of the day, all you’re really doing is hitting a bunch of buttons, and the hours you’ve spend practicing aren’t really translatable into an actual skill.

Guitar Lessons

When you first start to take guitar lessons, you definitely won’t be rocking out to any of your favourite bands. You’ll have to learn things like finger placement, chord structures and how to read music. It will be a while before you even get to play a full song, and like Guitar Hero, learning to play the guitar will take a lot of time and practice.

When you take guitar lessons, you aren’t boxed in by a certain set of songs that you’re able to play. The only thing you might be hampered by is your ability to play the song in question. But, if there is a certain song you want to be able to play, and you practice hard enough, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to play that song eventually.

As you successively move through levels with your guitar lessons, your playing abilities will continually be getting better. And, after some serious schooling (admittedly, it will probably take more time to get really good than it would at Guitar Hero), you will walk away with the ability to play the guitar. Which means, that you can take a guitar anywhere, start playing, and NOT have to be hooked up to a video game console. And, if you’re good enough and lucky enough, your guitar lessons might lead you to eventually being one of the bands on the game, and all those video gamers will be rocking out to your music.

When asking the average person what the benefits are to taking music lessons, they would probably reply, “learning to play an instrument.” And, while playing an instrument is the main goal and purpose of taking lessons, they also provide supplemental perks that many people might not realize.

Early Success

To be successful with music lessons, it usually takes a lot of discipline, and that discipline can transfer to the skills necessary to be successful academically. Things like study skills, cognitive skills and communication skills can all be improved with the addition of music lessons. In addition, studies have shown that involvement in instrumental music throughout the middle and high school years show a significantly higher proficiency in higher levels of math by grade twelve. Furthermore, students with experience with music lessons (both performance and appreciation) receive higher scores on their SATs.

And, with more and more pressures being put on our kids from outside sources, more and more teenagers are experimenting with illicit substances which can have an adverse effect on their academic careers. Fortunately, a study from the Texas Commission on Drug and Alcohol Abuse found that secondary students who participated in music (via band or music lessons) have the lowest lifetime use of substances including alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs.

Future Success

Music lessons don’t necessarily mean that a person is destined to have a career in music, however taking music instruction will help further goals in whatever career path chosen. Many colleges and universities view music education highly when considering college applications and many of the world’s best engineers and technicians are gifted musicians.

Although there are many benefits to taking music lessons when you’re young (including developing better spatial reasoning, pattern recognition and patience), music lessons continue to have educational benefits throughout one’s entire life. It’s been found that music lessons can improve the health of the elderly. In one study, (originally reported in AMC Music News) it was shown that there were significant decreases in anxiety, depression and loneliness following piano lessons. These decreases can help lead to improved health by helping the elderly cope better with stress, can stimulate the immune system and can show significant increases in human growth hormones. (These hormones (or lack thereof) are linked to what causes aches and pains.)

Music lessons have educational benefits that have an expanding effect beyond just learning how to play an instrument. They facilitate brain development and cognitive skills from young to old and can really play a factor in becoming a success.