Play That Funky Music

Earlier this week, I mentioned the fact that I had picked up the game Rock Band for my XBox 360. I realize some of you more cultured individuals might find it childish for a 32 year old man to be playing video games. But gaming has been a part of my life since I was a wee lad, from playing text-only games on the Commodore 64 to rocking out to "Combat" and "Adventure" on the Atari 2600. I've hit all points in between, with the original Nintendo, Playstation, PS2 and now my 360. And I've cherished the ungodly amount of time I've spent with each and everyone of those platforms.

Up until a few weeks ago, I had spent the better part of 2 years gaming on my PC with World of Warcraft. WoW is one of those addicting games that's known as a Multi-Massively Online Role Playing Game, or MMORPG (or, to shorten an acronym, which seems dumb to me, MMO). For nearly 2 years, every ounce of free time I had was spent trying to make my character the uber-pwn toon on whatever server I happened to be playing on at the time, cursing players, sending in demons to do my bidding and generally causing mayhem and destruction wherever I happened to wander in this virtual world.

As a result of the time I spent in WoW, other more useful talents that I had gained in the real-world went to the wayside. Such as my ability to play guitar.

Before WoW (which I'm leaning towards referring to as BW, like BC or AD, for ease of reference), I took several months worth of lessons on my six-string acoustic. I was hardly the best. Hell, I was hardly any good. But at least the callouses on my fingertips were evidence that I was practicing. And the fact that I was able to do the rhythm parts on several well-known tunes (and a few more lesser-known songs) further proved that it was more than just a passing fancy. But during my time with that stupid game, my guitar sat, lonely, unused and collecting dust inside it's plush case.

Last week, I finally took it out of its case and began the process of putting it back in tune, dusting it off and strumming the strings to make some semblance of music ring forth from its wooden, hollow body.

The first two days were rough. As I said, the callouses on my fingers, that I had worked so hard to achieve before, were gone. The supple, baby-like nature of my fingertips prevented me from playing for longer than a few minutes at a time. In fact, it downright hurt. And I could hardly remember the chord progression of even the simplest songs. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" completely evaded my memory.

It was rough starting out. My wife, who has little-to-no musical talent whatsoever, would cringe as I sat in my living room, trying to strum something that didn't sound like a cat in heat. It's quite a blow to one's ego.

Little by little, I've been able to play for longer periods of time before the steel strings begin to dig in and start to hurt. As such, I'm able to run through more songs and actually remember how they're supposed to sound. The one song I had down pat prior to my WoW addiction was "Good Riddance" by Green Day. I know it's not the hardest song in the world. It has maybe 5 or 6 chords, so it's not exactly Santana-esque. But when you finally remember a song and are able to play along with the actual recording and it doesn't sound all jacked up, it's a pretty good feeling.

Since then, I've picked up a few more easy to learn rhythmic songs. "Peacful Easy Feeling" by the Eagles and "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd have been re-added to my staple of songs, though I have yet to get to the point with the Pink Floyd song that I'm able to play the full thing with the original version and the Eagles song that I play is in a different key than their version, but it's close enough that the uninitiated don't know the difference and are still able to recognize the tune.

But it's nice, getting back into something that brings me the kind of enjoyment that isn't completely wasted in front of a computer monitor, moving a pixelated toon around a screen in the hopes that I can get another epic piece of gear.

And, when I play well enough, it even gets the wife grooving...which is ALWAYS a good thing.