Guitar Hero Research Articles

Death of a guitar hero: The art of metal reputation maintenance

Combining insights from identity, gender and ethnicity studies while incorporating notions of the sacred, the death of guitar hero, Randy Rhoads, in a plane crash in 1982 is addressed to establish how maintenance of Rhoads’s reputation as a saintly, innocent character who died because of a mysterious accident has been constructed and maintained for over forty years. Situating his death in a comparative analysis with premature deaths of other guitarists, Tommy Bolin and Allen Collins, in addition to artists from other musical genres, Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston and Donna Summer, frames of similarities and differences emerge to reveal how identity and reputation is achieved and maintained after death within heavy metal but also in other genres. Three specific tropes including accident equals innocence, transgression equals recklessness and transgression equals criminality are defined and applied throughout. These reveal that posthumous identity, be it positive or negative, is actively constructed and is imbued at times with gendered and racial elements. Via the application of criticality, the findings show how the posthumous consecration of Rhoads and other decedents is accomplished via selective emphasis on particular claims and the silencing of others, with locus of responsibility for a tragic death, either internal or external, being crucial.

Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby

Reviewed by: Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby Joel J. Brattin (bio) Nick Hornby. Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius. Riverhead Books, 2022. Pp. 171. $18.00. ISBN 978-0-593-54182-1 (hb). Novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby has tried his hand at nonfiction before, writing books, essays, and book reviews on pop music and football. Here, he proposes links between Charles Dickens and the Minneapolis performer and recording artist Prince Rogers Nelson, more commonly known as Prince (1958–2016). This short book is written in an engaging style, offering information about both title figures in an accessible and often colorful manner. The two men have quite a lot in common, according to Hornby: among other things, both died at age 58 (except for Prince, who was only 57), overcame childhood poverty and deprivation, met with extraordinary success in their twenties, worked on multiple projects at once, achieved great financial success but were convinced they were being robbed, failed to make their marriages work, were outstanding performers, and had a remarkable work ethic, with “no off switch” (15). Hornby suspects there are few artists as prolific as Dickens and Prince. I thought of Anthony Trollope and of Telemann, but Hornby shut me up by saying “maybe you’re reading this and shouting Wagner! Picasso! If you are, you’ll have to write your own book” (7). Much of what Hornby tells us about Dickens will be familiar to readers of this journal, and perhaps few of those readers will care deeply about Prince. But there are interesting tidbits along the way. Of Prince, we learn that he recorded a Jehovah’s Witness album, and that he liked not only Led Zeppelin, but Grand Funk Railroad. We also learn that Robert Christgau said, in the wake of Prince’s album Dirty Mind, that “Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home” (43). Hornby offers some arcane bits of Dickensiana, too, noting that a business called “Havisham[’]s Wedding Centre” operated, and then didn’t, in Rochester (Kent); that a young Davy Jones, later of Monkees fame, played the Artful Dodger on Broadway; and that novelist Stephen King juiced up the old urban legend about crowds in New York waiting on the dock to hear a report of little Nell’s death by moving the locale to Baltimore and by drowning several of the crowding Dickens fanatics. He also says that Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy drove himself to the Marble Arch cinema to see an adaptation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Hornby has a unique comic perspective. He says if your nine-year-old child is reading David Copperfield, “please stop them. It will kill any future enjoyment they might get from those extraordinary novels. And also, you’re a terrible parent” (7–8). Referring to Prince’s often embarrassing interviews, Hornby says “Sometimes, to be a fan of Prince was to be cast back to one’s [End Page 257] school days, struggling to defend an inarticulate and possibly malodorous guitar hero while he postured and pranced on TV in front of my witheringly scornful mother” (45). He says that Dick Swiveller in The Old Curiosity Shop “is so clearly an influence on Wodehouse that Bertie Wooster would have been entitled to a DNA test” (90). And he notes that “there are, regrettably, a number of movies called A Tale of Two Titties, but these do not seem to follow the plot of the book” (156). Hornby never really identifies what he means by “a particular kind of genius,” but I suspect he’s primarily thinking about hard work. Finally, Hornby concludes that his book is “about work, and nobody ever worked harder than these two, or at a higher standard, while connecting with so many people for so long” (159). The book is light reading: fun, interesting, and often provocative. Hornby makes a variety of mistakes of fact and has a less nuanced view of Dickens than, say, many a university professor. But he makes no claims to expertise: he’s a fan, of both Dickens and Prince. It’s unfortunate that Hornby misspells Dickens’s full name...

Otogarden

In this article we present ludomusicological research associated with the development of the video game Otogarden. Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short musical phrases through the use of a loop mechanic, juxtaposing sounds extemporaneously. By using the methodology of research through design, Otogarden addresses aesthetic and design issues related to musical participation in video games. Specifically, this article argues that video games, a contemporary venue for technologically augmented musicking, can allow access to novel forms of musical improvisation. In fact, while video games afford a remarkable variety of musicking, examples related to musical improvisation remain underexplored, with popular games favoring score-based interactions, as established by titles such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. In similar examples, music is presented as a task to be completed, mediated by prerecorded compositions and simplified notations. Notable exceptions, such as the experimental game Electroplankton, have been criticized specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities, seemingly neglecting the inherent value of improvisatory musical practices in video games. Otogarden challenges this understanding of a “music game” by focusing on the largely untapped potential of musical improvisation, “an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression.”1 In order to gain feedback on Otogarden’s special characteristics, we held a playtesting session with a sample of university students (N=21) with a special interest in music and music education. We collected research data from this session in the form of a survey. Analysis reveals different manifested perspectives, offering players novel creative opportunities. In addition, the game has surprising potential as a music-education tool. We conclude that it is possible to deliberately stimulate players’ perspective on the game in an improvisatory musical direction, making evident the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement.

Guitar Hero? My hero!

Guitar Hero is a video game where one or more players use a specially made game-style guitar to play along to popular and well-known songs. Players need to match the correct notes and timings of the sings. An onscreen guide shows players which notes to play, when. There are levels of difficulty in the game, as well as the choices to play with or against other players. Players can select from bass, rhythm or lead guitar and the program adjusts the difficulty of play accordingly.

Brain Implants and Wearables Reroute Signals to Restore Movement and Sensation

In 2015, a group of neuroscientists and engineers assembled to watch a man play the video game Guitar Hero. He held the simplified guitar interface gingerly, using the fingers of his right hand to press down on the fret buttons and his left hand to hit the strum bar. What made this mundane bit of game play so extraordinary was the fact that the man had been paralyzed from the chest down for more than three years, without any use of his hands. Every time he moved his fingers to play a note, he was playing a song of restored autonomy. Bioelectronic medicine is a relatively new field, in which we use devices to read and modulate the electrical activity within the body's nervous system, pioneering new treatments for patients. My group's particular quest is to crack the neural codes related to movement and sensation so we can develop new ways to treat the millions of people around the world who are living with paralysis-5.4 million people in the United States alone. To do this we first need to understand how electrical signals from neurons in the brain relate to actions by the body; then we need to “speak” the language correctly and modulate the appropriate neural pathways to restore movement and the sense of touch. After working on this problem for more than 20 years, I feel that we've just begun to understand some key parts of this mysterious code

Dancing in Quarantine: Performance Training across the Digital Divide

Dancing in Quarantine: Performance Training across the Digital Divide Sebastian X Samur (bio) In March 2020, reacting to increasing COVID-19 lockdown measures imposed by the New York state government, I found myself turning to an unexpected resource for activity: dance video games. With gyms, pools, children’s parks, and indoor play facilities closed, I needed to find new sources to keep my daughter active, which was especially challenging on cold, rainy days. Dancing at home provided one solution, which surprisingly yielded several discoveries pertaining to my own work in performance training. The game has served to underline essential qualities of in-person performance training, which live-streamed training substitutions have only been able to emulate with limited success. These insights have arisen in large part because both video games and in-person studio training are tailored to their respective performance spaces (home and studio), while live-streamed adaptations are a makeshift hybrid combining the two. In this short essay, I will present an initial analysis of four disruptions arising from live-stream training that have been highlighted through video-game training. These include breaks in: shared space, physical contact, rhythmic flow of experience, and establishment of stage presence. Under lockdown conditions, the video game my daughter and I enjoyed together is Just Dance, a game that is released with annual editions, featuring choreographies for one to four people set to a mix of popular international dance songs. The game follows a similar gameplay format as titles such as Dance, Dance, Revolution; Guitar Hero; and Wii Fit. These games take advantage of increasingly improved controller and motion-capture technology to allow players to move their body in response to onscreen cues. In Just Dance, players select a song they wish to dance to––alone or in a group––and then copy the movements of an onscreen avatar dancing in time to the music (fig. 1). The series is aimed at a younger, amateur audience, yet can feature sophisticated, high-level choreographies performed by professional dancers. This mix of an advanced level for a beginner audience demands that the game designers find a means to quickly and simply make the game accessible to players who are not necessarily experienced gamers nor trained dancers. The solution that has proven successful is in presenting silhouetted dancers for players to mirror, coupled with a series of simplified two-dimensional body illustrations (called pictos) showing each movement and a (generous) star scoring system that gradually awards points up to five stars when player movements match up with the video choreographies. Combined with the motion capture technology, Just Dance provides a digital means for quickly transmitting choreographies in a way that “analog” systems–– such as text-based descriptions, early twentieth-century mail-in dance lessons, or labanotation, for example––cannot (fig. 2).The result has been the creation of a community of millions of amateur dancers dancing at home, breaking a sweat, and improving, to varying degrees, their movement vocabularies as they try to obtain higher scores. Indeed, some players can reach a remarkably high degree of competence, as evinced in live world-cup events the developers have organized, demonstrating that the game can lead to genuine performance improvement through a scoring system that encourages repetitive practice. Of course, this form of learning is no substitute for in-person teaching and rehearsal. In addition to lamenting the absence of performances during quarantine, lockdown alternatives such as Just Dance bring an appreciation for the performer’s behind-the-scenes work training and rehearsing in [End Page E-23] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. A screenshot from Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now in Just Dance 2017. Players copy the movements of the central avatar and can use the lower-right pictos to anticipate upcoming movements. A star-based score appears in the lower left. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Even a hundred years ago, alternatives to in-person teaching were attempted, as evinced by this example of steps from an early twentieth-century mail-order dance lesson offered by the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. (Source: https://www.amdancing.com/exactly-arthur-murray-know-name/.) [End Page E-24...

Amplified: A Design History of the Electric Guitar by Paul Atkinson

Reviewed by: Amplified: A Design History of the Electric Guitar by Paul Atkinson John Hajduk (bio) Amplified: A Design History of the Electric Guitar By Paul Atkinson. London: Reaktion Books, 2021. Pp. 272. Amplified: A Design History of the Electric Guitar By Paul Atkinson. London: Reaktion Books, 2021. Pp. 272. One would be hard-pressed to name a more culturally iconic piece of technology produced over the past seventy years than the electric guitar. Perhaps only sports cars, like the Corvette or Camaro, resonate as strongly in relation to youth-centered culture in the late twentieth century. Paul Atkinson's fine overview of how the electric guitar evolved from its humble origins (discovered in an 1890 patent application) to the present certainly bolsters that impression. The book is full of photographs, drawings, and advertisements with richly detailed descriptions of virtually every significant model developed over that span. Atkinson traces how new design elements emerged, whether motivated by efforts to achieve better engineering, better sound, or better visual aesthetics. The broader cultural import of the instrument is mostly incidental to his main focus, but Atkinson's efforts still convey how technological innovations combined with artisanal craft and musical purpose made the electric guitar such a powerful symbol, especially in relation to rock and roll culture. The author covers everything from proto-electric guitars (acoustic instruments fitted with some form of electronic amplification) to fully computerized guitar-shaped synthesizers whose relationship to traditional guitars is mostly visual. Looking beyond the myth surrounding the instrument, Atkinson asserts that the story of its evolution owes as much to inspired tinkerers as to professional designers or engineers, all of whose various efforts made for a mostly haphazard pathway to innovation. Musicians such as Les Paul were just as likely as electronics professionals like Leo Fender to contribute lasting ideas. They are among the names that became part of the myth. Atkinson's account underlines the influence of two companies, Fender and Gibson, that were largely responsible for placing the electric guitar at the center of the emerging youth culture represented by rock and roll. Leo Fender's early designs developed from his interest in country music, while earlier experiments in electrification were more closely associated with Hawaiian and jazz styles. However, mass demand for his fabled Telecaster and Stratocaster models exploded when young people saw early rock guitar heroes such as Buddy Holly and James Burton wielding them in television appearances. Chuck Berry and later Eric Clapton had a similar impact with Gibson models. Atkinson does not develop his reference to the influence of television in shaping the reception of these instruments. For example, he does not follow up with a discussion on the influence of MTV in the 1980s, but his account is provocative enough to suggest a line of further research clearly beyond his stated scope. [End Page 968] Once Fender and Gibson demonstrated the electric guitar's growing popularity, other companies developed their own variations, with rock musicians as a primary target market. While many competitors deviated only slightly from the templates pioneered by the two industry leaders, other designers sought to make their mark, and even customized their designs to incorporate visual motifs of particular sub-genres of rock, like heavy metal or glam. Certain models also became closely identified with star performers, and as with Les Paul before them, some artists took a stab at designing their ideal instrument (for the author, Eddie Van Halen was a prime example). Atkinson draws on a variety of published sources and interviews to augment his commentary, and he tells the story in a clear, accessible fashion. His book nicely complements two other recent works on the same subject: Brad Tulinski and Alan di Perna's Play It Loud (Knopf Doubleday, 2017), which takes a more nuanced look at the cultural impact of the electric guitar, and Ian S. Port's Birth of Loud (Simon and Schuster, 2019), highlighting the rivalry between Leo Fender and Les Paul. Despite the narrow focus on the evolution of technological and design elements, Atkinson's book is a useful and visually striking addition to the literature on the electric guitar. John Hajduk John Hajduk is professor of history...

St. Vincent: Postmodern Guitar Hero

ABSTRACT In a February 2017 article, Guitar World dubbed Annie Clark, known by her moniker St. Vincent, a “postmodern guitar hero.” Over the course of her career Clark has made a name for herself as a modern virtuoso guitarist. This is notable, given the electric guitar has traditionally been a masculine-gendered instrument. This article explores how Clark subverts gendered stereotypes and expectations of guitarists, as well as presenting a postmodern and posthuman mode of conceptualizing the electric guitar as technodildo, thereby outlining the cultural and political significance of St. Vincent’s work.

Redefining Digital Library Boundaries: Being More than an Information Silo

This article is the final in a series of three publications that reflect on the boundaries and perceptions of what we think of when we hear the term Digital Libraries, with reference to our mainstream digital library systems. In this article we present three digital library examples that push the implementation envelope in terms of digital library systems functionality, thereby challenging expectations and assumptions about what our mainstream digital library systems are capable of delivering. The first example integrates a Digital Music Stand with a digital library environment, and in doing so extends the role of the digital library to include fine-grained interaction and access to document content. The second example is a digital library that supports musicological analysis, and shifts the boundaries of where and how the digital library operates. This second example is notable as it breaks out of the silo mindset prevalent in mainstream DLs software architecture designs. The trends of enhanced flexible and permissive capabilities continue through the third example, where we present a crowdsourced pop-trivia music video website with a Guitar Hero game challenge element. While this description might seem far removed from the notion of a digital library, it is in fact implemented using an off-the-shelf open source digital library solution, where all the additional functionality introduced is achieved through the inclusion of supplemental JavaScript and XSLT files—no change to the digital library architecture is needed. While the three chosen examples all happen to be musical in nature, this is really incidental to the main points being made, and the article concludes by generalising the discussion to other forms of digital library.

Inadequate Software Testing Can Be Disastrous [Essay

In October 2007, Activision published the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock video game for the Nintendo Wii gaming console. The extremely popular game sold 1.4 million copies during the first six days of its release. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock was a game that allowed players to play songs with a guitar-like controller. Music was the primary output of this highly entertaining game.

So you think you can play: An exploratory study of music video games

Abstract Digital music technologies have evolved by leaps and bounds over the last 10 years. The most popular digital music games allow gamers to experience the performativity of music, long before they have the requisite knowledge and skills, by playing with instrument-shaped controllers (e.g. Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Sing Star, Wii Music), while others involve plugging conventional electric guitars into a game console to learn musical technique through gameplay (e.g. Rocksmith). Many of these digital music environments claim to have educative potential, and some are actually used in music classrooms. This article discusses the findings from a pilot study to explore what high school age students could gain in terms of musical knowledge, skill and understanding from these games. We found students improved from pre- to post-assessment in different areas of musicianship after playing Sing Party, Wii Music and Rocksmith, as well as a variety of games on the iPad.

Celebrity Guitars: Musical Instruments as Luxury Items

The article seeks to explore why musicians’ instruments that were originally mass-produced, such as electric guitars, have gained the status of luxury items and highly collectible artifacts. Special attention is paid to individual instruments that have been previously owned by celebrities and/or rock musicians and to instruments that have been modeled after them. The research is contextualized within the cultural history of the electric guitar, especially with regard to the so-called “guitar hero” phenomenon, and to the way in which the high market value of vintage guitars and the increasing demand for them are being taken advantage of in contemporary instrument-making by the manufacture of replicas of celebrity-owned instruments. Theoretically, the work draws from anthropological and sociological concepts of magic, consumption, narration, and distinction in order to interpret the immaterial values attached to specific vintage electric guitars and the discursive practices used in transforming objects into fetishes. Empirically, the article draws from the contents of Guitar Aficionado magazine, as well as the discussion that this publication has raised on Internet sites, and the narratives used to construct the history of specific celebrity instruments.

Guitar Hero Live. FreeStyle Games, 2015.

<i>Guitar Hero Live</i>. FreeStyle Games, 2015.

Music Game Enjoyment and Natural Mapping Beyond Intuitiveness

Introduction and statement of problem. Despite the success of music games with instrument-shaped controllers, little is known about what makes these kind of controllers entertaining. The aim of this article is to shed light on the enjoyment mechanisms of such music games and their particular controllers. Review of the literature. The literature’s theoretical foundation lies in the concept of natural mapping, i.e. the similarity of actions performed in the real world and their representation within the videogame. A review of the literature finds that most approaches are too simplistic, as they limit game enjoyment with natural mapping to higher intuitiveness. In contrast, challenge can also foster game enjoyment. Methodology. Two parallelized sample groups (N=20) played three levels of a music game with increasing difficulty with either a Guitar Hero controller or with a real guitar. Perceived difficulty and game enjoyment were collected via questionnaires. Analysis. A 2x3 mixed-design ANOVA was conducted for significance testing. It revealed a significant increase in enjoyment and perceived difficulty both for advanced game levels and the real guitar. A posteriori multiple regression showed that the increase in enjoyment with the real guitar could not be attributed to the higher challenge it produced alone. Conclusions and recommendations for further research. The results suggest that intuitiveness is not the single factor for music game enjoyment with natural controllers. Further research might investigate the role of simulation and identification with attractive roles, as both could act as sources for game enjoyment and natural mapping might facilitate these factors. Applications for learning and teaching should consider debriefing as a method to facilitate transfer of the game experience into the real world.

Disorienting guitar practice: an alternative archive

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines the gendering of electric guitar technique in its limited scholarly reception. Focus is given to the work of Steve Waksman, specifically the “technophallus,” a coinage through which he engages feminist scholarship to interrogate the electric guitar's masculine performative identity. This paper offers a counter-archive of punk guitarists whose work, when approached with a queer analytic, problematize the pairing of virtuosity with heteromasculinity. Synthesizing the work of José Esteban Muñoz and Jack Halberstam on queer failure and virtuosity, I offer disorienting guitar practice as a critical lens which can materialize efforts at refusing the linearity of guitar technique as well as guitar hero worship. Consideration is given to St. Vincent's pairing of a disorienting virtuosity with her extension of the guitar's sonic possibilities through effect pedals.

The original guitar hero and the power of music: the legendary Lonnie Johnson, music, and civil rights

Lonnie Johnson (1894–1970) was a virtuoso guitarist who influenced generations of musicians from Django Reinhardt to Eric Clapton to Bill Wyman and especially B. B. King. Born in New Orleans, he began playing violin and guitar in his father’s band at an early age. When most of his family was wiped out by the 1918 flu epidemic, he and his surviving brother moved to St. Louis, where he won a blues contest that included a recording contract. His career was launched. Johnson can be heard on many Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong records, including the latter’s famous “Savoy Blues” with the Hot Five. He is perhaps best known for his 12-string guitar solos and his ground-breaking recordings with the white guitarist Eddie Lang in the late 1920s. After World War II he began playing rhythm and blues and continued to record and tour until his death. This is the first full-length work on Johnson. Dean Alger answers many biographical mysteries, including how many members of Johnson’s large family were left after the epidemic. He also places Johnson and his musical contemporaries in the context of American race relations and argues for the importance of music in the fight for civil rights. Finally, Alger analyzes Johnson’s major recordings in terms of technique and style. Distribution of an accompanying music CD will be coordinated with the release of this book.

Design and preliminary evaluation of the FINGER rehabilitation robot: controlling challenge and quantifying finger individuation during musical computer game play

BackgroundThis paper describes the design and preliminary testing of FINGER (Finger Individuating Grasp Exercise Robot), a device for assisting in finger rehabilitation after neurologic injury. We developed FINGER to assist stroke patients in moving their fingers individually in a naturalistic curling motion while playing a game similar to Guitar Hero®a. The goal was to make FINGER capable of assisting with motions where precise timing is important.MethodsFINGER consists of a pair of stacked single degree-of-freedom 8-bar mechanisms, one for the index and one for the middle finger. Each 8-bar mechanism was designed to control the angle and position of the proximal phalanx and the position of the middle phalanx. Target positions for the mechanism optimization were determined from trajectory data collected from 7 healthy subjects using color-based motion capture. The resulting robotic device was built to accommodate multiple finger sizes and finger-to-finger widths. For initial evaluation, we asked individuals with a stroke (n = 16) and without impairment (n = 4) to play a game similar to Guitar Hero® while connected to FINGER.ResultsPrecision design, low friction bearings, and separate high speed linear actuators allowed FINGER to individually actuate the fingers with a high bandwidth of control (−3 dB at approximately 8 Hz). During the tests, we were able to modulate the subject’s success rate at the game by automatically adjusting the controller gains of FINGER. We also used FINGER to measure subjects’ effort and finger individuation while playing the game.ConclusionsTest results demonstrate the ability of FINGER to motivate subjects with an engaging game environment that challenges individuated control of the fingers, automatically control assistance levels, and quantify finger individuation after stroke.

Both ways strong: using digital games to engage Aboriginal learners

Engaging Aboriginal learners in the school curriculum can be quite a challenge given issues of cultural and linguistic differences. Even more so, these differences can be expanded when the students are in their adolescence. Creating learning environments that engage learners, while providing deep learning opportunities, is one of the biggest challenges for teachers in remote communities. This paper reports on a reform initiative that centred on the use of a digital game, Guitar Heroes, in a remote Aboriginal school. It was found that the digital media provided teachers with opportunities for new learning spaces and resulted in additional unintended learning outcomes.

Guitar hero: From icon of popular culture to nostalgic self-design

This paper aims to interpret the transformations of the “guitar hero”, from the icon of popular culture to models of nostalgic selfdesign, meaning transformations from generally recognizable figure in the context of popular culture to mimetic patterns based in medium of contemporary technologies. The phrase “guitar hero”, in its basic meaning represents a specific phenomenon in popular culture and popular music of the second half of the twentieth century. Guitar hero is a performer with skills and appearance that transcends and transforms common patterns of guitar performances, thus creating a new and distinctive form of musical and performative statement. Seen in this way, a guitar hero is close to heroic models of antique and romanticism. On the other hand, contemporary products of cultural industries and the entertainment industry to some extent changed this basic meaning of the phrase “guitar hero”. Creation and popularization of video games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, as well as the availability of high quality replicas of instruments of “original” guitar heroes, carried the meaning of this phrase more explicit in the field of consumerism, fetishism, and virtualization. Guitar hero in its basic meaning undoubtedly belongs to the history of the twentieth century popular culture. However, his legacy is still very much present. Specific heritage of a guitar hero in contemporary popular culture lies primarily in the dissemination of the original model through the mechanisms of consumer society, and then in the mimetic patterns based in media of contemporary technology. Thanks to these characteristics, the phenomenon of guitar hero was transformed from icon of popular culture to nostalgic self-design over the original model. Whether it is a replica of instruments of guitar hero or empathy in virtual reality of video games as Guitar Hero or Rock Band, guitar hero heritage confirms its place in modern popular culture, despite the fact that the “sundown” of rock-guitar culture occurred in the last decades of the twentieth century. However, this transformation from icon of popular culture to model of nostalgic self-design is not without significance for understanding “heroic” component in the phenomenon of guitar hero. Described transformations of guitar hero put this phenomenon even closer to the ancient heroic model - its heroic character was confirmed after its death.

Reality is broken: why games make us better and how they can change the world

Reality is broken: why games make us better and how they can change the world