Guitar Zeros - a New Kind of Rockstar?

The game Guitar Hero was a cult hit when it came out for Xbox and Playstation 2 several years ago. The sequel, Guitar Hero II, was even more widely received and is available for PlayStation II and Xbox 360. I've had the chance to play the new game several times and it was very entertaining.

In the game, you control a fictional character (though some of them are modeled off of real life guitarists from popular bands) and much like the incredibly popular game, Dance Dance Revolution, your job is to hit the right buttons at the right time along with the song. Whereas Dance Dance Revolution was played mainly to dance and techno music, Guitar Hero naturally uses guitar-heavy songs from classic rock to punk rock.

The big catch is that the joystick is actually shaped like a miniature guitar with five buttons on the fret board, a pick lever that you can move up and down, and a replica whammy bar. This works only with pre-programmed songs in the game and can't be unplugged from the system or plugged into an amp to get any real sound.

That is, until now. Enter, The Guitar Zeros. Apparently, they're big fans of the game, play real guitars, and decided they'd like to get a little more action out of their Guitar Hero Controllers. So, they managed to plug their Guitar Hero controllers into a computer, used some software to hack their button layout, and reprogrammed them to emulate real music.

This sounds like a lot of work, and I'm sure it was. They say they didn't at all physically modify the controllers themselves. They've used a series of adapters to hook the controllers into a laptop, used a program called Max MSP and reprogrammed the buttons using a sort of binary layout in order to change from one scale to another.

With the newly programmed controllers they can play single notes, chords, switch from acoustic to electric (by pushing start and select) and basically do anything they want. As the lead guitarist said, "the fun thing about using a computer to do what we're doing is that, uh, the limitations are limitless." Yeah, definitely geeks.

But they may also be rock stars. The Guitar Zeros are made up of a lead guitar controller, a bass guitar controller, a drummer and a singer. Without a single guitar, they still rock out. They've got their own website (The Guitar Zeros) where you can sample songs and watch videos. They've played shows and they're currently being booked for more venues. They've even been interview by CNet (you can view it here). This sounds like the making of real Guitar Heroes.

The truth is, the Guitar Zero's synthesized guitar controllers don't sound quite as good as the real thing. But then again, who else can plug their Guitar Hero controller into an amp and rock out? They believe they're the wave of the future. You can decide for yourself. Either way, I've never seen a more complete fusion of nerd and rock star.