My kids and I play Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 2 on our Playstation 3 relentlessly. There has been a really good side effect to playing these video games. My kids have become extremely interested in playing the real instruments that they’re emulating in the game. They’ve also gotten very interested in becoming performing live musicians. They are learning to play the songs that we play along with in Rock Band on the actual instruments because they are familiar with the arrangements that they focus on during gameplay. It’s really great how they’re going from gameplay to working on their musicianship.
Today I’m going to point you to some excellent guitar tablature books published by Hal Leonard that have the songs from Rock Band and Guitar Hero in them. These books are very well written and the tablature is very accurate. Not only do you get the tablature but you get the regular staff and rhythm slash notations as well. The Guitar Hero guitar tab book has songs from Guitar Hero 1 and 2. There’s a Guitar Hero 3 tab book as well. For Rock Band you can also get the Bass Tab Book! If you follow the links below you can see the songlists presented in each of the books. These tab books would make fantastic Christmas presents for the Rock Band and Guitar Hero gamers in your family.
These books will help you learn how to play the songs from Rock Band and Guitar Hero for real. That way, when you tell people “I play that song on guitar…”, you won’t be talking about a plastic toy guitar.
