On the 14th March 2008, the media and swarms of fans gathered to watch a 16-year-old boy from Minnesota called Chris Chike perform on stage. Although everything was in place for this monumental evening in rock and roll, on closer inspection there was something amiss. Unlike most debauched rock legends Chris had an intense, reserved concentration on his face and as opposed to hurling himself into the frenzied fans, he was staring intently at a large monitor. The reason for this anomaly was that the young man was in fact not a musical genius but an introverted teenager who spent too much time on his game console; he was not performing music but playing a game called Guitar Hero. Chris was breaking the world record for highest score ever on a single track and the masses of attention illustrate how deeply embedded t fg700s he game is in global culture. This article examines the cultural phenomenon and compares it to real guitar lessons. Guitar hero works on the basis of the player using a imitation guitar plugged into a games console which displays images on the screen. The imitation guitar strongly resembles a Fisher Price infants toy and has six different coloured buttons on it. The images displayed on the TV show a representation of the coloured buttons running along a Musical Staff which ignite when they hit a certain point, then the player must hit the colour corresponding button on the control. Many diehard fans of the game will defend to the death that it takes the musical talent to succeed; to which one might say, why not apply yourself to actual guitar lessons? There is however, something to be said in their defence.