A stenciled figure in the window of the Vuk School of Groove on Cambridge Street holds a flying V-shaped guitar at his hip and exhorts passersby to "Unleash your inner rock star." More and more people are finding ways to heed the call.
Chris Vuk, a recent graduate of Berklee College of Music and a violinist by training, opened the school in March, offering lessons in musical genres from classical to rock. In October, Vuk suggested students collaborate to form bands among themselves and within two weeks, he had 10 bands.
The most popular groups? "Rock bands," Vuk said. A performance at the Hard Rock Cafe was even scheduled for mid-December, but was canceled because of a snowstorm, he added.
This enthusiasm for forming bands and for playing in large venues points to a desire for rock stardom that extends beyond music schools in Cambridge. But it just so happens that the craze is getting a big boost from a high-tech company in the city.
Almost any teenager with aspirations of becoming a rock star will have heard of the Guitar Hero video game franchise, in which players recreate rock songs by strumming a plastic guitar in rhythm with visual cues on the screen.
Harmonix, the video game development company that invented Guitar Hero, is based in Central Square. The company's co-founder and chief technology officer, Eran Egozy, explained that the company initially set out to provide non-musicians with a way to unleash their inner rock stars.
"When you're on stage making music with other people, there's an incredible charge," he said. "Our mission was to let everyone experience these great feelings."
Guitar Hero sold almost 1.5 million units after its release in 2005 and spawned a sequel, as well as a third release earlier this year. Harmonix is hoping its latest game, Rock Band, which allows players to use a plastic drum set and a microphone in addition to a guitar, will continue to fuel the trend.
The games have quite possibly saved rock music from impending obscurity, said Bryn Bennett, a lead guitarist for the Boston band Bang Camaro. "For a while, guitar music was seen as dying - people were making beats on their laptops," he said. "I really think Guitar Hero and Rock Band are bringing back people who want to play guitar again and hit rock poses and be a little over the top."
Bennett added that the video games also drive Bang Camaro's music sales. The band, whose music is featured in both Guitar Hero II and in Rock Band, sells most of its tracks online, and Bennett estimated that their Guitar Hero II song, "Push Push Lady Lightning," accounts for almost 90 percent of the sales on iTunes, while sales of their Rock Band track, "Pleasure (Pleasure)" have quickly picked up since the game's release in November.
"These games have really changed what people are listening to, and video games are kind of pushing where music goes now," Bennett said.
Vuk said rock music video games have had a spillover effect on rock music lessons as well. "A lot of students here are in elementary, middle and high school. Without these kinds of games, they wouldn't be exposed to that music so much, but now kids are thrilled about Led Zeppelin," he said.
He added that many of his students ask to learn songs they mastered on their video game consoles. "Kids might be playing that at home," he said, "and now they want to play it for real."
Egozy said that while Harmonix did not set out with a mission to "explicitly educate people about music," the company's games are conducive to musical instruction. On a plastic guitar in the game, for example, players learn "left to right hand coordination and a basic understanding of how to fret with one hand and play with the other," he said.
"I'm not pretending it's a real guitar - it's still a game," Egozy cautioned, but added that someone playing drums at the most difficult level of the game would be performing "very close to one-to-one beats of the real song."
"What we're hoping is that it encourages people to get into music more and to play real instruments because they see what a fun experience it is," he said.
Vuk is also exploring different ways of sparking interest in musical apprenticeship. As a member of the Boston String Quartet, whose debut CD featured an instrumental version of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," he embarked on a tour of cities across New England in December and he is coordinating a rock music exhibit at the Museum of Science in February.
"Rock music sucks in kids and adults as well," he said, noting that more than half his students are adults.
It is his younger students, however, who are pushing for further integration between the guitar video games they play at home and the guitar pieces they play at the School of Groove.
The school's lounge area is decked out with a couch and a TV, Vuk said, and "the kids always tell me I need to get Guitar Hero."
