Something you might not know about Guitar Hero

Reading Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, I came across this footnote on p. 95 (footnotes are required reading in books by Sacks): "It is not always easy or possible for children to receive musical training, especially in the United States, where music instruction is being eliminated from many public schools. Tod Machover, a composer and leading designer of new technology for music, seeks to address this problem by 'democratizing' music, making it accessible to anyone. Machover and his colleagues at MIT's Media Lab have developed not only the Brain Opera, the Toy Symphony, and the popular video game Guitar Hero, but Hyperinstruments, Hyperscore, and other interactive systems used by professional musicians from Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma, and Peter Gabriel to the Ying Quartet and the London Sinfonietta." And here I thought Guitar Hero was just another time-wasting video game.

Tod Machover's Web site
Machover also saves old barns