‘Guitar Hero’ inspired crossover rock star to pick up instrument
Experimental folk artist Yasmin Williams grew up playing the game
by Ali Shutler · NMEExperimental folk artist Yasmin Williams has said she only learnt the guitar after playing Guitar Hero.
Yasmin Williams brings together folk, rock and jazz with her experimental acoustic music, and released new album ‘Acadia’ earlier this month. “‘Acadia’ is a place of peace, a place where creativity can blossom, a place where everyone can fit in together and collaborate effectively, a place where the fruits of my own labor in music can fully flourish without judgment or prejudice,” said Williams in a press release.
“One of my visions for this record was to expand the potential for current folk music to encourage collaboration across various genres. Blurring those somewhat arbitrary lines has been a natural tendency for me since I started writing music at twelve years old and Acadia is a full circle moment,” she continued.
Speaking to The Guardian, Williams admitted that it was “playing Guitar Hero 2 every day after school when I was 12, until I beat all the levels,” that first inspired her to pick up the guitar.
“The game shaped my experimental approach to guitar,” she continued. “On really tricky levels, I’d put the controller in my lap and hammer the buttons super-fast. So I started lap-tapping the acoustic and that opened up a whole new world.”
“I started playing guitar because I beat the video game Guitar Hero 2 on Expert and after that, I started begging my parents to get me a (real) guitar,” she previously told Premier Guitar. “They got me one. I guess they were impressed I beat the game.”
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Guitar Hero 2 was released in 2006 and featured 64 songs from artists such as Thin Lizzy, My Chemical Romance, Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine and Foo Fighters. The most recent entry in the series, Guitar Hero Live, was released in 2015. Following Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Xbox boss Phil Spencer hinted that a Guitar Hero revival could be on the cards.
In other news, three classic Tomb Raider games are being remastered, with updated versions of the fourth, fifth and sixth entries in the franchise due for release early next year.