Children wishing to find guitars under their Christmas trees this holiday should specify: wood or plastic?

The popularity of rhythm video games from the “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” franchises has placed fake guitars in the hands of countless role-playing rockers. I've slung my own plastic axe over my shoulder to review five of these titles in less than two years of covering video games for The Citizen.

A billion-dollar branch of the video games industry, rhythm games map sequences of multi-colored notes to rock hits ranging from “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones to “Enter Sandman” by Metallica. As the notes scroll down the screen, players must frantically match their fingers to the correct frets on a plastic guitar neck while flicking the instrument's strum bar.

Since the first “Guitar Hero” brought the genre to popular awareness in late 2005, real musicians have reacted with mixed emotions. Aerosmith and the Beatles' Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr collaborated with the publishers of “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” on editions consisting of their music exclusively. Chad Kroeger of Nickelback and John Mayer have shown less warmth toward the games; the latter told Rolling Stone in June, “'Guitar Hero' was devised to bring the guitar-playing experience to the masses without them having to put anything into it.'”

Other musicians have yet to judge the games' burgeoning role in the music industry or their influence on the people who play them. After reading my “Guitar Hero World Tour” review, professional guitarist Karl Logan, of Auburn, challenged me to learn a few fundamentals of the instrument and share my impressions as an “expert” player of its plastic facsimile. He also conveyed a healthy curiosity about rhythm games when he agreed to try his virtuosic hands at my copy of “Rock Band 2” and discuss how the real thing compares to the virtual.

Following a successful “performance” of The Guess Who's “American Woman” on medium difficulty - a rarity among first-time rhythm game players - Logan explained to me the inaccuracy of “Rock Band 2's” note design. The green, red and yellow parts he played comprise only the downbeat, which contrasts the rhythm of the actual guitar part, he said.

“It's kind of like going to England and learning to drive on the wrong side of the road,” said Logan, who has played guitar for crowds of more than 20,000 and recorded on albums that went gold in Germany.

About the game, he added, “I'm playing more of what the drums would play.”

In response, I told Logan that rhythm game designers often take musical liberties when marrying songs to software. Melodies are sometimes programmed as chord sequences and guitar parts may meld bass or even piano lines into their note matrices. Though in the case of Logan's observation, higher difficulty settings - which multiply the note count - may approximate the actual guitar part with more accuracy.

Logan shared a concern that the skewed note design of guitar games could trip up students of real guitar by constructing false associations between their actions and the sounds they produce. For this reason, he said, most musicians he knows who've attempted “Guitar Hero” or “Rock Band” have failed to adapt to the games.

Seasoned players of those games who pick up a real guitar may also be prone to handling it poorly, Logan said. If new guitarists approach the instrument as they would its plastic incarnation, they may position their fretting wrists incorrectly, grasp the top of the neck too tightly or struggle to master the subtleties of picking strings.

“The basic framework of playing guitar is present, but there's none of the instruction or incentive to play it as a real instrument,” said Logan, who teaches guitar locally.

With such obstacles possibly awaiting new guitarists, Logan fears that “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” players accustomed to speedy progression may be stifled by the steeper learning curve of the actual instrument. Should they scale it, he said, guitar students will earn an enduring gift.

“There's no substitute for having talent or committing to something that brings a reward,” Logan said. “It kept me off the streets when I was young.”

In the absence of research or even anecdotal evidence to confirm Logan's suspicions about guitar games' effect on potential musicians, he padded his remarks with reserve. His uncertainty slightly lessened, for the better, when I picked up Logan's six-string for my first guitar lesson since eighth grade.

Guiding my hands into proper position around a real guitar required some subversion of instincts formed during several hours of hugging a fake one. The delicacy of fretting and picking was another source of difficulty. I couldn't gracelessly smear my left fingers across fret buttons the size of gum sticks while slapping the strum bar with my right thumb. As my eyes flittered along the strings from the real guitar's neck to its body, I cautiously pressed and picked with the absolute tips of my fingers.

By my second or third beginning exercise, playing the guitar felt like its own activity, both accessible and free of transplanted habits from plastic mimicry. Logan reflected a brightening outlook toward rhythm games by telling me there may be hope for me yet as a real guitar player.

Staff writer David Wilcox can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net