I first discovered 8 year old Ben Eberle when his 5-star expert performance of Psychobilly Freakout was making the rounds.

The kid is good. Seriously good. I can barely get past Psychobilly Freakout on expert after all this time. 5 starring it is completely out of the question.

Ben’s still around, of course. Here’s a more recent video of him 5 starring the most difficult song in Guitar Hero III, Dragonforce’s “Through the Fire and Flames”. It’s a comically, absurdly difficult song, and he completely nails it. Oh, and he’s 9 now.

There’s a bit more on Ben in this Salon article describing the inevitable crossover between fake plastic guitar and real guitar lessons:

Red Octane’s Lange argues that “Guitar Hero” instills two important guitar-playing fundamentals: sensitivity to rhythm as well as mastery over “independent hand usage — the fact that you have to do something different with each hand.” There is perhaps no better proof of this effect than an 8-year-old boy in Denver named Ben Eberle, who is one of Caviness’ guitar students, as well as one of the most well-known — and undeniably amazing — “Guitar Hero” players in the world.

Ben, who is in the fourth grade, is a YouTube kid. He’s been playing “Guitar Hero” for a year and a half, and earlier this year, his dad, Lance, began posting videos of Ben’s “Guitar Hero” sessions on the site. His nearly supernatural skills — watch him hit every note of the My Chemical Romance song “Dead” while he’s got his back to the TV — have won him millions of viewers.

Ben says that he’d never thought about playing guitar before he picked up the video game. Now, he’s deep into playing a real electric; he’s taken five lessons so far, and he practices at least a half-hour every day after school. I asked Ben whether he thought “Guitar Hero” had made guitar easier for him. The game, he said, taught him how to “stretch out my fingers” to play the guitar. Caviness, his teacher, says the effect is much greater.

“He has a much better understanding of rhythm and his finger agility is more advanced than most other kids his level,” Caviness says of Ben. Caviness has been teaching Ben the Black Sabbath song “Iron Man,” a “Guitar Hero” standard, and “I think he’s learning it two or three times faster than the pace of other kids. He can hear something and just nail rhythms for it.”

Ben Eberle could, of course, be an exception; his skill at both the video game and a real instrument might well derive from natural music ability. Eberle’s parents, too, have contributed to his success by making sure he doesn’t slack in his practice.

Ben seems like a really nice kid, based on this brief gametrailers.com video interview with him. Here’s to Ben, and the enduring power of rock– even if it’s only the fake plastic variety.