For all their success, the popular music games Guitar Hero and Rock Band boil down to rote button mashing on big controllers. Understandably, the allure of those two titles is the thrill of karaokeing pop hits, for the linear level-to-level gameplay has little to do with musicianship. Now, Nintendo asks: Can a classical-themed, goal-less simulation of instrumental improv be just as fun?

Perhaps. Wii Music is too hit-and-miss to answer that question. The game’s downfalls are limited options and easily improvable audio shortcomings. Yet the Japanese gaming innovator has delivered an intuitive, pick-up-and-jam noisemaker that delivers the joys and frustrations of songcraft.

On the surface, Wii Music offers a shallow experience. Players pick up the standard Wii controllers and mimic one of 60 instruments. Unlike the metronomic, get-it-right-or-die finger tapping of Guitar Hero, Music demands only free-form limb waving—you’re truly air guitaring, violining, drumming, etc. You can gently strum a uke or turn “Ode to Joy” into Captain Beefheart by madly flailing your arms. Overdubbing allows the aspiring composer to fiddle with arrangements of some kiddie-aimed cuts (“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” the Monkees, etc.), yet it takes patience, practice and restraint to get it right. And isn’t that the reason people pick up a plastic guitar over a real one?

That learning curve could be ultimately rewarding with a recording-studio tool or sound quality beyond rudimentary MIDI. These days, bedroom musicians still continue to use old Game Boys to craft hip dance tracks and remix Beck. Nintendo should have taken note: Some form of recordable output would at least turn the game into a cult lo-fi synthesizer.

Wii Music’s other mode presents quizzes to hone the ears’ perception of tone, tempo and harmony. The IQ-building exercises aim for a state of bubblegum Zen but feel like trivial self-improvement. It’s noble for Nintendo to help develop music theory in amateurs. Which means, like your kid’s clarinet, it’s probably going to sit in the corner collecting dust.

more on video game music, read "Ode to joysticks".