Your guitar player is jamming away like Jimi Hendrix. Quite a feat, since it's your spouse who hasn't played the guitar since eighth-grade music class. The band's keyboard player, your four-year-old daughter, has stopped playing and is staring at the audience on the screen in front of you. Okay, so it's not technically your audience--they were originally gathered for a Yes concert. And so what if you don't know the song--or you've never even picked up drumsticks before in your life--you still feel like a rock star.

Welcome to On Stage, one exhibit at the Experience Music Project (EMP), Seattle's interactive music museum. On Stage has understandably emerged as one of EMP's most popular exhibits. Who hasn't wondered what Mick Jagger or Janet Jackson feel like running on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans? Now you can find out. (And for $10, you can even walk away with a concert poster and ticket stubs to remember your moment in the spotlight.) Although fame is fleeting (just a few minutes), it's about as close as you can come to being a rock star. It's quite a bit easier for your imagination to make the leap here than in your bedroom with a tennis racket, your dog the lone audience member staring up at you wide-eyed.

The Experience Music Project is the brainchild of Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Stir together his massive collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, the desire to bring American popular music awareness to the public, and a few extra dollars burning a hole in his back pocket, and you've got the ingredients for the Experience Music Project. EMP strives to combine the history of rock and roll roots in jazz, country, soul, blues, and gospel, with more recent rock genres in an interactive multi-sensory experience guaranteed to inform and engage for an entire day.

If you're worried about being able to find EMP by the Space Needle or Monorail in the Seattle Center, fear not. There are to be no problems whatsoever locating this enormity some call a modern masterpiece and others say looks like an exploded electric guitar. Visitors learn in the temporary architecture exhibit that co-founders Allen and Jody Patton chose architect Frank Gehry, famed for his avant garde works including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, because they felt his unusual vision would be well-suited to this type of project. To prepare Gehry, a classical music fan, they gave him a book on guitars. Gehry then bought himself a few of the electric variety, and cut them into pieces. These were his inspiration for the early designs, which eventually led to the multi-colored steel building sculpture of lightly brushed silver, bead-blasted gold, and mirrored purple (as in haze). One architectural journalist/musician described it as, "the visual representation of what guitar feedback might look like." Another visitor called it "a cathedral for the twenty-first century."

From the get-go, visitors are instantly engaged in the EMP motto: Look. See. Hear. Feel. Experience number one is Sky Church. If Jimi Hendrix knew his idea of a place where people could gather and listen to music had taken shape in such a big, big way, he'd be excusing himself to kiss the sky. The world's largest video screen--40 by 70 feet--and a state-of-the-art acoustic system besiege daytime visitors with performance videos that will constantly evolve over time. The grand hall becomes an event venue for concerts by night.

Wandering past Seattle sculptor Trimpin's giant 500-guitar sculpture, visitors find themselves at Crossroads. This main exhibit area showcases a range of artifacts that span mostly the past five decades, but some of it from the earliest musical roots of rock. Patrons marvel at steel guitars from the 1920s, as well as song lyrics handwritten by Kurt Cobain in 1988, Jimi Hendrix's guitar from Woodstock, Snoop Doggy Dogg's stage outfits, and memorabilia from the heavy-metal days (six words, three chords, one hairstyle).

EMP visitors use an interactive personal headphone throughout the museum called an MEG (Museum Exhibit Guide--and yes, they are really into acronyms). As a result, visitors look vaguely like Madonna on her Girlie Show tour as they meander through the museum using the headsets to listen to some of the industry's most prominent musicians, producers, writers, and historians. But this being the MTV generation, there's no standing patiently at each exhibit, listening to hours of dry facts. Visitors simply walk up to the exhibit display they're interested in, point the handheld device at a headphone symbol, and a menu of possibilities presents itself. It's even possible to bookmark passages to download from the museum's Web site, or bring the information home from EMP's Compaq Digital Lab.

Next stop is the Sound Lab, where the musically inept learn how to play and the musically inclined get to show off their talent. One man beamed as he played guitar for the first time in his life, courtesy of a computerized lesson using "Louie, Louie." I waited in line 10 minutes for a drum lesson, but gave up after realizing it'd be at least another 20 before I had my shot. (Even though EMP is arranged incredibly efficiently, some of the lines are theme-park long. Try to come at 9am or after 6pm weekdays for the shortest wait.) Some at EMP might find the sensory overload a bit over-stimulating; a 12-year-old boy graciously illustrated this point by losing his lunch in his baseball cap after a bit too much time in Sound Lab.

The Experience attracts everyone from preschoolers picking up their first musical instrument to world-famous musicians. "You can be a novice or a pro, or anywhere in between, and enjoy the Experience Music Project," says Paige Prill, Communications Manager for EMP. "We want people to visit and walk out of here feeling that they, too, can be creative, whether it's writing poetry or playing the guitar." Renowned artists flock to EMP, too. In just the first month the museum was open, lucky visitors heard Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics discuss songwriting, saw a multitude of free performances, and received DJ lessons from some of the country's finest.

If you can't make it to EMP, you can make it to the EMP Web site. Here the museum continues with information ranging from guitar lessons (a different lick is illustrated every day) to more than you thought you could ever know about Jimi Hendrix. Information about up-and-coming bands, a punk music chronology, and even a harmony lesson by Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart await Web-site visitors. But to get the rock star experience in front of an audience other than your faithful pooch, you'll have to visit EMP.•