There is a major difference with musicians and that is repetition and muscle memory. A song is always structured the same, and its possible to get to a point where you're adept at it without even thinking about it (like typing).

If musical talent is a 10, pinball talent is still about a 1 or 2 on the skill scale but that doesn't remove the random element of pinball that isn't present in music. As a lover of both pinball and guitar, I don't say this to offend pinball players. You can play pinball for a few months a probably be good enough not to embarrass yourself in a league. 3 months of guitar isn't enough to scratch the surface as a player.

As far as rules on the newer games... They're deep which is great, but unless you really read and watch tutorials its often unclear about what you're supposed to do. Wasn't there some kind of loophole in Star Trek where you could get crazy tournament scores by exploiting a code flaw? That is the difference between pure skill (which the player this thread is about my still possess) and memorizing scoring trivia for 20 or 30 different machines commonly used in tournaments.