Bridging the Gap
November 1, 2010 12:20 AM
Rock Band 3's new keyboard peripheral and Fender Mustang Pro Guitar, from a music creation perspective.
Confession time: anyone who knows me in real life knows I'm a rabid fan of rhythm/music games. I used to play Guitar Hero 2 semi-professionally (I've made more money doing that than I have making real music, until I got burned out from the competitive circuit and quit 3 years ago), and I've been excited about the recent release of Rock Band 3. Like it or not, it's awfully fun to get together with a group of friends who may or may not know anything at all about music, and just pretend to be rock stars for a couple hours a week.
Electronic music blog site Create Digital Music has put up a few nice articles over the past few days, including reviews of the keyboard and Mustang peripherals, approaching them as MIDI controllers, instead of just as game controllers. This has convinced me to go ahead and buy the keyboard; somewhat for use with Rock Band 3, but mostly as a legitimate, inexpensive MIDI shoulder-mount synth controller. It seems to be a solid buy.
As far as the Mustang goes, it seems like a nice buy for an inexpensive MIDI guitar replacement.
Finally, there's a behind the scenes interview with some of Harmonix's team, about what kinds of things they were going for, in creating the instruments and the pro mode, in general.
It seems they're working hard to bridge the gap between music listeners/rhythm game players and music creators. It's certainly an ambitious goal, but they may be just the ones who can do it. What are your thoughts on it?
posted by askmeaboutLOOM (6 comments total)
Confession time: anyone who knows me in real life knows I'm a rabid fan of rhythm/music games. I used to play Guitar Hero 2 semi-professionally (I've made more money doing that than I have making real music, until I got burned out from the competitive circuit and quit 3 years ago), and I've been excited about the recent release of Rock Band 3. Like it or not, it's awfully fun to get together with a group of friends who may or may not know anything at all about music, and just pretend to be rock stars for a couple hours a week.
Electronic music blog site Create Digital Music has put up a few nice articles over the past few days, including reviews of the keyboard and Mustang peripherals, approaching them as MIDI controllers, instead of just as game controllers. This has convinced me to go ahead and buy the keyboard; somewhat for use with Rock Band 3, but mostly as a legitimate, inexpensive MIDI shoulder-mount synth controller. It seems to be a solid buy.
As far as the Mustang goes, it seems like a nice buy for an inexpensive MIDI guitar replacement.
Finally, there's a behind the scenes interview with some of Harmonix's team, about what kinds of things they were going for, in creating the instruments and the pro mode, in general.
It seems they're working hard to bridge the gap between music listeners/rhythm game players and music creators. It's certainly an ambitious goal, but they may be just the ones who can do it. What are your thoughts on it?
It seems they're working hard to bridge the gap between music listeners/rhythm game players and music creators.
That's a fascinating thought LOOM and something I'd find interesting - I like it when walls start to break down and the orthodox "you can't do that" is answered with "oh yes we fucking can - just watch us". Appeals to the iconoclastic punk in me.
However, I get a real generation gap feeling reading your post and unS's response. I just don't know what you're talking about with these computer games! Whole thing has just passed me by - I think the last computer game I played was pacman way back in the 80's!! My kids were never into computers - but that might be becuase they're girls (one's 23 and the other's 21 now). I'm not knocking these games at all - and find it fascinating that you actually made money playing them - it's just really alien to me, another world. Flapjax, Dispbro and sns are, I think, around my age - be interested what their take is on this.
posted by MajorDundee at 11:01 AM on November 1, 2010
That's a fascinating thought LOOM and something I'd find interesting - I like it when walls start to break down and the orthodox "you can't do that" is answered with "oh yes we fucking can - just watch us". Appeals to the iconoclastic punk in me.
However, I get a real generation gap feeling reading your post and unS's response. I just don't know what you're talking about with these computer games! Whole thing has just passed me by - I think the last computer game I played was pacman way back in the 80's!! My kids were never into computers - but that might be becuase they're girls (one's 23 and the other's 21 now). I'm not knocking these games at all - and find it fascinating that you actually made money playing them - it's just really alien to me, another world. Flapjax, Dispbro and sns are, I think, around my age - be interested what their take is on this.
posted by MajorDundee at 11:01 AM on November 1, 2010
Heh, Major, I'm at most a couple of years younger than you but we just started late with the kid thing. I've always been into video/computer games though -- worked briefly in the industry when I was in college and kept up with it. 'unSane' was my online name when playing Unreal Tournament because it described my fighting style (load up with the flak cannon on the most crowded map you can find and blast your way to victory).
posted by unSane at 1:33 PM on November 1, 2010
posted by unSane at 1:33 PM on November 1, 2010
The whole idea, from the start, that was enjoyable to me about the Guitar Hero (and later Rock Band) franchise is that it did that; they gave this nice feeling similar to being in a band, but with a helluva lot less work. I don't have any interest in learning to play real guitar (that's why, instead, I have a guitbass and basitar), and I had no illusion that it would suddenly make me good at the real thing. However, growing up as a horn player, it was a really easy transition to fake guitar; I went from pressing 4 buttons (valves) with my left hand to pressing 5 buttons with my left hand while "strumming" with my right. It's a pretty easy logical leap.
At the same time, Rock Band's drums really did help me learn how to do the real thing. The tutorial modes even go over the fundamental techniques--paradiddles, off-hand beats, even fill techniques--and now that it has cymbals and a hi-hat pedal, it's become basically a practice kit I can use without driving everyone in the vicinity insane, because it's far quieter than the real thing. Of course, I have a real drum kit, but if I just want to dick around for 20 minutes, the rock band kit moves as a single piece, whereas it takes 20 minutes just to set up my real kit.
--
On another note, as far as playing video games, I grew up as a DOS gamer ("Ask me about LOOM" is a reference to the 1990 LucasArts adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island), and eventually moved to consoles as well (I have an XBox360 and Wii). My console experience jumped directly from the Atari 7800 to the Nintendo64, so I missed some big ones there, but I've sort of made up for lost time, upon getting my own source of income. Video games also served as a non-destructive outlet for the intense sibling rivalry between my brother and me--instead of fighting in real life, we just beat the crap out of each other in games. Nowadays, we tend to opt toward cooperative play than competitive, but it still serves a similar function, and we've never been closer. We were once the highest ranked co-op team on Guitar Hero 2, '80s, and 3 in the world, back before I stopped playing (even after 3 years' inactivity on our part, we're still ranked 41st on 2, 5th on '80s, and 48th on GH3).
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 3:24 PM on November 1, 2010
At the same time, Rock Band's drums really did help me learn how to do the real thing. The tutorial modes even go over the fundamental techniques--paradiddles, off-hand beats, even fill techniques--and now that it has cymbals and a hi-hat pedal, it's become basically a practice kit I can use without driving everyone in the vicinity insane, because it's far quieter than the real thing. Of course, I have a real drum kit, but if I just want to dick around for 20 minutes, the rock band kit moves as a single piece, whereas it takes 20 minutes just to set up my real kit.
--
On another note, as far as playing video games, I grew up as a DOS gamer ("Ask me about LOOM" is a reference to the 1990 LucasArts adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island), and eventually moved to consoles as well (I have an XBox360 and Wii). My console experience jumped directly from the Atari 7800 to the Nintendo64, so I missed some big ones there, but I've sort of made up for lost time, upon getting my own source of income. Video games also served as a non-destructive outlet for the intense sibling rivalry between my brother and me--instead of fighting in real life, we just beat the crap out of each other in games. Nowadays, we tend to opt toward cooperative play than competitive, but it still serves a similar function, and we've never been closer. We were once the highest ranked co-op team on Guitar Hero 2, '80s, and 3 in the world, back before I stopped playing (even after 3 years' inactivity on our part, we're still ranked 41st on 2, 5th on '80s, and 48th on GH3).
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 3:24 PM on November 1, 2010
PS The Mustang you mentioned is not a stringed instrument but has more than a hundred buttons up the neck. The stringed version is going to be a Squier Strat, which is basically a strat with a full midi implementation, kinda cool really.
posted by unSane at 5:43 PM on November 1, 2010
posted by unSane at 5:43 PM on November 1, 2010
I played a bit with the keyboard this weekend. Fun. I was surprised by the number of little things that made it less than instantly comfortable for me to play keyboard in the game, but that's more a matter of personal habits than anything wrong with the game or peripheral.
I'm really interested to see what general reviews of the Squier experience look like. I have no real interest in the Mustang peripheral myself, though I think it's very neat that they're giving that a shot.
posted by cortex at 12:35 PM on November 3, 2010
I'm really interested to see what general reviews of the Squier experience look like. I have no real interest in the Mustang peripheral myself, though I think it's very neat that they're giving that a shot.
posted by cortex at 12:35 PM on November 3, 2010
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My kids beat Guitar Hero into whimpering submission and although I don't think it taught them that much technically except for timing, it introduced them to huge swathes of rock music and most of all gave them that fantastic feeling of playing in a band. It kind of turned learning instruments into something that was a chore in terms of something they actively like to do. When they come home from school, the first thing they tend to do is go bash the drums or pick up a guitar and thrash it joyfully and tunelessly to the Beatles or something.
So if I can converge real instruments with the game, fantastic. I look forward to any reviews or experiences you have with this.
The keenest drummer in our house by far is the 17-month old. That pic isn't posed, it's just what he does. Puts the ear protection on, holds the sticks properly and plays all the drums in a semi-musical way (his single stroke roll is coming right along!). His favorite activity just before bed is to find all his toy drums, arrange them around him in a kit, and have at it. He has purloined my practice pad and sticks, which are now apparently his.
posted by unSane at 8:09 AM on November 1, 2010