Song Request Friday: Ben Bosco

More specifically, THIS SONG:

Bach Violin Concerto in E Major (3rd movement)

I know most people haven’t heard of this guy, but he does some awesome versions of classical songs for the bandolin and guitars. That song would be an awesome concert opener or closer. So, wanna play those classical pieces that were composed for the violin, only on your guitar instead? Contact Ben Bosco.

And by the way… Bach kicks ass.

Rock Band 3 might teach us how to ACTUALLY play

I’m starting to REALLY like this Dhani Harrison dude. You know, George Harrison’s son, Dhani, who was pivotal for the development of the Beatles Rock Band? Well, apparently he is sticking around as a consultant for Harmonix, helping develop Rock Band 3.

And guess what?

He wants to make the controllers more “realistic”, so people can actually LEARN how to play ACTUAL instruments.

For the full story and more details, please visit PlasticAxe.com.

For those about to rock: a message by G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton is, by far, my favorite thinker. He is also one of the most underrated thinkers in history, in my humble opinion. I am currently reading his marvelous “Tremendous Trifles”, which you can access for free online, and his fourth story, called “The Perfect Game”, drew some special attention from me.

Some time ago I was talking with a few people, and they said they’d never play Rock Band or Guitar Hero games because they were just too difficult and they’d never be able to play them. When asked if they thought the games were cool, they always replied that yes, they were incredibly awesome, but unfortunately they didn’t have the skill for them.

I always get a little frustrated when people quit music games while still on Easy. And I get frustrated, not because I think they suck, or they should try harder, but because I love the games so much that I want everyone to share my enthusiasm.

I think the words of G. K. Chesterton might help the wannabe rockers who just need a little push to start their fake musical careers. In the story, Chesterton is talking to his friend, Parkinson, while playing croquet, about the uselessness of skill. I hope you enjoy the read!

“how far you really are from the pure love of the sport—you who can play. It is only we who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause; you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet. You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet. It is we the bunglers who adore the occupation in the abstract. It is we to whom it is art for art’s sake. If we may see the face of Croquet herself (if I may so express myself) we are content to see her face turned upon us in anger. Our play is called amateurish; and we wear proudly the name of amateur, for amateurs is but the French for Lovers. We accept all adventures from our Lady, the most disastrous or the most dreary. We wait outside her iron gates (I allude to the hoops), vainly essaying to enter. Our devoted balls, impetuous and full of chivalry, will not be confined within the pedantic boundaries of the mere croquet ground. Our balls seek honour in the ends of the earth; they turn up in the flower-beds and the conservatory; they are to be found in the front garden and the next street. No, Parkinson! The good painter has skill. It is the bad painter who loves his art. The good musician loves being a musician, the bad musician loves music. With such a pure and hopeless passion do I worship croquet. I love the game itself. I love the parallelogram of grass marked out with chalk or tape, as if its limits were the frontiers of my sacred Fatherland, the four seas of Britain. I love the mere swing of the mallets, and the click of the balls is music. The four colours are to me sacramental and symbolic, like the red of martyrdom, or the white of Easter Day. You lose all this, my poor Parkinson. You have to solace yourself for the absence of this vision by the paltry consolation of being able to go through hoops and to hit the stick.”

I can’t help but think that if Mr. Chesterton was still alive today, and enjoyed playing Guitar Hero, he wouldn’t be bothered if he never left Medium at all. And neither should anyone. The fun of the game is on the game itself, not on being able to FC all the songs.

Edit: and by the way, this is the reason why I, so passionately, write in this blog about the details most people don’t even think about in music simulation games. It’s because I love even the tiny details. I can’t FC songs on the “Challenging” tier, but boy, do I love the game.

Leave the FC videos to the pros. We, the true fans of the genre, will carry on having fun with all the little magical attributes of the games.

On band-specific music games

Though not in black, I’m back. And speaking of being back and in black simultaneously, let’s talk a bit about AC/DC. As far as I’m concerned, AC/DC is a pretty big band. I mean big in terms of fame, of course. They have many legendary rock anthems in their music catalogue, have had their songs appear in dozens of movies, sell thousands of t-shirts around the globe at any given year, and I couldn’t watch them in their last world tour because the concerts got sold out in 10 minutes. So, I mean, they are pretty big, I think.

So considering how big they are, you could think AC/DC are a bunch of assholes. But nope, they are not. In fact, with all the hype around music games nowadays, instead of negotiating a game just for themselves, they agreed to release a big freaking live track pack for Rock Band 2:

Which is an awesome track pack, really. Now let’s change the subject a little.

I’m getting kinda fed up with my Beatles Rock Band. Now, don’t get me wrong: the game itself IS amazing. What is almost unbearable to me is having to swap out my Rock Band 2 DVD and insert the Beatles Rock Band one every time I wanna play a couple Beatles songs.

I mean… I am rarely in the mood of spending a whole hour just playing Beatles. Yeah, I love Beatles, but one of the awesome things about music simulation games is that you’re given freedom to play what the heck you feel like playing at any given time. And since the songs in Beatles Rock Band are not exportable, well… I don’t feel very free playing it. I mean, I can’t just play “Dragula” and “Octopus’s Garden” in the same setlist, right? Bummer.

Thinking of it this way, the AC/DC track pack is a much better solution, since you can actually play the tracks you want in the middle of the most nonsensical setlist you can imagine. Of course, the perfect solution would be to have all Beatles tracks exportable to Rock Band 2, but well, we can’t. Which really is a shame, because between playing RB2 and the Beatles one… it’s kind of a no brainer for me most of the time.

And there’s another thing. The whole deal, I hate to repeat myself here but here I go again, the whole deal of music simulation games is TO CREATE YOUR OWN ROCK STAR. PERIOD. So when you’re playing someone else’s avatar, someone who’s already famous, it’s JUST NOT THAT ENGAGING. You spend a lot of time creating your character, dressing him like a kickass rocker from hell, picking a righteous style and finish for your AXE, and you do that because you wanna go there and rock shit up with your “rock avatar”! So why the hell would I wanna play as James Hetfield in Guitar Hero: Metallica for example?? He’s famous already, where’s the thrill in that?!

The whole thing was done tastefully in Beatles Rock Band, since the game actually tells the player their story. And it has this whole different vibe to it which was delivered in an extremely accomplished way. But really, I’d love my guitar character to play “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in Rock Band 2. I’d really love it.

But since I don’t have the option to, in most of the cases I just choose not to play it at all, and to make a huge freaking setlist in Rock Band 2 instead with the songs I love.

Song Request Friday: Oingo Boingo

I know I haven’t updated in a while, I’ve been busy again. Sorry for that. Anyway, today is Song Request Friday again, after a whole week with no posts whatsoever, but here we go.

During the 80s, there was this explosion of a new genre of rock music called New Wave. It was daring, full of unusual elements and with a lot of raw power from its punkish influences. New Wave, in my view, is the the rock genre that absolutely deserves an epic comeback, since it was killed by grunge while it was still an infant.

Many great bands added to the New Wave movement, specially names such as The B52′s, Erasure, Duran Duran, Devo and Talk Talk (God I love them all so much, it’s hard to pick five), but none so much, in my humble opinion, as Oingo Boingo. 

In case you don’t know, Danny Elfman, who is nowadays working writing soundtracks to movies and TV shows such as The Simpsons, used to be the frontman of Oingo Boingo. Can you spot him in that picture above? Anyway, Oingo Boingo brought so much irreverence, strangeness, freshness and creativity to the movement that they are, again in my opinion, the definitive New Wave band.

And no music game would be complete without the “definitive New Wave band”, would it?

So without further ado, here is the list of the necessary Oingo Boingo songs that should be released in the future by Harmonix:

- Little Girls (I’m not sure if the original version or the “Farewell” version)
- Controller (live, “Farewell” concert)
- It Only Makes me Laugh (THIS ONE SHOULD BE A REGULAR LISTEN TO EVERY HUMAN BEING)
- Just Another Day
- Dead Man’s Party
- We Close Our Eyes
- Not My Slave (another MANDATORY one)
- Insects (live, “Farewell” concert)
- Grey Matter (live, “Farewell” concert)
- Nasty Habits (live, “Farewell” concert)

It’s a long list, but believe, it was a pain to choose only 10 songs. Oingo Boingo songs are just so fun to listen to, it’s hard to choose which ones would be the most fun to play. If you ever doubt my suggestion, go and give those songs a listen yourself. Come on, do it. Oingo Boingo KICKS ASS. Period.

Lego Rock Band and Band Hero: Compatibility

This is going to be a quick post. According to this blog’s user statistics, a lot of people have been interested in knowing if the Lego Rock Band and Band Hero games are going to have compatibility issues.

Well, for older games you can check the Instrument Compatibility Matrix right here at Joystiq.

According to Traveller’s Tales’ boss Jonathan Smith, Lego Rock Band will work with all current Guitar Hero controllers.

As for the reverse, well, I don’t know yet. But be sure to bookmark the Harmonix compatibility chart, as I’m sure Harmonix will update us on this one. I’m guessing they will all be completely compatible, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.

As usual, just keep in mind that Guitar Hero controllers have that slide area for tapping notes, which the Rock Band guitar doesn’t. Personally, I don’t care, but just remember that when you decide on which peripherals you wanna buy.

BIG EDIT:

Please follow this newer post for newer information on the compatibility of the peripherals.

 

Song Request Friday: Andrew W.K.

I’m starting a new tradition for this blog, in which every friday I’ll post some song requests here. And I think the one artist to be the first to appear here should be Andrew W.K.

First of all, the man rocks. His attitude is just really rock and roll all night and party every day. He’s the rock messiah that KISS prophesized. The man lives to party hard, it’s his philosophy of life and he taught us that way of life in his two testaments: “I Get Wet” and “The Wolf”. I believe those two albums should be available to download IN FULL. But I think it’s only fair to priorize the songs that (imho) are his best. So without further ado, here goes. The songs that DEFINITELY should be included in future music simulation games:

1. It’s Time to Party
2. Party Hard
3. She is Beautiful
4. We Want Fun
5. Victory Strikes Again / Long Live the Party (medley)
6. The Song
7. Totally Stupid
8. I Love Music

So no throwing “Party Hard” at us and calling it a day. We need a full Andrew W.K. track pack. Call it the “Party till you Puke” track pack. If you ever considered playing Rock Band while complete and utterly drunk, this is the ultimate pack to fulfill that mission with. And please include a blood-stained t-shirt in the pack as well. I mean, it’s only fitting.

PS: I thought Andrew W.K. was an MTV sweetheart through and through. I really don’t understand why his songs haven’t appered in the Rock Band series yet. It’s really a mystery to me.

Music Videos: it’s an MTV game after all!

Yeah, the title of this post is directed at the Rock Band franchise, even though this is a general music game blog. I’ll explain why later. But first, do you remember the music video for the song “Take On Me”, by A-Ha? If you don’t, go on and check it out right now. It’s awesome. Did you know it won 6 awards at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards? Including Best Concept Video and Best Special Effects. And it deserves it.

Music videos, as I’m sure you’ll agree, are very cool. Generally. Not all of them of course, but at the end of the day it’s all a matter of taste anyway. What matters is that if you’ve ever been young, a fan of music and had access to MTV, chances are you have fond memories of at least a dozen music videos that you cherish to this day. Am I right?

Well, Harmonix has timidly introduced the concept of music videos in Rock Band. Activision hasn’t, ergo the title of this post. What happens in Rock Band is that sometimes you’ll choose a song and then, as a surprise opportunity, a fan or maybe your producer will present you with a chance to shoot a video of another song. If you accept it, a different animation happens and it’s really cool actually. It’s as if you’re playing your own music video.

In the game, one of the videos looks a bit like this:

Notice all the colorful “ghosts” of your character, as one of the effects. Of course, it looks MUCH better in motion, but you get the idea. What really matters is that it’s a really fun moment, and if it’s your first time experiencing it, you might even miss a few notes because you’re trying to pay attention to the effects of your video.

But here’s what happens afterwards: you gain more fans… and that’s it. You don’t get to shoot it again, you don’t get to view your video, you don’t get a review for it… nothing. It fades into oblivion and the game continues.

Can you smell the opportunities for innovation?

Alright I’m sure you all own the Beatles: Rock Band game. If you don’t, you should. REALLY. But I’m gonna assume that you do. Well, for that game, the developers created a set of “dreamscapes” for several songs. Those “dreamscapes” are actually artistic interpretations of the songs’ meanings and “vibes”, translated into graphic animation. So, for example, when you play “Here Comes the Sun”, the game looks something like this:

Which looks amazing. Actually, it looks so good that it’s almost a REAL music video, in the sense that it would be very enjoyable just to sit back and watch it on TV.

Do you see where I’m going?

The current Rock Band implementation of music videos is still very crude. But we know that Harmonix has shown a lot of talent and competence at creating amazing “dreamscapes” for Beatles: Rock Band. Why not put it to good use for Rock Band 3? What if you could ACTUALLY create your band’s music video?

Imagine this: you choose your song. Yeah, you should actually get to CHOOSE it, and not let someone else do it for you. And then, once you’ve cleared it, you’re presented with a timeline of the song, and you can choose from a myriad of special effects, themes and scenarios to make your video with.

Alternatively, the game could automatically generate a video matching the style of the song you chose. The game already does that with the normal gigs you play. For example, I was playing “White Unicorn” by Wolfmother (from the new DLC that was released yesterday) and there’s a section of the song that’s really psychodelic. And the game reflects this by adding a lot of blurry effects to the screen. That same logic could be used for music videos. So if you’re a bit lazy and just wanna try your luck, just go and automatically generate your video and see how the game creates it. On the other hand, if you’d like to get your hands dirty, the game would hand you the tools to make it yourself.

I mean, this is the videomaking generation, isn’t it? The world is filled to the brim with young talented players who WILL surprise us if we just hand them the tools. And this brings me to my second idea. Two words: VIDEO SHARING.

Of course, once you spend some time making your own music video (for your fake, virtual band, no less), you’ll want to keep it so you can watch it again. You’ll probably also want to show it to your friends, right? Now imagine if you had the option to… generate a file that you could actually save in your computer, to upload it to Youtube, Vimeo or whatever? Actually I don’t predict it being too huge a technical feat. In my mind, your console would send the details of the clip (what effects, dreamscape and each character’s antics, each second) to the Harmonix website, which in turn already has your band’s profile. Then, you’d enter your band’s page at www.rockband.com and just download your videoclip. The website would communicate with a server equipped with the automatic generation of the video, and just send you the final file.

If this idea actually proves itself to be too difficult to implement due to the data traffic involved in the procedure, Harmonix could choose to charge a small fee (maybe the equivalent to 80 Microsoft Points, in XBOX360 terms) to let you download your video. This would limit the traffic substantially, I imagine. And I think people would work harder on their videos before choosing to pay for them as well.

There are also many other possibilities derived from this awesome tool. Harmonix could launch contests around music videos, for example. It could also launch additional effects and dreamscapes for download (for a price), for the videomaking enthusiasts out there. After all, if people will pay for avatar clothing, why not for cool add-ons for music videomaking? Maybe even user generated content in the same vein of Rock Band Network? Who knows?

Of course, I might be going too far with this idea, and I’m not asking for the ability to make my own “Take On Me” award-winning video. But I feel that making music videos could be really cool and that the current music simulation games haven’t explored this idea satisfactorily yet. There’s certainly much room for improvement and innovation here.

Lego Rock Band and Band Hero: TRACKLISTS!

Hey folks. Lego Rock Band and Band Hero are coming out soon. Have you decided if you’re gonna buy either game yet?

Well, that cool guy Jeff over at Fake Plastic Rock has posted the tracklists for both games. Isn’t that nice? So head over there right now and check them out.

My own impression is that the Lego Rock Band tracklist is better, even if shorter. But to tell you the truth, I’m not terribly excited by any of those games. I’d really love to pay for the few songs that I like in Lego Rock Band, instead of having to buy the entire package, but I guess that’s asking too much. Oh well. At least you CAN export the entire setlist to your Rock Band 2 for a small fee.

Anyway, personally I think those games are a bad move for both companies. But don’t let my grumpy attitude affect you in any way, please. Go take a look at those tracklists and have fun!

Project Natal and Music Simulation Games

Everybody’s talking about it, it’s the next big thing to hit the XBOX 360 and, according to the lucky fellas who’ve seen it in action, it will kick major butts. Yep, Project Natal’s coming and, according Scott Guthrie:

“The Harmonix development team are working on what is effectively the next game, or ‘Rock Band 3’. We aren’t standing still – we will keep moving into new areas and look at new technologies that our platform holder partners are also developing, such as Project Natal from Microsoft. We’re working with them to pull some things together. So it’s pretty exciting time for the future of our music game business.”

To read the whole interview, click here.

Alright, so Rock Band 3 is going to use Natal’s technology. That’s awesome news, I’m sure you’ll agree with me. Right off the bat, there are a few functionalities that come to my mind:

1) Being able to just SAY the name of the song you wanna play, instead of looking for it in your immense library.
2) Being able to draw the logo of your band and let Natal scan it.
3) Being able to show Natal the tattoos you want inside the game.
4) If you’re a musician, you could show Natal your own real instrument and it would scan it.

Those are all really cool features… but of course, when you think about Project Natal, something else comes to your mind, right? I mean, the biggest functionality would have to be… having your own antics appearing in the game, of course! That would be awesome, right?!?

Well, not so fast. As a plastic guitar player, let me say something first. I suck at stage presence. When I’m playing my songs, I’m generally staring with eyes wide open at the TV screen, usually tapping my foot and only rarely doing something weird like changing facial expressions in a funny way and dancing. So that functionality would definitely fail with me. I mean, look at this posts’s title picture up there. Do you see that guy doing a high kick? I can’t do that while playing my guitar, unless I wanna miss a bunch of notes.

Nowadays, the characters of the game already have some really awesome animations. The guitar player breaks his guitar, the singer jumps into the crowd, the drummer throws his drumsticks in the air. We, poor mortals, having to pay attention to our note tracks, barely even move around. Most of us don’t jump and play our intruments backwards, that’s for sure. So what could Harmonix be planning?

Now, I’ve thought about this and the singer could have a better time being tracked. I mean, think about it. It’s much easier to sing and move around, change facial expressions to deliver a passionate interpretation of the song, dance and all that. But the other players… I’m not so sure.

So right now… I still don’t know how Natal is going to be used in terms of motion capture. I don’t think it’s gonna be an obvious solution, unless they want people to play like really lame blasé bands who don’t care about their crowd. Remember, real musicians know all their songs by heart, they don’t need note tracking. It’s their jobs to know how to play their songs. Therefore, since they don’t need to look at a TV screen while performing, they are free to do whatever they want onstage. We gamers play the game to have fun, we don’t memorize all the songs we download every month, so we need to pay attention to our note tracks.

So how could it work?

I feel the developers are going to start to have some good ideas as soon as they start testing the technology with real people. I’ve read in a magazine that the Activision developers once thought that the peripheral for DJ Hero should have 2 turntables. But when they tested it with real gamers, they noticed people tended to look more at the controller than the screen, which fatally killed the whole experience. So they designed a peripheral with only one turntable instead.

Project Natal has a lot of potential, that’s for sure. But since it’s major innovation comes in using the whole player’s body as a controller, voice included, a lot of real human simulation is in order. There’s no easy way out of it.