OT, but watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK7ZkNCN4hc

Palin dodges a question on whether or not an abortion clinic bomber is a terrorist. Really.

PAX had a panel on “Is casual killing hardcore gaming?” Primarily this was geared at the Wii and to a lesser extent Xbox live, but Rock Band and Guitar Hero are also part of the mix. The concern here is more about developers than community ... that EA will spend more time and money making casual games than epic 20 hour FPS sagas. I think there’s room enough for both, but who knows (already the hardcore games are starting to collapse under their own weight ... the budgets are getting huge)

WRT diversity. Heck, they could have put in Earth Wind and Fire, Parliament, or any number of other things.

now what would be really cool would be an adapter you could hook up to your actual guitar and use to play rockband.

Instead of hitting the blue button, you’d actually have to play a G or whatever.

There’s a constant debate that’s been raging on in gamer culture for the past few years about “casual” versus “hardcore”.  Like most gamer debates, it’s interminably stupid.

THANK FUCKING CHRIST, SOMEONE SAYS IT.  If I have to deal with one more self-styled “OMGZ HARDKOREZ” gamer whining about “casuals” ruining gaming, I’m going to stab a cotton swab through my eardrums.

I’m kinda more curious about hardcore musician’s attitudes than hardcore gamers.  As someone who has played actual instruments, who willingly watches the technique’ish music shows like Jazz Solo Sessions on HDNet, and read books like This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin, I have read these posts here and elsewheres with a decided amount of amusement and a bit of concern.  I worry that it might drive tastes ever-further into the basement.  Crunck and boy bands are a demonic enough influence as it is.  On the other hand, I certainly remember the impact that Dance Dance Revolution had on college campuses, and I thought it was a pretty cool game even if I never played it that much.  I would never really connect it to actual dancing!

It’s good that people sing and play instruments, but I think having so much of the experience intermediated by an entertainment set-up that supplants imagination and even rudimentary talent is a bad thing.  I just hope it becomes its own thing rather than supplanting anything else.

I can understand why jazz bands led by Wes Anderson or Pat Metheny can’t be represented, but how about blues bands?  A lot of blues songs, stripped to almost nothing, are pretty technically simple to play.

/me has been playing Rokia Traore like a maniac these days

The key for me when learning the 5th fret in guitar hero was to have my hand further down most of the time.  It’s easier to play 1st and 2nd frets with your index finger than it is to play 4th and 5th with your pinky.

I recently completed every single track on expert on GH3, and I’m still psyched that I never have to play/hear “Raining Blood” by Slayer ever again.

I’m with shah8.  The guitar is not a particularly difficult instrument to learn to play, why not pick up an actual guitar and try to learn a few riffs of a popular song.  It’s probably a given that you won’t end up in the Pat Metheny league, but at least with an actual guitar you can make your own racket, rather than waiting for Activision to do it for you.

As far as hardcore gamers go, unless they are coding their own rendering engines, they aren’t very hardcore.

My band’s name is Genocide Kills (which Xbox Live tells me is “not classy”).  I have three characters I rotate between: Ray Gun, Rae Gun, and Rey Ghunn.  Not sure why I got stuck on that phonetic grouping.  I’m also a “guitar” player when it comes to the game.

It makes me laugh when everyone says “man, you should learn to play real guitar instead of playing that stupid game.”  Um, they’re not the same thing.  I don’t know anyone who is playing Guitar Hero instead of learning to play real guitar.

For the most part, all of these music-based video games are Simon set to popular recorded tunes with your friends.  Whereas actually playing guitar is hours and hours of practicing in your room, sounding terrible, hurting your fingers, and probably never getting to the point where other humans will want to be within 40 feet of you when you “perform”.

So, to recap:

Guitar Hero/Rock Band: goofy game to play with friends
Real guitar: hard solo hobby/ rewarding skill (after years of commitment)

One thing to note about Rock Band is that while guitar is decidedly not guitar, singing and drums are actually pretty good representations of ACTUAL singing and drums. To play expert drums well, you have to be able to get down the fundamentals of drumming very well. While you’re following a path, those fundamentals are still being developed and the game has a drum trainer and freestyle mode intended to further develop drum skills. And singing is just that. I’m a singer myself, though no where good enough to do it as a career. But good enough to hold my own on Expert. Singing through Rock Band 1, my technique and skills really improved back to my college days when I sang in a choir regularly. Likewise, so did my range as my baritone stretched into tenor at times like it could when I was younger.

Its not music, no, but I don’t think its player intend it to be. No one complains when gamers play racing games instead of actually racing cars. And inspite of the Army’s efforts, FPS’s still have little to do with turning gamers into soldiers. What you do see the game do, though, is expose a lot of people to a lot of different music. Older gamers are introduced to modern bands they may have been busy dismissing while younger gamers are discovering classic bands. Its not even just acts like The Who or Boston finding a new audience. Some gamers are being exposed to Nirvana for the first time through Rock Band. Its really preserving our pop/rock musical culture and I think there is a value to that. I’m glad 16 year olds are discovering Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers. I’m glad they are learning about grunge.  That’s really cool if you ask me.

I’m a huge fan of music games, the only instrument I know how to play is the Clarinet. I’m planning on starting to learn a real guitar I think pretty soon, but I’m not sure how that will go. It’s a bit out of my comfort level. I find music games to be a form of zen, to be honest. They are one of the few things that truly relax me.

For what follows. Note that I play Guitar on Expert and Drums on Hard/Expert, I’ve Gold Starred about 15 songs on Expert guitar and 3 on Expert Drums.

Rock Band 2 I think is a lot better than Rock Band, which is better than Guitar Hero 3. That said, Guitar Hero 3 isn’t THAT bad, although it for sure tries too hard to be “rawk”. What “better” means in this case, is song selection and charting. (There are also UI improvements but IMO people will ignore a bad UI for great charts.)  GH3 has Avalancha which is still one of the best I’ve ever played, and the charting IMO isn’t as bad as some people think.

Rock Band 1 had a good selection I think, but in terms of great charts it was a bit small. It probably had 10 or so great charts. Rock Band 2 IMO has a lot more, probably about 20-30. Which is actually a huge number for a music game. I’m not a big punk fan, and I don’t really go towards those charts very much, I do find that 70’s rock, especially the more prog side is a gold mine.

Just for reference, my favorite charts right now are Foreplay/Longtime and Carry On Wayward Son.

However, I have to say, that I love Rock Band 2’s graphics engine, how it does the camera angle switches and everything. Personally, I think that That’s What You Get is breathtaking in that way.

if shah8 is such an insufferable music snob as to actually listen to jazz on NPR (maryann mcpartland = in marching band with the Cryptkeeper in high school) he’d know there is no second “c” in Crunk.

PAX had a panel on “Is casual killing hardcore gaming?”

Man, that sounds like a bad movie . . .

Chart==The note patterns on the screen as set to the song. Most of the fun of playing a song is basically in the charting. The problem with GH3 is that a lot of it is charted to be too difficulty, adding additional notes here and there where they don’t feel natural.

For example, Cherub Rock in GH3 and in Rock Band have basically almost completely different charts. (The GH3 one I think is actually better. Strangely enough)

The key for me when learning the 5th fret in guitar hero was to have my hand further down most of the time.  It’s easier to play 1st and 2nd frets with your index finger than it is to play 4th and 5th with your pinky.

I second this advice from Wookiee. Make your index finger do all the work!

Also, if you’re like me, your hands get sweaty, which is gross, but does make it easier to slide your fingers up and down the fret buttons (and means that no one wants to share your guitar with you…).

It’s good that people sing and play instruments, but I think having so much of the experience intermediated by an entertainment set-up that supplants imagination and even rudimentary talent is a bad thing.

The guitar is not a particularly difficult instrument to learn to play, why not pick up an actual guitar and try to learn a few riffs of a popular song.

Two things:
xkcd comic, and TVTropes entry “Stop Having Fun Guys”.

SERIOUSLY, STOP PUSHING THIS FUCKING MINDSET.

Thanks for that TVTropes link. You just killed all of my spare time.

I think Rock Band is helped by the fact that players of different skill levels can play at their own skill level. This is huge. The ‘hardcore’ player can play on expert while the ‘casual’ player plays on medium.

And as far as the stupid hardcore\casual argument goes, I say that no one who does not love Peggle can call themselves any kind of gamer. That is all.

Amanda, Sacks is on record as saying that studies have shown that musicians have a larger Corpus Callosum, but I don’t know if there are any brain improvements in adults aside from this:

Musical training has been shown to aid in memory functions in many different ways. Although the exact neural mechanism of how it helps is not fully agreed upon, it could be a neural exercise of different parts of the brain which are involved in memory. Another idea is that it could form neural connections from different angles to a single memory and help to create different pathways for the recall of a single memory. Altenmuller et al studied the difference between active and passive musical instruction and found the results to be equally effective in the short term. However, it was found that over a longer period of time, the actively taught students retained much more information than the passively taught students. The actively taught students were also found to have greater cerebral cortex activation; this would indicate that the musically taught students were more effectively taught. It should also be noted that the passively taught students weren’t wasting their time; they, along with the active group, displayed greater left hemisphere activity which is typical in trained musicians (Strickland, 2001).

There is also an anecdote of a woman with chronic dementia due to her age, she could not remember integral portions of her life such as her place of birth, her place of residence for the majority of her life, or if she had had a short career singing on the radio. Despite this extreme dotage, she could remember every song she had sang perfectly (Skloot, 2002). It has also been indicated that simple melodies get “stuck” in our heads easier than more complex ones. Evolutionary biologists theorized that simpler tunes helped the ancient profession of the bard sing and remember oral histories. It has been shown that the more predictable the tune, the easier it is to get stuck in the head (Shouse, 2001). When subjects are asked to remember a song in their heads, the same parts of the brains light up except fainter and the primary auditory cortex is not activated as much.

I’m old-fashioned, you should play and sing what you enjoy, any ‘benefit’ should be looked upon as icing on the cake.

This is interesting:

Thaut’s clinical research applies to patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, Cerebral Palsy, traumatic brain injuries, and other diseases, illnesses, and impediments. Thaut and his staff developed clinical therapy techniques based on the physiology processes of the brain, of which rhythmic stimulation is one of the most important techniques.

“We know that the brain is very sensitive in processing time patterns in music. This is purely physiological and independent of any knowledge of music,” said Thaut. “A good example of this is when people subconsciously start tapping their feet to a good beat.”

The brain creates templates of how fast or slow the beats are. Through studies with brain- injured patients, Thaut and his staff determined that these music patterns and templates can help them. Discoveries from brain mapping and brain wave research showed that rhythm in music can serve as a timekeeper and stabilizer in the planning and timing of movement.

Thaut’s studies have all been published in peer-reviewed neuroscience journals. The studies focusing on rhythm to improve walking have shown that non-rhythm control groups improved by an average of ten percent, while the rhythm groups improved by twenty-five percent—a fifteen percent difference in improvement.

They really have Bikini Kill in there? I’d prefer “Carnival” or “New Radio” but that’s pretty awesome. I just sold a guitar last night to raise money for food so it may be a while before I buy this but I’m looking forward to it. Just played some four person Rock Band the other night, anyone spouting the “why don’t you just play a real guitar” line obviously hasn’t played this with their friends.

Also, I imagine they’d get Hendrix if they could but I’d really love to see some soul and R&B;in the game. Try playing drums along with the Meters or bass with Sly and the Family Stone, that would be great. A country version of Guitar Hero would be pretty cool too.

One thing to note about Rock Band is that while guitar is decidedly not guitar, singing and drums are actually pretty good representations of ACTUAL singing and drums.

Er, well, not exactly. I’m not a drummer so I can’t speak to that, but singing in the sense of carrying a tune and singing in the way that trained singers do (yes, even scratchy-voiced popsters, or at least the ones who are regarded as worth listening to) are not the same things.

Neither Pavarotti nor Patti Smith were born with their performance voices; they worked hard at consciously changing everything about what they do with their bodies in ways that an untrained singer would probably think were bizarre and unnecessary. But that accounts for all the difference between them and your average shower-singer.

THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, this is not a “well why don’t you just learn how to play a real guitar?” post. Rock Band is hella fun for all ages yadda yadda yadda. But I didn’t spend 3,000 hours in that goddamned basement practice room not to be persnickety about my instrument!

Also, I imagine they’d get Hendrix if they could

This.  The one Hendrix song that’s been featured in any of these games had to be a cover, without the lyrics.

It’s completely ridiculous that the only hip-hop is the Beastie Boys though.

Thanks for that TVTropes link. You just killed all of my spare time.

I aim to please.

I have to concur with Auguste re: music snobbery.  As a bass player I was somewhat elitist about RB until I played it at a party and was almost giddy with how much fun it was.  I play drums almost exclusively, though.  Maybe the transition to drums from bass is easier than from guitar.  Is Living Colour a GH exclusive property?  Seems Cult of Personality would be tailor made for these games.  The NIN songs (Burn, The Collector, March of the Pigs) are crazy fun on drums.

My band name:  Palinfreude.

I hope someone thinks about how great every instrument is in your average Prince song, and they make that a downloadable pack, though I fear Prince might not be generous about that.

JT: I want me an Eric Clapton pack.  I want my fingers to bleed.

I would love this.  “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses” are probably the two songs I’d most like to see in Rock Band.  (For that matter, a Cream 3-pack with “White Room” and “Sunshine of Your Love” would be amazing.)

I’m curious, Amanda, what you think about the Downloadable content options with Rock Band, specifically as it pertains to female singers. I think there are about 20 songs with female singers that can be purchased, including tracks by The Pretenders, The Runaways, Blondie, and Sleater-Kinney. Does this ameliorate the relative lack of on-disc songs with female singers much? I know I’ve bought DLC specifically so I had more tracks the would appeal to women wanting to sing for social gaming, but is the fact that this content available enough since it does come at an additional cost?

Also, for what its worth, the makers of Rock Band have been working on getting Hendrix into the game. Though the Guitar Hero folks got him first, the Hendrix estate has hinted that there are on-going negotiations with Rock Band as well. The big worry of the time is exclusive songs and/or artists, so there is some fretting that Hendrix may turn out to be locked into one game. In broadening the genres, they plan to release Texas Flood as a full album download, so that’ll bring some blues. Word is that there will be a country pack in December and Harmonix has made a point not to rule out rap and have obviously included the Beastie Boys and Rage Against the Machine. And strictly speaking, nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot in the charity pack from PAX.

I like RB2 better than 1—I like that you can transfer the DLC from 1 to 2, I like that it’s better with voice calibration, and I generally like the track list although I question their decision on a few. When I saw “Pretend We’re Dead” in the list my L7-fan-self rejoiced, the gamer part of me thought “damn, that song would be totally boring to play. No ‘Everglade’? No ‘Shirley?’ No ‘The Bomb?’” Same with the Lush song—there is just more interesting technical stuff out there by the same band. Ladykillers would have made a much better song than De-Luxe just from the gameplay standpoing.

I forget the name of the band because we’re actually playing a friend’s copy… but our drummer is named Android Abe (he looks like a punk-rock Abe Lincoln with red eyes)

There are a lot of punk rock Lincolns. One of the loading screens has a denim jacket with a pink of Lincoln with a Mohawk that has obviously been quite an inspiration. I’ve been meaning to make one, myself.

The other cool thing I like about Rock Band 2 is that not only does the DLC transfer, so does nearly all of the songs from the first game. With three exceptions, all of them can be copied to your hard drive for a $5 fee. Really expands your playlist in a hurry. I’ve got over 200 songs already for Rock Band 2. By the end of the year, they are promising 500 songs through DLC and various discs.

Oh, and my solo band is “Single Player Campaign”. With my girlfriend, though, I play as “Bonus Material”.

about using real guitar for rock band: someone’s had that idea.

As far as the old casual vs hardcore game conflict, I used to be a hardcore player (at least of some types of games), but now I have less time on my hands, and even if I had the time, I can’t spend 6 hours in one day gaming anymore. I’m just not built for it. There are probably a lot of people like me who would play hardcore games, but don’t have that much continuous time. Everyone can put in 20min to play a couple rounds of rock band though.

Amanda, perhaps they have better coordination or better physiological/kinetic intelligence
than the average non-musician, but that doesn’t translate into what is commonly referred to as ‘brain power”.  You might improve the circuitry, but you’re still stuck with the same CPU.

With Beethoven, as I pointed out in another thread, scholars still can’t say if he was unscrupulous with his publishers or was simply a dumb shit(as Mother Avenger would put it) when it came to financial matters. He was said to be clumsy, a trait along with deafness(in my right ear) perhaps being perhaps most of the few traits that he and I have in common.  

It’s easy to get caught up in the American tradition of doing an activity because it improves oneself:

The politics of dancing
The politics of ooh feeling good
The politics of moving, aha
If this message’s understood

OTOH, if you would like to live longer, I will also point out the number of classical music musicians who have lived a long life(Artur Rubenstein,  Shura Cherkassy, Mieczslaw Horszowski{who got married at the age of 89, talk about the triumph of hope over experience}, etc.)  You could even see it taking place with Lennie Bernstein, who kept for almost 40 years after being diagnosed with COPD at the age of 37, he mightn’t have survived to see 60 if he hadn’t been a musician.  Same with some blues musicians who made Bernstein’s life look like Mary Poppins by contrast with their own.

Does anyone else who sings notice weird shit happening? Like, you *know* you’re hitting the note, but the bar is wavering all over the place, and no one in the room reports hearing any shift in your voice?

My performance has become extremely erratic lately. It bothers me. I’m trying to stay on Medium, and objectively, I’m not a bad singer—I can hold a note, I can carry a tune, I know how to manage shifts between keys to handle the dropouts in my range—and I *have* a decent range most of the time. But I started out with RB2 doing really really well, and then on songs I actually did well on in RB1, or in the first days of having RB2, now I’m sucking. And I’m only on Medium—how does anyone ever sing on Expert, let along Hard? The tutorials don’t help.

My band is called Animatronic Robot Overlords, since people seem to be announcing their band names.

Cult of Personality and Sunshine of your Love are both in Guitar Hero III, for those who mentioned them.

What exactly is there to be ashamed of in liking Alice in Chains? AiC is awesome.

Isn’t she the South American political prisoner?

An album download for Rumours would make me almost as happy as Doolittle did, though it might be sort of a bummer on vocals, in that Stevie Nicks’ parts are hard, and singing a Lindsey Buckingham song is usually very repetitive.

I know they’re constrained by the need to get songs with a guitar/bass/drum instrumental template, but it would be really nice to get some hip-hop that’s not by novelty rappers. (Frontalot’s new album is actually pretty juicy, and his Rock Band song is hella fun to drum on, but come on. And for all the respect the Beastie Boys get for their production, they still sound like bullshit to me. Personally.)