Rhythm Games are becoming authentic music games and more

This is koolness, well it's koolness if it actually turns out to be all that it is claimed to be.

Rhythm games are undergoing further evolution to the point that it's not unforeseeable to predict that eventually games like Rock Band and the rest may in fact become music education tools and eventually the game controllers will morph into authentic musical instruments completely.

Don't believe me? It's already happening.


The newest version of Rock Band – that would be the upcoming Rock Band 3 – has added a new instrument, the keyboard . . . something I have been wanting to see for some time and not just because my daughter is an accomplished pianist although that has something to do with it.

Honestly, I don't see why keyboards weren't added sooner. Sure, it's a light keyboard but it is one. Here's a first look at the game system itself:

They have also brought in the harmony modes from the Beatles Rock Band and have added a pro mode. Now, professional mode is where it gets really interesting as that's where you're pretty much playing the controllers as real musicians would. In fact, they've got a very special new controller for pro mode which is a REAL Fender Squier Stratocaster which is played as a real guitar with strings and everything. See http://www.rockband.com/zine/fender-squier-pictures for details on this beauty.

Here's a video with a demo of the real guitar:

You play that in the most advanced settings of pro mode and you're pretty much a real guitarist. From the video on the keyboard in pro mode it looks like they have tutorial levels (thus my suspicion we're going in the direction of full-on music tutorial program but in an engaging and fun way . . . yep, the kids competing in Rock Band won't realize they're becoming real musicians and their parents won't need to force them to practice as they "think" they're playing a game). See the video discussion:

This is the opposite of sucks.

Of course, it's up to the player just how far they want to take their immersive experience with real game play with this and other games.

Of course, it is inevitable that Guitar Hero will follow suit (which is good for us as it's a LOT harder to find Rock Band stuff here in Taiwan than Guitar Hero which is much more pervasive . . . although Guitar Hero equipment is no longer as easy to find as it was and the World Tour band set with drums is not as pervasive as one might hope as most folks seem to just stick with their guitar controllers and that's it . . . little realizing the social goodness of the full kit, especially if you're playing something that allows multiple voices in addition to the instruments).

In addition to the stratocaster goodness for the pro experience, if you have a midi keyboard (yes, my very lovely daughter Kaye does, thank you very much), the folks at Rock Band have included an adapter box so you can plug that in for Rock Band Pro play. Hmmm. Goodness.

Heck, I would imagine that parents would rush out to get the keyboard and the upcoming Classical Rock Band game with rockified versions of Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, and Wagner (the last being really heavy metal stuff) along with the real instrument keyboard just to get 'em to get up to speed on their piano tutorials . . . okay, that's kind of a joke but I think it would be awesome especially if they mapped levels to correspond with the standardized instrument performance exams real musicians take (speaking of which, in the last round of music instrument performance exams at her school, Kaye scored towards the very top among the pianists . . . we also discovered that the teachers at her school purposefully score more more rigorously than other schools or competitions as they really want these kids to be prepared so much cudoliciousness to Kaye on that front).

So, hey, you rhythm game folks . . . get on the stick on that one! And . . . while you're at it, please start allowing lyrics in the user-created online content and also maybe it would be really neat to have an option to have notes displayed on a color coded measure system so folks can see actual notes and learn some notation while they're at it, just something to consider.

Now, it's not just the music games that are drifting more and more toward becoming actual musical instruments (of course, computer equipment is also drifting toward musical instruments . . . reminds me of the concert by Lang Lang which included a performance of Flight of the Bumblebees for piano but played on an ipad).

Dance games are also drifting more toward actual dance and not just physical exercise of moving one's feet on a floorpad. Harmonix has also unveiled the Dance Central game using the Kinect which is revolutionizing dance gaming as the system maps more than just feetpadding and recognizes actual dance movements. Here's a video:

Of course, most folks won't look quite so good as the demo dancers at E3 when they play the game:

So, this game won't be for the three hundred pound couch potatoes (at least at first) but it will be for social gamers who love to dance but I would imagine a shift will occur in that hardcore gamers will start gaining genuine social skills through this and similar games.

All the best,
Brian

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Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard 
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan