In recent interviews, Dhani Harrison, son of Beatle George Harrison, has not only revealed the existence of Rock Band 3, he's also dropped a tantalizing detail about the gameplay. According to Harrison, Rock Band 3 will teach gamers how to play music "for real" as they go.
“I’m working on Rock Band 3 and making the controllers more real so people can actually learn how to play music while playing the game,” Harrison said. “Give me a couple years, it’s going to happen.”
Any stories about music games that originate from rock-personas have to be taken with skepticism -- musicians have often dropped wrong information about the video games they're working on because they're way too busy making music and/or pulling groupies to worry about the finer points of video games -- but Harrison is different. By all accounts, he was a major figure behind the scenes of The Beatles: Rock Band, and seems to know his stuff. So when Harrison talks, you have to listen.
My question is: Do gamers want to learn to play music? As a (mediocre) guitar player, lemme tell you: Playing real music is nearly infinitely more difficult than playing video game music. It's not fun to learn to play an instrument in the same way it's fun to learn a game (It's much more rewarding when it actually "works," though,) and I, for one, have no desire to mix these two things.
Currently, other than the vocals, no part of Guitar Hero or Rock Band actually improves your real musicianship very much. You can gain rudimentary rhythmic improvement from drum playing, and maybe a touch of limb-independence front the guitar and the drums, but nothing too serious. I could see it working as an optional "learning mode," but not as a core gameplay mechanic. For a more in-depth look at using Rock Band to play "real" drums from an actual musician, please enjoy this video:
What do you think? Do you want to use a game to learn to play real guitar, bass or drums better?
Source: Chicago Tribune
Comments
Displaying 1–17 of 17
sebs180
Oh wow! Now this is advancement in video games. This sounds too good to be true though but knowing that its Harmonix taking care of it then everything shall be fine.
outlawstar00000
sounds interesting I would like to try to learn to guitar especially if rock band 3 was teaching me
punkrockkyle
I've been playing guitar now for almost 15 years. To me playing some of the songs in these games on a real guitar is far easier than it is on the games. Most times, the games over complicate what's actually happening on the guitar to the point that the strumming is not at all similar.
As a mediocre drummer, I've found that the games do in fact help out with learning to play more consistently and accurately. Before playing drums on rockband the best I could do was ACDC's "Back In Black" on drums - now I can actually play fast punk correctly (without the use of a double bass pedal).
As far as melding the 2 into one... I dont like the idea. If a person wants to learn to play, the best way to do it is from the ground up, on your own or getting proper lessons. The repeatability of playing along with a game is a great idea as a tool, but it skips far to many steps along the way to be an effective tool to really teach the basics of music, and more importantly music theory. Teaching someone how to strum bar chords and to play certain notes in a song because that's where it says doesn't do anything if the person playing doesn't know how they affect the song musically.
jro59
I can't wait. Anything that can help people play real instruments is a step in the right direction.
Thank you Steve, for the video.
wfofisrad
hopefully this is true. i think music games like this have had a hand in getting more young people interested in bands again, and not just rappers and DJs (not saying those are bad, variety is the spice of life). now, perhaps, they can get more young people interested in actually PLAYING music.
chocosquirrel
All you need is a guitar with 6 buttons for every fret = 138 buttons. And 6 individual strum bars. Makes perfect sense to me!
HenNaHito
@ wfofisrad
Seems to me when i turn on the radio, or mtv, or pandora, or slacker.com, there are plenty of new bands and people playing musical instruments. Also, why do you assume that rapper and dj's do not know how to play instruments? Most rappers/producers/dj's play at least one instrument (namely piano or percussion). Many of them, such as RZA from Wu Tang, Kanye West, Timberland, Beastie Boys, Dr. Dre, play several instruments. Lets not stereotype and pigeonhole people.
Back on topic i think it will be interesting to see what direction this all goes in. Maybe they'll create a new cable peripheral that connects to a real guitar....That be quite awesome.
weendex
As a guitarist, I always struggled to use my pinky finger effectively. I think it was out of laziness that i never trained it properly.
Guitar Hero 3 came along and fixed that. I couldn't get through expert GH3 without strong pinky use.
Then i picked up my real guitar, and voila, i could use my pinky very well. Dexterity +1 !!
zeroc1974
I've been playing drums and making music for over 30 yrs these games suck if you want to feel like your playing for real then get an instrument and learn it because no video game is gonna make you a Beethoven,whats next microwave hero that teach you how to use one,its old,you know what my 2 yr old daughter plays a full tama drum set,a real drum set with real cymbals ,not some piece of plastic,its crazy
KillCanvas
The first song I ever learned was: Is There Anybody Out There? by Pink Floyd. Out of curiosity, did anyone else learn to play guitar through their parents classic rock collection?
drewr15
I think this is the way it' needs to go. And you can do it several ways, easy can be strumming simple chords while hard could be playing every note. I think it is a good idea and needed because the gameplay is getting stale and can't really advance anymore. If you look at the improvements in the more recent iterations of RB and GH it's less about play and more about presentation, options, etc. The only way to keep the game fresh and the genre at the forefront, in my humble opinion, is to take this step. And as someone who has a long commute to work, and wants to spend his free time with family - I don't have time for regular lessons. But if I can do them on the game at night when the kids are asleep and learn as fast or slow as I want, I would be so so thankful. SO yes I think this will be great. It may not appeal to all but I think those that want will be really into it.
cpnet
RockBand is pretty good for drums as well as vocals. On expert level, the drum parts are pretty close to what the real drumming in the song is. It doesn't care about dynamics, it doesn't have discrete pads for toms and cymbals, and it seems to be a bit lenient on your timing, but other than that it's decent (and fun). I really hope they build RB3 so that you can use your own MIDI controllers instead of just the RockBand onces. I'd really like to be able to plug my Roland electronic kit into RockBand. The RockBand 'kick pedal' is just way too awkward for me.
realJWade
I've never picked up a music/rhythm game (besides a little Samba De Amigo on the Wii, but that barely counts) because the amount of fun vs. cost / room required just doesn't balance out for me. I also don't have many friends who enjoy playing these types of games, either. However, if they were to take a more realistic approach and actually teach me (to whatever extent possible) to play a guitar, I might bite.
Wozman23
I'd love for the drums to be more involved and realistic. Two years ago, I would have never considered buying a drum set. Now I would in a heartbeat, if I only had a place to put the thing. Until then I am having fun with Rock Band regardless of how close it may or may not be to a real drum set.
Notafanboythatiknow
Are you all blind...nobody noticed the nice boobs.
darkuest
I love Rock Band way more than Guitar Hero and i hope the game is great, but real instruments. This game is going to cost alot and i mean alot of money.
BiscuitEater
BOUNCE BOUNCE BOUNCE!
Displaying 1–17 of 17
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