Baggas' Blog

You’d have to have been living under a rock for the past few years, or be totally oblivious to the world of gaming, to not have some awareness of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band phenomenon. These games have achieved massive sales and a wide following. Initially they were primarily guitar based, but now the genre has expanded to include drumming, singing (?dancing), and even DJ’ing.

Obviously as far as games go they are very popular and fun for many people. But do they have any musical merit? Should musicians see them as a positive thing, negative, or indifferent? My own experience with these games began a couple of years ago with Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360 (complete with plastic wired Gibson Explorer shaped guitar controller). I thought it was good but didn’t find it something I was motivated to come back to again and again. Recently I revisited the music game genre when Santa brought us a couple of the RockBand games for Christmas – we got Lego RockBand (which is great for kids) and The Beatles RockBand (great for me as I’m a massive Beatles fan) complete with wireless Hofner Bass controller, drums, and microphone. I’m not going to comment on these games specifically other than saying that I think the Lego game is a huge improvement to make these games more accessible to younger players. Previous games were/are just a bit too tricky for most kids below the age of around 10 to get into. This game adds a “Super Easy” mode which requires only a basic idea of rhythm and not the co-ordination skills usually involved in these games. The narrative is fun (like all the Lego computer games) and the song selection is good, truly making it a game the whole family can enjoy together. I hope future editions of RockBand and Guitar Hero will include a similar Super Easy mode for the little ones.

As for The Beatles’ game, it’s a great snapshot of the career of this great band. Musically and visually it’s excellent, though technically a little more challenging than the Lego game so not ideal for kiddies. The wireless Hofner bass controller is a beautiful thing – very high quality construction which doesn’t have the cheap plastic feel of my old guitar hero controller. And in case you were wondering it can be used for guitar and bass play – the controls are just the same.

Ok, enough about the games themselves… what about their musical merit?

My view is that these games are a good thing. If nothing else they challenge people’s timing and rhythm, improve co-ordination and possibly even their sense of pitch. The guitar play obviously doesn’t truly replicate a real guitar, with buttons instead of strings, however the finger movements, and the right-left hand co-ordination are important skills to develop in playing real guitar. You’re never going to be able to jump right from playing this game to playing a 6 string like Van Halen, but it might give you a little bit of an advantage in learning compared to a complete novice.

Drumming is probably one step even more realistic than guitar playing – it’s similar to having an electric drum kit – the physical movements of hitting the pads,  and using the kick pedal are pretty much the same as the real thing. My Beatles drum kit even came with real wooden sticks. I’m not a drummer but my feeling is that playing RockBand drums would give you a decent intro and a huge head-start for learning the real thing. Starting with the easy levels and moving through to expert would be a great way to develop pretty good rhythm skills.

And singing is well, singing. There’s nothing fake about singing into a microphone and hearing your voice back through speakers. And in many ways this is better than singing in the shower or singing along to a CD in your car because the visual cues in the game help with timing and pitch. I haven’t played any of the dedicated singing games (like Singstar or Lips) but the singing feature in RockBand itself is pretty cool. The Beatles game even allows you to sing harmonies and use multiple microphones. Not quite like having a singing teacher in your living room but still pretty good.

Beyond those technical skills I think these games offer two more things – music appreciation and inspiration. The repertoire of songs in these games is a great way of exposing younger generations to classic rock and pop music. My boys have been enjoying classic tracks from artists like Queen, Bon Jovi, Tom Petty, David Bowie, Bryan Adams and heaps more – even the Ghostbusters theme! (who knew that song had such cool guitar riffs?!? – see below) – and of course no one should be ignorant of the Beatles!

Secondly if playing these games inspires a few people to take up a real instrument themself, or gives them a bit of confidence that they might be able to, then surely that’s a good thing too!

Rock On!

Thought I’d mention a nifty piece of Mac OS software I’ve been using. Read on if you have a Mac and either an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3… if you don’t have those you might as well save time and stop reading this now!…

Right, now that we’ve got rid of those non-Mac and non-Gaming console people we can continue with Rivet. This program basically enables your connected games console to access your music, video, and photo libraries on your mac. These consoles talk nicely to Windows out of the box but unfortunately they are not designed with Mac OS in mind. Rivet takes care of this smoothly and easily. Set it to load when your Mac starts-up and it just sits in the menu bar. There are no extra steps – right away I was able to browse and play my media content from my Mac on the Xbox 360 and PS3**. It’s very handy if you have a large collection of video files (home movies, TV shows, movies, whatever) as they can be immediately accessed and played on the console. Podcasts (video and audio) are handled as well, and all your iTunes playlists show up too. This last feature is very useful at this time of the year so I can pump my gigabytes of Christmas Mp3s ‘all through the house’

So if you have a Mac and a console download the trial version of Rivet and give it a go.. there’s a good chance that, like me, you’ll soon be going back for the full version too.

** Yes, I now have both consoles. I was in the market for a Bluray player and was soon convinced (despite my initial hesitation) that a PS3 was the way to go.. As far as gaming consoles go I still like the Xbox better – the interface is nicer and easier to navigate, and there is a better and easier to find selection of downloadable demos which the kids like playing. The Xbox360 interface has been hugely improved over the last year or so and the new avatar section is really good. I believe it’s due for another big update any day now as well…

I can’t really contrast the actual games though as I haven’t played much on the Ps-3 – my feeling is that the graphics and games are comparable. I did enjoy stuffing around with this funny game called Little Big Planet on the Ps3 last night. Oh and it has this interesting feature called Playstation Home which is similar to Second Life.. something to explore when I’m bored… but mostly the PS3 has become our home theatre media hub – great for playing Blurays, DVDs, and streaming videos and music (via Rivet). One big plus is it’s a lot quieter than the Xbox which makes it better for that application.  So there’s my haphazrd initial review of the PS3

*** Hey, and if you know me and have an xbox 360 or  PS3 let me know who you are and maybe we can add each other as ‘friends’ Presently I have no PS3 friends and only some random people on Xbox that I played a game against like once a few years ago, so having some people that I actually know would be cool. (here ends the pathetic appeal for friends..lol)