(by the way if anyone from Harmonix is listening, we’re still waiting for that song to appear as DLC..)

How time flies when you’re rocking, eh? In commemoration of Rock Band’s fourth birthday, Harmonix put together a ton of behind the scenes retrospectives and commentary. Hear the untold story of the original Rock Band, as told by the people behind the game!

Hear how the guitar, drum, and keyboard hardware almost never made it!

The companion blog post is Rock Band instrument prototypes and insider stories, where we learn what could have been:

We had this AMAZING folding drum kit that would fit under a couch. It had removable heads, integrated cymbal options and custom inserts that allowed to to change the quality of the strike sound so each pad sounded a bit different. It supported 3 pedals, a completely adjustable kick location. This thing was boss (and also would have cost over 200 dollars at retail).

There were SOOOO MANY strum bar prototypes. Clicky strums, spinny strums, smushy strums, stringy strums, clacky strums, invisi strums. We tried everything.

Another crazy idea we has was to attempt to modularize the wireless equipment for each console into a small box that could be plugged into any RB3 instrument. We wanted a way to reduce the total number of models in production, but at the volumes predicted for the RB3 launch and with all the legacy hardware already in the market, we couldn’t justify the additional cost of the Wireless Module. A lot of the tech/design made its way into the MIDI box, though.

It’s also a little scary to think what the Rock Band logo could have looked like:

Harmonix employees reflect on their first Rock Band experience in Rock Band Fourth Anniversary Harmonix Stories, Part One and Part Two. And Harmonix podcast episode 56 focuses entirely on sharing their first Rock Band experience.

I distinctly remember waiting outside Best Buy at midnight to get my Rock Band 1 full game kit — and how deliriously fun it was to play as a full band for the first time.

What was your first Rock Band experience?

But what about Guitar Hero II? This was a huge sequel, with so many improvements over the legendary original:

• Far better competitive two player modes. It’s easy to forget, but multiplayer in Guitar Hero was a tacked-on affair, offering only the oddball “you play a section, then I play a section” tug-of-war multiplayer mode.
• Cooperative two player mode with bass/guitar and lead/rhythm tracks depending on the song.
• A significantly larger on-disc tracklist, going from 30 core songs to 40 (48 on Xbox).
• A few of the songs were original masters, predicting the wholesale switch to all masters later.
• After a few months, finally available for the first time on a next-gen console as well as the original Playstation 2.

As far as I’m concerned, the “II” in the title stood for the best two player guitar game ever!

The Guitar Hero II soundtrack was killer, too. But it also predates reusable DLC song libraries by two years. So short of booting up the original game on a Playstation 2 or Xbox 360 — how can we experience these 48 classic tracks in a modern rhythm game? Let’s see:

(* indicates the song is exportable to be used as DLC in current Guitar Hero games. All Rock Band songs are exportable with very rare exceptions.)

By my count, out of the original 48 songs in Guitar Hero II, that’s …

For reference, the complete library of songs are officially listed for each game here:

• Guitar Hero music catalog
• Rock Band song finder

Unfortunately, the tale of the tape in this case is rather woeful — 43% of the Guitar Hero II tracklist is only playable in the original game. Here’s hoping we get a few more of these classic tracks as DLC in the future!

Most drum kits have two pedals standard: the hi-hat cymbal pedal, and the kick drum pedal.

All standard plastic Rock Band pedals, and even the fancy metal Roadie pedal included with the Ion drums, are more like hi-hat pedals than actual kick drum pedals. On a real kick drum pedal, there’s a chain pulling a beater which strikes the bass drum.

Drumming is very much about striking surfaces and having a kick drum pedal that actually strikes a surface is every bit as essential as having drum pads that you hit with a drumstick instead of pressing a button on a controller (or keyboard, for that matter). I was never into drum pedal fetishism, but after reading a bit more about it, and spending more time playing on the Ion drums, this important difference finally began to make sense to me. The Ion drums are otherwise quite authentic as a basic entry level electronic drum kit, with the notable exception of the pedal.

So I decided to order the following Ion drum “real” kick pedal upgrade kit from rockbandparts.com for $149:

• Yamaha KP-65 electronic kick drum
• SP500 kick drum pedal
• Roadie VTI Trigger Box

The Roadie VTI Trigger Box isn’t strictly necessary, depending on your configuration, but it does ensure that whatever drum and pedal combo you eventually use, it’ll work. It offers polarity, sensitivity, and duration tweaks that make most piezo drum trigger pads work with either the Ion drums (¼” connector) or the stock Rock Band 2/3 drums (⅛” connector). And all the necessary cables are included, too.

One thing I didn’t like about the Roadie box is that it adds quite a bit of complexity to the already-complex Ion drum configuration, seeing as how it needs its own power and has two adjustable trims. However, there is a solution — the KickWire.

The KickWire is a bit expensive at $27 plus shipping, but personally it was worth it to me for the much simpler configuration of just a basic wire (presumably with some kind of inline resistor) to connect the kick tower to the Ion drum brain.

The Yamaha KP65 was my choice because it’s quiet — about as loud as striking the Ion pads — inexpensive, reliable, and has a nifty built in sensitivity adjustment to boot. There’s a nice comparison video of the Roland KD-8 and the Yamaha KP65 here, if you want to hear and see it in action.

The KP65 and the pedal can be “mated” together via a clamp on the front of the pedal itself, so they form one semi-solid unit. Here’s a picture of mine:

Having a pedal with a chain driving a beater, striking a kick drum surface, completely changes the feel of the pedal… for the better! For one thing, you can now hear and feel a solid “thwack” when you kick, and actually get a rhythm going on the kick by ear! Compare that with the stock Rock Band or Roadie Ion pedal, where at best you get the sterile click of an electronic switch being pressed down by your foot. It’s a very, very different experience, with a nice organic rebound based on the mass of the beater and the chain pull. Is it slightly noisier? Of course, but at least with the KP65 it is only roughly as noisy as a stick hitting an Ion pad, which is about as good as it gets.

The only downside of the real pedal configuration is the price — considering the Ion drum kit is $300 with the extra cymbal, adding a pedal ($50) and the electronic kick drum ($60) and the wire to connect them ($30) is almost half the price of the entire drum kit!

If you’re enthused about drumming enough to go for the Ion Drum Rocker, then I can definitely recommend a real pedal upgrade. However, it ain’t cheap by any means — you’ll have to decide if spending $450 versus $300 is worth it to you for that final essential bit of authentic entry-level electronic drumming.

Although I’ve been happy with the Rock Band 3 Pro drumkit (with cymbals), I finally decided to take my drumming to the next level and adopt the Ion Drum Rocker kit. One advantage of waiting this long, at least — the kit that was originally $299 is now only $249.

The Ion Drum Rocker, although super premium by gaming standards, is extremely low end in the real world of drums. I knew that, and I wasn’t expecting much when I unpacked the (zillion!) boxes. But my first reaction to the Ion Drum Rocker was “wow, this thing is rock solid”. It’s a huge step up in quality, construction, and feel from a stock Rock Band 3 pro drumkit. Consider that you’re going from this:

to this:

It is, in a word, beefy. One of the reasons I upgraded is because our 2.5 year old son enjoys whacking on the drums with us, and I wasn’t convinced the stock kit could continue to survive his tender mercies for a whole lot longer. Well, there’s no way any toddler can harm this Ion kit; it’s all ridged aluminum frame and multi-point bolted joints.

It’s also way, way more complicated than the simple Rock Band 3 kit. Check out the assembly diagram, below (click through for a larger version):

Here’s a full visual inventory of all the parts in the box. And after building it up, you’re not done — you still have to connect everything together, and that’s one distinct wire for …

• 4 pads
• 3 cymbals (the third cymbal is a highly recommended $45 addition)
• 1 pedal

… eight wires and eight connections all told, as you can see in this visual diagram.

Alesis, the underlying manufacturer, is known for inexpensive but good quality electronic drum kits; the Ion Drum Rocker is effectively their most inexpensive electronic kit. Given the heritage, it is every bit as reliable and satisfying to play as you might expect. That part didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me, however, was how ridiculously configurable this kit is.

Apparently not all real world drum kits are arranged in the layout of a Rock Band 3 drumkit! I’m sure this is totally obvious to any real world drummer in retrospect, but drum kit positioning is often a matter of preference, musical genre, even song! On the Ion drum kit, the frame, the pads, the cymbals — all can be adjusted, tweaked, and arranged in an almost infinite number of ways. (Not to mention that some drummers can have literally dozens of drums and cymbals in their kit.) This was a whole new world for me! If I’m going to spend the dough on a fancyish kit, I want to do this right — I want to learn something approximating real drum motions and proper standard drum layouts. But then I belatedly realized I have no idea what that is. So I asked a question on music.stackexchange to determine what the “standard” or “typical” drum kit layout is.

I’ll save you all the angst and give you the short version: the Rock Band 3 layout is fairly close to a typical drum kit, but the biggest difference is that the snare (red) drum should be under the first tom (yellow) and lower, between the drummer’s legs. And really there should be a pedal under each foot, too! As you can see in this diagram:

I’m still tweaking my layout, but the snare positioning and the general layout pictured above is what you want to shoot for. Bear in mind that most drum kits have four cymbals, which means two crashes (green cymbals) on the left and right. So at some level having just one green cymbal is kind of fundamentally incorrect, and you may feel it’s on the “wrong” side depending on the song. In a perfect world you’d have a duplicate green cymbal on the left, too.

It’s been a much more substantial upgrade than I ever expected; not only does it work great (and it’s surprisingly quiet, arguably quieter than even the Rock Band 3 Pro drumkit in play), but the kit has encouraged me to learn more about real world drumming. The only thing you give up is the wireless connectivity, and any semblance of easy portability. Neither of these are very important to an avid drummer so I heartily recommend the Ion Drum Rocker.

I have a few more tips for new Drum Rocker owners based on my experience:

• Once you get the kit, prepare to spend the first few days tweaking the layout to taste. Trust me, that little adjustment tool they include will be your best friend for a while. Just like a real drum kit, all those knobs and adjustments are fascinating — do not tie anything down until you’re absolutely sure you’ve got the layout just right!
• Use a silver sharpie marker to measure and mark intervals on the frame crossbars, so you can get the alignment just right. And if you don’t have a silver sharpie yet, for shame. Go get one! Silver sharpies = awesome.
• Only the foot pedal cable has a color band; I thought that was really clever and matched the colored inputs perfectly, so I bought some Scotch Vinyl Colored Tape in red, green, yellow, and blue to mark both ends of all the cables so I always knew which pad or cymbal it was going to.
  
• Rather than using the supplied zip-ties, I found it was simpler and faster to wind the extra cables around the frame.

I’m enjoying these baby steps into the world of real music and real musicians tremendously. In the end, with the Ion Drum Rocker you’re paying ~$300 (once you factor in that important 3rd cymbal) to get a reasonably complete, good quality basic electronic drum kit. It’s only a little more than 2x the price of the default Rock Band 3 pro drum kit ($129), and what you get is way more than 2 times as configurable, reliable, and realistic. That’s a great deal in my book!

• Complete list of downloadable songs for the Rock Band series (Wikipedia)
• Official Rock Band Song Finder (Harmonix)

And who doesn’t have a sizable song library, now that there are over 3,000 DLC songs available, plus the opportunity to import the on-disc songs from older Harmonix games like Rock Band 1, Rock Band 2, Lego Rock Band, and so on?

Yes, Rock Band 3 made huge strides in sorting, filtering, and selecting songs from big song libraries, but how can you possibly communicate the breadth of your enormous song list when you can only view 12-15 songs at once?

That’s where Rock Band Karaoke List Maker comes in! Instead of scrolling through page after page of songs on screen to figure out what song to play next, you can present people with a high bandwidth printed list, like so:

It’s a fantastic way to get a “bird’s eye view” of your entire library so you can better decide what to play next. The layout is simple: just a list of songs, grouped by band, in multiple configurable columns and font sizes.

Even better, because it is printed, you can have upcoming players select songs from this menu while they’re waiting their turn to play — so they’re ready to hit the ground rocking! This paper stuff, it’s miraculous!

You can check out my list of DLC as of today, which is (almost) every non-RBN track ever released to September 4th 2011, in this public Google Docs PDF I shared. The awesome part is that this is thousands of songs (literally!) and the whole shebang fits on 5 pages if I use the maximum number of columns and the “small” font … and it’s still quite readable, because printers are extremely high resolution!

The service supports creating these PDF printable song lists from DLCQuickplay.com and MyRockBandSongs.com, so you must start by creating your DLC library on one of those sites first. Personally, I recommend DLCQuickplay as I had the best results there and prefer the simpler UI. It also has convenient “click once” checkboxes for bringing in full-disc DLC imports and collections.

One tip — make sure you properly indicate which platform and disc games you own when signing up, otherwise you won’t be able to select the correct songs under Songs | My DLC at the top of the page. The “Imports” tab is kind of subtle, and I didn’t find it initially, so be sure to look for it where I’ve highlighted below.

Of course maintaining an inventory of your DLC isn’t just useful for printing your song list, but also for comparing songs with other potential online players and bands, too!

So thanks to DLC Quickplay for making their site such a pleasure to use, even for people with monster DLC song lists like mine — and kudos to Troy Davis for putting together such a slick printable PDF song list creator that works with it, too!

I’ll be doing what I can to support both these services, but participation is the best way to begin!

Squier® – Rock Band 3 Game Guitar – Black

In fact, I own two of ‘em!

If you are truly interested in playing a real guitar in Rock Band 3 and haven’t bitten on this deal yet, you should before they run out of stock, because once they’re gone — they’re gone forever. Don’t worry, the guitar will be supported indefinitely in RB3 and future pro guitar DLC, and presumably Fender will honor any warranties on them, so it’s safe.

It’s a blast playing Pro Guitar mode with a real guitar. But don’t take my word for it — listen to this guy. Please!

Of course, the MIDI interface specific to your platform is required to use the guitar in Rock Band 3:

• Rock Band 3 Midi Adapter for Xbox
• Rock Band 3 Midi Adapter for Wii
• Rock Band 3 Midi Adapter for PS3

These Midi adapters may be platform specific, but they aren’t instrument specific; you can also use them to hook up Midi drumsets and Midi keyboards for play as well.

On Wii and PS3, the built-in controller buttons on the guitar also function, but not on Xbox (due to controller licensing restrictions). Fortunately, the Midi adapter can be cleverly mounted on the guitar itself so you don’t have to go digging around on the floor for it to push the green button. Flip the little plastic adapter on the back around, and it hooks into the strap peg for the guitar, like so:

Based on my experience, in addition to the guitar and the midi adapter, you might want a few other things to maximize the guitarpocalypse.

Since the Midi adapter and the Midi port are so close together now, it’s best to use a 1 foot Midi cable to connect them; the default Midi cable included with the guitar is far too long. A real guitar is heavy and wired enough without 6+ feet of unnecessarily long looped Midi cable hanging off your guitar as you play … or should I say try to play.

The pro guitar tutorials do a fantastic job of easing you into being a totally awful beginning guitar player. One word of warning: you will get blisters on your fingers. You’re pressing those tender digits against unforgiving steel braided wires, and something has to give. There’s a reason Ringo mentioned this, and boy, will you ever know why.

As far as strumming goes, I recommend playing with a pick. Some folks like using their fingers, but I found I had better accuracy with a pick. The guitar comes with 2 starter picks so you can decide for yourself. There are also some nifty aftermarket picks available on Amazon. They come in thin, medium, and heavy — and a variety of colors, including this beautiful celluloid abalone.

Also, there is some hidden adjustability in the guitar; remember this is a fundamentally analog instrument pulling some clever tricks to appear digital, so calibration might be necessary. Both of mine worked fine out of the box, as far as I can tell, but for completeness, here’s how to adjust:

In the battery box, there are two very small phillips head screws. Unscrewing will give you access to 6 gold on blue sensitivity potentiometers. Turn them counterclockwise to increase the sensitivity and clockwise to decrease. This means if you feel like the top string is not being picked up, “loosen” the potentiometer (and if you feel the bottom strings keep ringing, “tighten”).

You can also use a screwdriver to adjust the bridge height; bringing the pickup closer to the string can improve responsiveness if you are having issues.

Once you get your feet (er… fingers) wet (er… with blood), you should be itching to hear what your horrible guitar skillz will sound like when properly amplified. While playing in Rock Band 3, you must use the mute for detection accuracy, but there’s no reason you can’t unmute and take those same awful, hideous, terrible guitar licks and pipe them through an amp.

Since my amp probably won’t get a ton of use — I am planning on sucking at guitar beyond all human comprehension for the forseeable future — I did some research on small or mini amps and came up with the Roland Micro Cube Guitar Amplifier. I like it a lot!

Nicely compact, has a lot of neat amp simulation modes and a handful of effects, and can also optionally run on batteries — but the power adapter is, thankfully, included. It’s also available in red or black. You’ll need a standard 1/4″ instrument cable to hook your guitar up to the amp, too. I wouldn’t go fancy here, so anything in the appropriate length will do.

If you decide to go the real guitar route in Rock Band 3, your neighbors are totally going to hate you, man. Oh, and if you’d like some great starter guitar lessons to go with the in-game pro mode training, give justinguitar.com a shot.

The original Guitar Hero soundtrack is a true classic. But short of booting up the original 2005 game on a Playstation 2 — can we experience these 30 classic tracks in a modern rhythm game? Let’s see:

(* indicates the song is exportable to be used as DLC in current Guitar Hero games. All Rock Band songs are exportable with very rare exceptions.)

By my count, out of the original 30 songs in Guitar Hero, that’s …

Here’s hoping we eventually get to play all these classic songs in one form or another without being anchored to a PS2!

]]> http://www.fakeplasticrock.com/2011/06/the-original-guitar-hero-songs-where-are-they-now/feed/ 4 http://www.fakeplasticrock.com/2011/05/madcatz-pro-cymbals-expansion/ http://www.fakeplasticrock.com/2011/05/madcatz-pro-cymbals-expansion/#comments Mon, 16 May 2011 07:14:27 +0000 Josh Lambka http://www.fakeplasticrock.com/?p=1487 What did the drummer say that got him kicked out of the band? “Hey guys, I wrote a new song!”

Har. Har.

Drummers never get any respect.

They’re usually in better shape than the rest of the band from beating the skins all night long. They have to carry all of the pieces of their drum kit to and from shows and have the muscles to prove it. Sure, they’re not usually the brightest crayon in the box, but their job isn’t easy.

It seems like guitar players get all the recognition in real bands and Rock Band bands. I mean, there seem to be a lot more options for guitars and aftermarket gear you can get to complement them. Where’s the love for the drummers?

BAM.

The Madcatz Pro Cymbals Expansion kit is here. Well, actually it’s been here since late 2008, but its full potential wasn’t revealed until Rock Band 3 was released. If you’ve had reservations about spending 40 bucks I’m here to tell you to go ahead and pull the trigger. You owe it to your band’s drummer. Or, if you’re a drummer you owe it to yourself!

The closest you will get to playing real drums in the Rock Band universe is the Ion Drum Rocker Premium kit, of course. But if you’re on a tighter budget then this expansion kit will work like gangbusters! This cymbal kit fully enables your existing Rock Band drum set for the Pro mode in Rock Band 3. You won’t look back.

This three cymbal expansion features color-coded Crash, Ride and Hi-Hat cymbals. They are easy as pie to install and feel plenty sturdy when you’re playing on them. The cymbals clamp to the base of your Rock Band kit and plus into the the three 1/4″ jacks on the back of your drums. There are three color-coded caps you screw on to the top of each cymbal. The jacks are also colored for easy reference. The cymbals sit at about a 10 degree angle and their individual heights are adjustable. (See our previous review of the Rock Band 2 Cymbals for an installation overview, but do note that the “Pro” cymbals themselves are substantially improved.)

Sitting at the kit with the cymbals installed gives the entire drum kit a “complete” feel. It looks and feels a lot more serious than sitting down to pay the traditional four pads and a foot pedal. I felt like a serious drummer sitting behind the kit. Now, if only I had any serious drum skills to go with it!

I’m a huge advocate of Rock Band 3′s Pro modes. Luckily for drummers, upgrading the standard kit to Pro kit only costs 40 bucks. This is probably the cheapest jump to Pro from any standard instrument and improves the experience by leaps and bounds! As with the other Pro mode instruments, Harmonix’s goal seems to be helping create musicians by charting Pro songs the way they are played on the real instruments, and they claim that if you can play the expert Pro mode charts than you can carry that over to those real instruments. I can personally attest to this! With the three cymbals simulating a real drum kit’s Crash, Ride, and High-Hat cymbal positions, you should feel comfortable sitting down at a real drum kit and jamming out some funky beats!

With these cymbals installed, your 4 drum pads no longer pull double duty as cymbals and toms/snares. In Pro drums mode, the chart will present the traditional color coded square drum gems, while adding the new color coded cymbal gems on top. It’s the same physical setup that you have in front of you as is on the screen. Your yellow cymbal will come down the note highway on the left, blue in the middle, and green on the right.

It takes about 1 song to get comfortable to recognizing the new icons on the screen. As far as getting used to their physical placement and accurately hitting the cymbals when prompted, that takes a little longer!

The only negative is that sometimes my sticks would catch the underside of the cymbal when I was lifting from the last pad I hit in order to hit the crash or ride cymbal. It would have been great to have some sort of adjustable distance to go along with the included height adjustment. I think I’m just being picky, and after altering my technique a little I was able to cut down on getting hung up on the cymbals. After spending some more time on these I’m sure it will be a non-issue.

If drums are your main instrument for Rock Band then you really should buy this expansion kit. I consider myself an occasional drummer on hard or expert Pro levels and after installing the cymbals found myself enjoying the drums more than I ever had before! I had a blast and am looking forward to making more time to play on them. It makes drums both more realistic, and more challenging — and it just feels way more “Rockstar” to play with the cymbals towering over my drum kit! I can imagine that someone who plays drums exclusively would get much more enjoyment than even I have so far.

Remember, all songs in the Rock Band library were written with cymbal support from the very beginning. So if you’re looking to unlock the full drumming potential of your entire song library — don’t hesitate to add the Rock Band 3 Pro Cymbals Expansion Kit!

Remember the feeling of playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band for the first time? Remember how you didn’t care if you recognized the song you were playing? You just wanted to play and have fun. Move your skill level up on the ol’ 5-button axe and feel like a rock star for a while.

After a few years with Rock Band’s ever-expanding library of DLC and import options, some of us have fallen into the comfort zone of only playing the songs we like and know. Rather than learning and mastering new songs we may have just gotten a little lazy. A bit complacent.

Enter Pro Mode

Pro Mode is a whole new challenge on a completely different scale. It brings the excitement back. It makes you want to play the same song you’ve never heard before over and over again until you can ace it. No more worrying whether you actually know the next track in the setlist, but the attitude of “I don’t care what song I play, I just want to play and have fun doing it!” Funny thing is, you usually end up liking the songs and expanding your personal taste in music! Remember that feeling?

Do you play:

• Rock Band Drums?
• Rock Band Lead Guitar?
• Rock Band Bass Guitar?
• Rock Band Keyboard?

If you answered yes to any of those choices then Rock Band Pro Mode is for you!

It’s a Gateway Drug

Rock Band Pro Mode bridges the gap between plastic instruments and real instruments. Rock Band Pro note charts are nearly 100% comparable to the actual notes played by musicians. Harmonix claims that if you can conquer the Expert Pro tracks on your plastic instrument of choice, then you are prepared enough to play the song on a musical instrument. Rockstars, I couldn’t agree with them more!

If you can shred Ozzy’s “Crazy Train” on Pro Expert guitar or bass then you can recreate the guitar parts on a real electric. If you can master the Pro Drum charts on expert on Rush’s “Working Man” then you can beat the skins on a real drum kit. The Pro Keyboard Expert Pro charts are the notes that just your right hand plays, so that will only get you halfway to becoming a Piano Man (or woman)…but still, all of this is enough to impress your friends, and even learn some music theory along the way! Rock Band can now teach you how to play real instruments.

Rock Band’s pro mode is very thorough and will pay back what you put into it. It features the four standard difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert. The higher the difficulty level, the more notes you will have coming at you. There is an excellent tutorial mode built into the game, and every song in your library that is Pro instrument capable — and remember every song on the Rock Band 3 disc is Pro guitar and bass capable — features a training mode that breaks down main riffs or passages of the song for your learning pleasure. There is also the standard practice mode for practicing the whole song at once. One minor gripe here is that when learning sections of a song the game will only let you slow the passage down to about 60%. This makes it difficult when there are a ton of notes coming out you.

One possible alternative is to obtain song tablature for the song that you are learning. Guitar tablature is a numbering system that tells you what notes to depress on the fret board and what string to strike with your picking hand. This is essentially the musical notation that Pro mode utilizes, but with a few tweaks. Kids, don’t expect to pass these songs on the higher difficulties by sight reading. Just as when you are learning new music — memorization and practice, practice, practice develops that all important muscle memory! No joke about it, the learning curve for Rock Band Pro mode is steep.

Did I mention that real electric guitars have 6 strings and 21 frets? This gives us a possible 126 “buttons” that our left hand is responsible for and 6 strings that our right hand is accountable for.

From 5 Buttons to 12 Notes

There are 12 notes on a guitar, which is quite a jump from our old 5 button guitars.The majority of songs that Rock Band covers use guitars with “standard tuning”, which means the open strings are tuned to certain typical notes, and that’s the context of this lesson.

The guitar is a great instrument because it takes the same 12 notes and lets you play them on different frets on different strings. So, I can play a low sounding E note or a high sounding E note. They are the same note, but the octave has changed. Technically, I can play the same E note at different physical areas of the fretboard, but they will sound slightly different.

When holding the guitar in your lap you could play an E note by depressing the A string on the seventh fret, then strumming the A string. There you go, an E note. Or, you could depress the B string on the fifth fret and then pick the B string. Technically — an E note, audibly — a higher pitch E note than we first played with our fretting hand in a different position than the first note.

The guitar, in essence, repeats 12 notes over and over again … it’s just up to you where to play the notes. This is why there are so many “buttons” on a real guitar. Of course, when you’re playing Pro mode, you will need to hit the notes on the fretboard that Rock Band tells you to because they are the boss; I’m just trying to explain why we’re going from 5 to 126 buttons! But you will develop some musical knowledge and technique if you decide to take on the challenge that is Rock Band’s Pro mode.

The payoff can be extremely satisfying, but don’t expect to master an instrument that’s been around for centuries in a week.  Half of the fun is learning, and the other half is being able to play guitar to impress that hot chick at the party. But enough music theory, let’s play some video games!

Mustang vs Squier

There are two Pro guitar controllers available for Rock Band at this time: The Fender Mustang and the Fender Squier. There is a review on the horizon for the Fender Squier, but we’re going to focus on the Mustang for now.

Now, the Squier is a real guitar in every sense of the word. That is, the Squier is fully functioning electric guitar with Rock Band guts. You can plug it into your favorite guitar amplifier, turn the volume up, and keep your neighbors up all night, or fire up your video game console and take your video game band on tour to Europe. Sweet! The Squier controller is for you rockstars that will spare no expense in creating the most realistic Rock Band experience! The flagship guitar of Pro mode!

The Mustang, on the other hand, is a plastic replica guitar with faux strings and an all-button fretboard. It’s close to being a full size electric and much lighter. After hearing about the Squier you may be wondering what this plastic axe has to offer, but if you don’t want to spend the money, or prefer more of a “Lite” Pro mode experience, this guitar satisfies. It’s less than 1/3 the price of the Squier, and it’s a good barometer of how much you will enjoy Pro mode. If you enjoy playing on the Mustang, then chances are you will eventually move up to the Squier controller. And if you hate it, or find it too challenging to realistically make any progress … well, you just saved 250 bucks compared to starting with the Squier.

Playing The Mustang

The Mustang features all of your regular face buttons for navigating menus depending on what console your guitar is for, and also features a midi port — which I have never used, but can function as a midi guitar controller with the proper equipment. The Mustang is wireless and runs on 3 AA batteries, comes with a guitar strap and two guitar picks.

Remember when we said that guitars generally have 126 “buttons”? Well, the Mustang has 102. The Mustang has 17 frets and 6 strings. This isn’t as many frets as the Squier, but provides every bit as much of the Pro experience as the Squier does.

The “touch-sensitive” fretboard provides visual cues in relation to what buttons you press in real time. This helps in not having to take your eyes off the screen to look down at your finger placement too often. When you press down on any of the buttons on the fretboard the corresponding fret number will show up at the bottom of the note highway. It’s the same as pressing down the green or red button on the standard controllers before it’s actually time to play the note- you can see where fretting hand is by noodling around on the buttons in between charted notes. You won’t be penalized for this unless you strike one of the strings.

The 6 strings on the guitar run only the length of the strumming area which is around five inches. The strings themselves have a good responsive feel to them, but don’t feel strung as tightly as a real guitar does. For some they may have too much of a “rubber band” feel to them, though I think they are more than satisfactory in providing physical feedback as well as a sizeable area to strum.

Sliding up and down the fretboard isn’t as smooth as sliding around on real strings on an electric guitar, but the buttons do not require a lot of pressure to depress and I found I could still get around rather quickly.

So long 5 button Plastic Rock

The Fender Mustang body style isn’t very appealing to me, and overall the entire guitar isn’t visually impressive, but the real bread and butter is pairing this guitar with Rock Band Pro mode. It may not be the prettiest, but the Mustang just works. The buttons respond fantastically, and the only times I missed incredible amounts of notes and failed songs was due to my own silly mistakes, not the hardware.

The Mustang delivers in every single way as a gateway controller into the Pro world of Rock Band. The only fault I can find with it is the fact it has only 17 frets. For songs that have guitar notes that would go higher than the 17^th fret on a real world guitar, the Rock Band engine detects the Mustang controller and modifies note placement to account for the lack of frets 18 through 22. This won’t affect the majority of players and if you happen to conquer the solos in Crazy Train or The Beast and the Harlot on the Mustang, when you transition to the Squier controller or other full size electric guitar, some of the notes you’ve memorized may not be technically correct. Again, this isn’t even close to being a dealbreaker.

If you haven’t tried Rock Band Pro mode then now is the time! Rediscover the feeling of mastering a new controller and interface by advancing from 5 button rock to the 107+ buttons and real guitar hand positions of Rock Band Pro. The transportation is here for your journey: The Fender Mustang!

But what if you want to take your Rock Band 3 show on the road? That’s right, it’s time to build the ultimate (almost) no compromises portable Rock Band 3 setup — so you can deploy a full Rock Band 3 band setup whenever and wherever you want to jam.

Projector

First things first: you’ll need a way to display Rock Band 3 suitable for 7 person band, plus an audience. I’m talking BIG SCREEN here. Fortunately, portable LED projectors have come a long, long way.

This little Acer K11 portable LED projector is under $400 and will project an image at 90 inches diagonal.

All the user reviews on Amazon and Newegg for it are stellar, and it has the two key inputs we need: VGA and HDMI. It’ll happily scale whatever input you send to it down to a solid native DVD-ish resolution of 858 x 600.

Now, you are assuming that there will be a flat, white wall in a semi-dark room for this to work — or even better, a projector screen. And remember it’s only 200 lumens, a far cry from full size projectors which dump out 1700+ lumens. But this is as portable as we can realistically get without hauling an actual full size projector around!

Sound

Now that we have video, what about sound? You can’t have a rock concert without concert-worthy sound. We need some tough, self-powered portable speakers built for the road. I found two great options, both are about $70.

Altec Lansing Stage-Gig Amplified Speaker

Polk Audio Hitmaster Stage Monitor Loudspeaker

There’s an excellent YouTube comparison of the two speakers, but the short version is that the Polk has superior and louder sound, but the Altec Lansing is better for stereo use. And since I can’t imagine a rock concert without at least stereo sound, I opted for a pair of the Stage-Gigs. I just can’t compromise on stereo. However, if you want to go for a simpler, single speaker travel setup, the Hitmaster is definitely the way to go.

Instruments

There’s no getting around it; we need band equipment to rock. I don’t think you can cut corners here in the name of portability, other than opting for fully wireless instruments.

Now, you might prefer the Guitar Hero III Les Paul guitars as they are the smallest modern wireless guitars. But honestly I don’t think the size difference is that big compared to a standard Rock Band Stratocaster. So whatever you have on hand should suffice for guitar and bass (unless it’s the crazy full-size wooden replicas in cherry red or sunburst; leave those things at home, man!) There are “gig bags” that can carry two game-sized guitars, too. I have at least two left over from my Guitar Hero days.

As for drums, I’d stick to the standard full size 4-pad arrangement and drop the add-on cymbals for better portability. This, you’ll need a carry bag for. So either scrounge something up, or splurge for the official Rock Band drums gig bag. A bit spendy at $40, though.

Taking a drum throne would be … excessive … so be prepared to make do with whatever chairs you can scrounge up at the venue.

The wireless microphones (be sure to bring three for harmonies!) and wireless keyboard are more compact and easier to stash.

Console

Oh yeah, we need a console to run Rock Band 3, don’t we? And at least one controller! I favor the Xbox 360 slim because it historically has the best options for rhythm games like the Stage Kit and native wireless microphones.

But you should pick the console where you have purchased DLC, so you can take it on tour with you. Even on the Xbox, where I can swap the hard drive, it’s almost better to take the actual machine I bought the DLC on, otherwise I will have to log in via the internet to my Xbox Live account to enable the content. So do be aware of any DRM issues for your downloaded songs, like if you need internet access at the venue for your swapped DLC hard drive to work!

In order to output to our projector through VGA out (and our speakers through RCA out), you’ll need the Xbox 360 HD VGA Audio/Video cable. The generic version is a mere $5.50, and works fine for me.

It’s a 6 foot VGA cable so the Xbox will need to be fairly close to the projector. Bear in mind you will almost certainly need some RCA splitters and extension cables to get your speaker(s) positioned correctly — but these are easily obtained at your local Radio Shack.

Finally

Don’t forget to bring the Rock Band 3 game disc, of course! Wow, that’d be embarrassing to forget that little detail, eh?

Batteries! Either meticulously check all the instruments to ensure they have fresh AA batteries, or have extra AA batteries on hand. Otherwise those wireless instruments will be transformed into useless hunks of plastic.

Also, you might want to carry a power strip to plug everything in and give you a bit of an extension cord to power outlets. At a minimum you’ll have the projector, the console, and the speaker(s). I favor the “smart” autoswitching power strips that turn everything on or off based on the power of the primary outlet, like the Smart Strip SCG3.

So let’s list everything we’re taking on tour with us:

1. Console + power brick, a/v connector, and wireless controller
2. Travel projector + power brick
3. Stage speaker (1 or 2), plus RCA extension cables
4. Wireless guitars (2)
5. Wireless drums (no cymbals)
6. Wireless keyboard
7. Wireless microphones (3)
8. Power strip
9. AA batteries (lots)
10. Rock Band 3 game disc

Yeah, it’s a sizable amount of stuff. But it’s completely self contained. All you need at the target venue is a dark-ish room of sufficient size with a wall to project on, and some power outlets. You can now deploy the full, concentrated power of Rock Band 3 whenever and wherever you like!