fakeplasticrock

Our First Fake Plastic Rock God?

Jeff Atwood — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:59:32 +0000

Remember iamchris4life, who got the perfect score on the hardest Guitar Hero Song? He’s now featured in the New York Times in an article titled Rec-Room Wizard:

Every Guitar Hero needs a nemesis, and Chris found his in a song called “Through the Fire and Flames,” a track that appears in the game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Performed by the British power-metal band Dragonforce, “Through the Fire and Flames” (or simply “TTFaF” to die-hard gamers) is a brutal tour de force of finger-tapping, consisting of 3,722 notes over seven and a half minutes. The song is available only to players who have completed all the other tracks in the game, and they are not expected to master it so much as simply to survive it.

“It’s what we would consider the pinnacle of difficulty,” Mr. Huang said. “The guitar shredding in there is just insane.”

Over a period of weeks and months Chris practiced the song in the family den, surrounded by walls decorated with his mother’s homemade Western shirts, family photographs and a picture of his maternal grandparents with President Bush. He completed the song to 96 percent accuracy, then 98 percent, but kept falling just short of perfection.

Then, late on the night of June 3, with his $80 video camera recording him for posterity, Chris played the song flawlessly. His hands still trembling, he shouted a few expletives and raced to upload his footage on YouTube, where the online world had already been tipped off to his accomplishment when his astonishing score was automatically uploaded to an Xbox Live leader board. Within a few hours, Chris estimates, the video of his perfect “TTFaF” performance had been viewed more than 10,000 times; it has since been watched more than 2.1 million times — a particularly astounding tally for what is essentially a video of someone pressing buttons.

Maybe Chris, who just signed an endorsement deal with The Ant Commandos, is our first fake plastic rock god?

Unfortunately, most TAC fake plastic rock peripherals have gotten really poor reviews to this point, so here’s hoping they step up the quality to match Chris’s playing!

Basic Instructions on Guitar Hero

Jeff Atwood — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:48:33 +0000

I thought this Basic Instructions strip “How to Get the Most Entertainment for Your Video Gaming Dollar” — which references Guitar Hero — was quite funny.

Warrant’s Cherry Pie, of course, is a song in Guitar Hero II.

For an extra-double-plus dose of absurdity, here’s the actual Cherry Pie video. The symbology and mythology in this video is very difficult to understand, so pay close attention when you watch!

New Guitar Hero World Tour Guitar Size

Jeff Atwood — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:01:08 +0000

I noticed when the first info on Guitar Hero World Tour was released that the new guitars were larger:

These guitars are significantly larger, perhaps to mirror the the more realistic size of the Rock Band stratocasters.

Thanks to a scan of a UK Stuff Magazine article on Guitar Hero World Tour, this is now confirmed. Here’s a shot of the Les Paul guitar controller, originally introduced in Guitar Hero III, next to the new Guitar Hero World Tour.. er “unbranded” guitar controller

Definitely larger. And check out the size of that whammy bar!

One of the very few things I liked about the Rock Band Stratocaster was its much larger size. Here’s hoping the new improved stratocaster is a better controller.

Of course, we’ve got a long way to go before the fake plastic guitars are anywhere near as large — or as heavy — as real guitars.

The Drum Day From Hell

Jeff Atwood — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:01:36 +0000

If you thought the Endless Setlist’s 58 song set was tough, how about a 235 song set?

Tom Chick conducted a great interview with Sean Feica, a Rock Band drummer who played all 235 songs currently available for Rock Band in one marathon 26 and a half hour jam session.

On expert, of course. He called it The Drum Day From Hell.

On Saturday morning at 9am, 22-year-old Sean Feica in Ontario, Canada started up Rock Band and drummed through “29 Fingers” by The Konks on the expert difficulty level. It was the beginning of what he called The Drum Day From Hell. Then he did a Blur song, then a couple Weezer songs, then “Eminence Front” by The Who. He five-starred them easily and was even getting the occasional 100% as he worked his way through all 235 Rock Band songs, from the easiest to the hardest. That’s right: all 235 songs. And he was broadcasting himself live as he did it.

Between songs, he looked over the list of upcoming tracks with comments like, “Oh, god. That hour’s gonna suuuuck….”. He talked to folks typing chat on the live stream, giving himself the appearance of a good-natured but slightly crazed fellow having a one-way conversation that included tidbits like: “Blisters? You have no idea” and “The zone isn’t even the word for it”. He cautioned against trying this with vocals in Rock Band: “You will probably cause permanent damage to your vocal chords. Don’t do it.” After “Green Grass and High Tides”, he blurted out, “I was getting such serious amounts of tunnel visions. I was tripping right out.” “I am not taking off my shirt,” he reprimands someone online.

He finished on Sunday morning, completing “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who shortly after 11:30am. He let his sticks drop haphazardly. Someone walked into the room – a roommate? – obscured by the inset image of the Rock Band screen.

“Twenty six and a half hours,” he told whoever walked into the room. “Done.” They high five each other.

“You going to bed?”

“Oh my god, yes.”

But first he did an encore of “Still Alive”.

Lots of thoughtful Q&A in the interview. Harmonix has promised 500 songs will be available by the end of the year, and Sean plans to play all 500 of those songs in one sitting — again — when that happens. By his estimation that’ll take 48 hours. More of a Drum Weekend From Hell.

500 songs by the end of the year isn’t as crazy as it sounds:

We have 235 song available now.
Rock Band 2 adds about 80 songs on the disc, and Harmonix has promised 20 free DLC songs will coincide with the release.
There are 23 tuesdays between now and the end of the year. Assuming an average release schedule of about 5 songs per week, that’s another 115 songs.

So, 235 + 100 + 115 = 450. Looks like there will have to be some fairly large DLC releases of 8-12 tracks in there, somewhere, for them to reach their stated goal of 500 songs by the end of the year.

Comparing Fake Plastic to Real Guitars

Jeff Atwood — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 06:59:29 +0000

I didn’t know anything about guitars until I picked up a fake plastic one. After owning almost every fake plastic guitar on the market — and a few trips to Guitar Center to pick up some essential fake plastic band equipment — I’ve begun to appreciate how beautiful real guitars truly are.

I thought it might be fun to compare each fake plastic guitar with its real life equivalent, side by side.

Here’s the guitar that started it all — the original 2005 Gibson SG controller. The Playstation 2 version of Guitar Hero I came with the black version, and Guitar Hero II added the red (as well as some internal design improvements). You can buy the red, black and two newer “wood” variants of this original SG model at the Guitar Hero Store as well, but they’re still wired, unfortunately.

Around the time Guitar Hero II: Rocks the 80s was released, new wireless controllers were introduced for the Playstation 2. These aren’t an official licensed design, but they look awfully similar to the Fender Jazzmaster to my eye.

The release of the Xbox 360 version of Guitar Hero II brought the licensed Gibson Explorer design. A solid controller, but the shape was difficult to get used to.

Guitar Hero III added not one, but two more new guitar designs. The PS2 version of the game got the relatively obscure (but cool looking!) Kramer Striker.

The PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii versions of Guitar Hero III included what many (including me) consider to be the best fake plastic guitar yet, the Gibson Les Paul.

Rock Band included the classic Fender Stratocaster design — which was much larger in scale than previous fake plastic guitars as well. They went for realism, and although I think the Rock Band Strat is basically a failure as a controller, it’s definitely the one that makes you look least ridiculous while rocking the fake plastic. Which, admittedly, isn’t saying much, but..

And just for fun — remember The Battle Axe guitar, awarded to guitarists who finish Expert on Guitar Hero I and II?

Here’s a picture I found on Vintage Kramer of a real-life Battle Axe guitar. Go figure!

I’ll add the new Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour guitars here later, as they are officially released to market.

How Popular Are Downloadable Songs?

Jeff Atwood — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 06:35:45 +0000

There have been at least three new tracks each and every week since Rock Band’s original release in November of last year. Sometimes more. That means by now there are literally hundreds of downloadable tracks available now for Rock Band. 235, to be exact.

But which downloadable tracks are the most popular?

MTV and Harmonix don’t release those numbers, but a recent Viacom shareholder call gives some overall hints:

Rock Band: It’s the key driver of Media Networks growth, and Dauman predicted the franchise would start seriously contributing to the bottom line very soon. The game is still in the infancy of its lifecycle, he argued, noting the opportunity to expand geographically, and into new genres. So far, the title has sold 4.8 million copies, led to 18 million paid song downloads, and books another 1 million paid downloads every nine days. Right now, the hit game is still seen a drag on margins (a very welcome drag, of course), since the revenue comes in the form of low-margin hardware. But this is expected to change, and expected to double off of the single digits over the coming years, as revenue comes more from downloads.

Even though numbers aren’t available, dlcstats appears to track the popularity of downloadable songs for Rock Band.

How do they do that, with no real numbers available? They count the number of guitar scores in the online leaderboard for each track. It’s a highly imperfect method of data collection — what about people that buy DLC and play only vocals or drums? What about people who buy DLC but don’t bother participating in the online leaderboards? How do you factor in cheaper or free songs? Also, the online leaderboards only show the top 100,000 scores, so stats can’t be accurately tracked for extremely popular songs.

It is (barely) better than nothing, and it should be somewhat reliable in tracking the overall popularity of tracks — though it will probably skew a bit towards tracks guitar players find the most enjoyable.

Browse the Rock Band DLC Statosphere for Xbox 360
Browse the Rock Band DLC Statosphere for Playstation 3

At the time of writing, the most popular Rock Band DLC tracks are, in no particular order:

Fortunate Son (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Juke Box Hero (Foreigner)
Metallica Pack (Blackened, Ride the Lightning, And Justice For All)
Roxanne (Police)
Buddy Holly (Weezer)
The Kill (30 Seconds to Mars)
Dirty Little Secret (All American Rejects)
Move Along (All American Rejects)
All The Small Things (Blink 182)
Wonderwall (Oasis)
More Than a Feeling (Boston)

These songs have all hit the 100,000 recorded guitar score cap. As you might expect, it’s heavily slanted towards songs that have been out a while.

The least popular tracks are:

Doolittle Album (Pixies)
The Mother Hips
Cherry Bomb (Runaways)

I can see the Pixies album not being popular with guitarists, but it’s still a damn shame. Many rock critics would put Doolittle solidly in the best 100 albums of all time.

At least pick up Debaser, Here Comes Your Man, and Monkey Gone to Heaven!

And that Runaways track is great fun to play on all instruments, as well as being a classic girl band punk rock song.

Joan Jett and Lita Ford were in the Runaways. Go buy it!

Faith No More’s Mike Patton on Rock Band

Jeff Atwood — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:49:33 +0000

Mike Patton, of the band Faith No More (and many others) was recently intervewed by the Onion’s A.V. Club, and he talked a bit about Rock Band:

AVC: Faith No More appeared in Rock Band. Do you have any kind of input on those kind of decisions when you’re picked for a game like that?

MP: Well, if we do, I certainly didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about it until it was in the game. Some friends told me.

AVC: So it’s one of those situations where the label’s just making these deals and they don’t even check with you guys.

MP: Yeah, when you’re on a major, basically they own the music and they can kind of farm it out however they want. And I do think there was probably a courtesy call or something like that at some point in the process, but I wasn’t involved in it. You learn very early on just to step back and put your hands up and say, “Whatever, whatever.” There’s nothing I can do.

AVC: Would you have picked a different song to be in Rock Band?

MP: No, it doesn’t matter to me. I had no agendas in that regard. I mean I’m glad they used anything in the first place. Fine by me.

AVC: Many regard music games as kind of silly. Do you see the appeal of those kinds of games?

MP: Sure. It’s hard not to. Any idiot, any stockbroker can get out there and live out a fantasy and pretend like he’s playing music. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I just recently did an interview with a videogame magazine in which I walked into the room and they had a whole Rock Band set-up and wanted me to play. I’d never really done that. And I realized how un-musical it really is. You play that guitar or that bass, and it has nothing to do with music. But nonetheless, it was pretty fun. It made me wonder if, at some point down the line, you could compose that way, because there’s obviously a whole generation of kids who have grown up on these games and using that method to make music. What if you weren’t just doing it for karaoke? If I was 11 years old and I wanted to start a band using that technology, with screens and that weird push-button, press the X here… It just made me wonder if there’s a whole generation of kids who couldn’t do something like that.

AVC: MPC samplers would make great videogame controllers. They could translate directly into that kind of gameplay.

MP: Absolutely. All it is is pressing a pad here and there. I mean this guy’s making music on the fucking iPhone now. There’s these programs if you jail-break your iPhone where you can use drum machine programs, all this kind of stuff. I don’t know what this stuff sounds like, but the idea definitely hits me in the geek nerve, and I love it.

AVC: Eventually there’s going to be that kid who learned to play drums because he played Rock Band.

MP: Yeah, absolutely. But there should be a way for him to actually not just play a Led Zeppelin song, to make music doing that.

AVC: Guitar Hero IV, the new game, is going to integrate some kind of music creation tool.

MP: I knew it. It had to happen. I’m all for it, man. I think it’s great. I am no one to be a purist. I didn’t go to school to learn how to do this. I taught myself. If these kids are teaching themselves by looking at a TV or doing it through a videogame, yeah, it’s pretty sick, but who am I to argue? If someone can do something creative with it, I’d buy it in a second. I mean, would you go see a band of 10 year old kids playing original music on Rock Band? I would. I’m not saying I’ll like it, but I definitely would go see it.

Maybe I’m just naive, but I had no idea that artists had so little control over their music! Does Mike even get any royalties at all from his song appearing in Rock Band?

Rush Plays… Rush

Jeff Atwood — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:33:18 +0000

Here’s a short video of Rush playing their own song, Tom Sawyer, in Rock Band.

I was impressed that they made it to 31% on expert.

Harmonix Rhythm Game Design Philosophy

Jeff Atwood — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:24:23 +0000

There’s great new interview at the Onion AV club which covers Harmonix’ design philosophy in rhythm games. A few highlights:

On teaching people to hear music differently:

You can go to a really great sandwich shop and you can order an amazing sandwich and it just has one big name, and you eat it, and it’s great. But maybe you didn’t taste that they’d layered the prosciutto on top of the mozzarella with this special mayonnaise or whatever. You aren’t tasting every individual element of the sandwich. You’re eating the sandwich and it’s a great sandwich. There are a lot of people who turn on a song, and it’s a song. And they couldn’t tell you what the bass player’s playing, versus what the guitar player’s playing, versus the synthesizer in the background, or any of those elements. They just hear a song, in the way that you might eat a sandwich. And playing this game does a really easy trick, which is deciding that the success of one event determines the muting of one track. It equates two things which are actually not equal, and does this great trick to your brain which is hugely pleasurable, and educates you in a way by pulling [the track] away. It’s this simple, “One of these things is not like the other.” And then you all of a sudden have this knowledge that with a lot of other people would take them two or three years playing in a band to figure out. And bang, it’s there right in front of you.

How rhythm games are becoming a way for new bands to get heard:

We’ve always been thinking about [giving indie bands exposure]. And that is something that we really want to do, and [we've] started actually a few things that we can’t talk about, to make an avenue for indie bands to get their music heard through Rock Band. Because it’s so tough for them to get heard through the major record labels. So we’re thinking about that and seriously pursuing that.

This is particularly true with DLC, and I wish there was more of it. Although they really should release more at the 99 cent price range for new bands; pricing tracks from new bands at the same $1.99 as established classic acts is not helping anyone.

On adding new instruments, in particular keyboards:

We talked about keyboards a lot. I don’t think it’s actually what we need to add right now. I don’t think there are that many songs that are going to have interesting keyboards all the way through, that are going to warrant a new piece of hardware, or learning a new thing. That would be kind of tricky, teaching people to play with two hands. So I don’t know, that’s not something I would actually push for. Every year we talk about it, and one of these years it could pop up.

I think keyboards would be really tough to integrate; not only is it fairly limiting in terms of song choice, imagine how complex the controller would have to be. Certainly 5 or 6 inputs wouldn’t even begin to cover it!

Many other great insights in the interview; I highly recommend reading it.

Run To The Hills, Real Drums vs. Fake Plastic Drums

Jeff Atwood — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:29:37 +0000

This one’s fairly self explanatory.

Iron Maiden’s Run To The Hills on Expert, played on Rock Band drums:

Iron Maiden’s Run To The Hills on Expert, played on real drums:

Very cool to see how the in-game drum pattern correlates to play on real drums!

After looking at the note pattern, and playing this song on Hard drums all too often, I think it’s true what they say this song is actually harder on hard, due to the odd way they drop drum hits to make it “easier”!

He has some other real world drumkit Rock Band videos, and they’re all fun as heck to watch: