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:
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.
Hard to believe it’s been almost six years since the release of the original Guitar Hero. Remember struggling to complete your first songs on easy? Remember how mind-bendingly impossible hard difficulty seemed, much less expert difficulty? Remember hitting that last Bark at The Moon solo and failing instantly? Ah, memories. Now we get to marvel at how difficult Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames is on a REAL FREAKING GUITAR.
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:
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 17th 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!
I can’t believe it’s been almost six months since Rock Band 3 was released! You may remember just before it came out, I built what I called the Ultimate Rock Band 3 Setup.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Console + power brick, a/v connector, and wireless controller
Travel projector + power brick
Stage speaker (1 or 2), plus RCA extension cables
Wireless guitars (2)
Wireless drums (no cymbals)
Wireless keyboard
Wireless microphones (3)
Power strip
AA batteries (lots)
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!
