What happens when you meld the most futuristic Microsoft technology with the most futuristic Apple technology with the most ColecoVision-esque graphics as built in Jitter? Or you create gameplay that couples physical human contortion with the step sequencing rhythms of music? A different take on music games, that’s what.

Developers Matt (“M@tt”) Boch and Ryan Challinor work, in their day jobs, on the music game as most people know it, at Harmonix. Harmonix’s roots remain in the rhythm game, so that music play, even at its most serious, is still about musical timing accuracy. Pxl Pusher is a very different mechanic: imagine a step sequencer grid on an iPad, presenting blocks that, true to the classic game Twister, require another player to balance and stretch their bodies to match.

I caught up with Matt and Ryan over the summer at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Before throngs of crowds swarmed the game – easily one of the most popular of the night – I managed to get some quick footage of the creators doing last-minute patching and trying out gameplay. (The quiet there is atypical; we got to shoot before the doors opened.) An insane travel schedule kept me from publishing sooner, but here, Matt and Ryan share their process.

Another interesting twist: Max/MSP and Jitter allowed extremely rapid prototyping with Kinect, something of interest to anyone doing this sort of work. (And dig those “3D” images … if they don’t blind you.)

CDM: How did you work together on this project?

Matt: Jamin from Kill Screen had asked me to make a project for the Pop Rally, and I was looking for someone to team up with to make it happen. Around the same time, Ryan was developing Synapse, and I got super excited about that tech. Having worked with him closely on Dance Central 2, I was positive we’d make a killer team, so I proposed we team up and make it happen. He got the ball rolling immediately.

Max/MSP is a pretty ideal environment for the both of us to work in, as it lets us evaluate ideas really quickly, and completely obliterate the lines between disciplines that we’re used to in traditional game development. Each of us designed, coded, sound designed, and made art for the game. It was awesome to be able to share in the creation of all parts of the game.

Ryan: We riffed on ideas with each other until it snowballed into the final product. Max allowed us both to work in the same space, as opposed to the traditional programmer/designer arrangement, where I would work in code and Matt would tweak values that I expose. This allowed us to work much faster and blurred the line between programmer and designer.

Any roadblocks, discoveries along the way?

Ryan: The whole project was driven by discovery: discover a fun interaction, then figure out how to leverage it. There were no real roadblocks, other than Matt being on painkillers for the entirety of the project!

Matt: I fell, knocked out four teeth, and fractured my jaw, so I was on heavy doses of painkillers for much of the development. I’m doing much better now, almost fully recovered.

The greatest discovery for me was more of a rediscovery. I remembered how freeing it is to design a game for a very specific context. Before working at Harmonix, I made arcade games in a contemporary art context. Getting back into that mindset was a blast.

Tell us a bit how you work with Max for rapid prototyping. How did you set it up? Any specific tools you made use of? Any tips, either related to Max or Kinect specifically?

Ryan: No real tips for Max, other than do a lot of commenting when you’re working on a file with someone else. As far as Kinect tips, my main advice would be to explore and discover what fun you can have with he input, other than starting with a specific goal. The only tools we used outside of Max were Synapse for the Kinect data, Adobe Premiere for the background movie, and some web app Matt used to generate some of the sound effects.

Matt: We ended up using Beanstalkapp & Versions for version control, which was huge for us in the late stages of development when we both needed to be working simultaneously. It was great that we structured our patch in such a way that we could easily turn elements of the patch into standalone patches, so simultaneous work could happen. You lose some flexibility, but it’s worth it to be able to work in tandem.

How did you conceive the idea for this game?

Matt: Largely through iteration and idea exchange. I VJ around Boston a fair amount and often used TouchOSC to VJ with my iPhone, so I’m not stuck behind my laptop for hours at a time, so when Ryan brought up the idea of using TouchOSC with MAX and Synapse, I was totally sold. We quickly arrived at the mashup between Twister and Step Sequencer, and every after that was polishing mechanics, arriving at a unified aesthetic, and then finding the best way to ramp difficulty.

Ryan: Matt approached me to work on a game for the PopRally right around when I just finished up Synapse, so I wanted to leverage that in the project. I had also just learned about TouchOSC, so I thought it could be fun to incorporate that. So, the initial concept was born out of experimenting with interactions that combined the Kinect and iPad.

How did things go at MOMA? Any surprises in terms of reception? It was effectively rapid playtesting — anything that you would now incorporate into the game? Or things that worked well, for that matter?

Matt: It was a phenomenal success. I never imagined we’d have a line of people waiting to play the game all night, never mind a line full of people cheering, laughing, and clapping as they watched others play. We’ve talked a bit about ways to modify the existing game to make it a bit deeper and more broadly compatible, but I’m also wary of upsetting the balance we arrived at.

Ryan: I was pleased with the reception at MoMA, it was very satisfying to work on a project and then immediately have people playing it, literally 10 minutes after it was finished (thanks to a last-minute feature request from Matt’s friend Christina)

What does it mean to you to have this game in this landmark art museum?

Ryan: I’m really grateful that we were able to show it off in such an amazing space. It feels a little unreal to me, my brain hasn’t really processed it yet.

Matt: It was hugely validating, especially because my Dad was in town and was able to make it to the event. He’s never seen crowds of people play the games I’ve worked on so to have him there, seeing how much fun everyone was having, was awesome in and of itself. That it was at the MoMA? Still haven’t totally processed it. It was the stuff of dreams when I was getting my art degree; it’s going to take a bit for me to internalize that that dream was realized. Not only was I able to show work at the MoMA, but it was shown in the context of so many great games: Bit.Trip Beat, Limbo, B.U.T.T.O.N., QWOP, the list goes on…

How about the connection to Kill Screen Magazine?

Matt: I think Kill Screen is far and away the best game writing happening right now. Both their daily updates on the web and their themed print issues are staples in my life. To be fair, I might be biased as I’m good friends with [editor-in-chief] Jamin, but nevertheless, I think what they’ve accomplished is undeniably phenomenal. What other publication could convince the MoMA to have a video game night?

Can you tell us a bit about your roles at Harmonix, and how you came to be there?

Ryan: I’m a programmer at Harmonix, I’ve worked on The Beatles: Rock Band and the Dance Central series. I was a CS major at the University of Texas, I got an internship at a game studio in Austin that turned into a job, then a few years later a coworker talked me up to someone he met from Harmonix, and I got recruited to work there.

Matt: I am a Project Lead at Harmonix, though I’ve occupied many roles previously, most recently Senior Designer. I started at Harmonix as a Production Assistant while I was finishing my thesis at Harvard. My friend and VJ partner, Josh Randall, is the Creative Director of Harmonix. We’d been VJing together for a bit while I was in school. He gave me a call one day, suggesting I apply for a Production Assistant role. One of my jobs was to track all the prototype hardware, but I ended up spending most of my time repairing it, as my art practice of building arcades gave me a fair amount of experience about mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, and coding. That landed me a role as hardware designer, and, many Rock Band iterations and trips to China later, I was tasked with investigating tech for a potential dance game. That lead to me heading up the development of a game prototype that would become Dance Central, and I’ve been designing for the franchise ever since. A circuitous path for sure, but I’m really happy with where I ended up, and deeply grateful to Harmonix for allowing me to occupy such varied roles throughout my 4 years tenure.

Synapse is something other folks can use, too, correct? What does it do, and where might they begin?

Ryan: Yep, Synapse is a freely released toolset. The primary focus of the project was for controlling Ableton Live with Kinect, but it can be used with anything that receives OSC input. You can find more information at http://synapsekinect.tumblr.com/

Any future plans for this game, or other Synapse-powered stuff?

Ryan: In the immediate future, we’ll be showing off PXL PUSHR at Indiecade in LA on October 8th. Beyond that, I’m not sure what the future is. At the very least, we’re going to keep the ideas of the gameplay mechanic in mind to be incorporated into future projects. As far as Synapse, I’m currently exploring other ideas so I don’t have any Synapse stuff in the works at the moment, but I know of a few other people working on Synapse-powered projects currently.

Matt: As Ryan stated, we’re showing it at Indiecade, and are hoping we’ll get more opportunities to show the game publicly. I deeply enjoyed working on the game with Ryan and I hope that TeamPXL, the moniker we’ve adopted, will develop additional games with the same working methodology. For now, given that we both just wrapped development on Dance Central 2, we’re taking a much needed break to recharge. I know Ryan’s got some awesome audio manipulation patches in the works, and I’m excited to see what comes of those. In time, I’m sure an awesome idea for a game will cross one of our minds and we’ll have no choice but to dig in and make something new!

http://teampxl.tumblr.com/

As a guitar, the Rock Band 3 Mustang is a bit unusual – there are strings, but an array of buttons replaces the frets, and it is intended as a game controller. But with all those buttons, strings, and sensors, it makes a remarkably flexible, surprisingly inexpensive controller. Our friend nay-seven puts it to good use with Sensomusic Usine. And talk about a budget-minded setup – one that could put platforms like the iPad to shame. Usine costs just EUR90 for a full license, with discounted educational pricing and a version you can try for free. The Mustang runs just over US$100, which could put it in the category of must-buy for anyone who loves experimenting with alternative controllers – guitarist or not. Add an inexpensive Windows laptop and audio interface, and you’ve got a pretty terrific setup.

Previously, with the help of Harmonix engineers, we documented how the MIDI spec works:
Exclusive Details: How the Rock Band 3 Fender Mustang Works as a MIDI Guitar

nay-seven writes:

I’ve discover this guitar with this article Peter, so thanks for this ! it’s a quiet cool guitar and cheap for the possibilities . I’ve made a little patch in Usine to add some features like open tuning, x/y visualization, and you can also use most of the buttons to run effects or samples.

Your mileage may vary, but it sure looks promising. Keep in mind, this is the cheaper Rock Band controller with buttons. As such, it’s a good choice for people wanting some cheap experimentation and people who aren’t guitarists. As for the real guitar controller for Rock Band 3, the Fender Squier Rock Band Controller, I have a writer working on documenting its more advanced MIDI features. It’s more complicated, and I can’t endorse it just yet – wait for the full review and details.

There’s no more brutal opponent than elevated expectations. At least, that’s one explanation for the recent meltdown of the triple-A music gaming franchises. Harmonix, company that gave birth to the modern instrument genre saw both of its creations hit hard times in recent weeks. Activision gave Guitar Hero the axe [Wired], terminating the division, its employees, and a future game in the franchise Harmonix originally created. Harmonix got an extra life, at least, but it wasn’t pretty: the LA Times reports that Viacom unloaded the company – and some $100 million in liabilities – for the selling price of fifty bucks. A fight over performance payments reportedly remains unresolved.

In recent days, I’ve heard an attitude from many musicians that boils down to “good riddance.” Many serious musicians have long mistrusted these titles’ plastic instruments and linear game play. I think that’s short-sighted on two counts. For one, music games are here to stay. And for another, that should be good news for music, not bad.

Music games still have some serious business potential ahead. Business and technology are rife with examples of failures to appreciate natural cycles in demand. It’d be just as mistaken to underestimate the growth potential in the slump as to overestimate – as Viacom clearly did – that same potential in the boom. And that means opportunities for artists, and a chance to make music gaming a gateway to real musical study. “It’s just not the same as playing a real instrument,” say the naysayers. That, to me, is promising – it means that gaming could naturally lead to playing instruments.

While hard data on the transition from gaming to musical study is hard to find, anecdotal evidence sure isn’t. I’ve seen people wind up getting deeper into music production, music lessons, playing in bands, and studying percussion, guitar, and music because these games – silly as this may sound – helped make them feel comfortable with playing an instrument. Critics say these games sell a fantasy of musicianship, without the pain and agony. I say that’s the whole point: the long tradition of music isn’t a field just for specialists. It’s a world in which everyone is involved in musical practice. They play together and sing together. Extended feelings about this are perhaps best kept to a separate rant, but I see no reason, then, why these titles can’t have broad appeal.

Even if by psychological trick, something about music games has the power to telegraph to people who are afraid of being musicians that musicianship can be okay. It can be fun. It can be okay to embarrass yourself in front of your friends. (If that isn’t required in musical expression, I don’t know what is.) Music isn’t just meant to be heard – you should sing along and play along with your favorites.

Discounting such power would be a huge mistake. And fortunately, I believe there’s plenty of evidence that this new medium – among many other media for expressing and promoting music – will survive and flourish, benefiting pro and amateur musicians alike.

For people who are specialists, the Rock Band Network lives on as another avenue through which artists might build demand for their music – and both direct and indirect revenue, by extension. It could also be a model for other ideas beyond consoles and Harmonix.

Musicians should also consider the competition, both because this is more of a battle between music games and war games than plastic and real instruments, but also because the skewed numbers of the games business set an impossibly-high bar for music games.

So, talking points:

War sells better than music – at least on game consoles. “Failure” for music games is nothing to sneeze at. The Associated Press reports that Rock Band did just shy of $1.3 billion in the US alone, while the (older) Rock Band franchise hit almost $2.5 billion. The problem is that hype around music gaming may have overstated its short-term revenue potential, particularly when you start bringing bands like The Beatles into the action. And simply put, it’s tough to compete with the scale of war games. Also from that AP story (and many others), Call of Duty: Black Ops hit $1 billion worldwide in six weeks. That’s without people slavishly transcribing guitar solos or doing deals with record companies and artists and paying license fees. So, the question is, why aren’t musicians rooting for music over war? Heck, I enjoy non-musical games to unwind, so nothing against them, but I like the idea that musical experiences would survive on these platforms, too.

…but those sales did look really awful. The sudden collapse of music game sales is rightfully troubling. Guitar Hero in particular unraveled; Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock sold only 86,000 copies versus some one and a half million of Guitar Hero III in 2007, says Wired.

So, what were the factors in that demise? Fall 2010 was the year of Kinect; its sales, in a tough economic season for gaming, was impressive. Against that backdrop and hype for war titles, you’d ideally want some serious marketing muscle in order to compete. But if Activision and Viacom were already looking to shut down or sell their properties, they may simply have cut their losses and failed to spend on marketing. That hasn’t been disclosed that I’ve found, so consider this pure speculation, but on the other hand, when I went to buy a “keytar” controller for Rock Band 3 to review for CDM, I found no in-store marketing and the store associates literally barely knew the thing was available, even sitting in their storeroom. It’s a cut-throat business, and if you don’t invest in marketing, you lose.

Music gaming is going strong as ever – if you don’t ignore the “casual” and mobile markets. Music games were never the main draw on consoles. But on mobile – platforms already associated with music consumption, and with a certain player called Apple involved in sales – things may be different. Just ask Tapulous, the startup developer of Tap Tap Revenge and other titles that was acquired by Disney last year. They were even able to unseat the mighty Angry Birds on top sales lists – well, okay, briefly. But given far lower overhead, explosive mobile growth, and more disposable content, they seem a reasonable financial bet.

None of that is necessarily good news for Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Well, unless you count…

The Madden Factor could mean 2011 won’t be like 2010. Critics – rightfully happier as users with competition between franchises – once predicted the demise of football games when Madden NFL won the rights to US pro football. Instead, Madden has become an evergreen title, selling on every platform, and remaining a big-budget, big-revenue hit. Like the music games, it simulates the real thing – well enough that even actual football players often unwind by playing it. Like Rock Band 3, it’s insanely demanding of its players; to play in pro mode, you need knowledge of playbooks and formations that rival pro coaches while using the manual dexterity of an origami master.

If its new owners can unload the debts and correct the management missteps of Viacom, could Rock Band 3 – now with no natural predators on consoles – spring back to more sales?

Sounds like a safe bet to me. It’s worth noticing…

Troubles began in 2007, with the Guitar Hero-Rock Band split. Having two music platforms didn’t work out all that well. Nor did, evidently, the elevated expectations from new corporate owners Activision and Viacom, respectively.

And Harmonix has its fingers in the two successful growth areas. Console investment involves big risk, more so with music contracts. But Harmonix has its upfront investment in its platforms taken care of – and they can make money on other platforms, too. They’ve done mobile games before; though they lack a big hit, that’s a no-brainer to hedge their bets going forward, without the same investment risk. And while on mobile they face lots of competition, pay attention to those Kinect sales: the new Harmonix Dance Central was one of the only launch titles that got positive reviews. Kinect development is far more challenging, and Harmonix has a great relationship with Microsoft.

The titles were hits; now it’s a test of the platform. War games (and Madden, for that matter) require that you buy new games every year. The result: consistent sales. Music titles, requiring new hardware accessories, wound up competing with themselves – do you buy the downloadable content, or the new game? And once you have your favorite tunes loaded, given the depth of these games, why not just keep practicing (or switch to real instruments and learn music properly) rather than buy more games?

It’s a tall order, but that means that rather than oversaturate the market, Harmonix may need to provide more reason to download more music. With pro mode, it could even morph into something that allows you to practice prior to working on a real instrument. And as it happens…

Content is coming, including on the Rock Band Network. As we’ve covered previously, Rock Band 3 finally gives musician gamers and artists publishing work the serious features they need. It’s the deep, real-transcription gameplay that critics of previous titles should theoretically appreciate. It even allows the use of real MIDI instruments for input, and includes keyboard, vocal, and guitar input that could actually serve as musical practice. As such, though, it may also take a longer time to win over gamers.

The RB3 title was out in the fall, but content that can take advantage of it is coming in the near future, including music produced by independent artists through the Rock Band Network. John Drake from Harmonix updates CDM on the progress of content for Rock Band 3.

The creators on RB are closing in on 1,000 songs that they’ve created in under a year. This feat is pretty astounding and we’re insanely lucky to have a passionate community. RBN and traditional DLC continues to sell well and with launches like “London Calling” by The Clash, we’re still bringing AAA content to our music platform. We’re committed to continuing to grow the franchise through DLC releases and we’re confident that we’re providing content that die hard band gamers want.

The gaming industry right now talks about user-generated content, but especially with the addition of Pro mode, Rock Band is one of those precious few titles that might actually deliver.

Crests are easy. Troughs make you strong. The boom-and-bust cycle is part of both the gaming and music industries. It’s easy to look only for growth, only for hits, but it’s really trial-by-failure that tends to make something mature into a real business.

So, I’ll conclude with the official statement from Harmonix, which they issued on the death of Guitar Hero, the title they created:

We were sad to hear yesterday that Activision was discontinuing development on Guitar Hero. Our thoughts are with those who are losing their jobs, and we wish them the best of luck.

The discontinuation of Guitar Hero is discouraging news for fans of the band game genre. As retail sales of Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles have slowed with time, we’ve been focused on building a robust digital platform for music gaming and have recently crested 2,500 songs available for play within Rock Band 3.

Harmonix and Rock Band continue to push beyond simple performance simulation to pioneer new approaches to music gaming. Rock Band 3 saw the introduction of our innovative new Pro Mode, in which aspiring musicians of all ages can develop actual musical skills through gameplay on guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums. We’re looking forward to the imminent release of the Fender Squier Stratocaster Guitar Controller, a fully functional guitar which doubles as a Rock Band Pro controller (launching March 1st). We are also relaunching the Rock Band Network, a way for bands of all shapes and sizes to get their music into Rock Band. RBN just passed the 1000-songs mark, and it’s relaunch will now support keyboards, pro drums and vocal harmonies. The music genre is one that calls for constant reinvention, and Harmonix is continuing to welcome and embrace that call.

In short, the beat of Rock Band marches on. We’re continuing to invest in the franchise and the brand that we have built, and will do our best to serve all loyal band game fans. For rhythm gamers out there who haven’t yet given Rock Band a chance, Rock Band 3 software is compatible with a wide range of instruments, including most Guitar Hero controllers. Looking to the future, for fans that want to switch, we’d happily welcome you over into the world of Rock Band.

It’s been a wild battle of the bands since 2007, but we respect and appreciate all of the hard work and innovation of our peers who have shared the music gaming space with us, and we look forward to rocking in the future.

More background:
Party over for ‘Guitar Hero,’ but not music games [AP]

Previously:
Rock Band 3, Behind the Scenes: When A Music Game Gets More Real

Kids today. They just love their Ableton Live and their Rock Band and their alternative tunings and their Live triggers and touch controllers stuck to their far-out new boutique controllers and high-end MIDI guitars.

Starr Labs has a line of MIDI controllers for Rock Band gamers and musicians on a budget, real guitarists (that’ll be the pro MIDI guitarists, not the gaming ones), and a novel new controller designed especially for Ableton Live. We saw their wireless line earlier today, which interoperates with these; here’s them exploring control.

Gaming and serious musicianship have some surprising overlaps here. Look at the new Ztar, the ZS-XPApros, which is a MIDI guitar – complete with advanced features for hammer-ons, sensitivity, and programmable zones – that also can manipulate Ableton Live right out of the box. Triggers are pre-mapped to Live control layouts. Like the game Rock Band, there’s cheery color coding to match what’s on the screen to what’s on the instrument. Unlike the game Rock Band, you’re playing an actual guitar and controlling advanced music software at the same time. (Show that to the next Xbox gamer who thinks they know it all.)

If you don’t play the guitar, there’s also the airPad, a wireless controller for Ableton with pots, X/Y pad, nav control, and 4×4 light-up pads.

Ztar

The Ztar Z6S-XPA and Z7S-XPA are advanced MIDI guitar controllers with “the industry’s only zero-latency, 6-string x 24-fret touch-sensitive keyed-fingerboard.” (I actually think that’s not hyperbolic; this is the only one I know of.)

Each string trigger has its own tuning, so you get what amounts to a combination between a sophisticated MIDI guitar and an alternative key layout. It’s a controller singularity, as if an alternate-tuning keyboard and a MIDI guitar had a love child.

Specs:

6 Velocity sensitive, Zero latency String Triggers
4-Way programmable Joystick and programmable Mod Wheel
24 fret touch sensitive Ableton Live color-coded fingerboard
Ableton Live control layouts and set-up templates
Ribbon Controller with 2 touch pads (Z7S) / six touch pads (Z6S)
Unlimited String and Fingerboard Tunings
32 Mappable Zones
Programmable Chording System
Arpeggiator & Sequencer
Volume Pedal Port & Sustain Pedal Port
MIDI and USB i/o

The Z6S-XPApro adds six pots.

Scott Caligure has more on the updates to the Ztar.

“The Z6S-XPApro and Z7S-XPApro are newer/updated versions, with improved sensing, latest drivers, multiple sysex ‘layouts’ for various software not only Ableton Live, color coded fingerboard soon to be led-illuminated. We are currently working on the instrument to be a class-compliant device.”

I would call this more like an keyboardaraaytrixocontrollatar. I’m not sure the music this instrument plays has been invented yet. (Microtonal breakcore psychedelia?)

Ztar Rock Controller

The “Rock Controller” is marketed partly for use with the Rock Band 3 Pro Mode, but it looks to me to be just as practical as a MIDI instrument – maybe even a little more so for some users, as it’s a bit simplified in contrast to the Ztar. With USB and MIDI connections, it’s just as happy to be plugged into your computer as an Xbox or PS3, and Starr are quick to say it’s not a toy. With zero-latency string triggers, a four-way joystick, five-way knife switch, muting, and two pedal ports, it’s still out there controller-wise.

And like the others, it has actual strings (to make absolutely certain this isn’t just a toy). But it might be a more down-to-earth alternative if the Ztar is a little too alien or pricey for you. It’s also a huge leap up in quality and versatility from the (also useful) MIDI guitar controllers designed for the game.

airPad for Ableton Live

It might seem a bit out of place here, but the airPad is a more traditional Ableton Live controller. It does boast a novel control layout, and it’s wireless, working in the 2.4G ISM band.

It’s well worth a visit to the Starr Labs site; they make an array of controllers and guitar electronics, including some fascinating alternate keyboard arrays. Makers like this make me wish I’d cashed in on some Web startup boom with an inexplicably-successful idea so I could squander part of my fortune collecting these designs. And for someone, I’m sure, they’ll find a real musical place in performance.

http://www.starrlabs.com

Oliver Chesler and his Wire to the Ear blog have long been among my favorite reading on the Web. It turns out he and I have both been pondering the idea of doing an audio podcast to talk about trends in music and technology. After we did a panel together, the idea was irresistible. Sure, podcasts have exactly none of the hype they once did, but both of us listen to spoken word content voraciously.

So, here’s the first experiment. We get a chance to speak, uncensored and off the cuff, about mobile apps for iOS we’re actually using, how MIDI might work on those gadgets, Rock Band 3, the MeeBlip, and items currently in the news. Expect very different topics in future. Audio below, on SoundCloud.
Music Tech in Review – Episode 1 – Podcast Chat by cdm

We’ve also assembled links into a handy Bit.ly link bundle; even if you don’t care for listening to us chat, this will give you a hint as to what’s on our radar.
http://bit.ly/musictechtalk1

This was entirely impromptu, but we do intend to plan ahead and do it right and make it a regular thing. That raises a couple of questions. What would you want in such a program? (High on my list: adding some actual music and music discussion, guests, interactive Q&A…) And on a more technical level, I found that there wasn’t an easy way to simply host audio that would work in podcast form. Ideally, you’d want something easily digestible by iTunes and non-iTunes players (I subscribe with Banshee and Google Listen, too), and I’d love to have something we could recommend to bloggers, perhaps even helping them get set up on Noisepages. Any suggestions, readers who have been paying more attention than I? (If you don’t know, let us know how you listen and I’ll keep researching.)

Updated: SoundCloud have added subscription links for podcast readers; you’ll find them on our profile! It’s an experimental feature, but give it a go and let us know how it works. More on this stuff to come…

And, of course, if you prefer words or video, we’ll have more of those.

What if a gaping product hole for musicians were filled by a game company instead of a musical instruments company? There’s no need to imagine: pick up the new Rock Band 3 keyboard, and you’ll see what I mean.

Consider: most sub-$100 and compact keyboards have dumped 5-PIN MIDI DIN ports in favor of USB only – little comfort if you want to plug a keyboard into that DIY sound module or eBay treasure. (Alesis’ QS25 is one exception, but even a $150 M-Audio Oxygen is USB-only.)

And keytars? Fuggedaboutit. Strap-on keyboards or keytars are a great way to play keyboard lines, but they’ve tended to be freakin’ huge. They really do feel like strapping a full-sized keyboard on your shoulder, which can kill the joy of playing them. And the current “entry-level” model, Roland’s Lucina AX-09, has a street of US$600 or more. eBay bidders have made used items similarly pricey.

So, forget for a second that a game is involved. What if I told you you could get a cute, light little keyboard with MIDI DIN, intelligent MIDI mappings, and two great-feeling synth action octaves, all in a strap-on form factor with battery power, for $80?

Yeah. That’s what I thought. So whether you’re a hardened gamer or just looking for a nice, mobile keyboard controller, here’s an in-depth look at how MIDI works on the new Rock Band 3 Wireless Keyboard Controller – forever to be known to everyone outside Harmonix and Mad Catz as “the Rock Band keytar.”

The Hardware, Impressions

Hardware specs:

• 25 velocity-sensitive keys. (Velocity already gives a leg up over some stuff you can get on eBay. No aftertouch, though.)
• TRS port for stomp or expression pedals. (Right now, that means the bass drum pedal, until we figure out a DIY solution. It uses a little 3.5mm jack; working on finding out voltage specs.)
• 1-axis touch strip which maps to modulation and pitch.
• 5-pin MIDI DIN port.
• Xbox 360 (or PS3) game pad, wireless Xbox operation. (For wireless MIDI, you’re on your own.)
• Three AA batteries. (No external power.)
• Optional stand accessory. (This looks cute; I didn’t pick it up yesterday but may yet.)
• 4.6 lbs.

US$80 street, and also available bundled with the Rock Band 3 game.

I’ve handled a lot of “shoulder-mount keyboards,” and the simple reality is, a lot of them have pretty awful ergonomics. The Rock Band keyboard is about the best I’ve handled. It’s light enough that you can hold it in one hand, and compact enough that it’s about the width of a typical adult waist. That means it actually feels like a keytar sized to be played as a keytar.

The keyboard action is just a basic, unweighted synth action, but feels solid enough, and velocity response is consistent. I have to admit: I was very surprised by the quality of the keyboard. You could easily put this alongside so-called “pro” unweighted keyboards in the sub-$200 range and, blindfolded, no one would ever guess this was a game keyboard. I have no idea who built the action (it’s labeled “made in China”), but there would be no shame whatsoever in using it.

One oddity: F3, C4, and F4 each have raised ridges on the left-hand side of the keys, in order to delineate the keyboard’s five zones for gameplay. With proper keyboard technique, though, you won’t even feel them, since the pads of your fingers will hit the middle of the keys. (That is, unless you have larger fingers.)

You also get a standard set of game controllers, and everything either sends a MIDI message or is used to toggle features on the keyboard. Not a button goes to waste.

The touchpad on the neck is probably the weak spot of the design. It’s usable, and conveniently located, but its response is pretty hard to control exactly. It’s also hard to hold down the overdrive button while using it, which is the only way to get to pitch. Then again, your left hand is likely busy holding the keyboard, anyway, just as on all keytars, so a pedal seems the better solution for anything really expressive. I’ll see how I adjust to it over time, though.

MIDI Mapping

As with the guitar, operation is simple: plug in a MIDI cable.

Yeah, okay. There is something to be said for old-fashioned MIDI, huh?

Once you’ve plugged in, you get some surprisingly robust MIDI implementation:

Keyboard: 25 keys transmit normally, with velocity. (No aftertouch. I’m glad we get velocity.)

In drum mode, the keyboard transmits General MIDI drum parts, which is, of course, handy for playing drum patches. (It’s also handy for confusing the hell out of you if you didn’t know that’s what it did.)

Touch controller: 1-axis modulation. Hold down the “Overdrive” button, and while that button is held, it sends pitch bend – which makes pitch bend nearly unusable. (Too bad they didn’t just make the Overdrive button a straight toggle.) Works well enough for Modulation, though.

Octave: Octave up and down shift uses the X and B keys (on Xbox, or the left and right action keys), just as on the guitar – and just as on the guitar, you get four up, four down. Octave feedback is available on the LEDs.

Program change: Top and bottom action keys increment or decrement, respectively, program change. (Y and A on Xbox.)

D-pad buttons: As on the guitar, these toggle functions, though for the keyboard all four are mapped instead of three. Up turns on and off drum mapping, right changes the pedal to foot controller, down changes pedal to channel volume, and left changes the pedal to expression.

Transport controls: The Back, Guide, and Start buttons on the Xbox gamepad correspond to Stop, Continue, and Start MIDI messages, respectively – so if you’re tracking your next Rock Band Network song in Reaper, you can control your takes right from the keyboard.

Pedals: There’s one pedal port on the side. More on how to use this soon; I haven’t yet tried it. It’s a 3.5mm jack, but I have to find out the voltage. Stomp should work fine with a standard Rock Band drum pedal, and in the default mode, you can use that for a damper pedal. For expression, you need something that sends analog voltage.

Panic: Press the Back, Guide, and Start buttons simultaneously to switch all notes off. (Curiously, this appears not to be the same as on the guitar, but I can only test the keyboard to know for sure.)

MIDI channel: 1. Always. It’s always MIDI channel 1.

Note that there is no accelerometer output from the keyboard. Too bad; that would have been fun (and likely more useful than the two-fingered salute you have to do to get pitch bend from the touch strip). In fact, this sounds like a ripe opportunity for a little hack – maybe a strap-on board that transmits accelerometer and MIDI via Bluetooth.

Applications

Bottom line is, this thing is a joy for controlling computer synths or hardware, and may have just become my portable keyboard of choice, just because it’s fun to strap on. Of course, if you don’t care about the “keytar” form factor, any number of inexpensive keyboards will give you real pitch and mod wheels and some knobs. But if you want to play a keytar, this game controller has become, bizarrely, a must-buy.

As we find out more about the pedals, I’ll share that. In the meantime, enjoy.

Since the very first Guitar Hero game, musicians have found ways of converting game music controllers into genuine music controllers, through various hacks and tricks. But now, no hackery is needed: Rock Band 3′s new “Pro” controllers ship with actual MIDI DIN ports on the back. With the help of Harmonix, we get to look inside how that MIDI implementation works.

The Rock Band 3 Fender Mustang Pro-Guitar, designed as a collaboration between Harmonix and Mad Catz and manufactured by the latter, isn’t exactly a full-blown MIDI guitar. It has strings, but in place of fretting those strings, you instead use 102 fret buttons. (Stay tuned for details of the Squier Strat for RB3, which will be both – actual strings over the frets.)

Non-guitarists won’t mind the buttons: there’s no need to build up callouses. And the frets are located in the right place, so if you do know how to fret a guitar, you’ll find it usable. The other big upshot is price: with a street price of US$150, the Mustang is on the high end of game controller, but very much the low end of things that can simulate a guitar with MIDI.

I don’t yet have a Mustang on-hand — I’m hoping I can find a real guitarists to give one a full play test when it ships late in November. But I can describe how MIDI works on the device.

The hardware:

• Six actual strings sense velocity. (As you can see in the picture, they stop before they get to the fretboard, covering only the distance needed to allow you to strum them.)
• 102 buttons stand in for frets (17 frets, 6 buttons per fret)
• Power from three AA batteries
• 6.3 lbs
• Tilt sensor
• Xbox 360 game pad
• TRS port for stomp, expression pedal input. (Stomp pedals from the game will work; for expression pedals, we’ll need to do a hack or DIY solution.)

Here’s the pleasant surprise: just about everything onboard is mapped to MIDI, including even the game pad and tilt sensor. And there are even two play modes for additional flexibility when you’re working with MIDI.

Thanks to that 5-pin MIDI DIN port, you can connect the guitar to any computer or synth – even a post-MIDI vintage synth found on eBay. (No USB MIDI is provided, but a lot of audio interfaces and keyboards give you a MIDI in port “for free.”)

Configuration instructions: step one, turn it on. (The PS3 and Wii version will have an actual power switch; on Xbox 360, you have to hold down the Guide button, just as on other Xbox controllers.) Step two, plug in a MIDI cable (the one with 5 pins that we’ve been using for over a quarter century). Step three — there is no step three. Turn it on, plug, and go.

MIDI implementation

Octave: Increment and decrement octave are the left and right action buttons (X and B on Xbox).

Program change: Increment and decrement are the top and bottom action buttons (that’s Y and A on Xbox). Transmits on channels 1-6. No, really. There’s a program change message implemented on this thing. The default is 28, the patch for a clean electric guitar in General MIDI.

D-pad buttons switch functions for the pedal, from foot controller to channel volume to expression.

Pedals: Connect an analog pedal, and you can use continuous expression or volume. Connect a digital stomp (that is, one that’s either on or off, like the bass drum pedal), and you send a damper pedal / sustain message.

Panic: Mercifully, there’s an all notes off command issued if you press the Xbox Back, Start, and D-Pad right at the same time. (Hmmm – feels like ctrl-alt-del.)

MIDI channel: By default, the guitar transmits on channels 1-6 — that’s in order to transmit strings separately. Each of the six strings is a different channel.

Accelerometer transmits Modulation on the X axis, Expression on the Y axis, and Pitch Bend on the Z axis, and each can be toggled independently with shift (the Start key) + B, A, and X, respectively. (That’s a good thing, as controlling all three at once would be a little messy.)

Frets and strings: Here’s the tricky part, because you’re strumming something rather than playing a MIDI keyboard. There are two modes:

• “Strum mode.” Hold a fret, then strum the string. The note is sent when – and only when – you strum. The pitch is set by whichever fret is closest. That note is held until you change a fret.
• “Synth mode.” Strumming a string or changing frets will generate a note – meaning, if you like, you can use that fretboard as a 102-key keyboard. (Microtonal fans, go nuts.) Here’s the odd part, though – you need the strum to set velocity, so whichever strum you’ve last strummed is your current velocity. While it’s called “synth” mode, this is the only mode that allows hammer-ons and pull-offs.

We’re going to need to get the actual guitar and shoot some video before that really makes sense. But you get the idea.

You can adjust pitch up and down 4 octaves in either direction.

LED feedback gives you information on what’s toggled and what isn’t, though my guess is you’ll just listen rather than try to squint at the LEDs.

Want Real Strings?

If those buttons look unappealing to you, Rock Band 3 will have an alternative with real strings, the Squier Stratocaster.

In many ways, the Squier is more interesting – especially to actual guitarists, and not just people looking for a new way to fiddle with soft synths. With real strings, it ceases to be a toy, and while pricing and availability haven’t yet been announced, it’s likely to be the cheapest MIDI guitar solution out there.

I’ve confirmed that the MIDI implementation on the Squier will be similar to the Fender Mustang Pro – same channels and messages. It lacks the pedal inputs.

Engadget did a nice hands-on preview of the Strat, with photos and video.

Likely applications

With both “Synth” and “Strum” modes possible, I think Harmonix and Mad Catz may have a hit here. For someone who isn’t quite ready to commit to a MIDI guitar yet but just wants an alternative way to track some MIDI lines, it’s hard to beat basic input for $150, with frets in the right place instead of a piano keyboard. For other applications, I can imagine having some real fun – with the accelerometer and “Synth Mode,” the guitar becomes a very viable, absurdly cheap, velocity-sensitive controller for strange new synths and other creations.

It’s probably some of those oddball applications that will appeal most, as I suspect real guitarists will hold out for the stringed-fret Squier, leaving the buttons to the rest of us.

Beyond MIDI: These are wireless Xbox 360 controllers, too, so if you have any tool that can talk to Xbox controllers on PC, you should theoretically be able to rig up something wireless that doesn’t involve MIDI cabling. But I like the ability to plug into hardware synths with MIDI, no computer necessary, too – and as I say, those MIDI ports are often “free” on gear you already have plugged into your computer.

Stay tuned for when this ships.

Hopefully that gives you an idea whether you want to pre-order this sucker. Knock yourself out.

All photos courtesy Harmonix.

What Harmonix has achieved with Rock Band, and their original Guitar Hero, is remarkable. At their core, these games are descended from arcade rhythm games, reducing music to simple coordination of a few buttons. Yet numerous studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that, in an age in which recording has made musical experience passive for many, the fantasy of holding a plastic instrument is enough to convince people to explore music making again. Rock Band’s collaborative gameplay has people singing and playing again, karaoke style, and more than a few gamers have decided to graduate to real instruments and lessons. Don’t be surprised to walk into a Best Buy and see instruments and pro audio tech in the aisle next to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The genius of Harmonix is that music is again entertainment, not specialization.

What people may not realize is that designing these games is hard. The illusion of simplicity, the experience of fun – these are some of the most daunting challenges in design, period.

So what happens when Rock Band evolves beyond mere rhythm game?

John Drake of Harmonix colorfully sums up the spirit of the new, real-transcription Pro game: “Good luck on that solo, asshole.”

Ramping up the difficulty of a game to real music was a transformative design challenge. We go behind the scenes to hear how Harmonix approached it, what it means for how music works, and what it can mean for your music — or the next time you want to use a game with friends to hone your musical chops.

A New Game

Rock Band 3, released today, introduces new instruments and new play modes that blur the line between rhythm game and musical exercise. The hardware inputs are now actual MIDI controllers. A new guitar, the US$150 Fender Mustang Pro, uses around 100 buttons to allow real chord fingering positions – minus the callouses. A new keyboard features two octaves, velocity sensitivity, and touch controls. The guitar and keyboard each have standard MIDI DIN output feature extensive mappings of even the Xbox buttons onboard to MIDI control changes and custom MIDI assignments. A MIDI adapter lets you use your own MIDI hardware. (Ironically, this puts the Mad Catz-built hardware ahead of many supposedly “pro” sub-$100 devices, which now have only USB connections. CDM will have a detailed hands-on with information on how to make use of that MIDI controller in a separate article.)

Accordingly, “Pro Mode” songs feature more extensive transcriptions; learning them is tantamount to simply learning the music. Chords are real chords, and, while reduced to an octave or so, the keyboard parts really are what’s in the song. Needless to say, the presence of a keyboard also opens the floodgates to properly providing keyboard music in the game, from Elton John to John Lennon.

To understand how these changes came about, we have an epic interview with some of the folks at Harmonix. Even if you’re not a music gamer, there’s plenty of reason to pay attention: what they have to say could be relevant to getting your music to a wider audience, and many of the design considerations reveal insights into how people process musical information visually.

And if you are a musician and gamer, you may finally have found a music game you can share with non-musicians without dumbing down your playing.

Speaking to CDM: Daniel Sussman, Rock Band 3 project leader, John Drake, program manager of the Rock Band Network, and Matt “Nord” Nordhaus, senior producer for Rock Band Network. (RBN allows musicians to author their own content for the game and distribute it to players.)

Beyond Rhythm Games

CDM: We know already that your games have turned people on to music, and now it seems Rock Band 3 bridges some of the gulf between game and music. What does that mean for the evolution of Rock Band?

John: From my perspective, it’s certainly opened up a whole new angle to approach people who aren’t rhythm gamers. And as rhythm gamers, people who laugh at Expert guitar charts and say, I can five-star this on a five-button guitar, no problem, like Harmonix are wusses. And I’m like, okay, now you have [Ozzy Osborne's] Crazy Train on expert, so, good luck on that solo, asshole.

Daniel: Rock Band 3 is welcoming and doesn’t take into consideration any kind of musical background or education. As it relates to a feature set, we really look at making our game musical, but also fun and crazy interactive. What’s unique about the Rock Band Network aspect is that the RBN experience is not really so much a game – it’s more of a pipeline that musicians can use to get their content, their songs into the Rock Band world. If you think about the musical community out there, the ecosystem is really a way into that musical community. You have a game that appeals to a non-musician, they play the game, they have fun, maybe they take a greater interest in music. They use the game to learn how to play guitar or drums, to appreciate music. They start writing their own music, and then put that into the game world for other people to play and interact with.

It’s a kind of funny thing. I don’t think it was totally intentional – the idea that Rock Band would get to the point where you’re able to play the game on controllers that then you can plug into your laptop to make music and then use that same laptop to do all the game authoring and then put that back into Rock Band. That was sort of where we ended up, and it’s great because it all works really well together, but it speaks to the ambition of the studio.

Do you have a sense of what will happen as these new hardware inputs make their way into gamers hands? I guess you have to wait and see.

Daniel: We’re very excited to see what happens. If you read a lot of the statements we’ve made about the ambition for Rock Band Pro, part of it was to draw a deeper connection to the music. Another part of it, really, was to provide a new gameplay experience to an audience of gamers that had been playing the same game for five years on the guitar, or three years on the drums. Really the problem we had to solve was, how can we reinvigorate the category? How can we give these gamers something new to play? And how can we continue to challenge the music gamer in a way that doesn’t just involve the content? Can we build gameplay around something new and unique, and then use that to drive the progression of the franchise?

What’s been interesting is that we get these hardcore gamers who are the cream of the crop in the Rock Band world, they can beat every song on Expert the day it comes out. And then we sit them down with the Pro guitar, and we say, alright hotshot, you probably want to start on easy. I know that’s a novel concept to you know, but try it. And they do, and what happens is, they’re getting like three stars and 60-65% of the notes. And it’s kind of the same experience they had when they first played Guitar Hero 1, or they first tried the drums in Rock Band 1. And that’s really the phenomenal thing here, is that we’ve found a way to reconnect people to all of this great music through the gameplay. And almost as a bonus, the gameplay is totally steeped in actual musical ability, so by playing the game you develop skill that can be applied to things outside the game. But really, that’s secondary, from our standpoint.

What does that mean for play testing and authoring, then, to have these new tiers of difficulty? I know in the past, the first step in authoring was to just do a full transcription of a song, and then try to reduce it to what’s playable on the game controls at different difficulty levels.

Daniel: Well, I think we still start at the Expert authoring level, which is the basic note-for-note transcription of the song. And then as you pare down from there to get to hard, medium, and easy, consider that it’s more like the “campfire” version of the song. On Easy, it’s really root notes of chords on downbeats. It’s more like you’re playing along with the song; you’re not playing exactly what the song is. And then on Medium, we introduce power chords, so you’re playing that root-fifth combination on downbeats. And then on hard, you start playing the full chords, major-minor chords, open chords, and riffs. Expert is everything. We use a lot of the same design strategy as we pare down from expert to easy that we do in the core game, in the core five-lane game.

Rock Band’s Place in the Music World

It seems like there’s a strong awareness of what RB3 is doing in the game community, that it is at this new level of musicianship, but maybe not in the music community yet.

Daniel: Our focus really has been on the gamer out there, because we want to make sure the experience is accessible and not intimidating. But we see a lot of potential for an intermediate- to pro-level guitar player or keyboard player who wants to use Rock Band 3 as a way to learn new music, to learn new songs. And I suspect that we’ll get there as the game gets out and people realize what’s going on, the guitars get out and people put it together.

I spoke at a panel earlier this week; it was a panel that was sponsored by NARAS. [That's the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences - yes, the folks who give out the Grammy.] We were talking about digital distribution in this day and age, and how musicians can take advantage of some of the tools. And I was stunned at how few people were aware of RBN, and Rock Band 3. And I still think that in the musical community, music games have this stigma as a game, as a toy. And I don’t think enough musicians out there are as aware of the powerful distribution that’s offered through the Rock Band franchise, and then the actual musical benefits that our game has afforded all the way back. I’m looking for the tide to change within the musical community. I’m in two bands, a lot of people here are very musical people, and deeply, we feel that we want to use the Rock Band platform to promote music and to promote musical experiences, and to encourage people to be musicians. We want to be a part of the musical community, not competing with the musical community in any way.

Have you gotten feedback from musicians as you worked on Rock Band 3, apart from, obviously, the numerous musicians who work for Harmonix?

Daniel: Some. We worked pretty closely with a couple of folks at Berklee College of Music. We’re building this game, we want to make sure that we don’t want to teach people any horrible habits, and all of our chord language is correct, and our fingering is correct, and our ramp is from easy to medium and medium to hard, following loosely with stable, academic doctrine. And so we had a couple of people come in on a weekly basis to play the game. And people were very excited. I think a lot of people have seen the potential of this within the music community. So there are certainly people that are very impressed with what we’ve done and are looking forward to applying it as a tool in the music community.

Do you have hard numbers on the relationship of the game and this game genre to people going out and learning instruments? It seems Rock Band 3 has the potential to make that happen even more.

Daniel: Obviously, it’s too soon to tell what the impact of RB3 will be on, you know, the society that we live in. [laughs] There have been studies, vendors have done studies, Cornell did a study, just on the attach rate between music gamer and how many people play Guitar Hero and then go buy a guitar, how many people play Rock Band and take musical instrument lessons. I know that it’s an interesting topic in the musical academic world. And I think RB3 definitely changes the game. The connection between the game and the actual musical ability is way less tenuous than it has been in previous games. It’s pretty real. I think you’ll see a higher attach rate, but you know, we’ll see.

Some of those hard number… Harmonix provided us with a study, announced in January of 2009, by Fender and non-profit music education organization Little Kids Rock, looking at schools around the United States. The results: educators widely attribute a renewed interest in music education to the games. The study looked at teachers with students in the 8-13-year-old age group.

Results:
67% said guitar enrollment increased as a result of Rock Band and Guitar Hero; 46% bass, and 52% drums. A tiny fraction thought it decreased.

78% said they felt these games had a positive effect.

88% said it had increased interest in classic, guitar-based rock, and a whopping 95% said the two games would help attract new students.

Rock Band Network, Meet Pro Mode, Keys

How are the tools being received in the Rock Band Network community?

Matt: We’re working on the toolset now to add keyboards and harmony to Rock Band Network. The creative community has been incredibly excited about it. I know a lot of them are both holding songs back that have keyboard parts in it, and sort of going after artists who they know might be interested in it. We’ve already had interest from a few major-label artists who have already gotten in touch with us to try to get their stuff in. So I think it’s going to certainly expand the RBN stuff into the keyboard-centric area.

What made the difference for them — is it, okay, now I have an engine that can represent my music, is it that now it’s something that I can take more seriously, or a combination?

Matt: I think it’s more the former. I think these are people who are very keyboard-centric. Billy Joel’s a great example of someone who was added. We’ve had people who said, oh, cool, you have keyboards? I really want to get my songs in there, people who are known for playing keyboards.

John: I think it’s people who make music on that instrument want to see even the representational gameplay. Even if you’re playing keys mode, you don’t have to play the two octaves, we still have that five-button-style gameplay even on the keyboard, I think we’ve always felt a little weird about it when it’s been like, play the organ solo to Smokin’ by Boston on a guitar controller. We did it because it’s an amazing song and we didn’t want to hold it back, but it makes so much more sense, and it’s so much more fun for them to see their music expressed on an instrument, even in a simulation format that’s that much closer to reality. I think it opens the door for them to get excited about it. And then once they’re excited about it, it’s kind of a no-brainer to get their music in.

Of course, as a keyboardist, I’m pleased to see the addition of keyboards; what does that change mean for Harmonix, especially coming from only the guitar and drums?

John: The exciting thing for us is, keyboard is so fundamental in terms of the way that people process and understand music. It’s probably the most linear layout of notes that you can have. It makes a lot of sense to be able to look at a keyboard and be able to understand what that harmonic structure is, versus a guitar. When you see people trying to learn theory from a guitar, they’re able to do it, but it’s a very disconnected and disjointed thing in their minds a lot of the time, if they’re not musicians.

I come from a jazz background. You have great pianists and great piano solos in the context of jazz, but at laest half the time you’re comping. That’s always part of it. It’s such a versatile instrument that can do all those things. I think with Rock Band Network and with Rock Band DLC, what we’re seeing a lot of is the ability to highlight those songs. We’ve got music like Billy Joel, like Imagine by John Lennon, like Bohemian Rhapsody, where the piano has those stand-out moments, where we’re really looking at the keyboardist as featured player. But also we have have songs like Roundabout by Yes, or Freebird by Leonard Skynard, where the keyboard has a standout section or there’s a crazy keyboard solo or sort of insane part, but really it does work as an instrument that’s part of a collaborative effort, which is what Rock Band’s all about. Rock Band’s not about Guitar Heroes, and it’s not about drum solos. It’s about your band playing together. So the keyboard will have its stand-out moments, it’ll cast more light on an instrument that’s often overshadowed.

Matt: The thing about RBN is that you typically see the more the fringe-y, niche-y stuff. It seems likely to be that we’re going to get some of those, like maybe we’ll get a jazz tune where the keyboard comps the whole time. And that would be cool. It’s the sort of thing that we probably wouldn’t release as DLC, because we have more high-profile bands in front of it. But it’s exactly the sort of thing that people put into RBN because they’re passionate about the bands they love and the kind of music they like.

What will the impact of these new levels be on the authoring process? I know you’re working on releasing new tools to work with the new implementations for Rock Band Network; what are you changing?

Matt: We’ve improved a whole bunch of the audition tools to make auditioning much, much quicker and easier — like adding rewind and skip forward, vocal guide pitches and keyboard guide pitches. We actually brought a group of people in, some of the more advanced authors, to check out the MIDI spec, and one of the things they reacted to is that the keyboards are really, really complicated. The difference between five lanes and two octaves doesn’t seem that big, but when you figure out that you’ve got chords and it’s real stuff in real time, it’s a very significant increase in difficulty.

John: Both to author and to play test.

Matt: — and to play. So we’re trying to add some tools to allow them to make sure what they’ve done is correct according to what’s actually in the song.

John: The thing now is that it’s pitch-accurate. So it’s not just charting what feels right; it’s charting what is right.

There’s still compression going on. It’s not the same compression that we do to take all the sonic stuff that you’re hearing down to five colors, but we’re still talking about, if you have a full keyboard part, taking it down to about an octave and a half — you have to think about both the theoretical, what is the best way to do that to make it feel right from a gameplay standpoint, but also how to communicate information so that it’s still pitch-accurate, and it still plays well, with jumping around. When do you leave the bass note in, when do you take the bass note out? It’s a lot of thinking.

It’s not like when we launched originally, when we had four years of guitar authoring under our belts.

So it’s like doing a transcription, in other words — it’s like doing an orchestral transcription for piano, or in this case a piano transcription for toy piano.

John: Yeah, exactly. That’s sort of a funny way to refer to it, but it’s pretty accurate. It’s more an art than a craft.

Learning Music with Rock Band

Last week we got to see GarageBand ’11, with additional lessons, and metrics behind those lessons. In a way, the games and the music tools are converging. It seems like what the games are doing can help with learning music.

John: You know, I grew up playing piano. I’m a classically-trained percussionist, and learned piano when I was six years old, and all that good stuff. And the thing that sucks about learning an instrument in isolation is that you play scales, and you play Mary Had a Little Lamb, and you play your A harmonic minor scale. And when you mess up, it sounds bad. And when you do it right, it doesn’t sound that great either. It sounds like a scale.

The fun thing with Rock Band 3 is that the stories we have, we back you with a full band of music all the time. Even when you’re playing your C major scale, or your C major triad, you’re playing it on top of a bluegrass band, or a metal riff. And you feel like you’re accomplishing something. And it makes you want to get over that hump and get over that musical boredom and inertia that holds people down, where they’re not getting engaged on a real instrument. I’m hopeful we get people to feel like they’re learning, to feel like they’re engaging with a game and playing something, and they actually develop some chops and maybe some habits that can get them thinking about musical theory and maybe taking a piano lesson, or reading Keyboard Magazine, or downloading some GarageBand lessons. That’s all good.

It’s like the Jamey Aebersold tapes, where you have a backing track.

John: Exactly. Oh, God, those tapes… I was trained on those tapes. I was trained on… oh, God. They’re good. They’re torture.

So, now we have these full guitars and real two-octave keyboards — was there some iteration to arrive at that solution? I got to poke a little fun at the process when the announcement was made, mocking up a whole staff coming at you in the interface. Maybe at one point there was even something a little like that.

John: God, there was tons of iteration on that. I think this is sort of the genius of Harmonix games. To be very clear. I’m not a UI designer, that’s not my job or my baby, but having seen the iteration process it went through, when you see the end result, when you see the polish, you think, “oh, it must have been a really natural process to come up with this.” But what you’re looking at is hundreds of hours of painstaking thought and work that went into it.

With keyboards specifically, I think the biggest challenge was really getting people who are not used to reading piano roll, and not used to understanding the difference between a fourth and a fifth onscreen, being able to identify that quickly through a seamless UI and jump right in. And I think that our team did a killer job of what’s coming down the display on the screen. I think it’s pretty much the only way you can do it. The idea of having one octave of gameplay at a time, because we tried it with more than one octave.

Matt: And you know, adding the colors. I sat in on all those meetings. I go to all the design meetings. It was fascinating to watch us work through it. We tried not having black and white notes and coloring all the notes, and eventually we ended up on black and white because people are used to that. We struggled with, like, do you light up the lanes when you press them? How thick are the dividers between the lanes? We were tweaking stuff literally until the last day. And it was a nonstop process of iteration through the whole cycle to get it right. It’s very, very hard.

John: And it’s because people are so deep into music here, and want so badly to give people that experience and make it accessible. We can get my mom to play keyboards, and then get a great keyboard player, both being able to sightread something on easy and having a good time, not feeling like they’re reading music and suffering through a rehearsal process.

Matt I think it was a huge debate whether we had a key signature list at the beginning of each song. The keyboard people wanted it, and the design and UI people didn’t want it because they felt it was clutter. We went back and forth on that a bunch of times.

John: At the end of the day, that’s what designing games really is for something like this. If we’re translating a real-world experience, making decisions to give the most amount of information to people without overwhelming them. I think Rock Band Pro really walks that line of filling that screen with all the notes in the keyboard solo in Roundabout, without making you feel like you’re going to have an aneurysm from trying to play them.

My favorite thing is what people said about the pro guitar — that’s been in development as long, if not longer, than keyboards. We’ve been futzing around with that for two-plus years. And playtesting it, people were saying, oh, sure, you can play on it, and it makes sense to you, but you’re a guitar player. And to bring people in who never played guitar before, and give them our tutorial system, to see them like an hour later playing power chords? Playing I Love Rock and Roll? I mean, they’re not mastering it and no one’s playing crazy guitar solos, but to be able to fret three or four chords based on learning it through the game in an hour or two hours. Having them have to stop because their hands hurt — they were grinning from ear to ear, and they were doing it and loving it.

That’s the power of someone learning an instrument and getting excited about it. That’s what we had hoped would happen. The idea that anyone could pick up a guitar and spend two or three hours in our game and walk away knowing two or three chords and how open notes work and how they can move their way around a fretboard — that’s pretty crazy.

That’s the biggest surprise to me — that it fucking works.

It’s why people have been playing music for thousands of years.

All photos: Kyle Mercury. Images courtesy Harmonix.

Whatever line there was between playing Rock Band as a game and playing Rock Band as musical instruments has now more or less evaporated with the release of Rock Band 3. Yes, there’s a keyboard, and yes, you can add a strap to it, if that makes it a keytar for you. But there’s more to it than that.

For the gaming world’s take on the ratcheted-up difficulty and actual music making functionality, Joystiq interviews Daniel Sussman at Harmonix.

The keyboard parts are real keyboard parts. The only difference between Rock Band / Guitar Hero parts and traditional score notation, aside from rotating the whole score 90 degrees counter-clockwise and having it come toward you, is that you don’t get a full range of notes. The keyboard changes that – while not as extreme as my faux mock-up in May, you do get the full range of black and white keys. There’s actually an octave and a half up on the screen, and two octaves on the controller. In other words, while you’re not quite learning to sightread, you are learning actual keyboard skills. There’s also a touch strip on the neck of the instrument, in a nod to keyboard history.

MIDI output. The keyboard accessory supports MIDI output, as confirmed in the Joystiq interview. So you can plug the keyboard into your computer – good fun for Xbox-using electronic music geeks, and also a nice bridge for people new to music who want to get into production after using Rock Band.

MIDI input. Here’s the other surprise: Sussman tells Joystiq they’re working with Mad Catz to do a MIDI input accessory, so you can plug your Roland JUNO-106 into your Xbox 360, if you want. (Side dream: if such an accessory supported XNA titles, you could have elaborate indie music games to play with real controllers, too. CDM Hero?)

Guitar with strings and frets. This is a bit more elaborate, so it tops my questions for Harmonix when I talk to them, but suffice to say Harmonix is finally adding strings and frets to a six-string model made by Fender.

Consider this a teaser, as I’ll be talking to Harmonix later this month. But why does this matter?

It makes gaming even more of a gateway drug for music. CDM’s own Jaymis, known better on the visual side of things than music, has started playing drum kit after getting hooked on Rock Band. And statistics worldwide show uptick in interest in buying and playing instruments, even as music education has been under economic pressures. At some point, there may have been a debate about the validity of music games. It’s tough to continue that debate now: games get more people into music, period. And while the games aren’t exactly creative or improvisational, they introduce people to more communal, more musical experiences in surprising numbers.

It makes a game musicians might actually want to play. Here’s where I think there might be a surprise. Lots of tech-loving musicians and producers are avid game system owners, but it’s hard not to feel a little silly picking up anything but the mic on the music games. Oddly, RB3 could bridge the opposite direction.

Rock Band Network just got a lot more interesting. I’ve been singing the praises of Rock Band Network, the tool that allows artists to author songs for the game platform, for some time. But now with keyboard input and real musical parts, I think RBN might finally be more tantalizing – including for electronic music. Now, could we please, please, please have some on-screen visuals in the vein of Harmonix’s earlier, visually-brilliant Amplitude or Frequency, and not just people in leather pants? (Okay, so maybe there are still some lingering obstacles for electronic music.)

Got questions for Harmonix? Stuff you’d like to see? Want to register for my Bring Back Frequency campaign? Let us know in comments.

Kotaku notes that Rock Band 3‘s icons tease something we’ve been awaiting a long time — keys.

It’s ironic that in order to make guitars playable in games, they were effectively made into keyboards, yet it’s taken this long to actually get keyboards. Oh, wait — yeah, there is that whole problem of having as many as 88 keys, two hands, and no convenient way to fit the staff notation into the descending gems view. Not entirely sure how that’ll work out; see also a controller concept, below.

Of course, this also means that, while electronic music is still largely off-limits, synthpop, prog, and synth bands are all now fair game. That’s fantastic news for the Rock Band Network I’ve covered here on CDM, which lets anyone with a copy of Reaper adapt music for the platform.

So, I got one wish… though I do have to say it again, on behalf of the richer gameplay and the chance for VJ backgrounds and electronic tracks. Xbox Network. Frequency. Amplitude. (Or, heck, Google TV/Android. Anything.) Long-time Harmonix watchers know what I’m talking about.

Oh, side note to Kotaku: am I going to have to send Stevie Wonder and J.S. Bach to kick your ass, or will you stop making fun of the keyboard? Yeah, it’s had its embarrassing moments, like any other instrument. It’s no soprano sax, though.