The Beatles: Rock Band

The beatles were clearly brilliant pop composers but none of them were considered virtuosos in their respective instruments.

Sad Paul is sad at this sentence.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/MMPH/B72917~Paul-McCartney-Posters.jpg

See WTF IS HE DOING WHILE GEORGE IS TAXING THE STREET?

how much money is a full system with all the rockband gear and software compared to inflation-adjusted neo-geo? cause back in the day only rich kids got to have a neo geo.

― Philip Nunez, Thursday, September 3, 2009 5:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest

Neo Geo debuted at $600 in 1990, which is equal to $976.36 in 2008 dollars.
Incidentally, Super NES debuted at $200 in the same year, which is equal to $325.45 in 2008 dollars.

Beatles Rock Band Premium Bundle for all console systems (which includes game and all the controllers) is $249.99.

A+++ for both Q & A.

Agree with Adam that Paul McCartney is indeed a great bass player. Surely no Jaco Pastorius, but still an innovative and technically great instrumentalist. I would also say George Harrison developed into a quite good guitar player, but maybe not so much during his Beatles years. Ringo is not a bad drummer either, in spite of what George Martin thought. None of them is the best in his respective field, but those (and not John to quite the same extent) were all quite good at their instrument.

Still, it is as composers, arrangers and, to some extent, harmony singers that The Beatles were so unique that a lot of people consider them the greatest thing ever.

paul is such a better bass player than jaco.

What I do wonder is, like, sometimes you see some kid on Youtube playing Guitar Hero on the insane hours-of-learning levels, and it's hard not to think whoah, it would have been less fun and easy, but you could have maybe actually learned to play some real guitar in all that time.

― nabisco, Thursday, September 3, 2009 10:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but jjusten says at his store most of the young kids that buy stuff are actually buying guitars because of rock band/GH, if anything i bet there will be more kids playing guitar because of it rather than less...

also to put it in perspective....if a real guitar was a rock band guitar there would be 144 buttons and 6 strum bars. that's not counting the physical issues like actually fretting and picking correctly, etc.

Wait, Kraftwerk should do a Synth Hero.

The arrangements are very simple but you have to get it PERFECTLY on the beat. It trains you to become a tempo robot.

This would be invaluable to musicians EVERYWHERE

The arrangements are very simple but you have to get it PERFECTLY on the beat. It trains you to become a tempo robot.

So, if you decide to play against the computer, you will always be bound to lose? ;)

yeah I know, we talked about that stuff -- and yeah, I have zero doubt that kids are getting into actual instruments through these things; I even sometimes hope Rock Band turns out to make drummers easier to find for young people who want to start bands -- but it's still pretty obviously weird to look at intense plastic-guitar skill and think about learning effort; I think this about a lot of game things I'm good at, like I sorta wish I'd spent more of that time learning a thing itself

ah yeah i get it...

we're all wasting our precious time in this earth to some degree i guess.

xpost - maybe more specifically I think that about most people who are so amazing at a video game that they can post videos of themselves playing on YouTube and blow people's minds with it -- like hey, you have developed awesome heroic skill at something that does not really translate. (which is fine, I'm not knocking how people spend their time, it's just interesting)

if a real guitar was a rock band guitar there would be 144 buttons and 6 strum bars

I meant to post earlier plz plz plz someone make this

I bet the next Rock Band controller will be the keyboard. Four buttons for the left hand, and four for the right, or something similiar. Then we can finally have B. Springsteen and the E Street Band Rock Band game! Or the Rock Band version of Suicide, lol.

x post

http://images.mix.com.au/2009/01/14/105196/MIXMUSIC_crazyguitars_01.jpg

you know one thing I find interesting about the game is the sight-reading aspect -- there are occasionally moments where it can bypass your brain, and you wind up playing something fast/complicated without consciously thinking about what's on the screen. (this is most fun with drums, where you can't consciously "read" the fill or change on the screen, but between seeing it and the feel of the song your body just does it perfectly anyway.)

I don't play "real" guitar but in Rock Band on "hard" or "expert" guitar solos I get that a lot; also playing bass in Rock Band, when you find the groove, can be like this.

It'll definitely be interesting to see how well they can separate 3 instruments + vocals on songs recorded on 2-track tape!

it works perfectly, pretty impressive job

"Ghost rider... motorcycle heeee ro!" (200 points)
"mayybe mayybe mayybe he been speakin the truth!" (183 points)

xxxpost Nabisco: I'm learning RockBand bass right now, finally graduated to Medium, and ever now and then I get into that weird zen mode where I don't even notice that I can play that hard part finally...but what's worse is when you realize, HAY! I CAN DO IT!! then you fail. Thinking is bad in rockband.

Mr Vegemite checked out the Beatles Rockband tent at Outside Lands last weekend, I walked in just in time to catch him do Helter Skelter with a bunch of other eager doodz. Graphics are cool as hell, I really love the animation...and I am dying dying dying to sing that stuff. It looks like right fun!

Also I read that instead of unlocking new venues, as you progress through the catalog they'll unlock easter eggs like rare photos, and Christmas singles, cool stuff like that. I'm excited about it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb-IA-HF08A

On the 'guitar' level on I Am the Walrus you actually play the strings part which is pretty damn cool!

OK, that looks amazingly fun. I am really stoked about this game now. Wonder what it will take my sell my wife on this?

That looks great. I'm scrambling my brain trying to work out the most cost-effective and cool way of buying this for the Wii. I've already got GH:WT with that guitar, but it'd be pretty cool to have the Beatles bass and drums instruments. According to http://www.rockband.com/compatibility they don't work with GH:WT, but GH instruments work fine, but from looking at some forums the RB2 (and presumably Beatles?) instruments will work with GH5 onwards. tbh trying to work out whether to buy the mono or stereo box and whether to just get the game on its own or with instruments is kind of spoiling the whole thing for me. Too many options!

for the poor kids who can't afford it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frets_on_Fire
(I anticipate some enterprising young'un will find a way to rip the beatles tracks into this shortly)

if a real guitar was a rock band guitar there would be 144 buttons and 6 strum bars

I meant to post earlier plz plz plz someone make this

― cherokee flux (HI DERE), Friday, 4 September 2009 18:38 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3187/2850996531_013f0c6ef1.jpg

Z7S MIDI guitar controller, made by Starr Labs (coincidence?) - a snip at a mere $1995.00

So... what's the verdict?

The demo looked good on the big screens at B3st Buy, but I won't be able to sit down with mine until tonight.

i think harmonix did a fantastic job.

they definitely did a fantastic job of marketing it cuz i really want it

So uh yeah it's good

Just Burned through the single-player story (saved it for the weekend so I could do it in less than 24 hours and get the Day Tripper trophy) and two things struck me toward the end:

1. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." The unlockable trivia avoids going into detail about the band's dissolution, but the sequence for this song, the only "live" one with added visual effects, does a nice job of suggesting that with darkening skies, queasy bad-trip blurriness, etc during the coda.

2. The ending animation is just as marvelous as the opening. The CGI "psychedelic" creatures in both still bother me a little- they look too Julie Taymor/Cirque du Soleil-y, and I wish they'd gone with a more Yellow Submarine/pop-art feel, but that's a minor quibble. The 2D animation, on the other hand, is just fucking marvelous.

Thought this was kinda blah last night except for I WANT YOU, that is such a monster... <3 waltzing.

I stopped in at Best Buy yesterday to grab season five of the Office on DVD and they had this game on a huge TV with a big Rock Band setup, so I decided to try out a couple tunes, and I breezed through expert "I Feel Fine" on the drums. VERY VERY DISAPPOINTING. The ride cymbal rhythm doesn't sound anything like the actual song. It's like there's extra notes missing that will only be filled in when the reach the locked "super-hard-mega-expert" mode. DO NOT WANT.

I get into that weird zen mode where I don't even notice that I can play that hard part finally...but what's worse is when you realize, HAY! I CAN DO IT!! then you fail. Thinking is bad in rockband.

you know, that's the same with any instrument, real or fake; when you know a song you can just play it, when you start to think it through you stumble.

The high scores friend's board makes this crazy addictive. I just played "Getting Better" until my hand was a withered claw (but I'm now #1 on the friend's board with around 49k). I had to beat Je Suis France (who I believe is an ILXer?).

when you know a song you can just play it, when you start to think it through you stumble.

http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_08_21_a_choking.htm

It's like there's extra notes missing that will only be filled in when the reach the locked "super-hard-mega-expert" mode. DO NOT WANT.

did you have it on the hardest mode available?

finally got it yesterday, abandoned bass and am singing my way through on hard, mr vegemite opting for expert guitar. Fun fun fun fun. Need another mike, those harmonies are begging to be had. I keep getting distracted by the visualizations during the studio-era...Here Comes The Sun, Walrus, Lucy...they look great, and I love how it plops them back in the studio just as it's ending.

there's not always much of a challenge to getting through the songs, but the joy of playing them is awesome...and I'm kind of obsessed with accruing photos and all those easter egg bonuses. The Christmas single was a hoot!

So have any ilxors gotten the I GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS! achievement yet?

Finally got internet up and running in my new apt and chose my free songs for preordering with Gamestop. The options were:

Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Oh! Darling
Because
Her Majesty
Fixing a Hole
She's Leaving Home
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
When I'm Sixty-Four
Lovely Rita
A Day in the Life

Went with A Day in the Life, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, and Because. But..."Her Majesty"? The fuck? Also, I would have loved to get "When I'm Sixty-Four" but it seems I got a faulty copy of the game that did not come with an oboe peripheral.

I was pretty disappointed we didn't get Maxwell's Silver Hammer, since I named my dog Maxwell Edison & sing it to him all the time. Guess I'll be downloading that one.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/10/beatles-rock-band-sales.html

In September, its first month in release, the game sold 595,000 units in the U.S., according to the NPD Group.

That's bigger than the first month sales of either 2007's Rock Band or 2008's Rock Band 2, but far below the best launches in the genre and some analysts' estimates.

You watch, when Christmas comes around...

Anyone managed to download extra Abbey Road tracks for the Wii?

They were supposed to be available from yesterday, but I had no joy either then or first thing this morning (the message this morning said that ‘no data was available for download’).

Hurrah! Downloaded the rest of Abbey Road this PM, even if it did cost me more Wii points than I thought it would.

omg the CREDITS on this thing go forever. I recommend not even finishing it. they just will not stop. they also have awful timing, because there's a list of all the babies born to people who worked on the game, and it comes at exactly the right exasperating moment for you to be like "omg screw your babies, I hate your babies, just finish so I can play the game again." the copyrights alone take like 5 minutes. by the end they're having to put up trademarks for stuff like the brand of headphones modeled in the graphics. it just will not end.

I do like, though, how you get toward the end of their career and get really in touch with the fact that Ringo did not use a lot of drum hits. the drum charts become kind of funny. everything's about the fills, and then if you've listened to the Beatles much you get into this funny mode where you just know what kind of fill Ringo would do, even if you don't know the song very well -- you just try to play it in what feels like a Ringoish way and you turn out to be right.

I think you have to finish it to unlock In the End.

you do. I'm not sure it's worth it.