VJ Heaven

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Thanks to Michael Smith, Grandpa gets to listen to music on a free iPod…If he doesn’t break it first

Yes, I totally said 26th at the start. Because I did actually film it on the 26th. It just didn’t look right so I continued editing it for the next couple of days. Basically just a test – I put up my bluescreen using my favorite Blu-Tack and a blue cloth and sit in front of it and do some funny stuffs. Software used: Real-time Chroma Key: Gephex ( www.gephex.org ) Video Edit: Windows Movie Maker Keying my singlet out: Wax

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.

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In case you haven’t seen already, Propellerhead is slowly doling out new feature information on its website for Record 1.5 and Reason 5. So far, they’ve announced pitch correction and vocal synthesis in Record (because we really don’t have enough AutoTune-style vocals in the world, apparently), multiple loop support in REX, and new block-style arrangement (a bit reminiscent of Cubase’s implementation to me).

It’s all good stuff, and I look forward to seeing what the final announcement is later today. I’m still hoping that Record gets ReWire host mode, because I can think of some users who would love to drop tools like Ableton Live into Record for final mixing and mastering. (Flying Lotus, Steve, I bet you agree with me!) Update: Nope. It’s not a deal-breaker; you can just import audio, which is okay, given that mixing and mastering generally happens last. Of course, I still think it’s a good idea.

But the big news so far is that sampling has come to Reason. What a lot of Reason users I talked to said following the Record release was that they had no desire for a big, SSL-style console, but thought a lightweight sample input was what Reason had lacked all this time. Sure enough, that’s exactly what you get in this release, as seen at top. It makes perfect sense for the Reason workflow, and the implementation appears to be fairly easy to use, complete with a sample editor. Yes, I know – what many of you would like to know is likely why it took four releases to get here. But for Reason die-hards, it could be well worth the wait.

With sampling and the Blocks feature both in Reason, you also aren’t forced to by Record just to get audio input or arrangement.

Sampling in Reason 5

Our own Matt Ganucheau is currently in Sweden at Props headquarters; I’ve scheduled the announcement for 9am NYC time / 3pm Berlin and Stockholm time / 1pm Greenwich Mean Time… you know. Some time today.

Full CDM upgrade story, to go live later today

The launch video doesn’t tell you much, unless you’ve been so caught in Reason world that you didn’t realize mics can be used to record things. It does, however, give us a picture of what the world’s strangest, audio geek mod of Unreal Tournament would look like. (Duke Fieldrecordem 3D, anyone? We could totally have a CDM clan.)

And yes, it is absolutely fair for Propellerhead to point out that too many “samples” don’t allow live input. It’s a crime. It’s not a sampler if it only plays things back and doesn’t record. This sort of thing is the cure. Input is a good thing.

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