Rock Band (the other one)

Played the Rock Band video game at Joe’s. Pretty fun. We switched up vocals, bass, guitar and drums constantly throughout the night. Just like Guitar Hero, most of the songs were of no interest to me, but some were winners. I even played some Queens of the Stone Age (“Go With The Flow”) playing bass AND singing AT THE SAME TIME! Can you imagine? Never before in the history of time has that been attempted! For those GH geeks out there, I’ve noticed a bit of a difference in the Playstation guitars and the guitars for other platforms (I guess Rock Band is for the X-Box or something, I wasn’t really paying attention). The fret buttons were hard to get used to, but the strum bar was less finicky than on the PS version – the latter of which I find I really have to jerk all the way up and down for it to register, which is very frustrating, because I haven’t been able to finish Tenacious D’s “The Metal” yet.

RE: the drum kit – it seems like a really good way to actually practice your hand-eye-foot coordination. I can drum, but nothing tricky. I sense that practicing on Rock Band would be instrumental (haha) to improving one’s chops. With this, and all of the instruments on these sorts of games, there’s really no artistic leeway, which is great for learning. You have to hit the proper pads at the exact time you’re prompted, and nothing else. And yes of course there’s a foot pedal. Cowbell is done with the microphone, interestingly enough.