We have seen the future of piano lessons, and it starts with Rock Band 3

Brian Ambrozy 10 Jun, 2010 at 1:20am ET Article published in Gaming

USA Today got a first look at Rock Band 3, which so far essentially looks like More Of The Same™ but with one major difference: A hardware keyboard is included.

The keyboard is exceptionally well implemented in-game. On screen, you see notes falling as you always do, but they are black or white to visually cue you to what’s coming up; and the notes fall on the same physical lines as the keys themselves. Screen not wide enough for all 25 keys? The bar warns you as it’s about to “shift over” to the left or right, to give a much broader horizontal range. Watch the video and it becomes clear:

I’ll tell you one thing: If they released a full-fledged, stand-alone piano trainer using this method, kids (and adults) all over the place would start taking piano lessons in droves. Droves, I tell you.

Rock Band 3 will include backwards compatibility for all old content and instruments. Besides the compelling keyboard option, the game allows for a full-fledged “pro” guitar with real strings which has not been detailed yet.

As I have watched this video several times, it occurs to me that this is the future that I dreamt of when I was learning to play an instrument and then reminded of again when I became a music instrument instructor. Teaching kids to play an instrument is very difficult for a variety of reasons, from the simple (muscle fatigue and blisters) to the complicated (boring scales, uninteresting music, personality conflicts with teachers)—yet kids of “learning age” are absolutely mastering games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band because it is presented in a way that makes them want to keep practicing.

Rock Band 3 may be sold as a game, but it may prove to be much, much more than that.

Comments

10 Jun 2010 ~ 2:09am Gate28 Looks sexy. Hope it has a good price, because I'll totally buy it bundled with RB3.

Also, Bohemian Rhapsody. Yum.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 3:44am UPSLynx Sick man. I've been waiting for Rock Band to implement a keyboard. I've had dreams of playing some of the best of progressive metal on the game (i.e. more Dream Theater). This looks fantastic.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 4:01am Obsidian Sorry, but doesn't this already exist?
10 Jun 2010 ~ 6:15am coldalarm "We saw a staleness"? Well... That is what happens when Activision decide to release 5 versions of the same game, not counting "expansions" and band-editions.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 6:54am ardichoke Oh man... I KNEW I should have kept up with my piano lessons. Now I see the error in my ways.

There had DAMN WELL better be some Ben Folds on this. Seriously.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 8:52am Kwitko I really hope they include "No Quarter."
10 Jun 2010 ~ 9:06am kryyst Keyboard is neat but I'm more curious to see what the pro guitar's look and feel like as well as how they are going to go backwards compatible with the keyboard and if it'll only be added to songs that actually have a keyboard in them.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 10:29am Annes WICKED. Also, I totally agree with Ardi, Ben Folds or GTFO.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 11:21am MAGIC Keyboard Hero has been out for a wile.
10 Jun 2010 ~ 2:29pm Gate28 I want to be able to import my characters from RB2 into 3. That would be nice, too.
15 Jun 2010 ~ 6:20pm CrazyJoe After attending the Rock Band 3 event today you most likely will not be able to import RB2 characters into RB3. They said the new RB3 characters will be alot more detailed and have many more options than the RB2 characters had.
16 Jun 2010 ~ 10:12am wahay I demand MAE and Keane.
16 Jun 2010 ~ 6:06pm UPSLynx Eff all that, give us more Dream Theater!
8 Aug 2010 ~ 10:03am Aaron Stewart Ahhh Rock Band!
3 May 2011 ~ 10:51pm Dave Thank goodness! I've been wondering when they would upgrade Rock Band to teach an actual skill. This has major potential.
3 May 2011 ~ 11:28pm QuadWhore

UPSLynx wrote:

Sick man. I've been waiting for Rock Band to implement a keyboard. I've had dreams of playing some of the best of progressive metal on the game (i.e. more Dream Theater). This looks fantastic.

You really want to play some of Rudess's stuff on RB? That would be HARD. Any prog would be hard, really.

Along with DT, I vote Close to the Edge and Thick as a Brick be on there!
4 May 2011 ~ 9:22am kryyst Rock Band I found has hit the point of diminishing returns on it's entertainment value. They haven't released any music I'm personally interested in for some time now. It still comes out on occasions and my daughter still enjoys it which is the main draw to it. But the keyboard, which I thought my wife would love, she didn't find interesting.

Perhaps the one area RB really succeeded in was that it's getting me to finally take up the guitar again. Something I hadn't touched really since I was in my pre-teens. I'm of course now curious to see how the new Ubisoft game Rocksmith handles the guitar. Their claims are bold. But now that I'm interested in playing the guitar I don't want to half play the guitar. if Rocksmith actually can teach people to play the guitar - on a real guitar - which is their claim. That really could be something awesome.

If on the other hand it just teaches people to pretend play guitar then that's a fail for that game. With Rock Band at least there's no real illusion that playing that game translates into really playing a guitar even at the Pro modes of RB3. It's still just playing a game.
4 May 2011 ~ 12:54pm primesuspect Have you played RB3 pro mode with a real guitar? It actually does translate into playing a real guitar. I played it just this past weekend and was surprised at how accurate it is.
4 May 2011 ~ 1:27pm UPSLynx I can't find that effing guitar! I want to buy to pro Fender six-string, and it's only available at Best Buy (ugh) but I have yet to actually see it in a store.
4 May 2011 ~ 2:14pm kryyst I knew they were talking about putting out a real 6 string for RB3 but I've never seen it anywhere around. You can barely find their pro one with the full neck of buttons around here except for the Wii.

But no I haven't played pro-mode on RB3. However I think they dropped the ball on it. Had they allowed people to actually connect a real guitar through a midi-connector to RB3 that would have been a much bigger win. Something Rocksmith is banking on.
4 May 2011 ~ 3:03pm primesuspect This is the one I played on:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004MF102G/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=icrontic-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=B004MF102G">SquierÂ® by FenderÂ® StratocasterÂ® Guitar and Controller for Rock Band 3</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=&l=as2&o=1&a=B004MF102G&camp=217145&creative=399349" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" />
4 May 2011 ~ 4:19pm Canti

UPSLynx wrote:

Eff all that, give us more Dream Theater!

^

Also more Muse, Garbage, and GaGa please.
4 May 2011 ~ 4:25pm kryyst From my understanding, that is the only one that works with Rock Band. Neat for it's ability to tie into Rock Band. But I find it hard to justify $400 for it given that that guitar would regularily only cost about $125 without the Rock Band electronics. Even factoring the $60-100 you can spend on an analog to midi connector, it's still stupid expensive. Still though it'd be fun to play Rock Band that way as long as I'm not the one having to provide the guitar.
4 May 2011 ~ 4:29pm Canti If this guitar actually works to teach someone how to play for real without the aid of the notes in game I could totally see that price being justified. By now enough people have all the old toy instruments that I think it would be a great move for them to start implementing real instruments into the game. I know a lot of musicians complain that Rock Band and Guitar Hero deter people from learning to play real instruments but this could turn that completely around.
4 May 2011 ~ 4:29pm Thrax The actual price for the guitar is $280. Amazon is a ripoff.
4 May 2011 ~ 4:45pm kryyst Ok, well $280 I can see. That's a fair(ish) price based on the guitar, the midi components, controller components and licensing of course. But that $280 is based on actually being able to find one in a store.

I also agree if it teaches you to play guitar then it's a great step in general. Though personally I'm waiting to see what Rocksmith develops into. Their entire premise is that it's a game, that you can connect just about any electric guitar into and it can not only teach you how to play the guitar but scale it's way up to where you are playing the actual song, not kinda playing the song. But playing the song.

Again bold ideas for a game, but if they pull it off it could be awesome.
4 May 2011 ~ 5:16pm UPSLynx

Thrax wrote:

The actual price for the guitar is $280. Amazon is a ripoff.

Truth. It is available exclusively through Best Buy, so Amazon is probably having to do some second hand stuff.
4 May 2011 ~ 10:21pm RootWyrm I'm STILL waiting for a decent number of tracks with keys. They apparently decided not to add them to any RB1 or RB2 tracks. They also charge an extra 80MSP for Pro Guitar on almost every downloaded track, meaning that instead of being 160MSP per track it's 240MSP to enjoy Pro Guitars, some Pro Drums, and a limited number of Pro Keys. I'm extremely dissatisfied with this new policy, as well as their policy of charging full price for reissues with minimal changes (add harmony only, add keys only, etc.) plus the 80MSP surcharge for pro on top of it.

We'll see if someone can introduce a real competitor that restores some balance to things. Hopes though, are not high.
5 May 2011 ~ 2:32pm kryyst The extra costs for the RB3 tracks mean I've stopped buying tracks that I kinda liked and limited to only songs that i really like.
5 May 2011 ~ 6:54pm RootWyrm

kryyst wrote:

The extra costs for the RB3 tracks mean I've stopped buying tracks that I kinda liked and limited to only songs that i really like.

The exact same here. And I don't buy the pro parts when I do buy those few tracks. I've gone from buying entire albums I like regularly, to the very rare purchase of a single track I love to death, and not a penny more.