A Musician's View on the Rock Band Phenomenon

An Essay by Jerry "Grymn" Hamilton

I just wanted to share my personal views on the video game phenomenon that is Rock Band. This essay is my own person opinion and I am in no way affiliated with Harmonix, MTV, or EA.

First off, I should probably give a little insight into my own musical background. I am a multi-talented musician who has created and performed music since I was 6 years old. I have, throughout my life, I have learned to play quite a few instruments and can honestly say that I can play nearly anything with strings, keys, or that can be hit with a stick or mallet. I am even half-way decent vocalist. I have filled every position possible in a band situation and have been performing in bands since I first picked up a guitar. I've also been a DJ and performed live sets of electronic music at various venues and events.  I have shared the stage with bands such as Static-X, Fear Factory, Kiss Army, Vader, Hed(pe), and numerous others. I am also an independent producer/sound engineer. I am currently the drummer and programmer, in addition to producer, for an Industrial Metal band called System Slave (www.myspace.com/systemslave). Even if you don't like our music, it should at least illustrate that I am in fact a veteran musician.

Now that I've got my background out of the way, I should let everyone know that I was completely against Rock Band at first. I absolutely hated Rock Band (and the other Music/Rhythm games) when I first heard of it. In my eyes, it was a travesty to music and the musicians that created said music. I felt it was pointless and that it was demeaning to the one thing I love most of all, music. Now bear with me here. I know this entire paragraph is pretty much just bashing the game, however, it is necessary to know my initial reaction to this game and the other games like it. Needless to say, I came into this game on a bad note (no pun intended).

My first step towards the Rock Band phenomenon started in a completely unlikely place: Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. I've always been a fan of the Tony Hawk games, so I picked this one up for the 360. It had a demo of the dreaded Guitar Hero 3 game on the disc. My dear niece has been a fan of the Guitar Hero games since the first one and I must admit, I was at least a little curious behind all the loathing I felt for the music genre of video games. I loaded it up one night while I was bored and proceeded to play it using the xbox remote. Despite my aversion, it was kind of fun.. The root of the Rock Band phenomenon had began to take hold in my subconscious that night.

That first encounter with Guitar Hero came shortly before Christmas. My father, obviously not knowing what to get me for the holiday, gave me a $100 gift certificate to Wal-Mart (in addition to the requisite clothing items). The fact that I hardly ever shop at Wal-Mart was what ended up pushing me fully into the Rock Band fold. I had a $100 gift card to a store I rarely go to and they had Rock Band in stock! Why not, it would only cost me around $70 plus tax and if worst case scenario I give it to my niece. I had no idea what I was in for!

I purchase Rock Band on a Saturday at around noon. The Saturday prior to New Years Eve, mind you. I knew I was going to be working on NYE, so I had already invited some friends over for the evening. A pre-NYE bash if you will. I had heard about the group-oriented nature of Rock Band, so why not see it in all its glory, during a party.

I opened the box as soon as I had brought the game home from the store. I figured I would at least test it out before others arrived. This gave me roughly around five hours to play around. Opening the box was quite interesting. The guitar, though I've never been a fan of Fender (having exclusively played Gibson and ESP guitars most of my life), was fairly realistic. The drums were quite interesting and comfortable (I play a set of Roland V-drums, the king of electronic drums), and the microphone was intriguing. The hardware problems aside (we all know about the issues that some of us, myself included, have had with the RB hardware), what I saw when I opened the RB box were some well-thought out peripherals to a game that was slowing wiping away the loathing I had felt for it. So, I immediately hooked everything up the included usb hub and popped the game into my xbox console.

The first thing I noticed after the game booted up and the initial intro video played (Highway Star, the same one seen in part on TV commercials for the game) was a very familiar hum of amplifiers during the game menus. That hum is something that any rock musician worth his salts should know and it was an element that defiantly helps with immersing one into the rock band world. The first thing I did, before even playing anything, was make characters for the guitar, drums, and vocals. I've always been a fan of games that allow you to put together your own character and Rock Band's character creator, though somewhat limited, is fun and satisfied that part of the gamer in me. I have since spent hours designing tattoos, face paint schemes, and artwork with the Art Designer. Bravo on that little gem, Harmonix! I hadn't even actually played the game and could already see the hard work put into it. My loathing was beginning to fray away into nothing.

At this point, most of my preconceptions were being challenged by the obvious thought put into the software and feel of the hardware. I loaded up my first song on as a solo drummer- "In Bloom" by Nirvana. I played it expert at first, being a praised real life drummer. Boy was I surprised! I failed the first try. Now, I can actually play this song on a real drum kit, mind you. It angered me. That anger quickly turned to curiosity. The song was pretty much having you play the drums note for note, drum for drum (in as much as could be done with four pads and a kick drum). It was challenging. It started to suck me in. I kept playing that one song over and over on the easier settings. I managed to get all the way to play it near flawless on Hard. Dammit, I was having fun the whole time. How the hell did that happen! Then I realized, I had a bunch of friends on their way over in a few hours, I had to try the other instruments!

Still leery about the guitar, I loaded up a song on for the vocals next. I picked a song I knew pretty well, "Creep" by Radiohead. I tried this one on easy to start. After that failure on the expert level drums, I wanted to do well on my first go at vocals. I managed to ace the song on my first go, with a 97%. It was pretty easy to follow the words, though I already knew most of them, and the visual display of the pitch took a little getting use to. I defiantly like the way it worked, though. The note tracking was fairly accurate and it was really awesome to hear the virtual crowd singing along when I was doing well. A very nice little touch!

Next up, that dreaded guitar. Five buttons to play a song on guitar? Yeah right. How could that compete with my six-string or even my seven-string. I loaded up "Enter Sandman" by Metallica on easy. You know what? As cheesy as I thought it was holding that fake guitar, it was actually kind of fun. I pretty much aced the song on my first go and tried it again on medium. That's were it got really fun. Something about adding in the fourth blue button made it all that much more fun. The loathing was barely hanging on by a thread now, the next thing destined to end the loathing for good.

My friends showed up. We sat there. The Rock Band main menu loomed before us as the hum filled the silence. I was the only one enthusiastic about it. Of course, I had spent the past five hours playing around with it and was slowly and ironically becoming irrevocably hooked. I finally got one of them to pick up the guitar. We started out by playing a few random songs with just guitar and drums. We started getting into it and were jamming away. Next song, another friend jumped in on vocals. She was tearing it up and the three of us were having a lot of infectious fun. The others started getting intrigued and they became infected by our fun. We were switching out on various instruments and having a good time.

That isn't the end of this story. Fortunately, my previously mentioned niece had left her Guitar Hero guitar at my place. We had all the four essentials for a Rock Band going: vocals, drums, guitar, and bass. While most of the friends vacated the party at around 1 a.m. or so, there were four of us left. The other three made xbox profiles and Rock Band characters. I took on the role of lead guitar. My friend took over the bass. His wife hefted the mic as our vocalist. His brother raised the sticks as our drummer. We loaded up the Band World Tour and formed The Howling Piggies. We started playing gigs and winning fans. That's when it happened! The loathing was dead. Its last thread had snapped and it plunged into a dark endless chasm screaming "Damn you Rock Band! Damn you!" I didn't care. Rock Band was fun as hell!

We spent the better part of the night and went well into the morning playing gigs. We were working together as a band, helping each other and locking in our parts as tight as we could (playing in unison). Even the band politics came into play while we decided what songs we were going to play, what venues we should tackle, and what we wanted our set lists to be. All of these things are things that I have experienced first hand in real bands throughout the years. Harmonix did their homework! We felt like a band. We played together as a band. The thing that made it the most fun for me is that I got to share that feeling and excitement I've felt on stage in real life with my friend who have no musical talent. That's what really got  me. That's what makes this game fun.

A few other things I would like to mention as I've played around since that night. Harmonix has really created something special with this game. The perfect integration of your own rock star characters into the stage shows, group shots, and load screens adds a whole other degree of immersiveness to the game. Watching the on screen characters put on a genuine rock show is amazing. The fact that you can actually see the characters playing the songs is something that shows that people who made this game went above and beyond to create a very unique experience.

I've since bought every single DLC song track released. I will pick them all up as they come. I'm addicted. I love this game. That is something I would have never even conceived back in November. The Howling Piggies went back "on the road" again on New Years Day. I foresee quite a few Howling Piggies tours in the future. In addition to all the other bands we will form in the months ahead.

Rock Band is not going to kill the music industry. What it is doing is giving people a way to have fun together and brings those people together with one of the most potent things in existence: Music. To all those other musicians out there who feel the way I felt about Rock Band in the beginning...don't judge the game on the concept. Its the execution and challenge that really makes this game a wonder! Give it a chance. Maybe your own "loathing" will end up down that endless chasm. I'm sure my loathing would like the company down there...all alone.