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Finally - after a lot of speculation about whether it was a mistake that a 360 advert announced that RB2 was out in the UK in November, it’s been confirmed for 21st November (on 360 anyway). Definite purchase! The hardware apparently won’t be out until early December, but I’ll be buying the solus anyway.

Also we finally know who ‘won’ when it comes to securing the rights for the first Beatles tracks in a music game, and it’s MTV / Harmonix. I can’t imagine how much they had to pay, or what they had to promise, but it’s definitely happening. I’m personally not a huge Beatles fan, I think they made some great songs but are idolised far too much - I can think of a number of bands I think were just as important in the last 30-40 years, and I really don’t subscribe to the view that the Beatles are the best band ever without question, and will be forever - some fans seem to verge on religeous fervour in this regard, which is a little scary. In fact I find the whole suggestion that one band could be ‘the best ever’ offensive. It’s like saying one painter mattered more than any other in the history of art - total nonsense.

While I’m pleased to hear the ‘better’ team got the license here, what’s concerning is that the galloping hubris / idol worship that seems to regularly orbit the Beatles seems to have affected how they’re going to develop this game. They’ve announced that this is a brand new game, not a Rock Band pack, crafted specifically around the Beatles in a ‘unique and innovative’ way. This sounds like it might be at risk of ‘rubbing its own rhubarb’ to me - I trust Harmonix to make great music games, but will they end up being constrained / railroaded in terms of design here, to the detriment of the gamer? Only time will tell.

It appears that despite many people having their hands on the game, the ever-present review embargo appears to be stopping most from commenting so far, but IGN appears to have been the first of the game enthusiast sites to get a review of Guitar Hero World Tour posted.

I don’t go by scores personally, I advise you to read the full review. It’s only one opinion so far, but to me, there are a couple of elements that make it sound like Neversoft may have missed some fairly important points again. By far the most important thing I saw in this review is that in ‘band mode’, it only takes one person failing to immediately bomb everyone out of the song. They say there’s no option to ’save’ people like in Rock Band 1, and of course Rock Band 2 added ‘no fail mode’ which I can see us turning on, particularly in party mode. It simply sucks for everyone when the whole song fails in multiplayer because one person gets into trouble - the person failing feels bad, and everyone else gets their play interrupted - much better just to get a crappy score at the end (in practice in RB1 you can’t get less than about 70% because any less than that and you’d have failed beyond the ability for others to save you). Harmonix listened to the fans on this for RB2 - and since RB1 has been out for a year I would have expected GHWT to learn from this too and include RB2’s no fail mode, but in fact it doesn’t seem to even equal RB1 since you can’t ’save’ others. Quite an odd decision - but then the GH3 designers somehow thought boss battles were cool too.

One thing I do like though is that you can activate star power when you want with the microphone (not sure about the drums). When it comes to ’saving’ people this is an issue in RB1 - although the no fail mode will get rid of it.

Unsurprisingly there are some people complaining in forums about instrument failures already - drum pads not working properly, guitar slide bars being erratic, that kind of thing.  I’m not really sure why people thought GHWT’s peripherals would be immune to the same teething problems RB’s had - even though Red Octane have a large amount of experience, anything new always has a few rough edges, especially when you’re talking about mass production. It’s way too early to tell if this is just a small proportion or a larger pattern but it’s not really news - it would have only been news if things had gone perfectly.

So, not a great start on the review front for GHWT; I can’t say I’m that surprised considering the disappointing GH3, but we’ll see as the review embargo lifts what other people thought. I have to say that embargoing reviews until after the release date of a product is a little suspect.

[edit]Well, a few more reviews are in now and it appears IGN was on the lowest end of the scale so far. Still, the text of every review still seems to indicate that the band mode / party play is the weak point, due to the instant-fail,  clunky interface layout and less interesting band career mode. So, it looks like it depends on your play style - as someone who never really plays these music games alone (unless I’m practicing), co-op and party play are the #1 priority, so weakness in this area is a turn off for me (just like it was in the horribly broken GH3 co-op play, although this doesn’t sound as bad). Although the extra songs would be nice, on balance I think I’ll save my money and spend it on RB DLC instead. Those who haven’t taken the RB plunge yet might be good to get the hardware though, assuming the failures reported so far aren’t systemic.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I plan to get an electric guitar in the next month or two to complement the accoustic that I’ve been learning on. I’ve done a bit of research, assisted greatly by the responses given to my previous post (thanks chaps), and I’m pretty certain that I’ve found the right combination for the immediate future. I’m still very much a beginner so there’s no point spending a ton of cash, but nevertheless it doesn’t hurt to try to get the best I feel I can afford/justify.

Guitar - Yamaha Pacifica 112V (link)

I still like the feel of the Fender Stratocaster, but I also liked the sound of the Humbuckers on other models (like the Les Paul) - the Pacifica is a nice middle ground in that it’s shares the physical structure of the Strats while replacing the Strat’s 3 single pickups with 2 singles and a Humbucker at the bridge, which gives a good range of sounds when used in various combinations via the 5-way selector.

In addition, pretty much every review I read says the Pacificas are built considerably better than the entry-level Squier Stratocasters. From what I hear you’d have to pay around double the price for a Strat to get the same build quality, so what you lose in ‘brand power’, you gain in value for money.

I’m no expert, but from what I hear it seems like a good bet for someone at my modest level.

Amp - Line 6 Spider III 15W (link)

I don’t need anything particularly powerful, but something with decent sound and a few effects. Nothing too fancy or overwhelming, just decent quality sounds - I can always buy a Pod later if I want more range, or a bigger valve based amp if I want to go nuts, but both  are going to be overkill at this stage.

This amp seems to have gotten some good reviews as a beginner / practice amp and the guy in our local store recommended it too, although he’d sold his last one today so I couldn’t actually try it out.

I’m pretty happy with that lineup, it’s actually less than I’d budgeted to potentially spend originally (coming in around £200 in total), but on reflection is probably pitched about right for my current expertise, which can be classified as ‘can play a few songs barely adequately’.

Feedback welcome as always!

Well, Harmonix confirmed the list of 20 ‘free’ DLC tracks included in the Rock Band 2 retail bundle, and here it is:

The 88 - “Sons and Daughters”
Authority Zero - “No Regrets”
Between the Buried and Me - “Prequel To The Sequel”
The Cab - “Bounce”
The Chevelles - “Get It On”
The Cocktail Slippers - “Give It To Me”
Dealership - “Database Corrupted”
Endeverafter - “I Wanna Be Your Man”
The Ghost Hounds - “Ashes To Fire”
Hollywood Undead - “Young”
Kutless - “The Feeling”
The Len Price 3 - “If I Ain’t Got You”
Lesley Roy - “I’m Gone, I’m Going”
Opiate for the Masses - “Burn You Down”
Semi-Precious Weapons - “Magnetic Baby”
Shaimus - “Like a Fool”
Thenewno2″ - Crazy Tuesday”
Tickle Me Pink - “The Time Is Wrong”
Underoath - “Desperate Times, Desperate Measures”
X Japan - “I.V.”

The first surprise that the entire list is made up of lesser known bands - a lot of people, me included, assumed that Harmonix was keeping some headliners in their back pocket to undermine some of the GHWT marketing; perhaps the inexplicably missing tracks from the recent Nevermind DLC for example (Come As You Are and Smells Like Teen Spirit, the two most recognisable tracks, were not part of the Nirvana release). But no, the entire list is staunchly ‘indie’, and it’s annoyed and delighted people in seemingly equal measure.

Firstly, the downside: everyone knows and likes headline bands and signature tracks. In a ‘party’ situation especially, almost no-one picks tracks they don’t know. That’s a shame, because there’s some real gems even in my current listing that occasional players just pass over in favour of playing the same few tracks they know all the time; I do try to counter that by picking different songs when I’m doing vocals even though that’s tough when you’re less familiar. Playing in the World Tour mode with friends resulted in them commenting on tracks they’d never heard of but ended up really liking. But, the fact is when people drop in for a quick party game, there’s a good chance they’ll resist playing anything they don’t already know, so most of these 20 songs will probably never get played in that setting, making them less useful.

On the plus side though, I’ve started listening to these tracks and I already like maybe 70% of them, and a couple have been really excellent. Harmonix have said in the past that one of their goals is to introduce people to new music, and by doing this they certainly tick that box - after all, where else but in a ‘free’ 20-song set could you pack in things people wouldn’t have heard of? Regular DLC from less well known bands tends to be cheaper in Rock Band, but there’s nothing like ‘free’ to really disseminate music.

It was always fun in the first 2 Guitar Hero games to play tracks from small bands the Harmonix team and their friends were members of, like Freezepop and Honest Bob And The Factory to Dealer Incentives, bands I would never have encountered outside indie gigs in Boston, and this track pack follows firmly in that vein. After getting over the initial shock of the fact that I didn’t recognise most of the names on this list, and after listening to some of the tracks, I’ve come around to the positive camp on this. There’s a really good range even in the small number of tracks I’ve listened to so far, some speed metal, pop/rock, blues/funk, indie, punk - so I’m sure most people will find something they like in here; I certainly have. While headline bands would have been an instant PR win, in the grand scheme of things it’s nice to be randomly exposed to some unknown music every so often - after all how would you find new bands you like otherwise?

Ok, so my suspicions about the reasons behind Rock Band: AC/DC breaking the usual customer-friendly mould of Rock Band appear to have been confirmed:

The reason “AC/DC Live” can’t be purchased at your local EB Games or Best Buy is because of the deal that AC/DC had already struck with Wal-Mart as an exclusive distributor of their upcoming album, “Black Ice.” The negotiations with AC/DC over the track pack required that Harmonix become part of the existing Wal-Mart agreement.

Even more damning is a quote from Angus Young to the Telegraph:

“We don’t make singles, we make albums,” said Young. “Way back in the Seventies, we drew these figures on the back of an envelope for our record company. We showed them how much they earned from us if we sold one million singles and how much they earned if we sold one million albums. The difference was staggering . . . If we were on iTunes, we know a certain percentage of people would only download two or three songs from the album - and we don’t think that represents us musically.”

Doesn’t represent you musically? What you actually mean is that restricting customer choice works for you financially, because if customers could only pick the songs they actually liked you’d make less money. My only dilemma is which box to check on my ‘why bands ignore their customers and don’t list on download sites’ form: is it the ‘Arrogant snobbery’ or ‘Money-grabbing shill’ box in this case? I think I’ll check both.

Any band that thinks they are somehow ‘above’ the people that buy their music and feel they can disallow customers from buying it the way they want have their heads firmly wedged up their own arses, and deserve everything they get when people download their music for free.

Yes, this is a rant; I hate this kind of attitude and I’m also cranky from not being able to play drums for over a week thanks to my back

I’ve been learning to play accoustic guitar for a little over a year now, and although I still dispair at overall quality of my playing sometimes, I can still acknowledge that I’ve made a lot of progress, considering I started from zero. My renditions of Stairway to Heaven, Ziggy Stardust and Wonderwall are at least recognisable, if not hugely flattering.

During particularly busy periods it’s hard to find the time to practice, which has sometimes led to a frustrating cycle of starting to lose callouses, finger strength and muscle memory, and then having to spend time building them back up again, which makes you feel like you’re not making any progress. So in the past few weeks I’ve been making an extra effort to find 30 minutes to play every day, even if that means delaying getting back to that work issue that’s bugging me for a while, and that’s definitely helped with my consistency.

I’ve got to the stage where I think I’d like to have an electric guitar as well as the accoustic, so I can start trying out a few different styles. This is a generally more expensive proposition of course, and I’d like to get a decent one that will last me for a good while. While my skills don’t justify buying a seriously high-end instrument, I’m certainly willing to spend a decent amount to get a quality ‘axe’ that will last a few years and grow with me.

I was in town today so I popped into our local guitar shop to play with a few. I liked the visual style of the Gibson Les Pauls, but actually when I played them, I preferred the overall feel of the Fender Stratocaster. I also really liked the Ibanez ARX which seemed kind of half way between the Les Paul and the SG.

Any opinions from more experienced guitarists (not difficult)? I have a couple of months yet before I plan to buy and I’m intending to drop in to try a few more out in between.

Oh, and in the land of make-believe instruments (which is considerably easier), my wife and I passed a couple of milestones last night. We’re starting to both play on Expert now, and we got our first set of five gold stars (which requires everyone to play on Expert and score above a certain threshold), and I also got this:

Finally! I’d already had She Bangs the Drums in GH3, but it’s not one of the Roses’ best tracks and the GH3 implementation was, typically, not that much fun.

There’s a small handful of tracks on Guitar Hero : World Tour that I would like to see in Rock Band, and one was Love Spreads by The Stone Roses. Luckily next week’s Rock Band DLC includes this track, so that’s one crossed off my list. It’s still not one of my favourite tracks, but it’s still quintessentially Stone Roses and more interesting than She Bangs the Drums - I’m certainly looking forward to the Harmonix take on John Squire’s riffs and Reni’s drums.

The Stone Roses did a massive amount to shake up the tired 80’s music scene and were in the vanguard of early Indie in the early 90’s, but are still ignored by a lot of people today. A combination of poor management, dodgy legal problems and their own incredible stupidity meant they didn’t realise their potential, but I remember the first time I heard Fool’s Gold - in 1989/1990 it was just so different. For anyone interested, the BBC did a documentary about the Roses which is fairly informative although I think they dismiss their second, admittedly 6-year late, album (Second Coming) a little too quickly; despite them being out of fashion by then and no longer fresh (since the sound had already been copied & furthered by others by then) I think it’s still good.

Now, Harminix/MTV please can we have Fool’s Gold, Waterfall, What the World is Waiting For, Mersey Paradise, Daybreak, Breaking Into Heaven.. hell, almost anything. Tell you what, I’ll just give you my wallet now, ok?

I like iTunes - like many Apple products it does exactly what I want in a pretty and easy to use package. Sure, I may have to customise a bunch of options to make it rip CDs the way I want but on the whole it works swimmingly.

I updated to iTunes 8 today, because I wanted to try out the new ‘Genius’ feature - the ability to generate playlists from both within your collection and also to suggest more that you don’t own yet. I’ve tried several products that have purported to do this kind of thing before, such as TheFilter and of course the Last.fm plugin, and generally I’ve come away underwhelmed. Pandora was the only service I really liked and used regularly, but they shut the UK out recently and sound like they’re going out of business pretty soon, out of my earshot.

Using Genius is simple, just select a song and hit the Genius button in the bottom right, and you’ve got a playlist built from similar songs in your collection. I did it for a few songs in my collection, edited out the duplicate artists and picked the top 10 from the playlist, here’s the results:

Song: You’re All I Have (Snow Patrol)
Genius Playlist: In The Morning (Razorlight), Other Side Of The World (KT Tunstall), Wisemen (James Blunt), Dirty Harry (Gorillaz), Have a Nice Day (Stereophonics), Why Does It Always Rain on Me? (Travis), The Zephyr Song  (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Zombie (The Cranberries), Sit Down (James), Bat Out Of Hell (Meat Loaf)

Pretty good, it seems to have mostly picked out the ‘Alternative Rock’ (’Indie’ to us Brits) elements, although unfortunately it discovered the presence of James Blunt in my collection. How embarrassing.

Song: Spybreak! (Propellerheads)
Genius Playlist: Eple (Röyksopp), Feels Just Like It Should (Jamiroquai), Stayin’ Alive (Bee Gees), The Trick (The Prodigy), Purple Haze (Groove Armada), Glory Box (Portishead), Groovejet (Spiller), Fool’s Gold (Stone Roses), Don’t Falter[Mint mix] (Mint Royale), Leave Home (The Chemical Brothers)

Damn good choices - if I’m feeling like a bit of upbeat Propellerheads, chances are I’m probably also in the mood for the others in that list, a mixture of funk/dance/electronic. Groove Armada and Portishead tend to be a little slower but they’re definitely in the same vibe.

Song: Diamond Hoo Ha Man (Supergrass)
Genius Playlist: Horse To Water (R.E.M.), Shot Down (Nine Black Alps), Love Is The Law (Seahorses), Animal Nitrate (Suede), Charmless Man (Blur), Waterfall (Stone Roses), This Is Music (The Verve), Girl From Mars (Ash), Good Souls (Starsailor), Slight Return (The Bluetones)

Again, a really appropriate selection. A good selection with the same mix of Indie and Post-punk influences that I tend to like at pretty much any time of day, with a sprinkle of BritPop.

Song: Jumpin’ Jack Flash (The Rolling Stones)
Genius Playlist: My Generation (The Who), All Right Now (Free), I’m a Believer (The Monkees), Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith), Black Dog (Led Zeppelin), Suffragette City (David Bowie), After Midnight (Eric Clapton), Monkey Wrench (Foo Fighters), Orange Crush (R.E.M.), For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield)

It clearly picked up the ‘Classic Rock’ pointers here, which is good - although the inclusion of The Monkees is really only period-accurate and not genre-accurate:)

Song: Wonderwall (Oasis)
Genius Playlist: One Week (Barenaked Ladies), I Believe In A Thing Called Love (The Darkness), Everybody Hurts    (R.E.M.), Smooth Criminal (Alien Ant Farm), Lady (Lenny Kravitz), Otherside (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Mysterious Ways (U2), A Little Less Conversation (Elvis Presley), Single (Natasha Bedingfield), Talk (Coldplay)

Mmkay, a little more random variation here - I would love to know the thinking behind associating Elvis with Oasis, apart from silly accents I also would have associated The Darkness with more glam rock, but there we go.

I had noticed that big names like Radiohead and Queen were going strangely unacknowledged by Genius so far, so I decided to see what it did think went with those:

Song: High and Dry (Radiohead)
Genius Playlist: Lucky Man (The Verve), Supernatural Superserious (R.E.M.), Everyday Is Like Sunday (Morrissey), Hands Open (Snow Patrol),  Babe I’m Gonna Leave You (Led Zeppelin), Stay (Faraway, So Close) (U2), Supersonic (Oasis), Have a Nice Day (Stereophonics), Sam’s Town (The Killers), Low (Cracker)

Hmm, yeah I can buy that list - definitely on the pensive end of the rock spectrum

Song: Fat Bottomed Girls (Queen)
Genius Playlist: The Hand That Feeds (Nine Inch Nails), Oye Como Va (Santana), Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode), After Midnight (Eric Clapton), Won’t Get Fooled Again (The Who), Kashmir (Led Zeppelin), Dude Looks Like a Lady (Aerosmith), Can’t Stop (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Fly Away (Lenny Kravitz), DOA (Foo Fighters)

A bit of a mixed bag that one, but then Queen are a fairly hard band to pigeon-hole, and at least Santana finally made it in to the list.

So, overall Genius seems to do a pretty good job. I’m way too lazy and disorganised to make manual playlists for groups of songs that I like at particular times - I’ve tried but I just can’t be arsed, I think I was born without the ‘filing gene’. I have so far relied entirely on the ‘Recently Added’ and ‘Party Shuffle’ lists, so I can envisage Genius being useful - I recommend checking it out.

Oo, EW.com has just revealed (picked up via RockBandContent.com) that there are more full albums on the way for Rock Band after the release of Rock Band 2:

Foo Fighters (The Colour and the Shape)
Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar Sex Magik)
Jane’s Addiction (Nothing’s Shocking)
Megadeth (Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying)
Stevie Ray Vaughn (Texas Flood)
No Doubt (’Best Of’ Collection)

I don’t know about anyone else, but the top 2 are instant purchases for me, since both are regulars on my iTunes playlists. These are advertised for Rock band 2, but since DLC is interchangeable between the 2 games I’m betting I can still use them even if RB2 hasn’t made it to our shores by then.

Ho boy, time to prime the wallet again methinks. Until then I’ll have to just exhaust myself playing a Duran Duran drum medley. RB is definitely educational, I never realised that ‘Rio’ was so relentlessly fast & long on the drums, I have newfound respect for the New Romantics era musicians - that is, if it wasn’t all pre-programmed on drum machines…

At the Leipzig Games Convention Sony announced several updates to its venerable SingStar franchise, and whilst the inclusion of Barry Manilow is wince-inducing, the inclusion of several Queen tracks on their compilation issues, and the announcement of a dedicated Queen disc for SingStar can only be a good thing. Not because I particularly like SingStar - we had it on the PS2 and to be honest the novelty wore off pretty fast - somehow picking up the microphone and crooning on your own or in a duet just feels like you should be in a seedy bar, full of beer with your arm around your best mate, desperately hoping the next morning that nobody had a video recording mode on their mobile. In contrast, singing in Rock Band feels a lot less awkward, especially when you have 3 other people shredding / drumming away. Maybe it’s just me.

The reason it’s interesting even though I won’t be buying SingStar is that it means that those who control Queen’s music are loosening their grip a little, and letting master tracks into video games, which hasn’t happened so far - this in turn might mean we’ll see them in Rock Band eventually. Covers of Queen tracks have appeared in several games, such as “Don’t Stop Me Now” in Donkey Konga, “Killer Queen” in Guitar Hero, and “I Was Born To Love You” in Elite Beat Agents, but no master tracks have ever appeared before now, as far as I’m aware.

Here’s hoping anyway, Queen are one of the major classic British rock bands and I’d love to see them in Rock Band, to go with other British favourites such as The Who, David Bowie, The Police and Oasis (I also hope they stop ignoring Supergrass some day, because I’m dying to play Diamond Hoo Ha Man). That is, unless Activision decide to try to sign them to an exclusive deal like they’ve done with Aerosmith and Metallica, although I’d hope the Brits will have more integrity than that. Harmonix of course have stated their opposition to exclusive deals with bands, sticking to their line that music should be able to be enjoyed freely everywhere (this principle also underpinned their support for instrument compatibility, something grubby old Activision opposed for ages until the console manufacturers slapped them). Whether this laudable approach will come back to bite them later as Activision continues to pursue the “business first, music second” angle I don’t know, but they have my respect for it anyway.