Amusement:

[lwood]

countgeiger and I are amusing ourselves and spending Quality Time by playing Rock Band.

One may purchase and install more songs for this thing, and it is a pleasant mutual pastime, more so than, say, Age of Conan.

Among them are two songs that are primarily known for being in other musical games--

"Sprode", remixed from "Super Sprøde", which appeared in Amplitudem ith which I'm only familiar because chiendarrendor has it at his house. One must pay money for this--bah!

...and "Still Alive", the end-credits song in Portal. You can rock out with GLaDOS for free.

-- Lorrie (Aperture Science: We do what we must because we can.)

Comments

[illuviel.livejournal.com]

Still Alive? Ohmy. There may just *have* to be a Rock Band in my fam's future.

Right now, we're terribly, happily amused that Trogdor is part of Guitar Hero.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

"Trogdor"?

Squeeeee!

-- Lorrie burninates some peasants for kicks.

[mephron]

Somewhere on the net you can find the way that they announced "Still Alive" coming to Rock Band:

At a Jonathan Coulton concert, where he performed it in Rock Band, with Veronica Belmont, Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann. They failed, by the way.

But the Harmonix crew brought them cake!

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that it was Moist and Delicious.

Still, in Rock Band, the guitar is the instrument that seems the least like real life. The microphone cares about pitch matching, the drums at least require you bang on a pad with a stick, but the guitar is kinda a WTF there.

There's a vid of RUSH trying to do "Tom Sawyer" backstage at the Colbert Report, but I can't get their videos to load without hiccups, so I didn't watch it through.

-- Lorrie

[baldurrising.livejournal.com]

Heh... it's funny how many of my friends and colleagues with kids bought that, and then are coming to me asking for help to buy a real guitar.

And then there are the chicks you meet who are all, like, "Yeah, I totally play guitar too! I'm an ace at Guitar Hero! Same thing, y'know?"

Sigh...

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Heh... it's funny how many of my friends and colleagues with kids bought that, and then are coming to me asking for help to buy a real guitar.

But that's good!

And then there are the chicks you meet who are all, like, "Yeah, I totally play guitar too! I'm an ace at Guitar Hero! Same thing, y'know?"

No, no...really not.

For an example, the microphone only cares about diction in "talky" parts of songs. When singing, it cares a lot about pitch--but only pitch, and you can take an octave in either direction and still be OK.

Some songs hit the break in my voice, so I not only have to take an octave, but have to shift my tone radically to match pitch--which, I grant, is a skill I could improve BUT...

Imagine, if you will, me singing the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" pitch-perfect (or nearly), but an octave higher and with operatic intonation.

Madness! Madness and wrongness, I tell you--but I aced it that way, whereas trying to do it "properly" didn't work.

*grin*

-- Lorrie

[murstein.livejournal.com]

In a brief aside, today I handled a "tribute to Guitar hero," wherein a disk's worth of those songs were played, in an arrangement for string quartet. After much reflection, the head of Classical Data told me to give it to the Pop folks.

When I handed it to the Pop registrar, I said that they decided they really didn't want Freebird in the Classical database. We then laughed at the spectacle of lit lighters held up in Orchestra Hall. ;)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Butbutbutbutbut that would be awesome!

Then again, our local symphony had Metallica in, so I'm no judge. 8-)

[murstein.livejournal.com]

It'll still wind up in the Pop database, but the Classical Editors apparently are tired of tripping over recent Pop* in the Classical database.

Or, maybe, they're more acutely aware than I am of how soon the Classical database will outgrow the largest size we can stretch FoxPro to, and are even less confident than I am that our evil corporate overlords, having canceled the Oracle migration, will come up with their preferred replacement in time.




* Most of the Pop music of 100 years ago belongs in the Classical database, of course. ;)

[shantak.livejournal.com]

That's really cool. Which parts do you play? My roommate has Rock Band and sometimes he can gather enough people to have a full band. I think he was thinking of getting another guitar/bass when his latest financial aid check came. Another roommate was using it as a karaoke machine. Once I was called into the front room because the pedal for the drum set was too complicated.

Way cool.

-smk

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I sing well, which I'm using to power through the setlist and unlock everything.

I'm tolerable at drums except for that expletive-deleted foot pedal.

I suck out loud at fake guitar. countgeiger sucks rather less, though, so we have formed a two-person band named Datashred and are plowing through World Tour mode, but for hard songs I get ahead of the curve in Solo Tour and unlock stuff so he can practice.

-- Lorrie

[erisiansaint]

amezuki and I have likewise been enjoying Rock Band. Some serious fun.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

-- L