[Nepenthe]

I've never played either of these lines of games and probably won't have the opportunity any time soon. I've played guitar for 17 years though. If they had a version of the game that used an actual stringed guitar with MIDI pickups, I'm sure I'd do well.

Anyway, the question is about the music. In creating the tracks, are they going back to the original masters and pulling out individual sections? Are you in effect reassembling the parts at the right pitch, tempo, and timing when you play the game? For example, let's say you're doing the "lead guitar" piece in a song, and you get to the solo, but let's say you mangle it and your timing is off and such. Is this being reflected in what you hear? Or if you don't hit any notes at all, do you hear the song with the solo piece absent? What about drums, vocals, other guitars, etc.?

If this is actually what they're doing, I have to say that's pretty interesting. If not, then it sounds kind of lame. Anyone tried it out?

Thanks!

 

[stewgriff]

It's a hit-the-note approach. When you miss the note, you'll hear an "error noise", like the sound of picking a muffled string; the bass, drums, vocals, etc. go on regardless of your mistakes, but the whole song fails if you miss too many notes. If you go out of tempo, you'll miss the window for hitting the note, and you'll get errors until you get back in tempo. As for the actual songs, most of them are covers (cheaper than buying rights to the original masters), done as closely as possible to the original song.

 

[Nepenthe]

Ah, I see. So it's a lot less advanced and interactive than I had imagined.

Thank you.

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

Actually, when you go around playing random stuff, you will hear things go horribly off, and hear some error noises as mentioned above. Not sure how it works in rock band, I havent really tried it out.
As for the songs, I think most of the songs are covers, hence rerecorded as individual tracks. Hence if you just dont play at all, you wont hear anything, and if you manage to hit a few notes with proper timing, then you will start hearing things coming together.

 

[stewgriff]

Rock Band's the same basic approach, but it's slightly more realistic and diverse: buttons feel like (plasticky) frets instead of buttons, "solo buttons" around the 12th fret, basic effects like wah-wah, echo, etc. on a pickup selector.

I don't mind the simple approach they've taken. How else are you gonna sell guitar-playing with a 1-week learning curve? It won't teach you how to actually play guitar, but I guess it works on dexterity. Also, I can get away with playing stuff on Expert on Guitar Hero and generally rocking out when I can only do riffs and slow solos on real guitar.

 

[lawler]

rock band is the most fun out of all of them. the drumming is addicting and will entertain you for hours. the best part is the leave the score blank and allow u to solo for a couple of seconds.

 

[Artemio]

One thing that does happen though is that if you don't play at all you won't hear that instrument's track. So it is kind of in the middle of what you imagined.

It won't let you get off track, but it is separated in channels. For instance, if you are the left player and have the guitar you listen to the guitar on the left mainly.