I'm going to risk jumping into the middle of a long standing thread and take an opportunity to express a small rant. Please don't take this the wrong way. I am impressed by the game, really impressed, and I realize it is just a game, but I'm extremely frustrated by a few aspects of the game play.
After resisting my son's urges to try out Rock Band for several months I finally broke down and sat in for the bass part in order to help him round out the 4 piece band for the 1st time. My son's short explanation of the goal was, "these are like Tony Hawk kick-flips, the buttons are up here, hit that thing there when you want to play a note and you'll be fine" and then he set me up on medium difficulty. I was a bass player in high school so that explanation got me through the 1st song, then my goal was fairly obvious: sight read 4 note. Should be easy enough, and for the most part it is. I've sat in on two sessions now and have most of the basics worked out. I can usually score in the 90s on medium, better if I actually know the song.
So with that setup, here's my rant:
The game is almost really cool. As in; I almost played some really cool songs. I almost learned the bass line. And I almost got that musical rush from putting on a good performance. At the end of the day it was a rather empty feeling. I really wanted to try again and work out some of the details that scrolled by so quickly, but then again, why bother to practice a song if I don't really know how to play when I'm done? For songs that are particularly inspiring, I'm worried about committing the song to muscle memory on a video game and then fighting those reflexes on a real bass. BTW, the day after my 1st session my brother and I sat down and worked out enough of Last Train to Clarksville to relieve some of my frustration.
Another frustration is the bizarre fingering patterns used. There's a bit of a logic behind the intervals, but if I get too involved in the music and forget it's a game I end up fighting my intuition of how these intervals should be fingered. This may not make sense, but I'll try to describe how I'm fighting against my musical reflexes:
The fingering position implies that all the songs are in the key F#, B, or E because open notes are not used. So the root note, often the first, last, and most common note for the bass player, would be the red button and held by the index finger. The yellow button doesn't come up that often and when it does it's usually a leading note to the next fret. During some cord changes the index finger would advance to the blue button. The orange button is almost never used (in these keys), but another green button above that would be a common fingering.
I also want a better look at some of those licks. Things scroll by quickly and I want a change to stop and practice the fingering a few times. I managed to find several Expert mode videos for the bass lines, that has been helping a little, but now that I've had a look at the Expert bass lines I'm wondering what the programmers were thinking; other than if a bass line sounds hard the fingering must be hard. But usually it's not all that difficult. In many situations they seem to be making it a lot harder than necessary.
I also found some videos by an Expert Drummer and I must admit I'm a bit jealous. Maybe if I understood the drums a little better I'd understand the limitations better, but it looked to me that a skilled drummer could apply their skills fairly directly, and might even take away some skills that could be applied to real drumming. So with that in mind, here are a few suggestions for a new bass design:
The string or paddle, whatever that thing is called that makes the notes, isn't responsive enough. Driving bass lines pretty much need to be strummed. The paddle is too soft for the finger walking method to be used on fast notes; it doesn't bounce back quickly enough. A string has more tension closer to the bridge, and if you find the correct tension each pick adds to the energy of the string. Also, I want all the notes, so add 3 more paddles.
Mark the bridge orange and include open notes. Move all the extra keys on the upper neck down to repeat the color pattern one more time. Eliminate most two note combinations and only count the upper-most fingering. Put a rocker under the button so the controller can detect which side of the bridge is being fingered so that intervals can be held. Make the buttons pressure sensitive to allow for vibrato on the shorter extended notes.
) an email saying it is going to cost more, as that price is for canada and it will cost more to come to NZ or something....
If you didnt pay him for the RB bundle then I would just buy it from someone else and file a complaint with e-bay against that person.
It was so fun!
