Never seen Guitar Hero? Here’s your chance to get a taste of how it works right here at the blog with this fun Guitar Hero Widget:
DavidByrne.com - Art - Playing the BuildingPlaying the building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure…and are used to make these things produce sound.
Scoop: The Guitar Hero Embeddable Widget | Game | Life from Wired.comThe widget, played with the keyboard, contains three different songs: “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper, and “Metal Heavy Lady” by Lions. Each is set at only one difficulty level: Easy, Medium, and Hard, respectively.
Christmas is over, but we are still rocking out with our new Guitar Hero III for the Wii here at home, and in our virtual stadium crowd thanks to some photoshop fun…
Several of the music-ed bloggers I subscribe to (see my blogroll) have discussed the idea of using video games to teach kids how to read music. Check out Engadet blogger Nilay Patel’s post on a company that has a created a “guitar hero like” game that uses a real guitar and gaming technology to teach kids how to read music.
And, if you really can’t stand playing GH with a plastic guitar controller, check out how to build your own custom full-sized Guitar Hero controller like the modified Strat in the picture below. File this under projects labeled “when-I-have-too-much-time-on-my hands…”
Frets on Fire according to the game ’s developers “is a game of musical skill and fast fingers. The aim of the game is to play guitar with the keyboard as accurately as possible.” It’s basically a freeware version of Guitar Hero where your computer keyboard acts as the “guitar” controller. Check out the short video of my son giving it a test run on his Vista computer. Notice how he is holding his keyboard like a guitar- right hand pressing the enter key in time with his fingers on the left hand pressing the function keys (I tried downloading the MacOSX version, but it caused my intel based iMac to crash…) UPDATE: Check out my post on how we got the game to work on my iMac.
In addition to the pre-loaded songs, you can also “compose” new songs with the game’s built in song editor and Ogg Vorbis files. I had a blast trying to play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. It’s surprisingly well done for a freeware program.
Last night my son showed me the video review (see below) of a hot new video game called Rock Band by MTV Games. I am familiar with the video game Guitar Hero and have played it at the local electronics store (with out much success) and thought it was nothing more than a fun game and an exercise in coordination set to music.
But after watching the video of Rock Band, I was wondering if this kind of technology could really be used to teach music. There can be as many as 4 players in your band- Each player uses a controller in the shape of a guitar, microphone or drum set and has to “pluck”, “sing”, and “hit” in time with the music and lights that appear on the screen.
Check it out and tell me if you think this kind of technology could be used to teach an aspect of music…rhythmic accuracy perhaps? I do think the multi-player approach to “making music” is what sets this game apart.
