Music and technology have always had a special relationship. With the exception of mini-discs, which appeared to have a bright future before being crudely crushed under the jackboot of mp3s, technology has been at the forefront of ensuring music retains a special place in popular culture for many decades.
Today, the badge of mainstream acceptance has gone further than ever before with the explosion of video games designed to combine the musical experience with gaming dexterity and cool graphics. At the forefront of this revolution is Cambridge-based Harmonix Music Systems, the original developer of Guitar Hero (2005) and the maker of the hugely successful multi-player gaming experience that is Rock Band (2007).
In 2009, the company released The Beatles: Rock Band, which gave us all the chance to be John, Paul, George or Ringo, (although sadly there was no Yoko Ono option) and that game was voted Best Music Game at the ’09 Video Game Awards.
In June 2010, the second specific Rock Band title will be released with Green Day bringing their brand of pop-punk to the gaming platforms and the lack of songs from the Nimrod (album) era will concern only the truly devoted. However it is the latest development from Harmonix that is causing a wave of interest amongst the musical gaming community:
In March of this year, the company launched Rock Band Network (RBN) which was designed specifically to allow people to create their own music for the system. Thus, Harmonix opened it’s doors (and downloads) to lesser-known bands. What Harmonix has done is invite the musicians to create a gaming experience that will introduce their songs to new audiences and (hopefully) provide a revenue stream to allow them to tour and produce more product. Harmonix, in turn, hopes to cash in as well.
I met with John Drake, program manager at RBN, last week to talk about the company’s motivation for creating this new music marketplace.
Originally a format designed to enable gamers to play along with rock royalty such as AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Aerosmith and Boston, to date there are 1,381 songs on the various Rock Band formats. In 2007, Harmonix was named the VGA Studio of the Year, a glowing recommendation for anyone in the game development world.
John Drake believes that RBN will be “mostly about kickass music and little bands getting the same opportunities as big bands.” Drake, a musician himself in local band The Main Drag, (who have songs on RBN) says that this new platform for discovering music will “give [bands] the opportunity, and we are helping them to get to the easiest path. We are reducing barriers so that fans get there as quickly as possible whilst providing a marketing initiative that gives you money back.”
Recording is done using a Digital Audio Workstation called Reaper. For those familiar with Protools or with a basic knowledge of how to record music in a digital format, there is certainly nothing to fear. The DAW uses 5 stems/audio streams — vocal, guitar, bass, and drums, plus one more channel for everything else — to combine the music and the video game information that ensures the 7 different MIDI tracks the game reads when the track is selected will provide a good gaming experience.
Obviously, the more information input into Reaper, the greater the game’s difficulty: Musicians uploading games to RBN can make their songs either easy or virtually impossible. Combine this flexibility of construction with the awesome graphics and game experience of Rock Band, and the opportunity that RBN gives to the musical community becomes obivious.
Once the song has been created, it then goes through a series of playtests and peer reviews before finally arriving in Magma which, Drake describes as, “Where the rock is made.”
The whole process of creating a song that can be bought, downloaded and, most importantly, played on your Xbox 360 is very attractive to bands that don’t have access to the marketing and promotional departments that the more mainstream artists take for granted. As Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace continues to be nothing more than an overpopulated example of Sturgeon’s Laws (90% of it is crap), Drake is confident that RBN will be an experience that will allow fans to become attached and intimate with the music whilst also providing the casual listener with new bands to discover.
“MySpace is a destination when you know what you are looking for but as a tool to discover music, it is useless,” he says. “What RBN is doing is similar to iTunes: We are driving the fan towards recommended content. It is a new musical discovery avenue.”
Since going live in March, there are now nearly 250 songs available on RBN (including 21 bands from New England) and all of these songs give the opportunity for musicians to package and sell their product. Thirty percent of net sales go to the songs author using a traditional quarterly royalty format, which is paid directly to the submitter of the song. (Although it must be pointed out that Harmonix is not responsible for payment; the cash comes from Microsoft who will only pay out on a minimum of $150 per quarter.) If the song is a success and becomes what Drake calls, “a real physical experience,” then RBN could be a significant influence in the career development of the band.
Kathleen Burke, singer for local band Alchemilla is happy with the platform, saying that “Having our song, ‘Bleeder,’ in RBN has given Alchemilla the opportunity to reach a whole new group of music fans. We’ve gotten awesome feedback from people not only in the states, but from Europe and Australia too– Places we aren’t able to tour as an unsigned band with little money. Connecting with these new fans in a new and fun way has been amazing so far, we can’t wait to see where it goes.”
Time will tell if RBN will be the format that “is virtually guaranteed to change the way we discover, experience and appreciate music,” (Joe Rybicki, GamerPro, April 2010). But for those of us who saw the crowded Harmonix room at PAX East, the future of the Rock Band brand looks to be in safe hands. (Although it did seem that those on stage were less concerned with how good the song was and more interested in showing off their gaming skills.)
Where the masses are concerned, music is not just about being told what to listen to by the major record labels, as was the case in early iterations of Rock Band, but a voyage of discovery to find the latest and freshest sounds. Radio has played a huge part in this process, and the increase in digital and Internet stations have allowed listeners to stumble upon obscure bands that may not have the financial backing to tour with a multi-million dollar stage show. Hearing a band for the first time becomes a guilty pleasure, and that initial joy leads the fan into wanting more down the road.
If the average music fan can learn to take advantage of Rock Band Network, then music fans will have a brand new way to reliably stumble upon their next fixation. The last thing we need is another platform being targeted by the establishment to push the latest Nickelback LP.
Have you tried RBN? What do you think of the music available? Let us know in the comments section.
