Music Gaming Goodness: Rock Band 2 Rocks The House

Rock Band 2: Cheap Electronic Drum Kit?

Aside from the great tutorials and the drum trainer, Rock Band 2 offers another mode that is pretty interesting. Freestyle mode allows the gamer to just play the drums. There are multiple options for different sounding kits, and what you end up with is essentially a cheap electronic drum kit. And when I say cheap I don't just mean inexpensive, I mean not all that great as well. But hey, this is a video game not a musical instrument... Right?

The intriguing bit is that we've seen much worse electronic drum pad setups than what you get with Rock Band 2. We are actually at a point where, if someone wanted to, they could learn to play drums for real with this setup and actually even jam with people. Sure, you don't have a hi-hat pedal, and unless you get the premium kit or add cymbals to the standard kit you are limited to only 5 different drum sounds (a snare, three toms, and a kick). But that's enough to get by with for someone starting out or just working on the fundamentals.

With the premium kit (or eventually with cymbals added on to the standard kit), even though cymbals and toms are the same color, hitting one or the other gives you a different sound. Thus, playing in Freestyle mode with an expanded kit gets you: a snare, three toms, three cymbals and a kick. Which is better. But there are still some serious limitations.

It's just not going to sound as good as when you play the game.

Here's the deal. When playing Rock Band and Rock Band 2, you aren't actually "playing" the sound that comes out. If you hit something with the right timing, the audio for that segment of the master track for that instrument is played. If you screw up, you are treated to a generic mistake sound rather than the sound that would actually have happened if you had hit the instrument you did when you did. It does actually make the songs sound more like the songs, but it is divergent from reality.

Even though Rock Band 2 incorporates some dynamics (if you hit the pad harder it the sound will be louder), the range of volume isn't very good at all. This gets in the way of really playing drums like they are meant to be played. With any electronic kit, you have to deal with reduced dynamic capability, but with the Rock Band setup this is especially lacking. It isn't as bad as either all or nothing, but it really isn't much better either.

Combining these last two points, the gamer, when playing the game, has no control over the way the song was recorded. The tracks have all been engineered with the right amount of compression, reverb, and whatever other effects were desired. On top of that, the subtle things that a drummer will do to get different sounds don't translate. For instance, the hi-hat roll on Everlong has some accents in it that can be created either by hitting the hi-hat slightly harder or quickly and slightly opening and closing the hats. You just can't get that sound from the kit unless it's playing back a recording.

The result is that in Freestyle mode (like when you have the opportunity to play a fill in the game), the kit will sound flat or mechanical or not organic or whatever hippy term you want to use that really means that it sounds bad. That isn't to say that you can't make the thing sound alright. You just have to know what it's good for and use it for that. Having higher expectations will almost certainly lead to disappointment.

The last point is that you can't really do anything with what you play in Freestyle mode in the game (sure, you can record it using an external device, but that's a little annoying). The upcoming Guitar Hero World Tour will allow people to record and even upload and share their tracks. This adds another dimension that, if done right, could really add value to a music game as a makeshift instrument. It remains to be seen whether or not Guitar Hero will deliver, but we are certainly hopeful. And even if it doesn't, we are glad that both Rock Band and Guitar Hero have gone in a direction that opens up the flexibility of their game for use as a real instrument. Even if it is a fairly bad real instrument.

But seriously, who learns to play guitar on a $5k drum kit or even a $500 guitar? Most people start out with crappy instruments anyway. And that's where the real value is in Freestyle mode. You (or your kid) use the drums to actually learn how to play drums. The old fashioned way. With time and effort and stuff. They might not sound great, but allowing people just to play opens up the opportunity for people to practice on their own. With all the tutorials on the internet, people can sit down and read (or even watch) a lesson and then take what they learned to Rock Band 2 and practice. Or you could actually take lessons from someone and get more hands on feedback. But either way, you do everything you need to in order to learn drums using Rock Band 2.

In the end, Rock Band 2 won't "make" someone a drummer. But, more so than its predecessor, this game provides tools that could definitely help people who want to become drummers. Hopefully people will take advantage of this. The world can always use more drummers.