Rock Band 2007 Tour

**socolive** · Joined: 01 Mar 2007 Posts: 99 Location: Santa Rosa, CA

well, looks like i'm out, guys... can't really get away today or tomorrow. i'm dj'ing a wedding tomorrow so i can't get away. i guess i'll just have to wait until it comes out.

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**ajanata** · Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 1:07 am Post subject:

Just got back from Cleveland and ... wow. I'm not very good at drums or singing but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. It wasn't very nice playing with cold hands (it was about 50-55F outside) but it was still amazing.
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**Ral** · Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 218 Location: Cleveland, Ohio

Yeah, it did suck playing in the cold. I'd like to try to get better at the drums, even though I only tried them twice. Also, even though I'm a horrible singer, it was still fun trying to sing. I can't wait until the video is uploaded on the Rock Band site.

**JetsterDajet** · Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Posts: 718 Location: Norcal

BMX! Where were you dude? I DID get there late, about 6:00, but I didn't see you! I was totally dissapointed, dude.

They ended up shutting us down early because I was the only one playing for about an hour. I was like "I got 'till NINE, man, I got 'till NINE!" He didn't give a shit and a half and they shut me down. Total drag.

They shut us down just as the Brooks and Dunn concert started. They stopped running the bus back to BART... just another of my public transit woes, so I walked to a bus stop 2 miles away. Just got back home...

Well, guys, I'm working all weekend, so I can't pull anything. If any of you can work somethig out for M-F (I haven't looked at the shedule for the other dates) I'd love to go. I'm probably going to need to be picked up for this one, though. I mean, I can at least meet ya'll at a BART station or something... keep it in mind.

**BreakManX** · Joined: 29 Dec 2006 Posts: 953 Location: Vacaville, CA

You got there around 6:00? FUCK. I was forced to work late (stupid job that's super-important to the company), and by the time I got there, it was 8:00. And traffic was backed up so far it was about an hour's wait to even get into the goddamned parking lot. I turned around and just headed right back home.

I'm sorry, dude. I tried.

Consistently being screwed out of plastic guitar events this month is really starting to make me feel very depressed.

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**JetsterDajet** · Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Posts: 718 Location: Norcal

Fuck, dude. Too bad we didn't meet up. Hope we can shoot for something else.

**youhas** · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3015 Location: Santa Clara, CA

Back from the going with Ealasaid to the Rock Band playthrough at Stanford. (Dude, just getting to the event was crazy - they were doing it at the stadium before the football game there, and on homecoming weekend to boot, so there were about a million scrillion vehicles clogging up the place with approximately nowhere to park. Finally shelled out $10 for parking at a local high school and hoofed it on over to the event.)

They had one enclosed area for all the Rock Band happenings, with one main stage for MTV rock-out-and-we-record-you purposes and four or so test setup areas in the back. Didn't have any real lines to fight through or anything like that - we pretty much just played to our heart's content, uninterrupted. (With an audience of hundreds and hundreds, assuming you count all the vaguely disinterested frat boys and associated tailgaters.)

Getting used to the scroll speed and the new shape of the gems took some doing - finally had to bump things down to Hard and spend a couple three songs getting myself situated on the guitar controller. Once I did that, though, it was all pretty much like the GH fun we all know and love. Didn't pay a ton of attention to the background graphics or anything, but they seemed fine. Loved to hear the in-game crowd singing along with the band during the choruses - that's an awesome little touch. Also, there is something fundamentally cool about being able to activate star power to revive a band mate from the dead once they've failed out. Very nice little "we are all in this band together!" touch. (Which makes a little odd the "I activate star power and it effects me and my multiplier, but not your bandmates, screw them" aspect of things, but dude, whatever.) And yes, the "you can see just how many stars you've accrued at all times, right there on the screen" indicator is suprisingly helpful.

Guitar controller caveats: since the buttons are all flush and recessed, depending on how one holds one's hand, it's possible for your thumb to creep onto the edge of the frets and make you depress one that you didn't mean to. Took a small amount of mental effort to correct for that. Also, the strum bar definitely doesn't make a harsh clicking like one might expect - acoustically beneficial, though it did make doing quick alt-strums more difficult because I couldn't tell how hard I needed to mash. (Or it could just be that the equipment there was getting a little ratty - there were definitely some abused drum sets there - so I wouldn't trust this evaluation that much.) Other than that, no strong complaints. (Hard to make truly direct comparisons - I do all my GH while sitting, but did all the RB guitar play while standing.)

Didn't try the mic at any point - will blithely assume that it's just like Karaoke Revolution.

Echoing the sentiments expressed previously that boy howdy, ain't nobody able to sing worth a damn anymore. (And this is coming from me, whom we have experimentally verified rocks the adequacy and nothing more at the mic.)

Drum play was all kinds of fun - even if we couldn't figure out how to activate star power with them - though boy howdy, it's gonna take some work getting that whole hand-and-foot independent-movement thing perfected.

They seemed awesomely responsive to me - didn't have to make a note to wail extra hard or soft or anything. And clearly, this will qualify as a workout regimen if I practice for prolonged periods - there's some serious motioning to and fro involved. Still - never having played any drums, game or otherwise, ever - leapt into the fray on Medium and did adequately (~90% for sightreads of songs I know and love). Would expect that most folks here will be in the same sort of camp, eschewing playing through on the easiest level.

Speaking of folks here: ScoreHero has clearly made us very, very jaded about what compromises "good" at these sorts of events. My wife and I were easily the best two players present during our couple of hours there. I mean, we were doing standard issue nothin'-special 90-something percent performances on Hard and Expert, and this made people revel as if we were Gods Among Men, what with the whole "dude, you got 58% on Easy, nice" and "song failed at 40%, LOL" that seemed to be the order of the day.

If you filled out all the MTV-related liability waivers and had a full set of four people on hand, you could play on the stage area and receive free swag for your troubles. A pair of super-enthusiastic Stanfordites really wanted to go through with it, so Ealasaid and I hooked up with them and rocked the guitars while they fought their way through the mic and drums. One fantastically butchered we-have-never-even-heard-this-song-before playthrough of Detroit Rock City later, we got T-shirts and a hat and some guitar picks, yay. Then we went back to hearing everyone else fail out of Black Hole Sun, already in progress.

According to the staff there, they reiterated the whole "yep, we're scotching the other NorCal dates, gonna be in SoCal for a month" sentiment. ("Just not enough places guaranteeing us space," they said.) Wouldn't surprise me if the website isn't being updated yet because they're scrambling to find some sort of alternative venues or times... but barring that, I'm currently glum on the prospect of seeing another local demo. Fingers crossed, though.

I think that's enough rambling for now. If I forgot anything of interest, let me know.

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**ajanata** · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:37 am Post subject:

It seemed to me that activating your "star power" energy changed the band's multiplier and not your own (at least on the east coast build? But I would think they were the same). Also, to activate it during drums, it seems you bang in the free play sections and then hit that one note at the end. Vocals, I'm not so sure.
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**JetsterDajet** · Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Posts: 718 Location: Norcal

No, each person's multiplier is independent of themselves. A band-wide multiplier would be disastrous because it would never go above 2x.

Yes, to activate EG, (IT'S EG, NOT SP) on drums, you play through your drum fill and hit the crash cymbal (green) on the downbeat.

Sounds like you and Ealasaid had as much fun as I did. You didn't comment on the tapping buttons! Did you not try them? Shame on you if you didn't, they are among my favorite new features.

**ajanata** · Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 4:42 am Post subject:

Funny, I would have sworn it was band-wide. When only one person had EG going, there was a 2x next to the band score. When two people had it, it had 4x. When three people (the most I saw) had it, it had 6x. I'm pretty sure those were the only times I saw those. Also, I know I had 1x a few times with EG. Unless, for some really odd reason, the east and west coast trailers have different versions...

I tried using the solo buttons, I need more practice with them to be able to use them right...
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**youhas** · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3015 Location: Santa Clara, CA

I will defer to others more focused than I was on the whole "does it just affect me, or the whole band?" issue. It seemed to affect just me, but I'll freely admit that I could be mistaken - not like I had a ton of chance to focus on all the multipliers everywhere when I was playing the song proper, and not like anyone else we saw was competent enough to have multiple members "deploying energy" at the same time.

Didn't try using the tapping buttons in an actual song, I didn't. Only had a couple of hours there, and things like "let's try another song on drums!" took priority. Will figure out the tapping buttons in the comfort of my own home later on.

Oh, one thing I forgot previously: I really liked that on the song-select screen, you could hit the yellow fret to change the way that the songs were grouped. Cycled through "'normal songs' and 'bonus songs'", "by decade of release", "by genre", "straight alphabetical order", and maybe a couple of others, I can't remember. Really helps with things like "I feel like METAL" or "dude, I'm in a really '90s mood right now" - hey, there they are, all clustered up for you! Very neat, and totally suggestive of the whole "we would love to make Rock Band's DLC into some sort of fake-instrument-based iTunes" strategy they've alluded to previously.
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**Ral** · Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 218 Location: Cleveland, Ohio

I went again today and got to play on stage outside of Brown's Stadium. The guitars where much better this time. I got to play Dani California and Paranoid. I did alright on Dani California, and did good on Paranoid, where I hit 96-98 of it's solo.

I also got interviewed there, so I might show up on the Rock Band TV that's on the site.

**pmswedge** · Joined: 27 Jun 2007 Posts: 427 Location: San Francisco, CA

I would like to take this time to declare that when I played Rock Band at a Gamespot event last week, I managed to get somewhere around 60% on Expert doing vocals.

On Hard, I think I did about 85%.

Given that it happened in a noisy bar with lots of people around and I was sick for the previous two days, I'd say I have a fair shot at doing much much better. Of course, it was only on one song (the only one I know really well - Say It Ain't So) but I can learn new songs.

Too bad I don't think I can make it to any of the tour stops. I'll be in LA this weekend...
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**BreakManX** · Joined: 29 Dec 2006 Posts: 953 Location: Vacaville, CA

Well, luckily for you, it sounds like LA IS going to be a tour stop now. Have fun.
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