Monday, March 31, 2008

Conductor Hero III Legends of the Concert Hall!

My son recently bought "Guitar Hero III: legends of Rock" for his Wii.  I have to say that I am impressed with the game and enjoy the heck out of playing it.  If you haven't seen this game, the controlled is shaped like a guitar with 6 colored buttons on the next and a "strummer bar" in the body where you would normally strum the strings.  When you play the game a series of colored dots corresponding with the colors on the buttons on the fret board comes streaming toward you.  When the dots reach the front of the screen you must simultaneously press the corresponding button and strum the strummer bar.

At the easiest level of play the notes don't come down any more often that once per beat with the occasional 8th note scrolling past.  At the highest levels there is about a one to one correspondence between the dots you see and the notes in the lead guitar line of the song that is playing.

Will playing guitar teach you how to actually play guitar?  No.  Will it teach you to read music? No.  Does it have some value?  It just might.  The whole game is set to rock music.  You need good rhythmic skills to listen to the music, follow the dots, and "play" the notes at the right time.  

That's great if you like heavy metal, but what about the rest of us.  We are band geeks after all, and probably have interests in music that lie outside of (or perhaps for some of us overlapping) the heavy metal genre.  I propose that these software developers come up with a game with a more classical flavor: Conductor Hero III: Legends of the Concert Hall.  The controller could be a novelty sized baton into which the Wii controller fits.  Then the "conductor" could respond by gesturing with his baton to visual cues on the screen all while classical music plays.

Perhaps this game idea wouldn't have as big of a popular appeal as the Legends of Rock, but we band geeks can still dream!

3 comments:

Maestro said...

It's kind of funny that I was just joking when I posted this, but Nintendo is already developing a product no unlink what I described.

Wii Music is scheduled for release later this year and it includes an element in which you can conduct an orchestra with your Wii remote as a baton.

Maestro said...

I found an interesting discussion on Guitar Hero and whether it constitutes a musical experience on another blog:

http://collective.musiced.net/2007/11/13/guitar-hero/

Maestro said...

Here's another one, but this is a little out there. I don't think anyone really believes that this game teaches music, just maybe enhances it a little:

Could Guitar Hero Put music Teachers Out of business? http://www.musicedmagic.com/tales-from-the-podium/via-wired.com--could-guitar-hero-put-music-teachers-out-of-business.html