Poor Mojo's Newswire

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I wrote about this a while ago when talking about the remix mode of Frequency, another Harmonix game, and how it made the PS2 controller a kind of instrument. That idea fascinated me. Actual instruments are not especially ergonomic, in general terms - they are not engineered for use. They need to account for crass physical laws to epitomize their function. Instruments are beautiful, let me be clear. But they are not, themselves, music.

These guitars are only toys because they are limited, at this particular moment, to playing other people's songs. This is a software problem, and not representative of some lasting defect with the device. It's already been resolved by the community many times over. When Harmonix delivers a composition suite with the next Rock Band (or the next), and people start creating and uploading their own albums, it's going to be pretty hard to maintain the fiction that people are playing with toys. Between the five keys, combinations of those keys, and the "hammer on, pull off" mechanic, you're talking about a ri-goddamn-diculous number of states - even before you expand it with pass-thru USB style devices that intermediate between the guitar and the host device. I assume I don't need to make the case for the drums: the peripheral itself, in its unmodified form, wouldn't look out of place on any stage in the 1980s.

Of course, the Rock Band guitar would need some modifications in order to be used seriously for this purpose - for example, it would need to work. As these games reach prominence, there is no question that higher end "prosumer" option for a more robust device will be met by the market. In any case, of course some people don't like it. We're witnessing the democratization of music.