Bed Intruder quickly become ensconced in my top 10 songs of the year from the moment it was released 3 weeks ago. The autotune the news team are talented musical arrangers.
Now, Hayley Williams (Paramore), Jordan Pundik (New Found Glory), and Ethan Luck (Relient K) have taken it upon themselves to cover the song in the only musical style they could have – pop punk.
I <3 my early-mid 2000’s pop punk bands, but this power chord heavy version lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. In fact I’m going to go ahead that the only reason this cover is noteworthy is because of the performers’ celebrity status.
What do you think? Does the fact that “the girl from Paramore” and “the guy from New Found Glory” covered the song make it any more “legit”?
Ok, I think I’ve figured out this video for Yeasayer’s Madder Red.
It’s got to be part of an ARG promoting Bioshock Infinite. I can’t believe they would spoil the game this early, but you can clearly see that Kristen Bell’s one armed face-monster rules the clouds at the end of this video. There’s no doubt it’s the final boss.
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti is perhaps one of the more “buzzworthy” bands so far this year, garnering a “9.0” review from Pitchfork and landing on many other music blogs’ “Best of 2010 so far” lists. At $15 for a ticket including fees we’re in the impulse zone where there’s not a substantial risk even if you’re not a diehard fan of the band.
I’m all about seeing live music, especially at affordable prices, so I gave it a shot. I had given Before Today a couple of listens and while it didn’t “wow” me as much as the “Indie Blogosphere,” it also didn’t repulse me either. “Round and Round” has some pretty infectious melodies contained within and I will admit to waking up some mornings with the song in my head.
Some bands are just not meant to do live shows.
Ariel Pink cavorted around stage like a lifelong wino in an outfit that can best be described as a cross between Mario’s red overalls and Borat’s one-piece swimsuit. His voice cracked more times than an 18-year old going through puberty. Their set sounded lifeless and amorphous. None of the Before Today’s eclectic lo-fi charm came across on stage.
I stayed through each successive song with hopes of finally hearing the performance that would redeem the band. After about 45 minutes or so, it became apparent that this was never going to happen. I cut my losses and headed up to Two Boots for some delicious pizza.
Hey, for a $15 investment it wasn’t any worse than walking out of another shitty summer movie.
Disclosure: I was about three scotches in by the time Ariel Pink took the stage, so I had the musical equivalent of “beer goggles” going for me. Despite this I could still tell that the band was putting on a forgettable show.
I snapped a video of “Round and Round” in which you can hear this for yourself below:
Dance Central is the killer app for Microsoft’s Kinect.
Now, I know what you might be thinking.”Dance games are for kids and girls! They’re silly and lame!” Hear me out here. You know those choreographed dances in a Lady GaGa or Justin Timberlake music video? Say what you want about the music itself, but you gotta at least admit that the moves are kinda cool to watch, especially when a bunch of people are doing them in unison. What if I told you that there’s a game that would not only teach you and your friends how to dance like that, but would do so even if you had ZERO dancing ability to begin with. Isn’t that something that at least piques your interest?
Harmonix’s Dance Central is that game.
Think of it kinda like Rock Band, only your body is the instrument. (Well, if you want to get technical, the Kinect is actually the plastic instrument you have to buy.)
Dance games have been attempted before, but they were generally confined to sequences of steps on a mat (Dance Dance Revolution) or waving around an input controller (Just Dance). As many people would attest to, this is “dancing” as much as Guitar Hero is “playing the guitar.” Let’s face it, if you walk in on a room of people are playing DDR, they’re going to look pretty silly. However, if you walked into a room of people playing Dance Central, you might think they’re actually training as a real dance crew.
Using the full body tracking abilities of Microsoft’s Kinect, Dance Central lets you do a full range of motions with your body and hands free while scoring you on how accurately you perform the routine presented to you during each song. Honestly, I couldn’t have cared less about my score. It was just so much fun performing the moves that I found myself ignoring the score tally and just losing myself in the music and figuring out the moves. If the game didn’t even have a scoring system, I doubt a lot of casual players would notice. Nevertheless, I imagine once the novelty wears off, scoring highly will be a strong motivator to perform better as a dancer. As a gaming connoisseur, this excites me because it’s a game genre that has heretofore been impossible to fully replicate in a home environment. As a human being, this will excite you because its so intuitive and easy to get into.
All the songs in the game are original, licensed music. I had a hands on demonstration with Lady GaGa’s “Just Dance“ and Lipps Inc’s “Funkytown.” Other tracks I saw on the menu screen included Beastie Boys’ “Body Movin’,” No Doubt’s “Hella Good” and Bel Biv Devoe’s “Poison.” Harmonix promises a song selection that spans a diverse set of genres from hip-hop, to funk, reggae, pop, and more. The Harmonix producer I spoke with also touted the fact that many of the dance routines include the same moves from songs’ original music videos.
Now, I couldn’t dance my way out of a box, but after my hands on with Dance Central at the Harmonix booth, I felt I had a decent shot within seconds after starting up “Just Dance.” The dance moves are intuitive and generally easy to understand. Granted, I was on “easy” difficulty, but I’ve also never danced a step in my life that didn’t involve the number “two.” Gameplay involves a sequence of dance moves that scroll on the right side, kind of like the wheel on The Price Is Right. Your goal is to duplicate the highlighted move in the center, while preparing for upcoming moves by looking further down the wheel. The game will give you feedback in the form of red highlights on your on screen avatar’s body depending on where you’re messing up. Perform moves accurately and your score will go up along with Harmonix’s standard 5-star rating system. Many songs also incorporate a “freestyle” section as well, where everyone dancing just kinda does their own thing, as a psychedelic background plays on screen. The Kinect camera records all the action and shows you on screen. It felt a little gimmicky, but was still a neat feature.
I ran into a couple of instances where I couldn’t really tell what a particular dance move entailed. While a friendly Harmonix dancer was there at E3 to coach me on what to do, there clearly won’t be a bundled dancer when the game ships this holiday. Fortunately there’s a practice mode called “Break It Down” where you can practice each individual dance move more slowly and in detail. These instances are few and far between, especially in easier difficulty settings, so I wouldn’t worry too much about difficulty putting a crimp in your dance party gatherings. Most of the moves are very intuitive and easy to perform.
My only other concern was with the menu system, namely the fact that it took multiple confirmations and long, methodical hand swipes to pick a song and difficulty. This may be more of an issue with the Kinect in general as I noticed similar issues with other titles as well. It’s not a dealbreaker; it’s just kind of annoying because using a controller to pick options would just be plain faster. Hopefully this is something Microsoft and Harmonix work on before the Kinect launch.
While many people were on stage dancing at the same time, the E3 demo of Dance Central only tracked one player for the game. It was able to track a person behind in silhouette form as well, but only the first player was scored. Harmonix mentioned that there would be “multiplayer dance battles,” but it sounded as if this would be limited to two scored players. It’s kind of a bummer, but not as much of a deal breaker as you would think. You can still have a group of friends do a routine with you in front of the camera, they just won’t be scored. Think of them as your backup dancer crew. It’ll probably be a good thing at parties, too, as it’ll be more welcoming for some of the more shy people to get involved.
Add all of it up and you have a strongly compelling game experience if you have any interest in music or dancing. The only thing that might keep you away is the $150 Kinect device buy-in price or if you really have no desire to move your body under any circumstance. If you’re at all intrigued by Kinect, though, you owe it to yourself to take a good long look at Harmonix’s Dance Central.
Oh, another Rock Band game coming out this year? What’s next, are you going to tell me that they’re releasing a new Madden title too? hi2u Captain Obvious!
If I didn’t know any better, those would be my first thoughts about Rock Band 3. While a new entry in the franchise may not be the most surprising piece of news to someone, the number of tangible improvements Harmonix has brought to the series is.
Before E3, it was announced that Rock Band 3 would contain a “Pro” mode where players could essentially play the real notes of a particular song on updated guitar controllers. On top of that, the new plastic “pro” instruments would double as functional MIDI instruments for actual music creation.
Now, Harmonix didn’t have playable pro guitars available at their E3 booth this year, but they did provide a live demonstration of them in action:
What really blew my mind was when the guitarist plugged the guitar controller he was using into an amp and played real musical notes while playing a game. It’s one thing to read that these things function as real instruments and another to actually hear it for yourself. It doesn’t sound fake or bee-boo-bop-beep-y, folks. It’s not quite the same as Jack White on stage, but it’s definitely close. The music/tech geek in me had the same childlike feeling of wonderment as it did when I played the first Guitar Hero game.
(You can definitely tell the difference in the video below, but it’s nowhere near the audio fidelity you get from hearing these things played live.)
Bear in mind though, Harmonix dude is an accomplished guitar player. Unless you’re a plastic instrument playing prodigy, you shouldn’t expect to be shredding right out of the box. Nevertheless, the game does have the makings of being the most fun guitar teacher ever. I’m not sure if I’d actually stick with the game long enough to get good at it, but I’ll be damned if coming out of a video game progression cocoon a real guitarist isn’t downright compelling.
I did have the opportunity to try out the new keyboard instrument, though. Of course I picked “pro” mode because I used to play some piano back when I was a wee lad.
I clearly failed as a kid.
I had a hard time even on medium difficulty in a song with a simple keyboard part, “Power of Love.” When i did hit the right notes, though, it was much more gratifying than if I had just hit some colored buttons on a game controller because in the back of my mind I knew that i was playing the real notes of the song. On a related note, I noticed that the keyboard parts in many rock songs are pretty friggin’ simplistic. Unless we get a song like U2 – New Years Day, I wouldn’t expect for keyboard virtuosos to be playing long, complicated solos in this game even on pro-mode.
Ironically enough, the five iconic rhythm game colors are how Harmonix organizes keys on the keyboard controller:
The keyboard section on the game screen will shift from left to right depending on where your fingers should be on the keyboard. For example, if you see blue and green bars on your screen, you’ll want to have your fingers on the right side of the keyboard. If the game needs you to be on the left side, the screen will shift to show red and yellow bars. The colors essentially act as octave markers, if you’re musically trained. Notes will still scroll down towards you in the same way, there’ll just be more button possibilities to deal with. It sounds confusing on paper, but it’s easily picked up in seconds once you jump into playing.
I asked Harmonix whether they designed the keyboard to be played flat or if it was to be worn like a keytar. Both methods of play would work just fine, they answered, although I get the feeling playing it like a keytar is more suited for show than for functionality. It’s definitely a lot easier to play the keyboard “normally,” but hey, nothings stopping you from acting out your Nu-Wave keytar fantasies.
Game Improvements
Most of the talk surrounding Rock Band 3 centers on pro mode on the new hardware instruments and deservedly so. There’s also a ton of little things Harmonix is putting in the game as well. Stuff that will make the game easier to enjoy and make you wonder why they weren’t already there.
Here’s some of the things Harmonix highlighted:
True drop in/drop out functionality – Anytime. No more quitting out of songs or navigating multiple menus to remove/add someone.
Extensive song browsing/filtering capabilities – You can drill down with such detail filters such as song length or family-friendly songs.
Song ratings and recommendations – We’re getting into online music store client features here. You can assign 5 star ratings to all the songs in the library and search/filter by your preferences. The Rock Band music store will even use these to serve up recommended songs of what you may like.
Playlist building/sharing – There’s enough songs playable on the Rock Band platform now that this makes a lot of sense. I mean, shit, there’s even REAL music streaming services that don’t offer playlist sharing functionality yet.
Party Shuffle – Basically a random track shuffler. It’s simple, but makes complete sense for party play when people just want to play with the least amount of menu navigating possible.
Another goal that Harmonix mentioned was to make progress-oriented multiplayer gameplay more self contained. In other words, if you have a regular band that you play with on the campaign mode, you’re probably tired of playing an inordinate amount of sets on a seemingly never-ending world tour. Harmonix’s solution to the problem is to incorporate “tours” that you can reasonably finish in a couple hours of gameplay for the night. In essence, the goal is to make you feel like you’ve “beaten Rock Band for the night.” It’s a legitimate concern that I’ve definitely run into while playing Rock Band with friends. I’m glad to see that attention is being given to making progression oriented players feel like they are completing something significant each session.
The biggest challenge of the music gaming genre is making new products that aren’t just glorified song-packs each year. While I’m definitely for less frequent title releases, it’s hard to argue that Rock Band 3 isn’t shaping up to be worth upgrading to when it ships later this year.
For Pro mode, for the guitar, are you basically learning the song? Like, if you got up to Expert in Pro mode, and you played the song, would you then just be able to go pick up any other regular guitar and play that song?
DS: Effectively, yes. The underlying design of Rock Band Pro across all the instruments is that whatever you’re doing in the game translates to some form of genuine musical ability outside of the game. So on the keyboard, even if you’re playing on Easy or Medium, the notes that you’re playing, or the notes that the game is cueing you to play, are pitch-accurate.
And in guitar, it’s the same way. We’ve designed an interface that covers everything from single notes and single-note runs, to power chords, to full barre chords and open chords. It gets pretty complex.
We have arpeggio language — it does take you all the way through to Expert, which is note-for-note authoring…for ridiculous songs! Like, “Crazy Train,” or “Rainbow in the Dark,” or whatever — these songs that have blistering solos — in order to beat those songs in Pro mode on Expert, you will have to learn the song.
The interview also talks about how the new guitar and keyboard peripherals will have MIDI out.
This is huge.
The line between video games and music creation is officially blurred.
So the big news today in the tech world is that AT&T Wireless will be drastically changing their smartphone data plan options on June 7th.
It boils down to the following for smartphone users:
No more $30 “unlimited”(actually 5gb) data plan (if you have one now you can still be on it, even if you buy the new iPhone, but you won’t be able to get it back if you change plans)
Choice 1: “DataPlus” $15 a month for 200mb of data (Overages: $15 for each additional 200mb)
Choice 2: “DataPro” $25 a month for 2gb of data (Overages: $10 for each additional 1gb)
If you want to tether your data, you’ll have to choose the DataPro plan and pay an additional $20. (Shitty, but unsurprising)
Naturally, the first thing that went through my mind when i saw this was, “ZOMG WTF!! FUCK YOU AT&T YOU ARE THE WORST!”
Then, once I was done nerd raging, I thought, “Hmm, how much data do I actually use each month?”
I’ve gone over the hypothetical 200mb plan only twice, and didn’t even come close to a 2gb limit. I can’t remember what I did in November, but I do know that in May I had been streaming more live baseball games using the MLB At Bat app. Using the iPhone for Twitter, Foursquare, and looking random shit up while you are out does not use up a ton of bandwidth. It’s pretty clear streaming media is going to be the deciding factor for a lot of people. Since I’m paying $30 a month for data currently, I could be saving either $15 or $5, depending on how much I want to limit myself to.
That’s the good news. The concerning news is how this will affect rumored features in the new iPhone, such as video calls and a cloud-based iTunes. According to Wired, 200mb is roughly 7 hours of streaming audio. Thats like 2 baseball games, or a few commutes. Live, 2-way video streaming just sounds like it would eat up bandwidth like Brian ate poop in last month’s Family Guy episode. While I don’t see myself using video chat regularly, I’d like the option to, without feeling like I’m wasting precious allocated bits.
Maybe it was just wishful thinking to assume I could save $15 a month on my phone bill. It’s looking pretty tough to get by on only 200mb if you’re looking to stream any sort content. Ideally, Pandora, Spotify, iTunes, or whatever music cloud service ends up winning will over a robust caching feature so I can just preload all of my music at home before heading out into the wild.
Another silver lining in all of this is that AT&T will let you figure out which plan you want without much dicking:
The carrier’s going to be very flexible about changing between the DataPlus and DataPro plans — if you’re on DataPlus, for example, and you discover that you’re blowing past your allotment, you can choose either to start DataPro the following billing cycle, pro-rate it, or apply the higher plan retroactively to the beginning of your current billing cycle.
I look at this whole thing as hey, at least I’ll probably be saving $5 a month at the very least.
Trent Reznor, I love you, but you’re bringing me down. With your music, that is. Honestly, it just isn’t that great.
I’m not trying to hate; I honestly just haven’t really liked anything you’ve put out since Year Zero. Remember that Nine Inch Nails song, “Wish”? That song kicks so much ass, I just want to hear something new like that. But your new stuff’s gotten more experimental, downtempo, inaccessible, and for lack of a better word, “meh.” I gave your new band/project, How To Destroy Angels, a shot because of your pedigree, but I’m sad to report that the underwhelming single “A Drowning” is the best song on it.
That being said, I still love your acceptance and knowledge of how to distribute your wares on the internet. You provide pristinely encoded mp3s for the low, fair price of an email address. You make it easy for us to tweet, blog, facebook, and share your music without treating us as thieves. I’m glad you’ve offered me the chance to come to my musical conclusion by sampling your music for free.
I am sure there are people out there who enjoy your new musical direction and I don’t fault them for it. It looks like you’ve already “sold out” a $50 tshirt package on your merch site, so congratulations on that too. It’s just that I don’t think your music is for me anymore.
Kanye’s new track “Power” leaked on the internet earlier today and it’s pretty fresh-sounding. Co-produced by underground Dallas beatcrafter, Symbolyc One and featuring R&B singer Dwele at the end, “Power” is a return to “College Dropout” form for our favorite “douchey” rapper/producer.
Most of the talk is going to be about the King Crimson sample of “21st Century Schizoid Man”, but I love the dirty drum beat juxtaposed with an African chorus chant. It definitely evokes memory of the epic “Jesus Walks”. The little piano melody halfway through is a nice touch too.
“What about the lyrics?” you may ask. Check out the beginning of this verse:
Fuck SNL and the whole cast
Tell ’em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass
More specifically, they can kiss my asshole
Or this gem:
I don’t need yo’ pussy, bitch, I’m on my own dick
Yeah, man, Kanye is a potty guy. But props for backing it up with a well produced track.
Last week, Arcade Fire released two clips of songs from their upcoming album, The Suburbs. Music blogs and the indie station on XM/Sirius trumpeted these 30 second previews as ZOMG MEGATON ANNOUNCEMENTS.
Come on.
What is this, 2003? I’d like to think Arcade Fire of all bands would not stoop to the “hype game”. Just give us the whole fucking songs.
Anyway, the songs are now up in their entirety. You can listen to “The Suburbs” and “Month of May” via the cleverly designed Flash Widget below.
Personally, I am not that impressed. Both songs are fairly straightforward and serviceable, if uninteresting. “Month of May” is the uptempo rocker, while “The Suburbs” is a more happy-go-lucky indie track. Consider my expectations tempered for the full album when it comes out on August 3rd.
Click this link if you would like to give Arcade Fire your hard earned money.
Protip: You can drag the spinning record in the widget back and forth like a real LP. Neat, huh?
