Rock+Band

=**Rock Band** =

Here is a little idea of what the game would be like if you could do it perfectly. Yeah, right.

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Basically, the idea of the game is to learn to play a variety of faux musical instruments that might be in a rock band. You can try your hand at guitar, bass guitar, drums, or even singing. You get to choose songs and then you follow the rhythm set up by the game in order to recreate the songs of great musicians. You follow a string of colors that guide you through the notes/beats on your instrument of choice.

One of the things I liked about Rock Band was that you could browse through songs by difficulty level so that you had some idea of what you were getting into. Each song had a list of instruments and a rating for how difficult that song was on that instrument. I tried the guitar first, but then realized that bass was a lot easier on most songs, so switched to that for most of the time. That was hard enough for me!

What I noticed most about the development of my learning was that I had to find the rhythm of each new song and that took me a little bit at the beginning of each song. I'm sure if I went back and did it again I would try the same song a couple times in a row to see if I could get better at that particular song. Once I had the beat down it was a lot easier to get into a zone where I could find the right notes to go along with the beat. Trying to get both the rhythm and the beat going at once was pretty tricky.

There is a lot of hand/eye coordination required by Rock Band. You watch the screen to see what to play next and as it comes across the screen, you have to translate it into notes and rhythm with your hands. Every time you got a note right, it exploded in a little colorful light to let you know you hit it. I think you have to pace your own learning somewhat in this game. Once the song starts you just have to try to follow it, but you can choose the difficulty level and such before you begin. In this way, you structure your own learning rate, rather than the game doing it for you.

If you miss a lot of notes, you begin to see a red stripe across the screen. Eventually, if you don't get better at hitting the notes, you'll be booed off the stage, which is upsetting, even though its not real.

One of the Principles of Learning used in Rock Band are Psychosocial Moratorium since there is less of a social stigma attached to failing at the game than there would be if you messed up like crazy in a real band. Obviously there are the Committed Learning and Practice Principles at play; I wanted to keep practicing these songs to see if I could get better. It helped to have a lot of other nice filler music so your own mistakes didn't sound so horrible. I'm sure there are lots of others at play, but those are the Principles that first come to mind in this game.

Okay, who knew there were online Rock Band Battles you could join?? Not me! []

There are also forums and blogs on the [|RockBand.com] site where you can get lots of info on the game and even ask questions. I also ran across a lot of youtube videos talking about how to play the game.

I actually really liked Rock Band and would probably try it again, though I would prefer to try it alone for awhile so I don't mess up the other people's chance to finish the song! It was a fun game that allowed me a chance to practice my rhythm, and lord knows, I need lots of practice on that!
 * Final Analysis:**