J and I love the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. My preferred instrument is the drums, while J likes to rock it out on the guitar — on expert mode, no less.
We always joke about how years down the road, J will turn into Randy Marsh (my favorite South Park character), and so I can soooo see him re-enacting this scene in 10 years:
When we first heard about the new Rock Band 3 and how it will incorporate a new instrument — the keyboard — we were definitely intrigued. Will it be a keytar? Will it just be an arrangement of cheap plastic buttons that resemble a keyboard? Or will it actually be a full-sized keyboard?
Today, our questions were answered, as USAToday revealed the new Rock Band 3 keyboard:
According to Engadget,
The keyboard spans two octaves of for-serious white and blacks, but there’s a row of colored labels above those keys. How narrowly you’re required to hit the “real” key corresponding to the note in the song is based on what difficulty level you choose — on the easier levels you just have to smash into the correctly colored neighborhood.
You can see the keyboard in action here:
While I’m glad that the new instrument is basically a miniature keyboard, I’m not sure how I feel about the way it’s played. Being a pianist, I would feel like I’m learning a whole new instrument…nevermind the fact that I believe just pressing a random key in the correct color category seems like cheating.
Are there any other pianists out there who agree with my reasoning?
I have heard that guitarists have trouble playing the Rock Band and Guitar Hero guitars for the same reason. However, J plays the guitar and he had no trouble picking up the gameplay — he’s so good that he actually scares me sometimes! So perhaps I’ll be lucky in learning the new Rock Band keyboard quickly too.
Rock Band 3 will be released this holiday season. I can’t wait!
