A few weeks ago, we (being the members of the Educational Gaming Commons) were fortunate enough to meet with several faculty members from the Penn State music department. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possible educational impact of games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero on music education, and was in my opinion, very enlightening. If you ever played one of these games for any length of time, you would probably agree that there is some potential in such an idea. But that doesnt mean its a perfect one, and one of the important outcomes of our meeting was a candid discussion about some of the educational shortcomings of these extraordinarily popular music games.
Perhaps the most significant one of these shortcomings is that while you can play whatever music is in the jukebox, you are still limited to the music in the jukebox. Or put another way, you only get to play what the developers of Rock Band and Guitar Hero say you can play. And while we all love Blink 182 (or not) there is a whole lot of music, entire genres of music, out there that these games will never touch. And as you can imagine, thats a major limiting factor in any attempt to bring these commercial explosions to the music classroom.
At least it was, up until yesterday.
Enter the press release for the next in line for the Guitar Hero franchise, Guitar Hero World Tour, and a new feature that blows the lid off pot: Music Studio. If the name doesnt give it away, Music Studio lets you the player create your own original music using any of the Guitar Hero instruments, upload it to GHTunes (a user generated music repository), and share it with anyone else in the guitar hero community. Self created tracks cant contain vocals, likely for copyright reasons, but regardless, this was supposed to be years away. And so many doors are opening I can scarcely see them all.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I like to call a game changer (puntastic!). The educational possibilities are huge. The impact on music is huge. The community aspect is huge. And you better believe Guitar Hero World Tour's sales figures will be huge.
There is no need to beat this point to death like I normally do as I think it pretty much speaks for itself. But this is a big deal. And I for one, can't wait for our next meeting with the music faculty.
UPDATE:
The tentative release date for Rock Band World Tour is October 14, 2008 - price $189.99
Image from kotau.com
Perhaps the most significant one of these shortcomings is that while you can play whatever music is in the jukebox, you are still limited to the music in the jukebox. Or put another way, you only get to play what the developers of Rock Band and Guitar Hero say you can play. And while we all love Blink 182 (or not) there is a whole lot of music, entire genres of music, out there that these games will never touch. And as you can imagine, thats a major limiting factor in any attempt to bring these commercial explosions to the music classroom.
At least it was, up until yesterday.
Enter the press release for the next in line for the Guitar Hero franchise, Guitar Hero World Tour, and a new feature that blows the lid off pot: Music Studio. If the name doesnt give it away, Music Studio lets you the player create your own original music using any of the Guitar Hero instruments, upload it to GHTunes (a user generated music repository), and share it with anyone else in the guitar hero community. Self created tracks cant contain vocals, likely for copyright reasons, but regardless, this was supposed to be years away. And so many doors are opening I can scarcely see them all.
- Music composition for the masses - lowering the barrier to music entry and compositional understanding
- Independent music distribution and exposure to a massive community
- Unlimited content that is bottom up instead of top down
- Potential to expand Guitar Hero into every genre of music other than Rock & Roll
- Ending world hunger
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I like to call a game changer (puntastic!). The educational possibilities are huge. The impact on music is huge. The community aspect is huge. And you better believe Guitar Hero World Tour's sales figures will be huge.There is no need to beat this point to death like I normally do as I think it pretty much speaks for itself. But this is a big deal. And I for one, can't wait for our next meeting with the music faculty.
UPDATE:
The tentative release date for Rock Band World Tour is October 14, 2008 - price $189.99
Image from kotau.com
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