Real guitars are't just for old people

January 14, 2009 1:52 PM

Little Big Star (free software, currently in beta - video) it's the first guitar rythm game with support for real instruments. In the next months two more products of the same kind should be released, Disney Star Guitar and Guitar Rising.

Real istruments or - at least - more realistic fake ones; is this the future of the genre?
No one knows yet if this kind of software will help people to learn or get better at playing, but it will sure turn the difficulty up to eleven.

[bonus track: Don't forget you can also use your rockband drums as electronic drums but you might want to buy a second set.]

posted by darkripper (16 comments total)

Never understood the appeal of these games. With the amount of effort and money people put into them, they could learn how to play real instruments. This sorta makes more sense.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:24 PM on January 14, 2009

I don't get it. With the amount of energy put into playing a real instrument like that, you could become really good at guitar hero.
posted by stavrogin at 2:28 PM on January 14, 2009 [15 favorites]

Wow, 2 minutes from posting of a thread about Rock Band/Guitar Hero to the "Get off my fucking lawn/learn to play a real instrument" post. I don't know if that's a record, Ironmouth, but you've put in a good showing.
posted by Inkoate at 2:38 PM on January 14, 2009 [4 favorites]

I don't get it either. With the amount of energy put into releasing a piece of software for free (as in beer) he could release the source and have really good bugfixes and have it ported to other platforms and instruments. This sorta makes more sense.

That said I'm happy to see something like this happening. I do enjoy playing the drums on RB2 and it's fun messing my friends up from time to time playing along on a real guitar but I always felt that there was something lacking in the whole concept. Video game as CBT for musicians is an awesome concept and I hope this provides an answer for some of my non-musician friends who have earnestly asked if playing GH would help them learn to play the guitars they have sitting around the house.
posted by mcrandello at 2:49 PM on January 14, 2009

Another interesting thing with Little Big Star: it seems you can also use it to develop stuff like minigames, lessons and whatnot. There's a pong example.
posted by darkripper at 3:10 PM on January 14, 2009

For whatever reason this reminds me of this little kid totally tearing up his MPC and dropping The Game's Wouldn't Get Far.
posted by geoff. at 3:13 PM on January 14, 2009

With the amount of effort and money people put into them, they could learn how to play real instruments.

Er, no. I think the difference in time between the two is pretty substantial. Also, playing something like Rock Band is something you do at parties / with friends, as opposed to learning an instrument which is not usually something people get together and drink beer to do.

(I suppose you could, but it's really a different sort of experience).
posted by wildcrdj at 3:24 PM on January 14, 2009

+1 for "why is he releasing free software that isn't open source"?

He's clearly got a very limited view of the world, I had to search even to find out that it was PC-only.

Tons of people might have helped him - even me - but now he's on his own.

as opposed to learning an instrument which is not usually something people get together and drink beer to do.

I strongly beg to differ - though it's often smoking pot rather than drinking beer.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 3:32 PM on January 14, 2009

Needs more Alex Chilton.
posted by FelliniBlank at 3:41 PM on January 14, 2009 [2 favorites]

why is he releasing free software that isn't open source

I'd have suspected that fair use of commercial songs might have somehow conflicted with OSS licensing, but his stated reason is that he's afraid that commercial titles will duplicate his code without permission.

it will sure turn the difficulty up to eleven

Mr. Tesh, I'm taking the black keys away from you until you learn to behave.
posted by kid ichorous at 3:50 PM on January 14, 2009

Bastards beat me! I was intending to start learning the guitar this year and I was totally going to have a little go at programming what I was going to call Real Guitar Hero (until the cease & desist) this summer.

His closed source philosophy is kind of interesting:

I have been thinking about this many times since i began this work. I generally sympathise with open source efforts, but im scared of going into that domain for various reasons. I was working very hard to get where we are now and I'm affraid of 'theft' - in particular from the upcomming closed commercial titles.

It looks like his note detection may be working better than similar in-development commercial project's note detection and he doesn't want to have an open source project taken advantage of or perverted for closed source projects like Apple did with FreeBSD. If he was the only rare genius who could get this note detection to work this would be pretty cool in its way, but I feel like he's at most delaying them a little while...

I wonder more generally how much open source -> closed source plagiarism is going on that we don't know about, either as secret corporate policy or just individual programmers being lazy.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 3:57 PM on January 14, 2009

I don't get it. With the amount of energy put into playing a real instrument like that, you could become really good at guitar hero.

I bought the Ion drum kit for Rock Band - it's an actual low-end electronic kit, just minus the drum brain. Of course, Rock Band 2 has a freestyle mode without a song playing and the notes coming down, so I can just sit and play a rhythm, or start up my own music and attempt to play along. And I have - and found that it's actually really hard to keep any sort of complex beat on your own. So I'm practicing doing so.

In other words, I'm actually using one of these games as a springboard to learning to actually play an instrument. True, it's different for drums since the game's mechanism is very similar to the real thing, unlike with the guitar, but it shows there's room for these games to actually teach people instead of just entertain them.

It looks like this could do for guitar what RB does with the drums.
posted by evilangela at 5:10 PM on January 14, 2009 [2 favorites]

If he was the only rare genius who could get this note detection to work this would be pretty cool in its way, but I feel like he's at most delaying them a little while...

Yeah, I agree. Note detection in academia has come quite a long ways, and especially when you use short-time DFFTs, they're pretty damn accurate and fast as is. I think he's unnecessarily paranoid; if he really was bothered, though, he can release the code under a much stricter license than GPL. It's his code, and so as long as he's willing to stick up for himself in the case of commercial infringement (which would actually be a sound financial decision on his part) or companies aren't willing to take the risk, he has little to lose.
posted by spiderskull at 5:27 PM on January 14, 2009

With the amount of energy put into copying the Coda website, they could have designed one of their own.
posted by signal at 5:36 PM on January 14, 2009

evilangela, it's definitely different with the drums. The one problem I had trying to pick up kit in middle/high school was the coordination with the pedals. Being a clumsy oaf it was simply easier to give up the sticks and play a horn. It's certainly fun to sit down and work through the inevitable clams without getting noise complaints from the neighbours or having the other bandmates throwing things at you. I only wish I had this in my teens.

It's certainly possible to tell when someone's stolen your code, even from compiled binaries. There was a case a few years back, I think it was one of the router brands and the FOSS guys were able to tell exactly which bits of code had been lifted, and iirc forced the company responsible to either C&D or open the code. Does anyone remember that one? He may actually be better protected in having his code in the open and protected with one of the 'viral' source licenses than keeping closed if someone manages to figure out what he's doing and copies it anyway.
posted by mcrandello at 7:54 PM on January 14, 2009

I'm not having a lot of luck getting this working. My default setup is the guitar plugged into an FX pedal, which is then plugged directly into the microphone input on my Audigy2 ZS. I tried to avoid using ASIO settings because it was giving me an error message, but even if I use DirectSound, the game crashes when I try to play.

Do I have to have a song selected to play? The Synth options don't seem to work either. The only indication I have that the game recognizes that I'm playing is that the tuner seems to work when I go to test the synth.
posted by Clamwacker at 8:53 PM on January 14, 2009