Surveying Literature: Musical Representation in the Video Games Guitar Hero and Rock Band (Nicole Biamonte)

I just finished reading some chapters in Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom, edited by Nicole Biamonte.  The chapter I was most interested in in terms of the blog is a chapter written by Nicole: Musical Representation in the Video Games Guitar Hero and Rock Band.  The title pretty much gives the thrust of the article-- she explains how the games show rhythm, pitch, and form to the players.  She also discusses the layout of the controller buttons on the guitar and how they're represented onscreen.  I wasn't aware that most versions of Guitar Hero mention the form of the song as you play along.  Of course, this helps the player recognize the music that is coming ahead just as keeping the form in mind helps the musician players remember what's coming up.

I have to admit...  I kind of idealize this style of writing-- where it's as if the author is from another planet, stepped on to Earth, has come across a video game, and is describing what it's like to play to the citizens back home.  It really gives a chance to connect with an audience outside of your area specialization.  In effect, though, this is exactly what Bimonte is doing-- her target audience is musicians, who, I hypothesize, are less likely to play these games since they're making music in their daily work.  All the detail she goes into about how the terms that appear in the game: describing the "outro" as the "coda; often motivically related to intro or body of song," it's as if she's taken Rock Band/ Guitar Hero speak and converted it into classical music language.  She compares the notation in Guitar Hero/ Rock Band with current standard music notation as well as historic neumes.

My favorite part of the article are the activities she suggests some activities for a music class that use Rock Band/ Guitar Hero.  Having those with less knowledge transcribe well known tunes into musical neumes, sort of common to these games' notation, while those with pretty advanced musical knowledge could take a music and simplify it, deciding what pitches, rhythms, and contours would be worthy of being represented on screen and which would be left out.  Super cool!

Most interesting quotes:
"The visual and aural separation of song tracks into lead, rhythm, and bass guitars, drums, and vocals trains listeners to parse layers of musical texture.  Many players have commented that their gameplay experiences have led them to hear textures more completely, not only in the songs with the games, but also in all of their music listening.  -from Kiri Miller's Guitar Hero: A Research Blog.  guitarheroresearch.blogspot.com

"There is as yet no keyboard instrument controller for the games, which is not only because of the difficulty of designing a simplified version but also because playing keyboards requires relatively minimal movement and is, thus, inherently less performative than guitar."
Uhh...  This would be in contrast the the praise for Rock Band III that I encountered in my study of the audio mentioned in G4's Top 100 games.  Here, Scott Porter states that everyone wants to play the keyboard and that it's the best instrument.  Interesting contrast of ideas.....

My initial thought at this point is that this article would be better suited as a possible reading/ possible activities to do in my Tech for Mus Ed class than it would be for my game music course.  Although the thrust is game music, Biamonte is explaining to classically trained musicians how the game works.  The book also contains two other articles that caught my eye: Benjamin Bierman's Appreciating the Mix: Teaching Music Listening Skills through Sound-Mixing Techniques got me thinking about how to talk about mixing music in my game music class.  Then there's Brent Auerbach, Bret Aarden, and Mathonwy Bostock's DDR at the Crossroads: A Report on a Pilot Study to Integrate Music Video-Game Technology into the Aural-Skills Classroom-- which reads as a typical Mus Ed empirical study on using Dance Dance Revolution as a teaching tool.