The Summer Music Review

From the Music Memiors

Summer is officially over so let's do a recap.

Tell us your summer musical memories, whether they are a concert, an album you bought, a song that became special or a new artist you discovered.

This summer my music was dominated by one thing - Music Rhythm Video Games. Guitar Hero, and most notably Rock Band (and recently Rock Band 2). I got Rock Band sometime in late April. And it has become my most played video games.

How does this pertain to music... in multiple ways.

First it is a completely new way to experience your music. Yeah the instruments are plastic, but you feel as if you are playing the music. It's interactive, and man do you pay more attention to the music than when you just listen. It isn't playing in a band by any means, but it is more than just sitting and listening.

Second - because you are interacting with the music, you learn more about it. Since playing the drums or bass in the game, I find it much easier to pick out just the drum and bass parts in songs when I listen. I never had any musical training, but now I can see how the individual pieces make the complete sound, something I've never done before. And related to this - I've learned to keep a beat. I've never been able to do that either, but after playing the game with drums, I can now. I've also (in trying to get to notes I can't normally reach while singing) learned the very basics of singing from the diaphragm. So I have two actual musical things I've learned from playing the game.

Third - the tracklists of Rock Band, Rock Band 2, the DLC for them, and some of the Guitar Hero games are all over the place. RB 2 has sixties favorites (Spirit in the Sky by Normal Greenbaum), Rage against the Machine, Death Metal growling songs, Duran Duran, post punk pop... and more. Between just Rock Band and RB 2, I've been exposed to 20 new bands or singers that I never really listened to before. So the games are expanding my musical horizons (which are fairly broad to begin with).

And that has been my summer in music - lots of new artists, learning new musical abilities, discovering new ways to interact with my music... all from playing a game. :)