Save the Robot – Chris Dahlen

I’ve been going down to Harmonix’s offices in Cambridge, to do a feature for the AV Club on how they work, what they’re like, and what we’ll get from Rock Band 2. The full feature runs next week, but today we ran a hands-on preview of Rock Band 2 itself. A couple key details were still embargoed – for example, I could mention “add-ons” to the drum kit but not state exactly what they were – and I couldn’t name any but the ten songs they’ve already announced. As much as I howl and I whine, I can’t even tell you the best song I got to play when I was in their office this week.

But I was pretty happy with the preview, especially at the end, when I got to talk about their “indie initiative”:

As Greg LoPiccolo, VP of Product Development, explained, “We have a very ambitious indie initiative that’s cooking now. It’s not really ready for any detailed announcement. But long-term, we see that as a significant component of the Rock Band universe, that gets used actively by the independent music community to debut new material. We think that it’s an ideal way for people to explore new music.”

As news of Rock Band 2 continues to leak into the press, I’ve heard a lot of consternation about the lack of user-generated content. Penny Arcade’s Tycho all but calls it a dealbreaker, saying that Guitar Hero IV, with its songwriting tools, has “outflanked” Harmonix’s Rock Band. Personally? I think Harmonix made the right call.

Except in small doses, user-generated content generally sucks. Especially when the tool is as limited as this screenshot suggests it’ll be:

You could argue that it would lead to some good music, and that the good music will prevail. Mitch Krpata made that argument today, and it’s totally fair. I have no idea how the user-generated tracks will turn out. I used to think that live music had a future on Second Life; since then, I’ve stopped making predictions.

But here’s the main reason I’m against it: it’s not really that hard to make music. You need to cross certain hurdles – buy a cheap instrument, or download software on your laptop, or just make yourself clap and sing. But if you’re even slightly determined, you can get started. I bought a $40 ukulele this winter and recorded an album. It’s not good, but I went through the steps of actually sitting down and making music myself, instead of monkeying around with some tool in a video game.

The thing about Harmonix is that even though they strive to bring total non-musicians closer to music, they still mark a clear boundary between playing music and not. The instruments can’t make music within the Rock Band software, but you can plug them into a PC and do whatever you want with them. Harmonix didn’t build a music-creation tool, but they did provide a drum trainer that could actually, sort of, basically teach you something about how to play drums. And like I said, my uke only cost $40. I have to keep it in tune and play in time and work out the chords and try not to screw up. And that’s how you learn.

That’s not the same as a closed music-making system. I don’t know much about what Guitar Hero IV is doing. I’ve read that their system resembles using Apple GarageBand, which wouldn’t be bad, although it doesn’t support vox (which makes “song”-writing kinda tough). It may be flexible – but it’s not as flexible as picking up an instrument and learning to make some noise yourself. You can’t just throw in some harmonics or crank the distortion or screw around just to see what the thing’ll do. What it mainly does is take away the small amount of initiative it takes to make music for real.

And by the way, if more people took that chance? They might find it’s not as hard as it seems.