[Harmonix] New Rock Band peripherals are coming!

JonBob

Did you know you can still play games at home with plastic musical instruments, like you could in the mid-00s? It's true! Harmonix has been a pioneer in the rhythm game field for years, bringing us FreQuency, Amplitude, Karaoke Revolution, and Guitar Hero. In 2007, they brought a room full of plastic instruments together with the release of Rock Band, and the platform is alive and thriving to this day. New song releases every week!


What Songs Can I Play?

As of this writing, there are 2841 songs on the Rock Band platform. The vast majority of these are available in Rock Band 4: either on disc, as an import from an older game, or as DLC. Want to browse the selections? No problem!

https://dlcquickplay.com/


Rock Band Rivals

The latest iteration of Rock Band is available for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4. Features of the recent update include:

• A hilarious "behind the music" style Rockudrama mode
• Head-to-head Rivals mode competition between groups of players, based around weekly themed challenges
• Tons of UI improvements, like advanced song list filtering
• Online synchronous play

Penny Arcade Crews

To get the most out of Rivals, join a crew! Enjoy seeing how you stack up with everyone else. Here are the active crews of PA forumgoers:
Move Minor Standard (XB1)
PAPS4 (PS4)
All-Arcadian Rejects (XB1)

lionheart_m

Still active on the ps4 crew

BlackDragon480

Love that new thread smell.

When's online multi-player coming again, this month's patch right?

JonBob

@lionheart_m Can you give me a player list for that crew? I can't figure out how to find a list of players on other crews.

FyreWulff

BlackDragon480 wrote: »

Love that new thread smell.

When's online multi-player coming again, this month's patch right?

January 25th

HappylilElf

JonBob wrote: »

@lionheart_m Can you give me a player list for that crew? I can't figure out how to find a list of players on other crews.

I'll get it to you later tonight. Not all names coincide with forum handles but I'll PM you the list.

BlackDragon480

FyreWulff wrote: »

BlackDragon480 wrote: »

Love that new thread smell.

When's online multi-player coming again, this month's patch right?

January 25th

Sweet, that's also my dad's birthday, another thing to celebrate

And this week's challenge was made for me. I'll rack up 150-200 plays for sure since I get a 3 day weekend.

BlackDragon480

Okay, Halls of Valhalla is 5*able for me and I already got a high 5* on The Stage, but that song from The Red Chords can die in a freaking fire, I'll probably just do a quick run on Hard for it, because it's expert note chart sucks donkey balls.

High point of tonight's little 45 minute session, I finally GS'd Hallowed Be Thy Name.

Ov3rcharge

Finally got back on the crew. Gonna get us back up to gold lads.

BlackDragon480

Ov3rcharge wrote: »

Finally got back on the crew. Gonna get us back up to gold lads.

Oh, we at Platinum now, Diamond is the next plateau. You may have to do heavy lifting on the 1st 2 Spotlight songs, I don't see myself putting in the time and effort to GS them on guitar. The Stage is doable with some practice this weekend.

I'll instead content myself with playing every Maiden, Megadeth, and Judas Priest song I've got, till I'm literally oozing 2 guitar harmonies out of my very pores.

FyreWulff

Some recent runs.

Everlong - Brutal 4 Stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK77gkAMiSE

Rebel Yell - Brutal 3 Stars (almost failed out!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNdG_6j78x4


Thunderstruck intro dry run - I think this song is possible, I just hate the fucking chart after the intro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTR2VDucxeE

HappylilElf

PM with the roster sent

Kinda disappointed with some omissions from this events songs. No Pretty Reckless and no Halestorm mostly. They're borderline but scrolling the included songs there's quite a few that are borderline metal.

Santa Claustrophobia

FyreWulff wrote: »

Thunderstruck intro dry run - I think this song is possible, I just hate the fucking chart after the intro

https://youtu.be/ojrvfoJeueg

JonBob

OP updated. If anyone wants to clarify forum name <-> Gamertag/PSN ID conversions, feel free. Also, what are the other crew names? I know there are at least a couple more.

A bummer of a challenge for me this week. But it looks like Spinal Tap is in; I will be playing a lot of that, I think.

HappylilElf

A lot of metal just isn't fun to play for me. Skittle waterfalls somehow manage to be both uninteresting and a pain in the ass at the same time.

Somewhere around half the songs available for the challenge this week fall into the category of "things I own but won't play because fuck that"

JonBob

Since the lighter ratings are back in Rivals, I don't even see a bunch of those as existing in my catalog. :-/

FyreWulff

They said this week was done by just marking all songs as metal or nu metal as valid, and can't go in an add individual borderline songs.

My guess is there's two methods, and they haven't written the toolchain glue to unite them.

Also, to continue the covers conversation from the old thread, special mention goes to Last Train to Clarksville. A cover done by session musicians of a band who covered/mimed the recordings of session musicians that actually performed the album versions of Monkees song

Santa Claustrophobia

FyreWulff wrote: »

They said this week was done by just marking all songs as metal or nu metal as valid, and can't go in an add individual borderline songs.

My guess is there's two methods, and they haven't written the toolchain glue to unite them.

Also, to continue the covers conversation from the old thread, special mention goes to Last Train to Clarksville. A cover done by session musicians of a band who covered/mimed the recordings of session musicians that actually performed the album versions of Monkees song

Famously, The Monkees were not permitted by their management to function as a working band for this album, with the group's contributions limited almost entirely to vocal tracks. Eight of the original LP's twelve tracks feature one lone Monkee singing lead vocal over instrumentation (and even backing vocals) recorded entirely by session musicians. Other tracks feature multiple Monkees singing over session players; only on the two tracks produced by Michael Nesmith does a Monkee (Peter Tork) get to play an instrument (guitar). (Note that Nesmith also wrote or co-wrote these two tracks.) No tracks on the original LP feature participation from all four Monkees.

BlackDragon480

Dissapointed that Dream Theater isn't getting counted as metal for this challenge.

I can GS On the Backs of Angels and Panic Attack in my sleep at this point and a GS on Metropolis is doable if I could ever get above 80% in that first solo.

lionheart_m

Singing Metal is weird. I really can't sing Maiden like you're supposed to and it sounds so weird when I attempt them. Though I do enjoy trying to do that metal growl.

BlackDragon480

lionheart_m wrote: »

Singing Metal is weird. I really can't sing Maiden like you're supposed to and it sounds so weird when I attempt them. Though I do enjoy trying to do that metal growl.

I have a tenor and some choir experience, so I can do Dickenson, or M. Shadows, or Dio , and/or Geoff Tate, just don't ask me to do David Draiman or Rob Zombie in the original octave.

Ketar

I'm a bass. Metal vocals...yeesh. This is not going to be a week of big contributions for me. I'm too rusty on drums and guitar to do much there.

My friends get a kick out of me doing the metal growl, but I can't do much of it without killing my throat for a while.


Also, not that it really matters but @JonBob I am Ketar here and on PSN for the crew listing.

JonBob

I have had a really bad cold this week, so full-voice singing is not at all in the cards for me in this challenge. I'm pretty good at faking things with humming in lower octaves when required, though.

quovadis13

Put in my time this week and that Hour of Rats song is just terrible. About 45 seconds into the expert drum chart I said screw this and just flipped it down to hard.

Thirith

Yeah, I'm no fan of "Hour of Rats" either. I'm wondering if this one can be done as a kind of recitative, though, or whether you need to growl yourself hoarse in order to score.

FyreWulff

Isn't it talkies? Just fart into the microphone for 3 minutes straight and you've got an FC.

Thirith

That sounds more difficult to me than doing the actual song, but then I'm not a prodigious farter. Seriously, though, my wife's the one who sings in our band; I don't really know what does and does not count as correct in those passages that aren't sung. To what extent does rhythm come into it?

Santa Claustrophobia

Isn't there a video of somebody just placing a mic in front of a fan or something and beating an all-talkie song in RB2?

FyreWulff

Yeah, it's literally any noise.

Only Rock Band 1 did any form of beat/constanant/vowel detection. It was not fun. And thus talkies have been gimmes since RB2. With only Beatles outright just not even counting them (but still had them charted) for scoring purposes

Lord Palington

Is there any room in the Xbox crew? Got Rivals for Christmas, would love to have an excuse to play the game a couple of times a week.

JonBob

Lord Palington wrote: »

Is there any room in the Xbox crew? Got Rivals for Christmas, would love to have an excuse to play the game a couple of times a week.

Crews cap at 10, so we can't add people without removing someone. Not everyone in the crew is active, so this is probably possible... but it's Perrsun's call. I know there are other Xbox crews with PA folks, but I don't know what they are called. Anyone? Anyone?

In other news, I did a vocal run. Hour of Rats is a trivial FC, of course. I probably could improve my score with some path planning, but then I'd have to listen to it again. No thanks. I did terribly on Halls of Valhalla because I keep coughing in the middle of phrases and breaking streak. Hopefully I'll recover before the challenge ends and I can improve. Don't have the A7X track and not buying it just for the challenge.

BlackDragon480

I won't have my mic till Monday, but I can do a decent Halford and can kill M. Shadows, so if u can't I can give them a shot Monday or Tuesday.

vagrant_winds

Singing metal is hard, except when it's not singing. I gave my shitty contrition for the PS4 Crew. H-4Star the two singing, and (lol) X-Gold the speaking one.

I wish they manually put some of the metal songs that should really be part of the week in.

Lord Palington

Gotcha. Don't kick anyone on my account, but if someone else has a crew they'd like a decent guitar/bass and not great drummer/singer player for, let me know. My Xbox live is the same as my forum handle.

Reznik

Hey, I'm RenegadeGuardian on the PS4 crew.

Apologies for my lack of participation up til now. I finally got new instruments so I did what I could on Expert drums tonight.

vagrant_winds

Man, all the other weekly songs are so much better than the three they picked.

vagrant_winds

Did some songs on vocals and threw us into Green. Also sent friend requests on PS4 to everyone else in the crew so I can see all your high scores when playing normally.

HappylilElf

Reznik wrote: »

Hey, I'm RenegadeGuardian on the PS4 crew.

Apologies for my lack of participation up til now. I finally got new instruments so I did what I could on Expert drums tonight.

No worries, we bounce between gold and platinum for the most part. The crews in Diamond or higher are fairly insane.

Celloriffic

Put in an hour of metal this evening, getting the Xbox crew to safety (for now). Had to play on hard to get to 5 star performances - tried expert, couldn't break 3 stars on Hangar 18 or Tornado of Souls.
Ow. My fretting fingers.

FyreWulff

TIL Harmonix considers the Snoop tracks re-records and NOT remixes.

Dark Raven X

C

Lord Palington wrote: »

Gotcha. Don't kick anyone on my account, but if someone else has a crew they'd like a decent guitar/bass and not great drummer/singer player for, let me know. My Xbox live is the same as my forum handle.

I just started too! Let us team up and lame it out. How about... "All-Arcadian Rejects"? ;D