Understanding How Rock Band Functions

When Bob Dylan took the stage during his 1966 world tour

with The Band backing him, it marked a pivotal moment in rock 'n' roll history. Although he had already electrified his dedicated fans a few months earlier at The Newport Folk Festival, performing with The Band—previously known as The Hawks—solidified Bob Dylan's transformation from an acoustic singer/songwriter to a true rock legend.

Now, we're not claiming that players of the wildly popular video game Rock Band at home are on the same level as one of America's musical legends, but you get the idea. While Guitar Hero unleashed the soloist within millions worldwide, Rock Band has introduced those same players to the experience of having a full backing band.

Before you start throwing your picks at the screen, let us point out that Rock Band and Guitar Hero are distinctly different. Think of them like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles—both are influential and brilliant in their own right, but people will argue fiercely about which is superior.

It's hard to discuss Rock Band without mentioning Guitar Hero, as it picks up where Guitar Hero left off. By adding bass, vocals, and drums to the mix, Rock Band brings players closer to creating their own music. Since Rock Band’s debut, Guitar Hero’s publisher has also introduced games with additional instruments, but Rock Band is credited with sparking the whole-band game trend.

The core goal of rocking out as hard as you can stays the same in Rock Band. However, now it’s a collaborative experience, with anywhere from two to four players (or six if you’re rocking out to Beatles Rock Band) jamming together in harmony. By shifting from the solo hero to a full-band setup, you’ll experience everything from competing egos to inter-band romances and unfiltered backstage antics, depending on who’s in the group.

How has the public embraced this shift? Just like Dylan and The Band’s unforgettable tour. In March 2009, a press release from MTV Games, Harmonix, and Electronic Arts revealed that the Rock Band franchise had surpassed $1 billion in sales [source: Beradini].

But we’ve only just begun the Rock Band saga. Think of the following pages as your VIP access to the action behind the scenes.

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Pre-gaming: The Basics of Rock Band

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New Rock Band Accessories

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Your Familiar Companion: Rock Band Guitar and Bass

­Both the guitar and bass peripherals use the same controller. Designed similarly to the Guitar Hero controller, the Rock Band guitar/bass resembles the real instrument more closely, as the fret buttons are blended into the side of the neck with color-coding rather than sitting atop it.

Like the other hardware, playing the guitar/bass is all about precision. The fret buttons pick the note, while the strum bar ensures the timing. Inside the strum bar, a lever triggers an electrical chain reaction, informing the software of the note you’ve just played. For more details about the guitar controller, check out How Guitar Hero Works.

The Rock Band guitar is equipped with an additional set of fret buttons located near the body. These are activated during the solo segments, allowing players to really let loose. You can also use the whammy bar to add vibrato to extended notes. Enhancing the classic Rock Band controller, a pickup switch is also included, which enables five different sound effects during solos and overdrive—more on that later.

­The music data for each song is divided into vocals, drums, bass, and guitar, and is saved as waveform files [source: Yoshitomi et al.]. These waveforms store the music in distinct sections, allowing the game to detect when you've either nailed or missed a note. Depending on the selected mode and instruments, the software accesses the appropriate waveform files to let you either play solo or with others.

Next, we’ll bring our instruments to life and see them in action.

Rock Band Gameplay

After customizing your avatars, picking your mode and levels, and grabbing your instruments, it's finally showtime—let's rock!

When playing with a full four-person band, the Rock Band display can seem a bit overwhelming at first. There's a lot happening on screen to make sure every band member stays in sync. The easiest part to find is the vocal guide, where lyrics scroll across the top in a karaoke-style format. Below, you'll notice three parallel scrolling strips resembling guitar necks, guiding the bass, drums, and guitar players.

If you're a Guitar Hero pro, you'll notice the bass and guitar gameplay follows a similar rhythm. The notes are color-coded to match the fret buttons on the neck. When the colored markers reach the bar at the bottom of the screen, it’s your cue to hit the note.

The drums in Rock Band function a bit differently because of the kick pedal. While the drum pads are color-coded to correspond with the notes on the screen, you’ll also notice orange lines occasionally appearing across the guide. These lines serve as your cues for using the kick pedal.

A band is only as strong as its weakest player. But what happens when a player fails during the song? That’s when the star players can step in. Similar to the star power feature in Guitar Hero, you can activate overdrive by hitting a series of white notes. Once your overdrive meter is halfway filled, you can trigger it by tilting your guitar or bass, or by completing a special drum or vocals solo that the game cues up. Activating overdrive will help save a struggling band member and earn extra points, but you can only save the same person twice.

Once your band gets into a groove, there are several ways to boost your score. One way is by increasing your score multiplier. Drums, guitar, and vocals can achieve a multiplier of up to four, while bass can reach six. Why does bass get more? Many consider bass to be the weakest of the instruments, so to balance it out, bassists can enter a bass groove by hitting a series of notes that unlock the highest possible score multiplier.

You can also increase your score with the unison bonus. At certain moments in the song, if everyone plays in perfect sync, your individual multipliers will get a boost. You’ll know when it happens because the words "Unison Bonus" will appear on the screen. There are also solo bonuses, which give you a chance to shine as an individual performer. Your accuracy is shown as a percentage above your instrument, indicating how well you’re hitting the notes. For guitar and bass players, the second set of fret buttons at the base of the neck don’t require strumming, so take advantage of them to hit all those riffs.

Finally, there’s the big rock ending. This is your band’s opportunity to rack up extra points near the end of the song. Before the final notes arrive, the note gems will disappear, and the guides will fill in with a rainbow pattern. Go wild, scream, strum, and frantically hit the second set of fret buttons for a big score boost. But be careful—if you miss that last note, you’ll lose all the points you earned during the big rock ending.

Next, let's dive into the financial side of things and explore the gold and platinum records that Rock Band and its developer, Harmonix, have earned over the years.

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Rock Band Management

Rock Band, the popular video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, made its debut during the 2007 holiday season. If the name Harmonix sounds familiar, that's because they were the masterminds behind Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero II, and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. After Guitar Hero II, Harmonix and publisher RedOctane went their separate ways. In 2006, Activision acquired RedOctane, while MTV bought Harmonix for a hefty $175 million. The result? A literal battle of the bands.

Guitar Hero dominated the music game scene, sparking what many considered a revolution in the industry. However, when Harmonix parted ways with RedOctane, they walked away with some key assets -- patents for the underlying technology that powered the series. A real jackpot!

Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos, the founders of Harmonix Music Systems, are like the Big Boi and André 3000 of the video game world. Despite their split with Guitar Hero producer RedOctane, they continue to shine. Their roots in rhythm-based action games run deep, starting as MIT students before creating hits like Karaoke Revolution, Frequency, and Amplitude.

Even though Guitar Hero is now under Activision's umbrella, the franchise surpassed $1 billion in North American sales by January 2008, setting a record in the industry [source: Berardini]. Rock Band also made waves, hitting the $1 billion mark in sales by 2009. Viacom's financial report for the first quarter of 2008 credited Rock Band with helping the company achieve a 33 percent revenue boost [source: Associated Press].

What are fans buying beyond the $140 retail game? The game's website offers a variety of merchandise to enhance and protect your instruments, including drum bags, guitar/bass faceplates, mic stands, straps, stools, and drum silencers (so your neighbors won’t be calling the cops). For the more extravagant rockers, there's everything from $200 cufflinks to $2,400 jackets, plus piles of T-shirts and actual playable instruments. But don’t forget, you can't use your in-game cyber cash to pay for these items.

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Next up, we have downloadable content, or DLC. The game has secured agreements with musicians to offer their songs and albums for download. Harmonix consistently updates the in-game store as well as the Xbox and PlayStation 3 marketplaces with new tracks every week. By giving players the opportunity to download fresh songs, Harmonix keeps the game alive and thriving. Rock Band fans have definitely taken to this, purchasing 10 million songs by May 2008 [source: Sliwinski]. Harmonix has even released expansion discs packed with dozens of tracks spanning genres from heavy metal to country.

Musicians are eager to join the Rock Band roster as well. Much like Guitar Hero, the game offers artists a platform to gain recognition and revenue. Motley Crue, for example, released a single exclusively on Rock Band. It turned out to be a smart move since sales from the game far exceeded those on iTunes and Amazon.com by nearly four times [source: Kohler]. Songs are priced between 99 cents and $2.99 [source: Snider], and complete albums from bands like Metallica, The Pixies, The Cars, and Judas Priest are available for over $15 each.

Independent bands also have a chance to get their music into the game. In January 2010, the Rock Band Network launched its open beta phase. The Rock Band Network provides professional tools for artists to convert their songs into Rock Band-compatible tracks. While the technical side might be complex for some, individuals with programming skills can easily submit their songs. Players will be able to purchase these tracks, with a portion of the payment going to the artist.

Rock Band faces competition from games like Band Hero and Guitar Hero World Tour, but Harmonix is known for its innovation in the music game industry. The Rock Band Network might just give the game the edge it needs to become the dominant force in living rooms, disguised as rock concert arenas.