Individual Tracks

“Siva” — Smashing Pumpkins

“Working Man” — Rush *

“Ten Speed” — Coheed and Cambria *

Oasis Pack

“Don’t Look Back in Anger”

“Live Forever”

“Wonderwall”

Back in November we showed you Rock Band drums hacked to allow for PC input, and now Andrew Rudson utilizes said hack in a nifty little program called Drum Machine, which allows you to assign samples sounds to each of the four drums and the pedals, which you can then play as if they were a real, somewhat limited set of drums. The program comes with a variety of drum sounds included, with support for up to 1,024 different WAV files. Best of all, you can record your tracks for playback, sharing, or importing into your favorite mixing program. The only downside is that the program currently only works with the Xbox 360 version, though Andrew plans a patch very soon to support the PS3 and PS2 drum sets. Nice work! Drum Machine for Windows [AndrewRudson.com - Thanks Jason!]

These song downloads for music games, they're eaaaasy money. Look at Rock Band here. Game's barely been out a couple of months and already you lot have bought over 2.5 million songs. Most popular stuff? The Metallica pack comes in at #1, with the Queens, Police, Sabbath and Bowie packs also doing well. Most popular individual song was Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero". BONUS NEWS ITEM: Harmonix also state that the game's promised full-album downloads are coming "very shortly".
Rock Band song sales top 2.5 million [GameSpot]

Harmonix, MTV and.. .Ray-Ban? are teaming up to show off Rock Band during the Sundance Film Festival this week. The game will be set up at Harry-O's Monkey Bar, 427 Main Street, Park City, Utah from this Thursday through till Saturday, Jan. 26. The bar will have the game live from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. If you're going to be in Park City make sure to stop by and take pictures if you catch Michael Moore jamming.

Individual Tracks

“Action” — Sweet *

“Last Train to Clarksville” — Monkees *

“All the Small Things” — Blink 182

Destructoid's dashing Nick Chester has discovered that Gamestop is currently listing an upcoming peripheral called the Rock Band Stage Kit by Performance Design Products. According to the side of the box (the image of which has suddenly been removed from the Gamestop website) the kit is an "interactive light and smoke stage show" that will accompany your most frenzied Rock Band performances. You can pre-order it now in anticipation of it's posted release date of June 26 for $99. Could this be the rumored "big Rock Band news" we've heard tell about?

Live the dream with PDP's Rock Band 'Interactive Light and Smoke Stage Show' [Destructoid]

Wired GameLife's Chris Kohler sat down with some of the Harmonix folks to drag out some pro-drumming tips from them. Apparently it's not just about playing a song over and over and over again, there are a lot of little secrets that can ease your drumming pains.

For instance, the article explains the difference between heel-up and heel-down kick pedaling and when each should be used. It also talks about some of the issues inherent with using a pedal created for a game rather than a real drum's pedal. Other tips get into hand position, strokes, finger usage and some great practice tips. Finally there's a listing of some places on the net to find some good drum instruction and the songs in the game that are best for practicing drums on.

All-in-all it's a great read and an excellent primer for faux, and perhaps real, drumming.

Rock Band Feature: Harmonix's Top Tips For Drummers [Wired]

MTV have put together what is, so far, the most useful game-related tool for 2008. It's called Track Finder, and it contains details on the licensed music libraries of (nearly) every single rhythm action game released over the past few years. What's the point? It means you'll never again have to waste precious, disc-swapping minutes because you couldn't remember whether Ziggy Stardust was on Guitar Hero 1 or Guitar Hero 2.
MTV Rhythm Game Track Finder [MTV]

Individual Tracks

“Number of the Beast” — Iron Maiden*

“Die, All Right!” — The Hives

“Interstate Love Song” — Stone Temple Pilots