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!]

Posted: January 18th, 2008 under News.
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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]

Posted: January 17th, 2008 under News.
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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.

Posted: January 16th, 2008 under News.
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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]

Posted: January 13th, 2008 under News.
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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]

Posted: January 11th, 2008 under News.
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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]

Posted: January 9th, 2008 under News.
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Rock Band on Wii? It's a total "no brainer." Sure, you might need a couple of brains to design, code, test, license, manufacture and market the thing, but beyond that? It practically creates itself! But why hasn't it happened yet? The game has already appeared on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2, so why isn't EA betting on the little white horse? While Harmonix's own Alex Rigopolus has said the Wii has "enormous potential for music games" and rumors have pointed to EA itself interested in such a product, it has yet to materialize in physical or announcement form. GamePro got the update from EA themselves today, who decided to decline confirming that it exists and opted not to announce Rock Band Wii via the magazine.

Look, it's an inevitability. You can bet money on it, given that EA likes money and a Rock Band port is one of those things that will make money. This theory has worked pretty well for me so far, but I'll update the logic on this should the thing fail to pan out.

Rock Band Wii? EA says "no" (for now) [GamePro]

Posted: January 2nd, 2008 under News.
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We've been doing our best to keep the Kotaku readership up to date with the latest and greatest developments in Rock Band drums silencing technologies. First we told you about a hack that used foam and felt head toppers. And then a reader called our bluff and tested it. The idea worked great, but it required, you know, unlaziness.

Now a new company is selling Drumshhh pads specifically for Rock Band drums. Self-adhesive tops comprised of the same foam/felt concoction we've seen others test, Drumshhh pads are ready to stick on your drums out of the box and claim to reduce ambient drum noise by 50%. Plus, they come in four different styles for those looking to sexify their peripherals a bit. We're not sure about what the price will be at this time, but if it's under $10, we'd give it a try.

Drumshhh [via ironicgamer]

Posted: December 28th, 2007 under News.
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So Canada gets Rock Band a little late. Big whoop. The entire PAL market is also without the game, and don't even have the vaguest of dates to pin their collective hopes on. So quit your whining. To help you quit, you should know that because you're a little behind on the game's DLC, the Canadian Xbox Live marketplace will be playing catch-up, a Harmonix rep posting on the game's official forums:

As of today I am hearing that Microsoft plans on releasing the DLC in Canada on the 20th through the marketplace. I believe this will be a monster release of every song we've put out so far as DLC for the game.

Great! Except...hands up how many Canadians will actually have a copy by tomorrow? That's what we thought.
[Rock Band Forums, thanks Jaemeel]

Posted: December 19th, 2007 under News.
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Rock Band, and to be fair Guitar Hero III as well, have made huge strides since the days of the first Guitar Hero in terms of securing big songs from big bands for their tracklists. But, being the greedy, selfish types we are, the more you give us, the more we want. So it was to be expected that when the tracklists for Rock Band and GHIII were announced, people started wondering. Where's Led Zeppelin? Where's AC/DC? Where are The Beatles? Harmonix's Dan Teasdale knows:

I'm from Australia, so it's part of my citizenship requirements to get as much Acca Dacca into the game as possible. We'd love to get these kinds of mega-famous bands into "Rock Band," but securing licensing and such makes this something that takes a lot longer than other artists.

Ah, so that's why [insert your favourite band nobody else has ever heard of here] isn't in the game. They're too damn popular!
Random 'Rock Band' Questions Answered [MTV] [Image]

Posted: December 17th, 2007 under News.
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