The Official Harmonix Podcast Episode 38 – The Oral History of Hardware at Harmonix // Blog // Rock Band®

The Official Harmonix Podcast Episode 38 – The Oral History of Hardware at Harmonix

March 11, 2011
By HMXPope
In Podcast

We have a special show for you this week with the all-stars of the hardware department at Harmonix. Daniel Sussman, Todd Baker, Jim Toepel & Nate Stoddard walk us through the complete history of creating guitars, drums, mics and more for Harmonix games. Enjoy a trip down hardware history hall hearing the stories behind the wired Rock Band guitar, the wireless Rock Band 2 guitars, all the way up to real guitars in Rock Band 3.

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Music Credits

Intro: Megasus – “Megasus”
Middle: Vagiant – “No Mercy”
Outro: Alchemilla – “Bleeder”

Podcast Credits

Guest Roster: Daniel Sussman (Project Director), Todd Baker (Executive Producer), Jim Toepel (Software Designer) & Nate Stoddard (Quality Control Coordinator)
Host: Eric Pope (Community Manager)
Audio Engineer: Nick Kallman
Album art: Fish McGill

Posted in Podcast

Comments

JuggaloMick
April 9, 2011

That was SO interesting! Thanks guys.

FiGMarcus
March 26, 2011

Oh man, There's just so much more to it underneath all of the rockin' music. I never really thought about the shift in the process regarding HMX not relying on RedOctane for their instruments anymore. Don't worry! The effort paid off-- My RB1 Stock stuff still works perfectly! (Infact, my guitar works better after having broken it in a bit, haha!)

Skode
March 24, 2011

Best podcast ive heard guys... you could easily have added another hour on top of that. It was genuinly that fascinating from start to finish and yeah i had no idea that kind of work and the sheer undertaking the peripherals were for the game - i mean you would never have imagined it to be like it was as the guys described. If they do another one i would like to hear more on the side of the hardware not instruments based ie the Stage Kit etc. It just seemed at least a year or two ago there was no end to the ambition HMX had for what they wanted to do and essentially what they couldnt do... after all look where weve ended up as Pope hit on at the end with actual playable instruments outside the game.

DavyinaToga
March 11, 2011

Heh, it's like you guys ran out of sound effects to use for censoring.

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