As part of the Rock Band Network 1-year anniversary celebration, we took you behind the scenes and showed you what it's like to be a Rock Band Network author in our article "The RBN Author's Perspective". Now, we're starting a series in which you can learn about track authors individually and get a behind-the-scenes look at the groups who arrange the best new hits for the Rock Band Network.

The company: Rock Band Relief

Their website: www.RockBandRelief.org

Examples of their work: "Shiver" by Amy Courts, "Happy People" by Big Kenny, and "Animal" by Kink Ador

Speaking for Rock Band Relief: John Griffin ("DJ Gryph")

In response to the Nashville flooding disaster of May 2010, DJ Gryph (John Griffin) founded Rock Band Relief to combine his love of Rock Band with a passion for helping others. Part of the proceeds from every Rock Band Relief song go toward funding charity efforts.Harmonix talked to Griffin about the Rock BandRelief team.

How did you get into RBN authoring?

I was an avid fanboy of Harmonix's work on Guitar Hero II and was just blown away by the way they designed the tutorials, learning curve and song progression for the game. It was a really masterful approach to introducing the player to a new skillset and guiding them through to Expert level proficiency. I played almost daily and was eventually ranked in the top 4% on Xbox Live. That was such a confidence booster that I bought a real bass and joined a band as a direct result.

Watching that thoughtful approach to guided learning evolve through the original Rock Band (which shipped on my birthday!) to the Rock Band 3 Pro Mode experience we have now has been really remarkable. When it was announced that Harmonix was opening their tools and processes to the community, I think it would have been impossible for those of us who were really hardcore about the genre to resist the opportunity to become a part of it.

When the RBN public beta started, I had recently been inspired by an artist named DJ Earworm and had started creating audio mashups on my personal YouTube channel. A lot of the skills I had been working with there like beat/tempo mapping, multitrack audio editing, fx plug-ins and automation controls transferred easily to the RBN authoring process, so it seemed like perfect timing.

In May of 2010, I was several months into the RBN learning curve when the Cumberland River that runs through Nashville, Tennessee overran its banks after 18 inches of continuous rain. More than 30 people died and the city sustained nearly $2 billion in damages. Rock Band Relief was started as a small way to help support the American Red Cross in their ongoing recovery efforts there, which are now gradually transitioning to United Way. We're now beginning to add additional charitable organizations as beneficiaries so that artists can choose to raise money for the causes that are most meaningful to them. We're excited to be announcing those soon!

What are the various roles on your team?

We have a small, but kickass, team of volunteers who are as passionate about music and gaming as they are about helping people.

• DJ Gryph (John Griffin) - Executive Director, Authoring Lead
• DearestWard (Edward Gibbs) - Vocals Authoring, Testing
• Jayseman (Jason Wieth) - Guitar Authoring, Testing
• ninjasockmonkey (Kevin Dibble) - Drums Authoring, Testing, Webmaster
• Googalash (Jim Sharp) - Playtesting
• xNoLaNx (Bryan Nolan) - Playtesting
• UberBeth (Beth Gilliam) - Playtesting
• Strat68 (Charles Schrank) - Music Consultant
• Skip Franklin - Events & Publicity

Do you have an authoring specialty or specific kinds of artists that you hope to attract?

The ultimate goal of Rock Band Relief is to develop an eclectic catalog of RBN tracks with all major genres represented and have those tracks raising money for a variety of major, globally recognized charities. I'm really excited about the range of songs coming in and we have a healthy supply of stems to keep us busy for quite some time. We're still a bit light on metal but, hey, nobody's perfect.

We're currently putting together a really wonderful lineup of artists and songs to benefit the American Red Cross relief effort currently underway in Japan. We're proud to announce the first of this new round of songs is "Heartstrings" by YouTube phenomenon, Clara Chung, whose videos have racked up over 100,000 subscribers and 5.7 million views in a little over a year.

What's your favorite part of authoring?

Personally, vocals are my favorite musical part as far as charting, though it's the part I like to play the least as a player. That sounds odd, but I've heard other authors mention similar things. For me, there's something a bit magical about watching the vocalist avatar up and running for the first time on a song, especially when the lip sync is really clean. The new Pro Keys charting process is also really exciting. I may have found a new addiction. Some of the songs in our queue, and even some that we haven't announced yet, are going to be great showcases for the Pro Keys experience.

What's the most challenging part of authoring?

Testing. What I'm not sure is obvious to people before they get started is that the entire authoring process for a song is essentially the first half of the project. Testing and Peer Review are the second half. The rigor and the checks and balances that Harmonix (and Microsoft) designed into the RBN process are what allow us to deliver DLC tracks with a level of quality that the authors, the artists and Harmonix can all feel proud of. But that quality is hard earned. Seriously. There is no BS'ing your way into the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Do you have a cool or funny story to share with the community?

I was invited to speak as a panelist on the Seattle stop of the RBN Creators Club Workshop training tour that Harmonix did with Pyramind last year and the guys from the tour invited us out to coffee beforehand. I was chatting with Jason Kendall from Harmonix for 30 minutes or so and geeking out about his design work on Guitar Hero II (his band, Megasus, also had a song in the game) when he finally confessed that he was the voice of the tutorial guy in the game. When you would finish a tutorial lesson successfully, the rocker guy would give you a really enthusiastic "NIIIICE!!!" So when Jason switched on his tutorial guy voice and said, "NIIIICE!!!", it was a major fanboy full-circle moment for me. The opportunity to meet people like Jason who helped invent the music gaming genre and then be allowed to go behind the scenes and be hands on with bringing more great music into it...it's a very, very special experience.

Any last words you'd like to share with our audience?

Keep playing Rock Band! And contact us through our website if you're interested in joining our crew. The more folks we have on our team, the more songs we can get out there helping people. And helping people rocks.

The company: RockGamer Studios

Their website: www.rockgamerstudios.com

Examples of their work: "He Sleeps in a Grove" by Amberian Dawn; "Bullet with a Name" by Nonpoint; "Push Push (Lady Lightning)" by Bang Camaro

Speaking for Rock Gamer Studios: Miguel Molinari (founder)

Harmonix chatted with Miguel Molinari about the Rock Gamer Studios team.

How did you get into RBN authoring?

I decided to start RockGamer literally the day I found out about RBN, when the official press release went out. The opportunity to work with artists AND put new content on Rock Band was just too good to pass up. So I called a few game/music industry friends, as well as a few folks I knew through the Rock Band community and made it happen. Jeff Marshall, who was running RBN at the time, was nice enough to let me sit in at one of the original RBN training sessions, and I've been hooked ever since.

What are the various roles on your team?

We currently have roughly 15-20 members on our team, ranging from QA and part-time authors to full-time authors. A handful of our full-time authors also contribute as team administrators. I (Miguel) handle day-to-day operations, licensing, accounting, and business development. Christopher "S1ckHands" Julio is our lead author, and does a great job helping with day-to-day, marketing, and coordinating our playtesting and peer review efforts. He also does a kickass job of reaching out to artists and labels, and convincing them to hop on the RBN bandwagon. Izzy "SaikoSakura" Dávila does all the weekly scheduling for mixing, authoring, and QA, and she also helps keep track of all the projects in the Creators pipeline, gathering feedback, entering revisions into our bug database, and basically making sure that we turn projects around quickly. Damian "DizzyBoy" Boyar stays on top of the authors and testers to ensure that we finish all of our v1 builds on time every week, allowing us to keep up our ambitious production schedule. Matt Greig handles all incoming song submissions.

Do you have an authoring specialty or specific kinds of artists that you hope to attract?

We don't specialize in any given genre, and our catalog covers pretty much the entire spectrum from indie rock (Band of Horses, Iron & Wine, The New Pornographers), to pop (The Material, Lee DeWyze, Let's Get It), prog (Children of Nova), electronica (Scott Attrill), goth (Inkubus Sukkubus), hip hop (Audible Mainframe), and everything in between. Oh yeah... and LOTS and LOTS of metal. We don't necessarily reach out to more metal artists than other genres, but we do get an unusually high demand both from the players and from metal arists/labels to put more metal in the game. I think this is mostly due to a combination of the hardcore gamer demographic and the technical complexity issued by the genre.

What's your favorite part of authoring?

I'm partial towards mixing and venue authoring, but I'll also crank out a drum or vocal chart if we're short authors on a particular week. However, my favorite part is seeing all the charts come together, showing the clients our work in progress and having them go "WOW, THAT'S AWESOME!"

What's the most challenging part of authoring?

From a business standpoint, securing the rights and the masters to a song can be extremely tricky sometimes. We've run into plenty of instances where the artist wants to put a song in the game, but the label isn't interested. Or the label is interested, but the publisher isn't. Or everyone's interested but the masters were destroyed in a fire.

From a technical standpoint, the work isn't particularly challenging as much as it is time-consuming. There are very few shortcuts you can take when authoring a track. Every once in a while there's the occasional edge case, for example if a client delivers a guitar stem with three guitars in it, all playing at the same time, and the author is expected to pick out one of those guitars and transcribe it by ear. Or we might get a song with unconventional time signatures that throw everyone for a loop.

Do you have a cool or funny story to share with the community?

Super Gravity's lead singer Adam Cane lives here in NYC, and every once in a while he'll stop at our Rock Band bar nights in the East Village. The first time he tried singing his song "Makeup/Breakup" in Rock Band, he kept looking at the screen as he was singing, as if he didn't know the words. After the song was over, I asked him why he kept looking at the screen, and he cried "I wanted to make sure I got the notes right!" It was a classic case of" Rock Band face" from the artist himself!

Any last words you'd like to share with our audience?

If you like our work, we invite you to become part of our community. You can visit us on the web at rockgamerstudios.com, follow us on Twitter (@RG_Studios), and become fans on Facebook (Facebook.com/RockGamer)."

Two weeks from now, we'll be back with profiles of The Authority (who brought you Drowning Pool, the April 2011 RBN Artist of the Month and Gamer Beats, Inc (who brought you not only great music, but five different nachos!)"