Much harder to find good songs for Rock Band than Guitar Hero

[Dismissile]

I was just thinking about how difficult it will be for Harmonix to find good songs to put in Rock Band compared to Guitar Hero. With Guitar Hero, the only thing they have to worry about is finding a song that has some pretty sweet guitar which is pretty easy. With Rock Band, you have to make sure that the song has equally good guitar, bass, vocals, and drums. If a song has really good guitar (enough to be challenging) it is not guaranteed that the drums will be very challenging or fun to play for that song.

I do have faith in Harmonix. They haven't let me down yet..but I was just thinking about how this could be a limiting factor on the game. Anyone agree/disagree with me? Discuss.

[benjamin]

The could circumpass this problem by creating different ranks for the different instruments.

So a song is tier 7 for drums, but tier 3 for guitar.

They will figure it out.

[shrimp-n-gritz]

I was thinking the same thing, particularly when I was thinking about songs I would like to play in RB. I found myself picking songs with great guitar riffs and then thinking the bass and drums are not all that interesting. Same goes for the other instruments. I think benjamin has the right idea. Similar to DDR, each song could have a rating for each category (instrument) that would be displayed when the song is highlighted. Maybe something like this:

Song: ?
Lead Guitar ***
Bass Guitar **
Drums ****
Vocals ***
Overall ***

Just a thought.

[Dismissile]

Guess I never thought about it that way. Good idea!

[shokkerrokker14]

You have a good point here. It all comes down to what Harmonix chooses for its set list, otherwise it may not become the game everyone is hoping for.
I think that if they look for a variety of songs that offer guitar, bass, vocal and drums, but with some of the songs make a certain part of the group have the most fun (like vocals or drums or something), cause everyone LOVES to play solos.

Anyway, hopefully Harmonix will have some help choosing the songs, not that they would do bad, it's just i want them to do good!

[VocalKnight]

And I wouldn't be surprised if they had four career paths, in which case they could include some songs meant exclusively for one instrument or another.

[relic81]

everysong is gonna rock you'll see :p

[shrimp-n-gritz]

And I wouldn't be surprised if they had four career paths, in which case they could include some songs meant exclusively for one instrument or another.

This is allegedly the case (except for bass). I expect you could use every song for each campaign, only ordered differently according to difficulty. So the drum career may start out with easier songs in terms of drum and progress to more complicated ones. But the guitars for those songs may not definitely follow the same difficulty progression so they'd have to be reordered based on guitar difficulty. Should be pretty cool.

[sushi111]

Exactly^

For example, WGFA would be much lower in the guitar carrer than the drums carrer

[Brock_Landers]

I just hope they haven't put too much focus on singing when it came time to pick out songs.. I could be wrong, but I still expect the majority of people to be picking this up for guitars/drums firstly, and karaoke secondly. After all, anyone who is diehard into singing will already have Singstar or KR, I imagine.

[Edgehopper]

After all, anyone who is diehard into singing will already have Singstar or KR, I imagine.

Ahem...unless they don't have a PS2, say, because they sold it to get money for an XBox 360 :)

[Brock_Landers]

lol, yes we must always spare a thought for the humble peasents ^_^

[Slab_X]

I agree about the singing part. I don't see that getting used at all in my household, as much as I would like someone half decent at it to give it a good go.

Also, I don't think they should dismiss certain songs just because the bass isn't up to par with the drums and lead guitar. You're gonna get some easy and repetitive bass lines no matter what. Sometimes they're easy but sound great.

[snyder24]

Its true picking songs for RB will be harder. But it shouldn't be that hard. If you go with older songs or the really good bands they will have an equal amount of each, drums, guitar, etc. Like Journey and April Wine and also the Eagles. If you pick among the new music it will be much harder. Artists nowadays do not put enough effort into there music, only a few of todays generation do.

[Angel-Jin]

i don't think it would be that hard for them to pick songs.

since Harmonix has the backing of EA and MTV, they can get music from almost any label they want, master recording or cover. it's just a matter of the classics. unfortunately, you won't be able to get many of the classics from Guitar Hero transferred into Rock Band. Some songs will. I wouldn't mind if they put the whole songlist from GH2 into this game and called it Rock Band, simply because it's a completely new experience....well, i would mind a little.

I myself am a fan of all kinds of music, but i'm really hoping these guitar/drum sims don't forget about alot of the younger audience who might say "wtf is freebird?" None of MY friends said that when they played it, but a lot of the younger people out there didn't bother to play GH simply because they couldn't relate to the songlist.

if they want this game to reach a broad broad audience, they would throw in a small chunk of modern rock songs just to say they covered all their bases with the songlist. in the end, it's going to come down to what they could and could not acquire, but as long as they tried to get some of today's modern acts, it would sell a couple more units/skus.

[Archangel_of_Light]

I don't think it would be too hard. Cause no matter what you do you're not going to get 100% awesome songs for every instrument. You're going to get some songs good for guitar, while not fun for bass.

Its just something you're going to have to put up with. And as long as they get known songs on the list, this game will sell. So if you buy it, you are going to have play some pretty boring songs.

[sa_nick]

There are going to be 4 different career modes (according to the GI article)

Guitar career
Drums career
Singing career
Rock Band career which is 4 player

Surely it's possible (and probable) that the different careers will contain different set list with different songs in a different order. Therefore songs that lack in a certain instrument can be omitted from certain careers, or placed on an easier tier.

[Dismissile]

There are going to be 4 different career modes (according to the GI article)

Guitar career
Drums career
Singing career
Rock Band career which is 4 player

Surely it's possible (and probable) that the different careers will contain different set list with different songs in a different order. Therefore songs that lack in a certain instrument can be omitted from certain careers, or placed on an easier tier.

No bass career? Or does that fall under the umbrella guitar career?