Rock Band 3 Rocks!

[brynndragon]

In other news, Rock Band 3 is just as awesome as I'd hoped, and apparently playing the keyboard is somewhat akin to riding a bicycle, even though it's been 15 years or so since I last did it. I can only do Medium on Pro Keys, but that's not bad for having never played Pro Keys before tonight. But it's distressing easy to play regular guitar on the keyboard, except for Crazy Train because *nothing* can make that easy. (It's not my copy of the game, a friend was kind enough to invite me over to play with her)

So I'm going to need the game, a keytar, a pro-guitar, a Rock Band 2 drum kit, and the cymbals. That's not going to be cheap. Budgeting will have to be done most carefully. . .

Comments

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

[Edit version: Oh, yuck! Sorry about the messed-up HTML. Here's a better version.]

Hang on, why will you need a Rock Ban 2 drum kit? Don't you already have one? Or is that a typo and you mean a Rock Band 3 drum kit? In which case... hang on, isn't the RB2 kit forward-compatible?

Also: pro-guitar... that's the kind that has dozens of individual controls for each string/fret intersection?

I'm trying to establish whether Fey and I can get away with just getting RB3 and possibly a keytar.

For that matter, can you tell me: Will RB3 take MIDI input from a real keyboard? Because I've got one sitting around here...

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I currently have a Rock Band 1 drum kit, which is sadly not compatible with Rock Band 3; I don't mind getting an upgrade too much, the RB2 foot petal is a lot nicer.

Yes, the Pro Guitar is the one with 5 strings instead of a strum bar and each fret is a button corresponding to that fret. We currently only have one functional Rock Band guitar (an RB2 guitar thankfully), so might as well get the Pro version for a second guitar.

If you've already got a midi keyboard, you don't need the keytar - you can get one of these for half the price and call it a day :).

ETA: Pro guitar/bass is actually a separate mode from the standard guitar and bass, so you can certainly play all the songs with standard instruments and it will be just like RB, RB2, Beatles RB, etc. The keytar also has a Pro mode, where instead of just using 5 white keys you're using about an octave and a half, including the black keys. Which particular octave.5 you use depends on the song - there's a color code to indicate different parts of the keytar.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Cool! Thanks for all the info.

[dot_fennel]

Yeah. I'm with you on the "wow this is going to cost a lot" shock. Plus, both my (non-Pro) guitars broke. Whee!

I could save a little money (and get bonus awesomeness) by hooking my real drums up as an RB3 controller via one of those MIDI adapters, but that would mean some room in my house would need to hold all the gear for both the fictional band and the non-fictional band at the same time. Plus the TV. And I think that would have to be the living room.