Rock Band 3 Keys Preview
![[IMG]](http://rockbandaide.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/image011-noscale-e1282061920571.jpg)
Looks like the embargo to discuss serious hands-on time with the new Keyboard peripheral has ended, as Joystiq and Kotaku both came out with some quick analysis of the latest peripheral to join the ranks of Rock Band 3 instruments. The biggest takeaway from this is the details behind the Keys trainer in Rock Band 3, and included below is some of the discussion about what they each experienced.
Apparently, Rock Band 3 will unveil a very intense trainer module within the game. After reading the detail built into the trainer, it’s obvious that Harmonix has a clear goal of actually teaching you how to play music, rather than “simply” giving you a real instrument and letting you “color-code” your way through a song. Joystiq tells us that Harmonix has created nearly a whole game’s worth of original songs (according to Dan Sussman, “there’s probably another like 60-80 songs in there…”) specifically designed to teach you how to play. The trainer presents a series of lessons from simply playing certain finger patterns to actually learning scales and chord structures, and each one has its own original song, designed and recorded specifically by Harmonix to teach interactively. The trainer music runs the gamut from rock to metal to jazz, and apparently is pretty good. “We’ve talked about putting that stuff up through the Rock Band Network,” said Sussman, “but right now it’s only in the trainer.”
![[IMG]](http://rockbandaide.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/rb3-mad-catz-keyboard-e3-02-e1282061956475.jpg)
An example of the types of lessons available: you’re given a goal (of playing five or six notes in sequence), and then that pattern runs down the screen towards you. Play it right and you’re rewarded; play it wrong and you get some extra hints and the chance to play it again. “We really approached it from a mechanical perspective,” Sussman told Joystiq, “where these are the things we’re trying to teach, now come up with a riff and an orchestration that’s towards that riff. The music really pushes the gameplay, and it’s written to support the gameplay.”
Kotaku notes that there is no difficulty level in Rock Band 3′s training mode. The lessons require precise, realistic timing. You can slow the lesson down, making the required note sequences cascade down the game’s central note highway more slowly, but you can’t ask the game to be more forgiving or to throw fewer notes at you.
The trainer was developed in conjunction with Harmonix’s music staff (many of whom have actually taught these instruments before). Aside from simply teaching you to play the game better, it will even teach you some music theory. Off to the side of the trainer screen, there are little boxes that will tell you how the notes you’re playing correspond to middle C, or what a whole or a half note is. In addition to slowing the trainer down, you can even add a metronome to get the timing right.
![[IMG]](http://rockbandaide.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/image013-noscale-e1282061997724.jpg)
There’s another reason you’ll want to go into the trainer as well: finishing the trainer levels give you rewards that unlock items in other areas of the game. Harmonix wasn’t completely clear about this (and promised more details on the Career mode soon), but Sussman gave the example of “a player who’s obsessed with making characters and they desperately need that cowboy hat for their character. And the only way to get that cowboy hat is to do the Pro Keys trainer, so they’re doing that. And doing that, we’re hopefully pushing them into an experience that we hope will be compelling.”
The only reservation brought up was that Kotaku had a valid complaint when playing on Pro mode using all four instruments. For guitar or drums, those highways can be between four and six lanes wide, but the keyboard highway is 10 lanes wide. The keyboardist legitimately complained he was struggling to discern which notes were coming down his note highway in which lane. Add in the need to hit sharps and flats, which are denoted by black notes in the highway instead of white ones, and you’ve got music gaming’s most eyesight-taxing feature yet. Sounds like you if you have a full party playing on Pro-mode, you’ll definitely be needing a big TV. If you’re playing on “normal” mode, you’ll still have the same five lane highway for Keys, though.
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