Got The Beatles: Rock Band a day early. It's exactly what I thought it would be -- fantastic. The presentation and attention to detail is brilliant, by far the best the genre has seen. Harmonix are classy as fuck.

Watching 3 people attempt harmonies is hilarious. An absolute mess :P Everybody knows the main vocal melody, but watching people try to find the higher and lower harmony is better than them actually nailing it. You can have the harmonies played by a flute in practice mode though so you can learn the correct pitch but that's boring.

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So, Rock Band 3 was announced. Pretty insane step-up from the previous game (not that I expect Harmonix to continuously release the same game with a different setlist a la Neversoft). The first major addition to the core gameplay is a 25-key, fully functioning MIDI keyboard.

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All of the standard gameplay additions such as a better story mode, more fluid, party-friendly gameplay (instantly jump in and out with any instrument), revamped song filtering system are in the game, which features 83 new songs. They've also added the 3 part vocal harmonies from The Beatles and Green Day games. Anything you learn on the keyboard (in expert mode particularly) will translate to the actual thing, and if you already have a MIDI device, you can use your own instead of Harmonix's keyboard if you buy this.

And that "actually play an instrument" mentality is now going to be covered with all instruments thanks to the addition of Rock Band Pro mode. This new music learning mode lets players develop real-world music-playing fundamentals for keyboards, guitars and drums. More realistic music notations replace the standard color-coded notes during gameplay. For guitar, numbers flow down the screen along six guitar strings, telling you where to place your hands on the neck and when to strum. How do you play Rock Band 3 in pro mode? Well, for guitar you could buy the Rock Band 3 Fender Squire --

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This is a genuine, full size guitar that works as a guitar should outside of the game. It also has fret-sensing technology for your fingers which shows up in real time on the screen so you can look at the screen and see where your left-hand fingers are. It also detects strum data. Rock Band Pro mode, like the standard mode, will have easy, medium, hard and expert and will work with all 83 songs on the game, and all future DLC. When you get up to expert mode, you are playing the song on guitar. Literally. "We have arpeggio language — it does take you all the way through to Expert, which is note-for-note authoring… for ridiculous songs! Like, “Crazy Train,” or “Rainbow in the Dark,” or whatever — these songs that have blistering solos — in order to beat those songs in Pro mode on Expert, you will have to genuinely learn the song."

There will also be this cheaper MIDI Pro controller with a 17-fret neck and 6 lanes of touch buttons representing the strings:

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The drums are the same, though in Pro mode the game actually recognises the cymbals if you buy the 3-cymbal pack. It will tell you when to hit a cymbal or a tom, and a second pedal will work now so you're, for the most part, playing the drums one to one, and this will work with all DLC too.

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By this point you're probably either thinking "Holy shit! Awesome", "This is going to cost a fortune" or a bit of both. The beauty of the game is that you don't have to buy anything other than the disc, if you don't want to. Play it how you want, at any level you want. Your Rock Band/Guitar Hero drums, guitars and mics will work. If you want the keyboard, pay the extra for it. If you want the pro stuff, buy the cymbal pack and one of the guitars (it's hardly a dumb investment for a game anymore, since you're buying a legit instrument). Whatever you buy or already own, it should be a fantastic game if you're interested in the genre.

Tracklist so far:

2000s
Combat Baby -- Metric
Dead End Friends -- Them Crooked Vultures
Get Free -- The Vines
Lasso -- Phoenix
Me Enamora -- Juanes
Oh My God -- Ida Maria
Portions of Foxes -- Rilo Kiley
The Hardest Button to Button -- The White Stripes

1990s
Been Caught Stealing -- Jane's Addiction
In the Meantime -- Spacehog
Plush -- Stone Temple Pilots
Walkin' on the Sun -- Smash Mouth

1980s
Crazy Train -- Ozzy Osbourne
Here I Go Again -- Whitesnake
I Love Rock and Roll -- Joan Jett
Just Like Heaven -- The Cure
Rainbow in the Dark -- Dio
The Power of Love -- Huey Lewis and the News
Sister Christian -- Night Ranger

1960s-1970s
Bohemian Rhapsody -- Queen
Break On Through -- The Doors
Crosstown Traffic -- Jimi Hendrix

Rock Band 3 - First Look
Rock Band 3 Trailer 1

Sound really cool, I just expect the keyboard for me to be pretty boring, but maybe there could be some cool stuff on expert.
I'm a bit disappointed though that I can't just plugin my real Fender Stratocaster to play the guitar if they already went that far, although that would probably have been the most amazing thing possible, so I'm not really seriously disappointed ;)
I'm wondering how this new guitar will change the mentality of the game for me. So far Rock Band was always an experience that was most fun when I played a song for the first time. Now with this almost real guitar, it won't just be 100x harder to play, but also more a practice-first experience. I wonder how that will turn out, because I can also have that on my real guitar. On the the other hand, Rock band will then turn into the ULTIMATE guitar practicing tool on the entire planet. I gives you the guitar tabs in flowing symbols, automatically showing you your mistakes totally accurate because it can follow you whole finger movement on the strings. Practice-RockBand-first-then-on-real-guitar.
This could be very very very awesome.

I just wonder how they will add the new notes for the keyboard and the new guitar to the old songs... Maybe they'll it all on the disc for RB3, but somehow I doubt that. Or maybe they already included all that since RB1 and it was just invisible so far ;)

i wish there was an option where we could combine countries and search their databases...so other songs would be more accessible.
i'd play a lot more.

Anyone ever try Audiosurf? Play with your own music.

It's a lot of fun, but I think certain genres of music make better courses. Not a lot of Ringo songs make good courses either. Atarashii Bunmei Kaika does though.