Harmonix wants user-created music in Rock Band

by Majed Athab { Mar 11th 2008 at 7:30PM }

In a recent interview, Greg LoPiccolo of Harmonix shared his insight into what the company plans to do with Rock Band's future. He said that the direction Harmonix is heading for is to make Rock Band more personal for gamers, giving them a better vehicle for musical self-expression. Greg spoke of one major potential change regarding this, and that's the possibility of allowing users to create their own music in the game.

The biggest snag holding the company back from actually pursuing this is that there's going to be a whole lot of paperwork and legal technicalities over IP claims and ratings. Despite this, LoPiccolo still feels that user-created music is the natural next step for the franchise. Rock Band as a stepping stone to fame, fortune, and most of all groupies? Sign us up.

On another interesting note, LoPiccolo also talked about potentially supporting the keyboard for use in Rock Band tracks. If Harmonix does decide to support this, our first request is to get more Queen songs on there pronto.

[Via Joystiq]

Tags: ea, harmonix, lopiccolo, mtv-games, mtvgames, rock-band, rockband

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Stef Geiger @ Mar 11th 2008 7:40PM

Rock Band as a stepping stone to fame?

If ONE person gets a record deal based on something they made through rockband (those aren't real instruments, remember?), I'll promptly light myself and my guitars on fire.

Haiddasalami @ Mar 11th 2008 8:23PM

Doubt thats ever going to happen but if it is, we're going to have a guitar and drums burning. I like the mic

Stef Geiger @ Mar 11th 2008 8:47PM

Just so we're clear, I meant my real guitars, not the fake toy ones that you use to play these games with.

Lars @ Mar 12th 2008 3:39PM

Maybe I missed something, but I thought he meant real songs, created by garage bands, mapped and coded for use IN Rock Band... not created WITH Rock Band.

"If Harmonix does decide to support this, our first request is to get more DOORS songs on there pronto."
-fixed it for ya PS3Fanboy

mathab @ Mar 12th 2008 3:44PM

@Lars

Yes, exactly. Create your own music and put it up in the game so other people could play it.

And about that second comment ... touché!

joel ford @ Mar 28th 2008 3:34PM

i seriously doubt that the user created songs will be inputed with the toy controllers. to create a rock band "chart", you need a multi-tracked recording (probably the user will record the song or the hmx "house band" will record it) and the equivalent of 4 midi files per track (difficulty) possibly to be created with beat/pitch detection? maybe a concise user-controlled environment where the user clicks a color for each detected sound in the track? maybe they will require midi files for song acceptance? who knows. there are many ways to go about accepting user content. i think it will be a great opportunity for musicians to share their music with millions.

MF Bronz @ Mar 11th 2008 8:00PM

u and me both my friend

Adam @ Mar 11th 2008 8:21PM

"Harmonix wants user-created music in Rock Band"

Of course they do, so they can up their library without having to pay for it

Haiddasalami @ Mar 11th 2008 8:22PM

they could totally do this, program notes onto the guitars and drums and add in an electric keyboard and bam we have songs.

Dahk @ Mar 11th 2008 11:01PM

With... 5 notes, no difference to tell whether you're picking/strumming for BOTH guitar/bass, a snare 3 toms and a bass... and I guess a useful mic.

Sorry I'm with Stef. I'm gonna be as critical as I can be for this damned idea.

Haiddasalami @ Mar 11th 2008 11:14PM

You do know there is a group that plays music using the guitar hero controller. Its hooked up to a computer. I dont know the details since I skimmed over the article.

John @ Mar 11th 2008 8:32PM

I would love this if I could upload my own music and have people play it... but I'm nervous about what kind of criteria will accept it... I wish this was more home-brewish, you know, an editor and you map out the keys or better yet an AI that looks at your track and maps them for you and we can burn these and play them, upload them if people want them, but yeah, it gets into nightmare copyright issues because you know people will be putting other people's stuff up and saying it's theirs.

Kabapu @ Mar 11th 2008 9:16PM

Yeah. This is essentially what I'd like to see. There's a lot of songs I'll hear and say to myself "That would be awesome in Rock Band."

But like you said, with copyright issues, it may not happen.

gebis @ Mar 12th 2008 12:35AM

User-created music would be absolutely incredible, especially if they don't mess it up to appease the lawyers. People are willing to spend a huge amount of time and effort contributing to a group project, if they perceive it to be for a greater good and it's easy enough for them to do it: just look at wikipedia, youtube, and so on. People won't even mind if Harmonix ends up making money by selling more copies of the game, as long as they don't try to control the content.

I'm guessing it'll never happen, because of stupid copyright concerns. If it does happen, but if you need prior approval or have to jump through some other hoops, it won't take off. But if somehow they do add the ability, and they make it easy to contribute, it would be huge.