It started, as all great rock performances do, with a prayer circle.
"Dear God, if anyone here misses the slightest note, please strike them down."
So said Tom Jewett, guitarist and singer for Boston rock trio Rogue Heroes, while surveying the faces of his fellow bandmates and two interlopers armed with notebooks and pens. The impromptu group, formed last week to test-drive Rock Band, the new music video game from Cambridge-based Harmonix, was ready to roll. Even though all five members had little-to-no experience with video games and two weren't even, um, musicians, confidence was high.
Maybe too high.
Rock Band, which goes on sale Nov. 20 at a suggested price of $170, expands the concept of the phenomenally successful Guitar Hero, also made by Harmonix. That game took the karaoke craze to a new level and was a huge hit with young gamers, actual rock stars, and pretty much everyone who ever fantasized about playing sold-out stadiums but didn't want to bother learning how to play.
Rock Band builds on the guts and glory of that game - in which guitar-god wannabes battle for six-string supremacy - by adding three additional players (a drummer, a bassist, and a vocalist) and a slew of new features to ramp up the competition.
The Rock Band package, which is compatible with Xbox 360 and PlayStations 2 and 3, comes with one guitar that doubles as the bass, a microphone, and the percussion setup as well as a 58-song set list. It is rated T for Teen.
So here's how it works. Band members try to coordinate their pounding, riffing, and singing to colored bars flying down a fretboard as avatars act out the moves on the screen.
That may sound simple, but it's plenty challenging, even if you're a professional, as Rogue Heroes drummer Kevin McDevitt discovered. "The drums are pretty close to real, that's how it felt to play," he said shortly after scoring a disappointing 76 percent out of 100 on a run-through of Weezer's "Say It Ain't So."
But both band and reporters had plenty of fun practicing our faux chops and trash-talking. Bottom line: Rock Band rocks.
After carefully observing our seasoned bandmates careen righteously, if not note-perfectly, through the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go" and "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones, it was time for us neophytes to step into the spotlight. That felt especially brave given that during the Clash song, mistakes moved the onscreen crowd to desert the show, one of the more humbling functions of the game.
First on the set list was "Tom Sawyer" by Rush. Good thing we didn't pick a hard one. With support from Rogue Heroes bassist Jonny Clancy (trying his hand at guitar) and energetic Harmonix demo guru John Drake on drums (showboating by setting the difficulty level to "hard"), the reporters took on bass and vocal duties. The reviews are in - and they're decidedly mixed.
"While you were busy worrying about your 'bass stance,' I was over here killing it on vocals," Rodman taunted Anderman after her high-scoring performance.
"It was my first time playing bass," whined Anderman, who scored a dismal 59 percent. "Wait till I get my hands on that microphone."
Rodman scored 95 percent, but the victory was short lived. While the Geddy Lee impersonation was killer, Rodman literally killed the game while attempting to play drums on "Blitzkrieg Bop" by the Ramones. Snickering, Drake assured us that this wasn't the first time an awesomely inept performance resulted in the blue screen of death on Rock Band.
Happily, butchering your favorite anthem isn't the beginning and end of Rock Band. Multiple layers of game play round out the rock 'n' roll experience, including the ability to customize the look and personality of your avatar, from hair color and hometown to body type and attitude. "Dude, if you can't rock an ascot, you can't rock," said Drake as he outfitted his alter ego "Axell" with hot-pink accessories, a flowing blond mane, moon boots, and a bird-of-paradise tattoo.
The audience is a character as well. Your imaginary rockers can hit the road, winning or losing fans, earning money, scoring a van, and flying to LA to sign a record deal depending on how well they play.
We won't be flying to LA anytime soon. Our third number was a classic-rock song by a female-fronted band that will remain nameless for licensing purposes. (The game comes loaded with 58 songs; following next week's launch, more songs will be available for weekly download, as licensing arrangements are completed.) Anderman handled the tricky melody with aplomb, while Rodman approached proficiency on bass.
"Sarah definitely benefited from my pioneering bass work on the Rush song," Anderman pointed out, flush from her high score of 87.
"Yeah, and you really rebounded from that missed intro. Way to go!" replied Rodman, who scored a not-so-shabby 80.
Cooling down in the demo room following their near-triumphant rendition of the Beastie Boys's "Sabotage" - average score in the high 80s - the real musicians, who support their new album at Matt Murphy's Dec. 8, debated the pros and cons of Rock Band.
Clancy: "When you're playing on the 'easy' level, it almost throws you because there are so many notes that you don't have to play."
Jewett: "Even though they're not real instruments, the discipline and timing involved feels real. Not that many kids know what it takes to really play in a rock band."
Clancy: "There's a good array of diverse song choices."
McDevitt: "They're mostly rock songs."
Clancy: "Well, it's not called 'Smooth Jazz Band.' "
Rob Kay, lead designer for the project, said that the criteria for inclusion on the inaugural set list, which spans the '50s to the present and features mostly original recordings, was varied. The main question the designers asked themselves, said Kay, was "are they going to be particularly fun to play as a group?"
Kay - who, like dozens of other Harmonix staffers, plays in a local band - expects more classic and emerging artists to sign on. Already local bands including Bang Camaro (a member of which works at Harmonix) and Freezpop are featured in the game. "With the success of music games taking off, the music industry's starting to take notice."
Fans of Guitar Hero will notice that the guitar-bass component has been upgraded.
"Everything was built from the ground up again," says Kay of the bigger, better 3/4-scale model of the iconic Fender Stratocaster. Unlike the Guitar Hero model, the Rock Band ax has a streamlined fingerboard and five choices of real-time effects like delay and wah-wah. "Because what [song] doesn't need wah-wah?" mused Drake, a 23-year-old Harvard grad and a drummer.
The electronic pads correspond to a variety of drums and cymbals with a kick pedal for the bass. (It's worth noting that unlike a real kit, the high-hat is to the right of the snare and, as with all the instruments, there is a left-handed option.)
Harmonix's previous singing game, Karaoke Revolution, featured a microphone sensitive to pitch and timing. "Rock Band" throws in phoneme recognition to monitor your pronunciation and diction. "It knows if you're singing the words," explained Drake.
Ultimately, the best thing about Rock Band is that it's not just about individual glory on an instrument. As novices, our favorite feature was the "Savior" option, whereby a player can rescue an underperforming cohort who's in danger of flaming out by executing a rad stage move. One altruistic rocker can save an entire band.
We speak from experience.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com.
