The Blogg

I had an opportunity to play Guitar Hero I & II in the home of a friend last night, and it was quite enjoyable. It took some time to get used to the mechanics of “playing” the controller, but within an hour I felt pretty comfortable jamming to songs I knew on “Medium” difficulty mode. Undoubtably I picked up some bad habits that I will have to avoid the next time I pick up an actual guitar, but I think there is some opportunity here to provide some kind of musical education. While players may acquire some misconceptions about the difficulty of performance, most will certainly gain a better understanding of how the different parts of popular songs are rhythmically constructed.

While playing, I thought of two modifications that I think could prove quite useful. First, someone should write a driver that allows the Gibson SG-shaped controller to be played as a MIDI instrument. The five fret buttons don’t provide a great amount of flexibility, but if you programmed them to the components of a minor pentatonic scale you could at least play some bland blues licks. Furthermore, the controller’s ability to sense that it has been tilted upright could be used to switch the assignments of buttons to pitches, allowing the player to cycle through different keys. If the ability to play multiple notes simultaneously and the last vestiges of similarity to guitar playing were thrown out, the keys could even be combined like the valves of a trumpet to provide 31 distinct combinations with at least one button pressed, for a 2.5-octave range that rivals many traditional instruments. The tremolo bar could be mapped to the pitch wheel on a MIDI keyboard. I wouldn’t expect this to be a common use, but it would be pretty cool to go on stage with a couple of guys playing these. (I am aware that guitar-shaped MIDI controllers of much higher quality, such as the SynthAxe exist.)

My other modification throws away the controller entirely and simply uses software similar to the game. Rather than showing a scrolling sequence of colored circles representing buttons to be pressed on the controller, it would show actual notation for the song scrolling from right to left. I would recommend the combined tabulature and standard notation used in the PowerTab Editor for guitar scores. The software would be used by aspiring musicians to play along on an actual instrument. The idea of providing a backing band on CD to practice improvising over, popularized by the Aebersold series, are well-established. What this system would add is an actual microphone to record what the user is playing and critique it. Given the signal processing technology available, this should be fairly straightforward for a single, properly tuned instrument in a reasonably quiet environment. The ability to play back the user’s performance with the accompaniment and text explaining that a certain section was played out of time, another contained notes that were allowed to ring when they should have been muted, etc, would likely be very useful for a beginning musician. Someone with venture capital or time to spend, go do this! (Actually, as I was writing this, I recalled that Finale includes a SmartMusic feature that, while I have never played around with it, appears to do very nearly what I have proposed.

One other comment: I wonder how much Gibson/Epiphone paid for product placement in this? Now, time to go make sure I can still actually play Sweet Child.

I was very reluctant to embrace the cell phone revolution. There is just too much of pop culture, 14-year old kids pimping out their phones and sending inane text messages and whatnot wrapped up in it. Nevertheless, I joined a wireless plan with my family through AT&T several years ago. Since then, I can testify that it is much more convenient than a landline, and I would sorely miss the ability to communicate with other drivers in a caravan, call my wife from the grocery store to ask if we need milk, etc. The idea of not being able to receive calls at any time and place seems quaint.

Not wanting to be involved in the aforementioned culture and being poor, I took the ultra-crappy handset that was provided free when enrolling in a service plan, a Nokia 3560. It was bulky and featureless, but it made and received telephone calls, and that was good enough for me. In time I had become increasingly unsatisfied with the telephone due to the size and buggy keys, which I presume resulted from them being exposed as I carried the phone in my pocket for 2 years.

Because one of my family members managed to lose or destroy their phone, we recently took the opportunity to renegotiate our contract and get the latest generation of the free-after-rebate phones, the Samsung C417. I was pleased to find that this phone is significantly smaller, protects the keys from damage by flipping the earpiece over them when not in use, and gets a stronger signal due to a small antenna. Of course, the phone also came with a variety of “fun” features, such as a built-in camera, that I suspect I will never use.

Unfortunately, I have found the default ringtones available on this telephone to be obnoxiously loud and annoying, seemingly at any audible volume level. Thus, I thought I might go about the process of acquiring some different sound that I could use. This is where I have been increasingly frustrated with the collusion of Samsung and Cingular to exploit whatever additional funds they could from me while preventing me from using the hardware I have purchased in the way most convenient for me.

My first idea was that there would likely be a way to interface between the telephone and a computer, just as digital cameras and other common devices contain a USB port such that the data on them may be manipulated as an external hard drive. Although this technology is common and could probably be built in for a few cents of cost, no such interface is provided.

My next thought was that I might be able to produce something myself. One of my friends had a phone several years earlier that included a basic MIDI sequencer so that the user could transcribe their own ringtones. Alas, this was not an option for me. I did, however, discover that I could record audio to the phone. After experimenting with this for a bit I incredulously discovered that recorded audio could not be used as a ringtone. In fact, the only things you can do with audio recordings are to play them back, delete them, or rename them. What would be the point?

Next I considered that I could find someone who had something more palatable and transfer from their phone to mine through the included bluetooth or other networking technology. As I suspected, this is not allowed. Having exhausted my other alternatives, I finally decided to browse the available ringtones that Cingular would graciously sell me. This was easy, because Cingular makes the option to purchase ringtones and graphics the highlighted option when you enter the phone’s menu, as if this is the action the user will most often take.

After browsing for some time, I found something that I thought might work. The beginning of Blue Oyster Cult’s classic (Don’t Fear) The Reaper is an understated, clean guitar arpeggiating a few chords. I was not able to preview the sound, but I know the song quite well, so I spent the $3 or so to get the ringtone. After I paid for it I was finally able to listen to the sound, and found to my horror that they had sampled the middle of the song where the full band is playing and their are vocals. Thus, the ringtone I purchased is nearly as obnoxious as the one I was replacing.

Is there any valid reason why the only way to acquire a different ringtone is through the Cingular store? No. The only reason is that if they artificially limit the capabilities of the phone they can force you to spend money through them. It works out for Cingular because they get the extra revenue peddling their crap, and for Samsung because they can sell another phone with nearly the same cost to themselves but without the useful features crippled and charge twice as much for it.

Such unethical business practices are hardly limited to wireless phone services. You get the same thing when every producer of digital music players uses their own format, and devices such as the iPod have features like transferring media from the iPod to a computer disabled. The practice probably predates consumer electronics entirely, but this is the first time it has directly affected me. I can’t really complain, since I got the phone for free, but my distrust of corporations continues growing.