"Raise a glass of something, then, to celebrate how Harmonix lived, not how they died. It was a magnificent run, filled with some of the greatest games ever made. I don't think any other gaming company ever made so much sheer fun in such a short span of time." I desperately hope there's a happy end to this, somehow.

"But then, nobody’s expected to be able to sight-read the Pro guitar tracks. It’s meant for actual students of the guitar. And if you use the game’s slowed-down Practice mode, the game packs the potential to become a real tool for learning to play music." The notion that Harmonix were always a music company, who just happened to make games, becomes ever more true. Proper tab notation, proper strings on the Pro instruments? Well done.

"I saw these two videos of Rock Band Network tracks over at RBDLC and couldn’t resist sharing them. The first is a serious jazz tune: “Footloose and Fancy Free” by Bill Bruford’s Earthworks. The thing that’s interesting about this is that the “guitar” track is actually piano — something Guitar Hero has done in the past but Rock Band has generally shied away from. But what’s even neater is that the “vocal” track is actually a sax line, intended (one would assume) to be played with a sax or other horn; the “lyrics” are simply the notes being played." There's no question that building tunes for RBN is hard wokr, but god, this Bill Bruford video is stonking, and the sax-as-vocal idea is cracking.

Brad Sucks has converted his own material to Rock Band tracks in Rock Band Studio, and will soon be selling them straight to your 360. Harmonix really are bringing something to the game here - amateur/unsigned musicians can now use Rock Band to sell music (with appropriate notecharts, obviously), in the same way they started to use MySpace as promotion a few years ago. Awesome.

"Use our tools to author playable tracks. Upload and submit your tracks for review by the Rock Band Creators community. Approved tracks become available in the Rock Band Store and on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace*, and you get a cut of every purchase." Um, as pointed out elsewhere, this is utterly brilliant. Harmonix are smart cookies, and thinks like this remind me why.

Seriously, Harmonix' character design is just amazing, and this movie - just the _intro_ movie to Beatles Rockband - is making me care more about that band than anything in my life has. Harmonix are gods.

"...what I'm hearing is the actual drum line recorded by the song's drummer, and I'm triggering those sounds by playing notes within the designated timing window. And that timing window, even on Expert, is quite a bit more generous than real life. It's the difference between truly playing a beat and merely invoking a beat. When I play Rock Band, though, that difference is camouflaged so subtlely and so well that I never even notice. That's a beautiful bit of design, isn't it?" Yes, it is. Bill Harris on the magical quantize that you forget exists in Harmonix' games. This, incidentally, is something I'm convinced Neversoft never got right, especially in the horrendous Guitar Hero 3.

"I do think that during the coming years we will continue to try to bridge the gap between simulated musicianship and real musicianship. That said, the path there is not obvious: As the interactivity moves closer to real instrumental performance, the complexity/difficulty explodes rapidly. The challenge is to move along this axis in sufficiently tiny increments, so that the experience remains accessible and compelling for many millions of people. It’s a hard, hard problem. But that’s part of what makes it fun to work on." There is loads in this interview that is awesome; it was hard to choose a quotation. Rigopulos is super-smart.

"My crystal ball tells me you will hear music - great classic rock tunes - and you will believe, truly believe, that you are playing that music on your toy guitar. And you will feel, truly feel, that you are cool. A hero of the guitar." Lovely.

"Of course, to get the most points, your band needs a bassist. And nobody wants to play bass. So if you want to lead a full band, you're going to have to play bass yourself. And this is like life!" Lovely article from Torpex' Jamie Fristrom.

"The thing about Harmonix is that even though they strive to bring total non-musicians closer to music, they still mark a clear boundary between playing music and not." A much better explanation of this than I tend to give; lovely article.

Ah, yes. The age-old problem of rhythm-music games...