Orchestra Hero

[steuard]

A month or two ago, Kim and I started playing Rock Band; it's a lot of fun. I've mostly been playing drums, in part because I've always been a little interested and in part on the theory that the skills there could transfer reasonably well to the real instrument. Better than the guitar, anyway!

I began to wonder if someone would eventually create "Orchestra Hero" so I could indulge my love of classical music, too. Kim and I spotted some significant difficulties, like:

• Shorter songs are good for game play, so rock works well but classical less so. Playing through a single piece (or even a single movement) could take up a whole game session. And how obnoxious would it be when the clarinetist "fails out" ten bars before the end of Beethoven's 9th?
• Rock band requires just three or four controllers for a standard rock setup, while to field an orchestra you'd need at least a dozen. Sure, not everyone would need to buy every controller, but it still fragments the market for those items. (And if you did get a dozen friends together to play, how would you show all the parts on the TV screen?)
• While a lot of people might end up enjoying Orchestra Hero, many fewer would think they'd enjoy it: the market just isn't there. (Related is the point that one fun thing about Rock Band/Guitar Hero is getting to play songs you already know. Fewer people know a wide range of orchestral music.)

By the end of that conversation, I felt disappointed to realize that Orchestra Hero probably wouldn't ever happen, but I moved on.

So it was a bit of a surprise to see an article on the NY Times website today entitled "Orchestra Hero". The article isn't actually all that great (the author spends half his time talking about his composing, which has pretty much zilch to do with the topic), and it doesn't really touch on any of those difficulties or suggest ways to overcome them, but it's still neat to see other people considering the idea.

It's made me start wondering if something like this could actually work. There are lots of classical CDs with titles like "20 Romantic Classics" or "Bach's Greatest Hits" that pick out short, well-known pieces, so maybe length isn't such a big concern if you're willing to give up playing full symphonies. You could reduce the number of controllers by combining similar instruments (e.g. one controller design might work as a clarinet, oboe, and even flute). Maybe someone will eventually create Orchestra Hero after all.

Comments

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

If you're prototyping (or doing a game for a very limited audience), then connecting up actual MIDI controllers is a reasonable choice.

Then deal with the many-players display problem by using multiple screens (possibly on multiple computers), and it winds up networkable.

That's pretty much just a different way to practice music together. Does that ruin the fun?

[steuard.livejournal.com]

I guess using MIDI would limit the audience, but I don't know how to improve on that. I'm not convinced that any sort of "simplified" piano would feel reasonable in a game. So either "Piano Virtuoso" isn't feasible, or it needs to be done with a full keyboard. And once you're to that point, why not just let people use any keyboard they'd like? (I assume there are some pretty cheap basic keyboards out there; you could even offer a game-branded version.)

The one advantage this might have over just practicing music would be that you could decouple the audio output from the actual keys being pressed. That way, you could still hear the full glory of Brahms' Piano Concerto #2 even though your fingers are just plucking out the basic melody on one hand. (And if you miss a simple note, the full piano music falters until you get back on track.) I know it's a lot more fun playing drums in Rock Band when I get to hear the full drum part as part of the music than if I had to listen to the simplified rhythms I'm actually producing. And it's pretty neat to realize that every step up I go in difficulty brings me closer to doing the real thing myself.