Messed with Texas

Finally back from SXSW. Too overwhelming to summarize, though I'll have more to say about it after a long snooze. Meanwhile, a hat-trick of music game news from around the internets this week:

The Apple iPhone OS upgrade is going to great for music. Let’s see: iPod library access (Audiosurf, baby!); Bluetooth A2DP for streaming to speakers or ‘phones; P2P Wi-Fi connectivity, so two devices can communicate -- ie, jam together -- sans a Wi-Fi network; and audio recording using a standardized API, so everyone can go crazy. This is going to be great!

Always keen to see new instruments applied to the GH/RB model, I was intrigued by the Trumpet Hero mod played at the Tangible Tech Exhibition in San Francisco this week. I’m still waiting for Sousaphone Hero.

Beyoncé reveals herself as a gamer, including love for GH, although since it’s all part of a promotional drive for upcoming Rhythm Heaven on the DS one may be forgiven a small degree of skepticism. Her old man Jay-Z is also looking to get into the game business too. Cute quotes:

I've been rehearsing for my [upcoming] tour in stilettos and uncomfortable corsets, learning all these arrangements. Today I was playing the game with my socks on, on the couch, and it was very relaxing … I like all the Wii games. Love Guitar Hero. This reminds me a little bit of a portable Guitar Hero, which is great, because I don't want to carry around a big guitar! Growing up, I liked Tetris. I even like BrickBreaker on the BlackBerry.

The stars, they're just like us!

[My first gaming system growing up was] a Nintendo. I would play Super Mario Bros. We weren't supposed to play it after 9 o'clock, and I would sneak and play all night. I loved it.

Emergence and kingpins

Popmatters' games and multimedia blog Moving Pixels has a great piece on emergent music games -- as opposed to linear games, like GH and Audiosurf -- in which players generate music through their actions on-screen. A familiar example is Rez, which I downloaded from Xbox Live a few weeks ago in a rare instance of retro-gaming, and Auditorium (see a few posts below). Others in the emergent category that I have yet to try out include Everyday Shooter and Electroplankton. The upshot is that emergent music games are relatively rare, but they offer a glimpse of a new form of narrative that is only beginning to be explored. The Clash picture is from this piece.

Speaking of Popmatters, its music blog Crazed By The Music has a series of articles about "The New Music Kingpins of the Post-Napster World", in which it names Guitar Hero as one of those kingpins. There are a couple of factual inaccuracies in the piece, but the overall tone is basically positive.