How being in Marching Band ended up in "The Real World" of Beatles Wii

First, let me say that I played Brahms and Ravel the other night when there was no one home (and if no one is in your living room, it does make a noise) and frankly kicked these dead guys' behinds. I also had nothing to drink except herbal tea. It was like there was some sort of sleeper effect. I hadn't sat down to the piano in a few days and hauled out the Ravel for kicks and there is was -- all the way to the end. Can I do it again? I am afraid to try. I was thrilled. My dad used to say that if you wanted to hear me play, you would have to go into another room. I am a tad nervous. I recall that in the Marilyn French's book The Women's Room, there was a character who also could only play the piano if people "weren't listening".

Last night being another official "off night" at 9 Hood, I thought I would have a go at the drumming in the Beatles game. I have had some success with Guitar Hero drumming, especially at the Medium level. In GHWT, you can essentially find a basic groove -- the equivalent of the snare and ride cymbal or snare and high hat. Everyone once in a while, on medium they will have you play another tom tom or something. And of course, there is the bass drum along the bottom. The bass drum is trickier than you might think because it just doesn't play on all the strong beats in the Beatles game. Again,I find myself with even more and more respect for Ringo as a drummer.

I am playing the Wii Rock Band Beatles game with GHWT equipment, and have found that the drums work just as well as the guitar does -- as long as you are using the most up to date equipment which I am. On the Rock Band game though, there are only four drums, and the GHWT game has five options. I did not use the orange cymbal.  I follow the "fretboard" and the relative psitions with the drums generally -- or found this was adequate with the medium and hard settings I tried. With the Wii guitar, you still use all five buttons on the hard and expert settings. I tend to think of the orange button on the guitar as a sign to shift positions -- much like you do when needing different positions on a real guitar. The drums seem simpler in terms of lay out, but are just as challenging with regard to difficulty.

I read in some book which covered their early years that at one point Ringo walked out of a rehearsal because Paul fussed at him for not being able to do a drum roll. I can't imagine when that was because on the hard and expert settings in the game, you certainly do need to be able to do drum rolls in the later songs.

This rediscovery of the Beatles is kind of interesting and of course I am falling prey to the marketing aspect of the game.. No doubt what's left of the Beatles corporation including Paul my least favorite Beatle and god knows who else -- Yoko and George's widow and Ringo; I don't know -- want those of us who either knew the Beatles or who are rediscovering them or in the case of kids discovering them to go out and buy all the new remastered CDs. Which I have done, but not all of them. As I said in an earlier post, the fidelity on the sound even through my TV which is powered by tubes and squirrels running on a wheel in the back still cranks out details for the ear that make even the old Cavern era pieces sound like something other than crappy "Rock and Roll Music".

Anyway. I am enjoying the drumming because at this point it is more of a challenge and a novelty for me even though I played percussion in the marching band in high school. By the time high school came around, I was playing the bassoon -- and the bari sax in the "Studio Lab Band" which was essentially a big band style band, as well as in the pit orchestra for Guys and Dolls -- and the rule was that if you were a wind player, you could not play in any of the premium ensembles including orchestra  unless you also played in marching band. Ugh. I was not going to march with a bassoon -- not sure anyone does. So I marched first with the bells -- which I hated -- since I could play a keyboard. And then I got ot try the snare and the bass drum and the cymbals. We were not one of those schools with a huge percussion section that had a million things going on at once and rocked out on the sidelines or something (Though we did have the "Bisonettes," a kickline named after the school mascot.). And since it was the Seventies, we played weird stuff like the "Kentucky Fried Chicken" theme song (which right now I cannot conjure up in my head) and the theme from the movie "Jaws." As a result, nearly everything we tried to march into looked a bit like a chickenleg. No kidding. But I did get to play percussion.

Big moment for the cymbals was during the National Anthem -- a solo; "For the la-and of the free" **CRASH** "And the home. Of the. Brave." Followed by cheers and we would walk off the field so the Bisons could do their thing. A couple of times during the indoor band rehearsal, I got to play drums as well and I learned how to do snare rolls and the marching cadence and some other things. It was fun. So I am getting the hang of this drumming thing more or less. I do know, for all my percussionist friends out there, that it is not the real thing as far as drum playing goes. But as a guitar player, it is way more real than playing the plastic guitar with the multi colored buttons.  There is a guy on You tube who credits GHWT with training him to learn the real drums. I don't know his whole story, and I bet he had some native talent to begin with. But it does support my point.

(Of course I cannot find his video.)

What is happening with the Beatles game though, is that I am really feeling like I should get on to real instruments. Why am I playing this game? It does allow me to blow off some steam. And it is fun. And no spectres from my past or present are standing over me criticizing my errors. But the Beatles, I swear, especially in studio modes, look at you if fail a song, and I think when I failed out of "Back in the USSR" for the first time, I heard John Lennon say,  "Don't do that! Don't do that."

Meeting the Beatles

Tried the Beatles game for the first time with the Wii Guitar Hero guitar controller with absolutely no technical troubles. I started out on Quick Play in order to get a feel for the game and found that the songs there are listed by ranking them easiest to most difficult. In the interest of avoiding being embarrassed, I started at the top with their easiest tunes first on medium. They were WAY too easy. When I tried Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the first time on expert though, I failed, not to booing as with GHWT, but the band simply stopped playing and you could hear John's voice saying, "I don't know what they're doing."You an choose a No Fail mode, but I skipped that.

Visually,for some of them, the quick play starts you out in a studio with a date displayed,  and then once you start the tune,  depending on the era, puts you visually into some other animated ambience. The Beatles look a bit like they do in the Yellow Submarine film , so it's not like they are unfamiliar or a mockery of themselves. The issue I am having personally with the visuals is the same one as I had with  GHWT. While we have a good enough old school TV, it is not high def and the sound is just out of the speaker unless I crank it, much to my cats' and partner's dismay. So, maybe the visuals are getting lost on me while I am laying. It is as if they play on in my subconscious, but right now I am concentrating so hard on the game that I am not paying attention to the visuals.

This is an interesting project because while I am not the wildest fan of the Beatles, I do like them. I noticed that the more difficult songs for guitar are some of their earliest ones.

Above the tunes in Career mode is a kind of thermometer which display the relative difficulty of the instruments and some of the easiest songs , like "Yellow Submarine" doesn't even inch its way onto the thermometer. 

Next stop, I think is "Career" mode, which will put me chronologically in the various venues they played in.