::Voodoo-People::

So around this time last year my xbox decided that it didn’t want to boot up.  No amount of coaxing would bring the console out of hibernation and the only sign that it was still alive was the 3 red illuminations on the front.  Now if you’ve been lucky (or you bought an elite) you’ve not seen this before but I can assure you its a very common fault due to a manufacturing flaw.

The good news was they had just extended the warrant in light of the fault and all that was required was to log it with Microsoft and get them to pick it up.  I was without my console for a couple of weeks while the boffins in Germany put it all back together and eventually I recieved the console back in full working order.

Now I figured that they had actually bothered to fix the original fault but last week I realised that they couldn’t have as to my horror it happened again.  The good news is I sent it off at the begining of the week and it would appear its already on its way back, so at least Microsoft have got their turnaround time sorted out.

Still I’ve yet to experience a single fault with my Sony PS3 so perhaps Microsoft were not so wise to just chuck out their next gen console so they could cash in on early sales.  If a jobs worth doing its worth doing right my mother used to say.

Hopefully it’ll be back soon so I can get back to playing some Rock Band!

Now if you’ve been living in a box for the past couple of years you’ve probably missed the huge boom in so called music games.  The basic idea is you a scrolling bar with “notes” that you are required to hit in time to the music with your silly plastic guitar.

Things got a little more interesting with the latest series when Rock Band allowed the use of an additional drum controller so now you could play as a whole band whilst enjoying a few cold ones from the fridge.  The makers behind the Guitar Hero series quickly followed up with their own “Full Band” version and released their own drum controller.

I started drumming with an Alesis DM5 electric kit a fair few years ago and since I bought my acoustic kit it’s been sat their gathering dust, and I always wished there was a way to connect this up to my Xbox 360 so that the whole experience would be a little more true to life.

Now with the Guitar Hero World Tour drum controller this can become a reality, all that’s required is a simple MIDI cable and a little knowledge on how to set your drum brain up correctly.

The midi notes are as listed below:

Rockband / Rockband 2

• RED - MIDI Note 38 - (Snare Drum)
• YELLOW – MIDI Note 46 - (Closed Hi Hat, Hi Tom)
• BLUE – MIDI Note 48 - (Open Hi Hat, Mid Tom, Ride Cymbal)
• GREEN – MIDI Note 45 (Crash Cymbal, Low Tom)
• ORANGE – MIDI Note 36  (Kick Drum)

Guitar Hero

• RED - MIDI Note 38 (Snare Drum)
• YELLOW – MIDI Note 46 (Hi Hat, Crash 1)
• BLUE – MIDI Note 48 (Tom 1)
• GREEN – MIDI Note 45 (Tom 2)
• ORANGE – MIDI Note 49 (Ride, Crash 2)
• PURPLE – MIDI Note 36 (Kick Drum)

Now it took me a while to work out that you also need to make sure you set the MIDI channel to 10 otherwise none of this will work.  As you can most likely tell from just looking at the list above, the Rockband configuration is alot more logical for playing on a real/electric drum kit.

With more and more people developing an interest in real drumming after playing these games it can only be a good thing that such things are possible.  Whilst you still rely on the screen to provide you with what your playing and when your playing, you begin to develop muscle memory which you can take with you to the real kit.

I currently drum with Razor Pineapples (Entirely fictional Rock Band 2 band) and Happiness@Gunpoint (real life band) so if you’ve got any questions/comments leave a comment.

Just a quick heads up on a new band that’s going to be playing a venue near you ….. well never since its actually a fictional band in Rock Band 2.

Finally got round to buying a copy of Rock Band 2 over the weekend, so now my song catalogue (Since you can import the majority of the original game songs) is now in the hundreds, there are however many more song’s I’d like to download it would seem I’ve been caught hook,line and sinker.

To see the complete list of song’s available visit the Rock Band song library

Also be sure to check out Razor Pineapples website, to keep up with the latest news on the band

Unfortunately the bassist is MIA