The world — and by “world” I of course mean “everybody who’s at SXSW right now” — is all a-twitter about FourSquare, a website aiming to turn your social life into an adventure game complete with experience points and trophies (they call ‘em badges), and the self-proclaimed sequel to the ill-fated Dodgeball.  While I am definitely #notatsxsw, the flood of SXSW tweets about #foursquare got me more than a little curious.

So I signed up, and of course my four bigshot social media maven friends (who are NOT #notatsxsw) were already on there.  I poke around a bit, getting a feel for what would be the “action” of this game.  The site is brand spanking new, so while the mechanics are largely in place, the content is not. 

It takes me 2 minutes to realize you could rack up a ton of points just clicking “sure I done that” on lots of random tasks.  My immediate reaction: this is a web-based button-masher.  So of course, since my brash editorial brain craves a global audience, I took it right to Twitter:

nthmost: #foursquare isn’t a fun game because there’s no accountability. It’s a web-based button-masher. iPhone app doubly so.

about a day ago

Sat Mar 14 23:40:46 +0000 2009

MyFriendTim: #foursquare maybe scoring is not so revolutionary. # of friends on FB or followers here is already real world score

about a day ago

Sat Mar 14 23:53:27 +0000 2009

nthmost: @MyFriendTim true, but that’s the #twitter game. #foursquare should be better at being the game it’s trying to be.

about a day ago

Sat Mar 14 23:56:54 +0000 2009

MyFriendTim: hmm don’t have #foursquare but I got the idea that it effectively scored stupid acts not that it stupidly scored effective acts

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:10:50 +0000 2009

nthmost: @MyFriendTim I just signed up an hour ago to check out #foursquare . I already have 5 pts b/c I found stuff I could click “yeah me too” on.

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:13:50 +0000 2009

MyFriendTim: re #foursquare ugh. Stupid scores for stupid acts

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:16:32 +0000 2009

nthmost: People make a lot of tasks like “go to We Be Sushi on Valencia and get the Early Bird Special”. Uh, yup. check. done it. #foursquare

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:15:15 +0000 2009

nthmost: But okay, maybe it’s yet another form of lifestreaming, similar to how the stuff you click “favorite” in YouTube can show in your FriendFeed

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:16:45 +0000 2009

nthmost: But in that case #foursquare != game. If they don’t want to be a game, that’s cool too. Someone else could make the game I’m wanting here.

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:18:35 +0000 2009

nthmost: @MyFriendTim Tasks don’t have to be stupid. They’re player-created / controlled. Which of course means >95% stupid. #foursquare

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:33:20 +0000 2009

MyFriendTim: I’ll check it out but I am with you. I don’t want amplifiers of current status games but want more interesting markers #foursquare

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 03:07:19 +0000 2009

nthmost: #foursquare Tasks could be interesting in aggregate. Could help suggest what to do in strange cities, help ppl find others who do cool stuff

about a day ago

Sun Mar 15 00:37:19 +0000 2009

As it happened, @foursquare was tracking mentions of #foursquare, and caught me in the act of my loudmouth editorializing.  [will clean up all Twitter copy-pasting later]

@nthmost Sorry you hate foursquare (and fun. & puppies). I hope we can still be friends. JK – we got tons of stuff to fix. Bear w/ us!  4:56 PM Mar 14th from web

@foursquare I kid because I love. I just submitted a nice fat suggestion for you. (I do hate fun though. >:-|  5:02 PM Mar 14th from TweetDeck in reply to foursquare

@foursquare I actually just spent a lot of time looking at your site hoping to see a list of “what’s coming”… didn’t find it  5:04 PM Mar 14th from TweetDeck

@nthmost. Ha. We love you too. And no list of what’s “coming soon” because we ran out of time (I was fixing bugs at airport!). Soon tho!  5:10 PM Mar 14th from web

I honestly do love what they’re setting out to do.  I just think it could be a much better game, if a game is what they want to be, by incorporating some really basic principles of what makes any game fun and addictive.  Of course I briefly considered “well I’ll just make my OWN douchebag game!”, but that lasted all of 10 seconds as I realized I had no interest in starting a website defined as successful by having ever-increasing overhead and no income.

Hence, I headed over to the FourSquare suggestion box and wrote the following, complete with lovingly hand-crafted HTML for best readability (this is straight copy-paste):

More Fun with a Little Accountability

Accountability may not sound like Fun, but a little goes a long way in making a game more fun and addictive. How about sparking creativity by letting players optionally create simple tests to “prove” the task was done?

Examples:

• amount of the bill at the restaurant after ordering a specific meal
• color of the person’s hair that the player was supposed to meet
• name of the guy who owns that little hole-in-the-wall cafe
• second word in the last paragraph on page 31 of the King’s Quest III manual

In other words, tiny bits of data that would be really easy to get if you’re there doing it, and either impossible to get otherwise, or just a silly pain in the butt to remember to look up on the web just to get the points.

Format could be similar to a captcha. Task-creators should have the option of showing to the player that there will be a validation required, otherwise people might later click “I’ve done this” and find they’re missing the data they need, possibly being unable to get it again.

Certain badges could be comprised only of tasks that require proof. Since proofs would be totally optional, a feature like this would add a layer to the game rather than change the way the whole game works.

–Naomi Most, March 14, 2009

Tangential thoughts: This experience has caused me to evaluate my “voice” on Twitter and around the net.  I’m happy with all of the above interactions. “People love a loose cannon”, as a family member once quipped at me over 12 years ago.  But I have some thinking to do as to how best to capitalize upon this persona’s comfort with having strong, somewhat abrasive opinions.

Technorati Tags: editorializing, foursquare, fun, game design, twitter, voice

All hardcore silliness aside, I’m really enjoying this new kit.  It’s making previously simplistic-feeling songs like “Alive” (Pearl Jam) and “Mountain Song” (Jane’s Addiction) fun again by giving me more of the real feeling of movement between the toms and the cymbals.

I’m not the only one out there who’s having a good time pounding on these things, but I’ve been hearing a lot of “ow these things make me hurt” as opposed to “whee these things make the music more fun”.

A large part of that, as far as I can tell, has to do with the fact that many people get the ION drum set for the realistic rebound and therefore think that the drum kit will increase their stick speed and accuracy without any increase in skill or knowledge on their part.

What people don’t realize is that, by continuing to whack the same way they did on the Rock Band drums, they’re actually sabotaging their stick speed by hitting too hard and not thinking “up”.

Alright, what is THAT supposed to mean?

I started taking drum lessons from a little music shop near me about once a week as soon as I got back from Japan and realized that all I wanted to do was bang out rhythms, like, all the time.  Here’s my drum teacher’s Number One Tip to increase your stick speed, as well as some other good bonuses I’ll get into in a minute.

TIP NUMBER ONE FOR STICK SPEED:  “Play Off the Drum”

When making your stroke, think “up” and bring the stick away fro the head immediately after striking it.  Don’t “play down into the drum”, throwing all your intention into forcing a downward stroke.

Even professional drummers don’t seem to get this right a lot of the time, especially the heavy hitters, and those are the guys who end up with tendonitis and other functional disabilities.

Alex Gonzales, drummer for Mana, has this to say in an interview on ModernDrummer.com:

   One of the things I can recommend for drummers who like to hit hard is to be as relaxed as possible. [...] I don’t put pressure on the heads, I play off the drum heads—the cymbals, too.

What’s great about the ION kit, in comparison with the stock Rock Band 1 and Rock Band 2 kits, is that you have quite a bit of realistic drum rebound to play with.  Make use of it!

Yeah, if you’re planning to transition to a real set of skins someday, this tip will carry you there.  See, thinking “up” will help you “draw sound from the drum”, as it’s described.  The less time the stick spends on the drumhead, the more resonance can be gotten from the drum.

Results: increased stick speed AND less stress and strain on the body.

Take THAT, “Everlong”!  *whack*

A little knowledge can be a powerful thing — now make sure you practice it!

Go check out Alex Gonzales’ other suggestions in his interview.  Apparently he does Pilates regularly, and ices his hands after shows to prevent swelling that leads to joint pain.

Technorati Tags: drumming, drums, ion, ps3, rock band, technique, tips

I didn’t say so in my response, but I absolutely agree.  I dislike the way I myself sound, and I try to protect my housemates from it as best I can.  It begs the question of why I play it at all, which turns out to be perfectly apropos to this topic. 

Simply put, it’s a challenge!  Can I get a great score and sound cool?  Some songs work great for me, and some songs are horribly unforgiving, score-wise, when I attempt to inject some style and tone.  I’ve started recording myself when singing a wide variety of songs both in- and out-of-game, and in many cases I’m amazed at the dull flat drowning-cat noises that have won me perfect scores in certain songs.

But WHY is it a challenge to sound good AND score good?  From this point on I have pasted what I posted in the Rock Band forum.

This topic is essentially all about what makes a “good singer”. As intuitive creatures we have a sense of what’s attractive and beautiful (“good singing”) versus what is robotic and off-putting (“monotone singing”).

So, what makes someone a “good singer” as opposed to someone who simply sings the pitches required to get good scores in a karaoke game but somehow manages to sound like a dying cat? 

Here are my thoughts on this, in a somewhat-but-not-completely organized fashion.

I actually don’t think this is a hard problem. Obviously songs consist of logically arranged melodies (and that’s a huge topic, so I won’t get into it). But they also consist of “challenges” to what we expect to happen — twists in the plot, so to speak.

In terms of singing, those challenges come in the form of unexpected tiny delays, choosing thirds instead of fifths for the second time through a melody, using slides to get from one note to the next, and injecting spots of emotion into words that may affect the pitch slightly (even throw it “off”). Some of these things are captured in the Rock Band charting, but if they don’t “come from” the person singing them, they sound just as robotic as any other parts. (Sorry to be so imprecise, but we’re talking Aesthetics here.)

Good singing is pretty much characterized by flaws, because humans are flawed beings, and hearing someone perform “perfectly on-pitch” throughout an entire song feels alien to us. We call that singer robotic and monotone, whereas we call someone like Eddie Vedder an amazing vocalist even though he never sings his songs the same way twice (and arguably he cannot). And why should he? He should challenge our expectations and inject slightly different emotions to stay interesting (which he does) — not recite the melody like a playback machine.

My other main observation is that when you’re singing for the joy of singing and/or to produce something aesthetically pleasing, you are necessarily producing sounds that sound completely different from the vocalizations that occur when you are staring a screen with your thoughts bound up in the effort of getting that little arrow to match with that line. Just an attitudinal thing.
In other words, my opinion is that singing for the purposes of FCing songs in this game produces vocalization that is the antithesis of what our brains want to process as aesthetically pleasing.

Tangentially, I would love to see more original singers of songs in Rock Band playing their songs in the game.

Just to wrap up, clearly it’s possible to sound really good AND appease the game algorithms enough to get 100%. I’m just providing explanations as to why (it seems) these conditions only rarely coincide.

–Naomi

* platinum RB2 vocals
* trained choral singer
* real-life rock band vocalist

Technorati Tags: aesthetics, brain, rock band, singing, theory

It was an incredibly rainy and dark day that suggested I do nothing more than achieve a mostly-meaningless video game victory that proves I am the Awesomest Rock Singer in the World [on the PS3] for maybe 24 hours until someone else does the same thing.

Oh yeah shout-outs.  I’d like to thank my mom for being an amazing singer, my sisters for being such avid and lovely singers as well, and my step-dad for forcing us to listen to Steely Dan in the car every Sunday!  bleghh!!

And now I shall go around the ‘net blagging about it.  BWAHAHAHAhahaghehgaghgh cough cough excuse me, my voice is a bit… ahem.

On a side note…

I’m not doing too shabbily in the solo Leaderboards for Vocals right now.  On the Playstation network (PS3, Wii, and Xbox360 are all different user-spaces) I have a #1 with “New Way Home” by the Foo Fighters.  What does this mean?  That I sang it perfectly and I manipulated the mechanics of the game in such a way as to get the most points.  So it’s a combination of being able to hit all the correct pitches — not to sound good, mind you — and strategically use some special power-ups that temporarily raise your point-earning potential.  Hey, it’s a game.

I’m not really the obsessive type though (really!) and I didn’t “try” to get any high scores.  I sang a few songs that I enjoyed (ahem all the Foo Fighters, Blondie, and Rush), enjoyed it, and wound up with high scores.  w00t.

It’s effortless for me to sing most songs.  I owe it all to my mama!

Technorati Tags: endless setlist 2, rock band, singing

(aka “Endlist Shitlist Too”.  I made that up!)

Because it’s hella rainy today and I’m hella bored, I’m doing this 84-song marathon on vocals – Expert of course – which will earn me “Legendary” status and probably gumdrops will rain from the sky and whatnot.

Preparations:

• re-dressed all my characters — hey, i’m going to be staring at them for like 7 hours
• ate a huge okonomiyaki
• made three big pots of tea: pu-erh, goji-ginger-jujube, and white tea
• readied a bunch of podcasts to play during the Talkie songs — it doesn’t matter what you say or “sing” during those, so may as well have my favorite talkers come in as guest-singers.  (I’ll just have to activate the Overdrive parts myself.)

I’m going to keep this blog post updated as I finish each song.  I’m going for the “Bladder of Steel” award too, so I can’t pause it or respond to messages or anything. 

Oh, and as time allows I am inserting pics of my infamous karaoke session with the illustrious Mika-chan when I was in Tokyo.  I’m in the stripy pants.

Click below if you REALLY want a play-by-play of the whole 7.5 hours. Might be useful if you plan on doing the Endless Setlist 2 on expert vocals like I did.

SONGS IN ORDER (with stars awarded / % correct / my comments)

Eye of the Tiger: 6 / 100 / “…for the pill with a skillet of five…!” yeah bring it on!

My Own Worst Enemy: 6 / 98 / nigga please

I Was Wrong: 5 / 93 / Shaky arrow

So Whatcha Want: 6 / 99 / Let Fitness Rocks podcast handle this one. Talkies make good breaks.

E-pro:  3 stars / ?? / freaking shaky arrow!! I didn’t deserve that.

Hungry Like the Wolf: 6 / 99 / How did I miss that one?? I was robbed!!

Pretend that we’re dead: 6 / 99 / Deeeeaaaadd.

Rebel Girl: 6 / 100 / didn’t make best use of overdrive (like i care right now)

Nine in the Afternoon: 5 / 95  / First time I ever sang this one (sightread – SR). Don’t know the verse melodies too well.

Float On: 6 / 98 / SR – that was fun. have to perfect that one sometime.

Drain You: 6 / 100 / had 1/4 bar overdrive left, but no problem.

PDA: 6 / 96 / i don’t know this song all that well, and when I’m singing it, i’m usually thinking, “i wish i were drumming.” well i won’t be thinking that when it gets to Painkiller.  (or will I?)

Man in the Box: 6 / 100 / i like this song better every time I play it.

Cool for Cats: 6 / 98 / i like this song less every time i play it. but as a late-70s new wave and punk fan, i still quite like it.

Hello There: 6 / 97 / I always miss that “WOULD YOU LIKE TA!!” part that’s half-talkie.  *shrug*

Today: 6 / 99 / had 1/4 bar overdrive left.

That’s What You Get: 6 / 97 / just barely got the gold stars (confusion over use of overdrive), but i finally nailed that weird bridge section i could never get before.

Spirit in the Sky:  6 / 99  / ugghghhhhhhghghgh.  SR.  fuck those stupid tambourine sections. i got my gold stars.

We Got The Beat: 6 / 99 / guh.

New Kid in School: 6 / 100 / Yayy Donnas yay.  had 1/4 overdrive left, but it ain’t that bad.

Feel the Pain: 6 / 100 / yeah whatever.

Pump It Up: 6 / 100 / probably my least favorite Costello song, but hey, Costello.

One Step Closer: 6 / 97 / now I wish I were playing drums.

Welcome to the Neighborhood: 6 / 100 / sightread (SR). but i’ve played it on drums lots.  argh that was only song #24 of 84!

White Wedding: 6 / 99 / It’s a nice, rainy day to… NOT start again! I can’t wait to be done this thing.

Psycho Killer: 6 / 99 / Did you know David Byrne has a degree in Medieval French?  I did.  Oh hey – nice long tambourine solo at the end means a nice quick snack break!

Lump: 6 / 99 / Is this lump I’m chewing still in my mouth? I FINK SHO.  yom.. that was funny.

Conventional Lover: 6 / 98 / SR (yes, really).  drumming this one is funner.  funny lyrics… i was giggling at all the puns as i sang it.  heh.  (“nerrd!”)

De-Luxe : 6 / 100 / kinda fun. i bet i could sing and drum this on expert at the same time.

Shooting Star: 6 / 96 / ughghghg. there should be a bylaw in this game that if you reach 6 gold stars before the end of the song, then you’re allowed to just stop singing.  “whoa whoa whoa, nananana”, just not necessary.

Give It Away: 6 / 98 / Guest-sung by Cory Doctorow via his Craphound Podcast.  nicely done, Cory!

The Middle: 6 / 96 / It just takes some time, littabittadittabitta something what…

American Woman: 5 / 94 / Goodbye Canadian jerk. 

[ed - I keep getting reactions of "HEY!" from Canadian guys reading this (that's a large proportion of the guys I play RB2 with, apparently!) so I feel I should point something out: have you ever actually listened to the lyrics of this song???  In addition to it being a catalogue of invectives against Americans in general, the very last line is, "Goodbye American CHICK".  So, uh, yeah.  Yeah!]

Jagged Gorgeous Winter: 5 / 96 / Mmmmf.

Living on a Prayer: 5 / 100 / Whoaaaaa I’m not even halfway theeere…

One Way or Another: 5 / 97 / Starting to lose interest?

Go Your Own Way: 6 / 100 / mmhmm.

Kids in America: 6 / 100 / let’s hear it for songs I don’t have to look at the screen to get 100% on.  now if my headset weren’t all smashed by my foot, i could blog and sing at the same time.  maybe some duct tape…

Girl’s Not Grey: 6 / 100 / SR (really). have drummed it a lot.

Lazy Eye: 4 / 97 / SR. whoops. maybe if i’m going to suck on a song, i should do the tambourine hits.

Come Out and Play: 6 / 100 / Heyyy… don’t pay no mind… been singing this song since 1995…

Mountain Song: 5 / 95 / SR. no fun. wanna cash in now.  but i must press on!

-=-=-=-= HALFWAY DONE!! =-=-=-=-

Where Did You Go?  5 / 98 / bad use of overdrive. meh.

Alex Chilton / 6 / 98 / Hiiii we’re the Replacements… and we’re playing in a Rock [n Roll] Band [2].

Rockin me Baby: 6 / 98 / What is this song about??

Oh Bob Dylan next, time to stuff a Larabar in my mouth!

Tangled Up in Blue: 5 / 96 / heheh this song is much more fun with a mouthful of snack bar.

Alive: 6 / 98 / it’s really satisfying to do well in this song.  should have used tambourine part for a bathroom break though.

Round and Round: 6 / 99 / long meedly guitar solos at the end of a song mean just enough time for a pee break!

You Oughta Know: 6 / 99 / i *ought* to know this song, i was a teen in the 90s. And every time I sing it I can’t help but think of Dave Coulier…

Alabama Getaway: 6 / 98 / SR.  i’m starting to feel icky from spitting into this microphone for 4 hours, and singing hippy songs about total dirtbags sort of intensifies this.

Testify: 6 / 100 / Another flawless talkie victory for Cory Doctorow, and a break for me.

Supreme Girl: 6 / 99 / I love this song! because it’s basically early XTC!  (Remember kids, the secret to creativity is Hiding Your Sources.)

Pinball Wizard: 6 / 99 / glad i took the time to master the melody, but next time, must remember to save 1/2-bar of overdrive and use it just before “he plays my favorite table”.

Our Truth: 5 / 99 / throat… scratchy… need tea!!!  but no time!!!

Uncontrollable Urge: 5 / 96 / SR. wow, not easy.

Bad Reputation: 6 / 100 / “Pedal, boys!” okay.

Night Lies: 6 / 99 / Exploding into giggle fits is becoming a problem.  “Niiight liiiahahahaha”

Any Way You Want It: 6 / 100 / pfft!  i’m a trained singer.

Teenage Riot: 6 / 99 / YOU’RE IT!

Shackler’s Revenge: 6 / 97 / I don’t believe there’s a reason this song should have been written, much less been included in this game.

Let There Be Rock: 5 / 96 / and you could hear the fingers pickin’, and this is what they had to say: “ow! quit it with the tambourine!”  alright, i’ll whack the mic against a pile of change in my pocket from now on. wait that makes too much sense…

The Trees: 6 / 100 / Alright, you go, Neil Peart! while I go to the bathroom and pick up another Youbar and drink tea!

Aqualung: 6 / 100 / see mom? [cassette] taping classic rock marathons off the radio and listening to it incessantly every day for a year has paid off.

Down With the Sickness: 6 / 99 / my throat hurts.  It’s not what you think!!

Chop Suey: 5 / 96 / mmf.

Everlong: 6 / 100 / yay. been singing that song since it emerged in 1997. maybe that’s why i’m losing my functional vocal range… oh wait, no, it’s just that i’ve been singing for 5 hours straight.  glad this game allows octave changes at will.

Master Exploder: 5 / 92 / It turns out I do need a microphone.

Give It All: 5 / 96 / Shaky Arrow strikes again!

Carry On My Wayward Son: 6 / 100 / gold stars at the 75% mark, that’s what I like to see.  (can’t sing that song w/o thinking about South Park heheh)

Rob the Prez-o-dent: 5 / 90 / shaky arrow!! plus, first time i ever sang it! good thing it’s mostly talkie!

Spoonman: 4 / 89 / Shaky Arrow!!! not fair! that song is hard enough!!!

Ace of Spades: 5 / 99 / injudicial use of overdrive

-=-=-=-= THREE QUARTERS DONE!!! =-=-=-=-

Almost Easy: 6 / 99 / “I’m not, not insane”?  Wait, does that mean you ARe insane?

Rambling Man: 6 / 100 / Wait a second, don’t play the freaking tambourine solo, you’ve got the gold stars, make a run for the bathroom!!!

Get Clean: 5 / 96 / SR, and I probably have never played this song on the drums either, which means I’ve never heard this song in full before.  just scraped by with the 5 stars.

Peace Sells: 6 / 98 / Wow now I know how to sound like Dave Mustaine… sing for 6 hours straight and then try to hit high notes.

Colony of Birchmen: 6 / 98 / best I ever did on that one.  (why do I suddenly feel like cracking open my old DM notes?)

Souls of Black: 6 / 100 / SR.  wow, that was easy. and kind on the vocal chords.

YEAH, Boddhisatva! Snack break!!

Boddhisatva: 6 / 100 / Advice: ignore cowbell solos at your peril if you are not good at singing this one.  they’re worth 1.5 stars or so.

-=-=-=-= FIVE SONGS LEFT!!! =-=-=-=-  and this is the good stuff *bouncebounce*

Shoulder to the Plow: 5 / 94 / SR.  ugh.

Battery: 6 / 100 /  boy, missing cowbell hits in a Metallica song sure makes me feel like a retard.  that was a good score though.

Visions: 6 / 100 / is this really actually a song? huh.

Panic Attack: 6 / 100 / Boy good thing I’ve been listening to Dream Theatre lately!  (wait what?!?!)

Painkiller: 6 / 99 / yay Judas Priest!  time… for… A Pain Killerrrr… or maybe a glass of wine.

“KEEP SINGING” ???  it’s telling me this. no way MFer. gimme my cutscreeenz!

YEAH! DONE!!!

416 / 420 stars

Trophies achieved:

Vinyl Artist

Gold Artist

Platinum Artist

Bladder of Steel

Technorati Tags: endless setlist 2, okonomiyaki, podcasts, rock band 2, tea

I hate to say it, but I wish I’d spent 12 hours playing Fallout 3 and then the next day hung out there.  Now that would have been a head trip.  Of course, it would have come at the cost of forfeiting a whole day of enjoying Japan… but the freak in me would have found it a worthy sacrifice.

Go check out some kickass pictures.  Right on.

Technorati Tags: fallout 3, hiroshima, japan

It started innocently enough, a few whacks on a snare when I was really young.  Joined a punk band and played bass with a drummer, boy he sure drummed.  But I didn’t see the harm in it.  He left his drums in my basement and I… experimented.  But it wasn’t a problem.

Years later, I had lots of opportunities to try drumming, sometimes for whole songs at a time.  Nothing tricky or fancy, just holding down a pattern while the usual drummer was singing.  Maybe that was the seed, I don’t know.  It didn’t seem like a problem.

Fast forward to last year.  I got this game, maybe you’ve heard of it… Rock Band.  It came with this mini set of plastic and aluminum drums, four pads and an imitation kick pedal.  I didn’t think much of it at first, preferring the plastic guitar which I was already pretty good at.

But the more it sat there, the more the temptation grew, until one day, I sat down and played the drums again.

I didn’t get obsessed right away — it took months to develop the habit.  Eventually I got hooked.

Hitting things in rhythm, the physical exertion, the feeling of one’s whole body being involved in the music… exquisite.  I couldn’t get enough.

My housemates had heard quite enough though.  It’s lucky that I had a big trip coming up, 2+ weeks away in Australia and Japan (which turned into 9 weeks), because it let them forget about how freaking noisy my little drum habit was.

When I was in Japan I met a few drummers who did other kinds of drums — taiko, kodo, stuff like that.  It’s great stuff but kinda hard to find.  Basically it just stoked the fire for me, thinking about the beats I’d hammer out when I got home.

And when I got home, a certain couple, “making up for lost time”, who will remain nameless but you know who you are, sent me a fantastic electronic drum kit with very realistic action from the pads and cymbals, but which is even more freaking noisy than the little Rock Band drums.

These days all I think about is when I can get another fix.  It’s so loud, I know it hurts the people around me… but I can’t stop.  I try to just do it when nobody’s home, so no one will notice or care… but with 3 housemates and only one with a day job, it’s just about impossible.  People come home in the middle of my “rocking out” and I just know they’re thinking what a junky I am and wishing I would just stop.

It rips my heart apart.  I want to drum, create music, be a part of the music in a way I’ve never fully engaged in before.  I’m getting really freaking good at it now, and I have the equipment to match.  But I can’t play… not here at home.

So the gig is up.  I’m a drum addict, everybody knows it, and everybody’s pretty annoyed with it.  I’m depressed and I need help.

(Ok, I’m not actually depressed.  But I am a little frustrated that I’ve gotten myself hooked on a fundamentally noisy hobby.  Headphones don’t help when you’re essentially whacking tupperware with wooden sticks.  Hrm….)

Technorati Tags: drums, rock band, satire

Part of the freakiness is the soundtrack — it’s an ambient dose of extreme jibblies.  Maybe I’m a big baby, I dunno… but YOU try wandering through dimly-lit disease-ridden sewers, with insanely fast feral ghouls popping out at you before you can see them, complete with a hard minor-chord orchestral hit as your character takes a hard major flesh wound, and then tell me if adrenaline hasn’t kicked your heartbeat into a startle-induced overdrive.

One solution is to switch to an in-game radio station, namely Galaxy News Radio, so you can dig the swinging sounds of Danny Kaye and The Andrews Sisters as you slice through yet another leather-clad raider with your homemade gas-powered fire-sword that sets your foes ablaze, or sneak around doing a little reverse-pickpocketing with live grenades.

But with only 20 songs and some really repetitive newscasting going on, it’s just not a solution.  Only so many times can I listen to DJ Three Dog dispense helpful tips such as “don’t feed the yao-guai”.

I want to make my own radio station in Fallout 3, but I think that’s not going to be possible on the PS3.  One guy has managed it on the PC.  It’d be great to see an XMP-based music streaming capability, or at least a way to make a playlist out of music on your PS3 that shows up in your PipBoy as a custom radio station.

Off the top of my head, here are some songs I’d throw into a Fallout 3 radio station.  While it doesn’t match the atmosphere of culture that hasn’t progressed past the late 50s, I can imagine these songs existing in subcultural parallel to the goofy doo-wop the game provides.  Some might even be post-apocalyptically ironic.

The Misfits – Ghouls Night Out

Dead Kennedys – Kill the Poor

Covenant – Hardware Requiem

Nine Inch Nails – Capital G

Project Pitchfork – Timekiller

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