Posts Tagged ‘Thursday Throwback’

Because of the whole band premise of the Rock Band series, instrumental tracks for regular Rock Band DLC are very rare (more common on the RBN, however). The only track I can remember at the top of my head, is the recently released Frankenstein back in January. So I thought I would share one of my favorite, and arguably the most popular instrumental song in the whole Rock Band platform, YYZ by Rush.

Rush is definitely one of the most popular artists in Rock Band, with three different packs (including the entirety of 2112), two on-disc songs, and five singles. We have even featured three of their songs as previous Thursday Throwback picks: Limelight, Closer to the Heart and Working Man (Vault Edition).

YYZ was released in 1981, on their studio album Moving Pictures. It wasn’t released as a single, so its popularity is mainly down to it being one of the favorites at concerts. The name comes from the airport code of Rush’s hometown of Toronto. The band always know when they are home, as YYZ appears on their luggage. YYZ was first featured on the setlist of Guitar Hero II, along with Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, and then finally as part of the full album release of Moving Pictures in Rock Band.

I’m glad to report that the exclusion of the vocals does not effect the rest of this song. While your singers can take a breather, everyone else should prepare for a workout, because its difficulty of the song is pretty high. 4-tier guitar starts off relatively simple in the intro, which then turns into a little harder riff, and then turns into a strumfest at around the two minute mark, with a solo later on. 4-tier bass follows a very simple pattern to the guitar throughout most of the song, hence the same difficulty, but towards the end it gets even harder, so watch out. As you would expect from Neil Peart, 5-tier drums is the hardest of the instruments, with loads of foot pedal usage, switches in cymbals, and loads of tricky fills throughout, so I would recommend playing in Pro mode for that extra challenge.

Got any ideas for any artists we haven’t featured yet? Or different songs by artists we have featured? Any ideas would be great!

After looking through this site, why don’t you head on over to my growing fansite, The Tribute Pages which features loads of tributes of video games, TV shows and movies. Much appreciated!

When Harmonix announced that keys were going to be introduced into Rock Band 3, many artists sprung to mind whose music included extensive use of the new instrument. And as expected, Harmonix released some great additions to the platform that made the most of keys, and Pat Benader was no exception. This week’s Thursday Throwback pick is Pat Benatar’s hit We Belong.

Pat Benatar, a four time Grammy winner, has a whopping 19 songs chart in the Top 40 from twelve different studio albums, of which several went platinum. Benatar made her Rock Band debut with Hit Me With Your Best Shot in February 2009, followed closely by Hearbreaker in March of the same year. It wasn’t until almost two years later the she returned with a six-pack of songs, all of which feature charts utilizing Rock Band’s newest instrument.

Rather than recommending probably her most well known song (Love is a Battlefield), I thought I would feature one of her other tracks that you may have missed or not played for a while. We Belong was released in 1984, on her album Tropico. Interestingly, it matched the success of her previous single, Love is a Battlefield, in the US, which peaked at number three.

Another favorite of mine in Rock Band, We Belong features a solid mix of the instruments, while each steal the spotlight during the song. 3-tier keys is a good mix of single notes and chords, used throughout the song. This is a prime example of superior Harmonix audio mastering, as they have a “delayed” effect, which isn’t really noticeable on the album version. The 3-tier vocals is up next, with Benatar’s easy vocals, assuming you can get the right pitch. Harmonies are great, as the song gradually builds up to the last chorus of a choir. 0-tier Pro drums plays like normal drums, as there are very little cymbals in the whole track, unusual for a track. 2-tier guitar and 2-tier bass take a step back, but both are still fun to play on either legacy or Pro.

And here’s a link to the Pro guitar chart.

Got any ideas for any artists we haven’t featured yet? Or different songs by artists we have featured? Any ideas would be great!

After looking through this site, why don’t you head on over to my growing fansite, The Tribute Pages which features loads of tributes of video games, TV shows and movies. Much appreciated!

One of the aims for these Throwback Thursday articles is to pick lesser known underrated songs or great hits that you might have missed. This week’s pick is the latter, as we’ve chosen a unique song, where the studio version was released after the live version within Rock Band. Can you guess what it is yet?

Wings (and referred to as Paul McCartney & Wings in Rock Band) was a band that included, Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, along with several other members throughout the ten years of being active. The band did extremely well in those ten short years, with twelve top-10 singles in the UK and fourteen top-10 singles in the US. That’s impressive enough, but all of their respective albums were in the top 10, as well. A hugely successful band, with one of the founding members of The Beatles, they were a force to be reckoned with. (For trivia buffs, Paul McCartney is credited with over 100 million record sales, not far behind The Who.)

Paul McCartney himself has had seven songs released on Rock Band across two packs; one released at the very beginning of 2010, and the other right at the end. Both have versions of my featured song, Band on the Run, which many will recognize from the Guitar Hero: World Tour soundtrack. I asked some of my friends what comes to mind when you hear Paul McCartney, and first they said The Beatles, but they all also said Band on the Run. Not surprisingly, it’s the band’s most successful single, selling over a million copies and reaching Number 1 in US and Number 3 in the UK.

The song has three distinctive parts, so that’s how I am going to break my analysis of the song down:

Part 1 (The first 80 seconds): The guitar starts with that opening riff, while the synthesizer follows a similar pattern. Bass compliments the guitar, while you have normal drums.
Part 2 (The following 40 seconds): The guitar kicks up a gear, with the synthesizer closely following suit. Drums have a faster pace, and bass now has a chart of its own, while staying simple.
Part 3 (Remainder of the song): The guitar now turns into an acoustic sound, with the drums having the same tempo as the second part of the song, with added fills. Bass stays relatively simple, but with a more prominent sound in the final mix, while the synthesizer disappears almost entirely. Vocals throughout the song are fun to sing, and use harmonies quite a bit.

A fun song, with different parts to keep the gameplay fresh and exciting. Here’s your playthrough:

Got any ideas for any artists we haven’t featured yet? Or different songs by artists we have featured? Any ideas would be great!

After looking through this site, why don’t you head on over to my growing fansite, The Tribute Pages which features loads of tributes of video games, TV shows and movies. Much appreciated!

For this week’s Thursday Throwback, we have another new artist to this feature lined up. If one says Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta may spring into mind. One band was heavily involved in the soundtrack of the film, and most of their most successful hits were featured in that film. I am of course talking about the Bee Gees.

Mostly known for having one of the highest pitched male singers in music history, the Bee Gees have had a quite lengthy career. They have recorded 22 albums between 1965 and 2001, selling over 200 million copies, making them the 13th best selling artist ever, putting their popularity on par with AC/DC.

Although its hard to believe listening to the radio, the band did actually record other music than the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. However, my pick ironically does come from that soundtrack, which is You Should Be Dancing. Released in 1976, it was a number one hit in the US and Canada, number five in the UK, and it was mainly responsible for launching the Bee Gees in the disco scene. The song was released for Rock Band in November 2010 with another five songs including their most recognizable hit Stayin’ Alive.

Simply put, this is one of favorite Rock Band tracks ever, with each instrument extremely fun to play! 4-tier guitar is probably the weakest, with the majority of the song featuring lots of alt-strumming. However, if you drop down to hard, it doesn’t feature such fast strumming. 5-tier bass is one of the funnest bass charts you will find in Rock Band. It’s never repetitive, and adds some great feeling to the song. 4-tier drums is super fun on Pro drums, with a great intro and few fills to keep things fresh. 2-tier keys isn’t the best, but its still good to play, too (it’s just weird they didn’t chart the trombone to it). 3-tier vocals is what you expect from the Bee Gees – high pitched singing, with most of the challenge just trying to keep up when you find out the words aren’t what you always thought.

If you aren’t sold yet, I throw this in: This song has a guitar solo, drum solo AND a bass solo! So what are you waiting for?

Don’t take my word for it, preview the song below, provided by RBA regular thenewnoelisoncruz.

After looking through this site, why don’t you head on over to my growing fansite, The Tribute Pages which features loads of tributes of video games, TV shows and movies. Much appreciated!

This week’s Thursday Throwback pick is one of my favorite tracks in the history of rhythm gaming, one that I play on a regular basis. This song also happens to be from one of my favorite artists, as well. What a coincidence, hey?

British rock band Bad Company formed in 1973, and were active on and off until 2010. The band released over ten studio albums, five live albums, and over 25 singles, earning them a number of multi-platinum records. The band has only had two songs released for Rock Band: Shooting Star, featured on the Rock Band 2 disc, and this week’s Thursday Throwback pick, Can’t Get Enough.

Can’t Get Enough was the Bad Company’s breakthrough hit, which rocketed up the charts to the top of the US charts, and still remains one of the band’s most popular songs. Originally released for Rock Band on the last week of November in 2010, it was the first song released after Rock Band 3 that didn’t feature Keys, prompting (now clearly unfounded) fears that future DLC would not feature Keys charts.

This song is fun on all instruments. 4-tier guitar has that iconic riff which will keep your fingers in check, and includes two solos, one in the middle and one at the end. 2-tier bass is one of my favorite bass charts, which never gets boring or repetitive, and unlike many other songs, doesn’t get washed out by the other instruments in the mix. 4-tier drums have a varied chart, with lots of mini fills to break the song up, along with lots of cymbal usage. The latter part features lots of quick bass pedal charting, so be careful that it doesn’t take you by surprise. Although 4-tier, I haven’t had any problems with the vocals. Paul Rodgers voice goes just as well with this song, as did with Shooting Star. Tambourine parts are also present in the vocal charts.

Don’t take my word for it, preview the song below in HD, provided by corporalgregg44.

After looking through this site, why don’t you head on over to my growing fansite, The Tribute Pages which features loads of tributes of video games, TV shows and movies. Much appreciated!

Instead of featuring a song that would compliment this week’s DLC release, we thought it would be interesting to release a song that is a polar opposite. Nickelback is definitely a polarizing act, and I’m one of the few who do like the band (but even then, only the lighter songs, I don’t like the heavy songs they do), so I thought I would feature one of my favorite tracks by the band, Photograph.

Photograph is the 14th single released by the band, from their fifth studio album, All the Right Reasons. Despite being voted as the number five most annoying song of all time on Rolling Stone, it reached number one on Canada charts (unsurprising for a band originally from Canada), and topped out at number two in the US. It was released for Rock Band as DLC in June of 2010, as part of a 6-pack.

So onto the song itself. I’ll start with the “best” [Editor's note: quotes added for emphasis] part of the song, the vocals. We’ve all been in a situation where we look at an old photograph and the memories come flooding back:

Look at this photograph
Every time I do it makes me laugh
Every memory of looking out the back door
I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
It’s time to say it goodbye.

Be sure you don’t trip up on the last chorus of the song, as it is charted differently than the other choruses. Next, you have some standard acoustic-style charted 1-tier guitar, with lots of three-note chords. 0-tier bass is basic but not repetitive, and 3-tier drums isn’t really prominent in the verses, aside from some cymbals and a bit of foot pedal, but is still simple but fun.

Here’s a full band playthrough:

Thanks for reading!

I would appreciate it if you would have a look at my growing fansite, The Tribute Pages which features tributes of video games (including Rock Band 3), TV shows and movies. Thank you!