Wii Music is the black sheep of Nintendo’s Wii- game series. It doesn’t come packaged with hardware or a peripheral, and it hasn’t sees the breakout success enjoyed by Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Sports: Resort, or Wii Fit Plus. Gamers and reviewers everywhere that lacked a sense of musical independence brushed off the title and slammed it in review scores. Those who remember our review, however, will remember that we saw the game as having had massive potential… it was just a little lean for a $50 title.

Luckily, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was smart enough to sort through ignorant and naive game reviews and little to the people who knew what they were talking about.

“I think it sold lower than our expectations but on the other hand it was a really unique game, I have to say. And also, even today, we are receiving several different offers from people in the field of music education, so as far as Wii Music is concerned, I think is still has great potential. And in the future there might be some developments.”

A future? As in, another game?

“We may want to think about the possibility of making some improvements, based upon the original Wii Music… Unfortunately we don’t have any news we can talk about at the moment. But like Wii Fit Plus, it’s not really a sequel to the original Wii Fit – but we have added some features to improve the overall experience. It’s a kind of an enhanced version of the original Wii Fit…”

As we said in the review, the game’s main appeal is the embrace of musical independence, rhythmic improvisation, and teaching of musical style. Still, for a full-priced game, the game lacked an enticing song library and was void of several iconic instruments – where were my oboe, cello, trombone, and bassoon? Either way, it would be interesting to see how the Wii Music property could continue, either through sequels or upgrades.

Official Nintendo Magazine

Related Posts

• Encore! Classic game music played through Mario Paint
• Wired interview with Miyamoto; Wii Music possible for ’08
• Wii Music-ians take to the streets this month

After a few weeks in the making, I am proud to finally bring you our first video review!

Since this is our first video review, please give us some feedback on what you like, and more importantly, what you think can be improved. And who knows, maybe we’ll whip up a few more video reviews before the holiday season is over.

Dailymotion

Related Posts

• Wii Music – Review
• Mario Strikers Charged video review
• Manhunt 2 appeal to undergo judicial review

So what does Shigeru Miyamoto think of the divide between core and casual gamers? Well, maybe there really isn’t one after all. He believes that a casual gamer can become hardcore after a time, as he told Official Nintendo Magazine:

I think it’s a natural transition. said Miyamoto. Everyone starts off as a light user but at some point many of them become hardcore gamers. My wife bought Brain Training about three years ago. In More Brain Training, you know how there is the Dr Mario game? She became absolutely hooked and today she is much better than I am!

[Notes: Brain Training is the Japanese version of Brain Age, and apparently being married to the most famous video game creator in the history of the universe isn't enough to get you free DS games.]

More of Miyamoto’s thoughts on the issue of hardcore gamers vs. casual gamers:

When I hear that kind of discussion, I wonder if there really is such a distinction. There are many hardcore gamers playing with casual games and I believe casual gamers do get into hardcore Nintendo games too. I think one of Nintendo’s missions is to destroy the barrier between the two and I believe Wii Music contributes that.

I’m not entirely convinced that Wii Music is a big hit with core gamers, but try to find one who hasn’t enjoyed Wii Sports at some point over the past two years. The full interview will be published in Official Nintendo Magazine, which hits news stands tomorrow.

Official Nintendo Magazine

Related Posts

• Will casual gaming come to a premature end?
• A casual game a day keeps the cigarettes away
• Wii created Four Kinds of Gamers

This weekend and the following weekend, trios of performers will set up at various locations in major U.S. cities, demonstrating Wii Music and jamming for the crowds. You may have even caught some of these groups this past weekend, cranking out some tunes on their Wii Trumpet, their Wii Saxes, Wii Vibes, Bass, and Drums. If you spot them again, be sure to stop and enjoy the performance.

MALLS NATIONWIDE FEATURE WII MUSIC STREET PERFORMERS
Nov. 14, 2008

Live musical performances have always been a fun part of the holidays. This year, Nintendo will be making spirits bright at family destinations and retail locations across the country with bands of street performers demonstrating Wii Music™.

Now through the end of the month, the family trio of music-makers will entertain shoppers by turning the Wii console into a musical instrument with Wii Music, the new music game from Nintendo. Wii Music contains more than 50 songs and lets players use more than 60 different instruments to make their music, from melodic steel drums to soaring trumpets. To play, players simply use the Wii Remote™ and Nunchuk™ controllers to make the same motions they would with a real instrument: Strum a guitar or pound the keys of a piano. The game challenges players to transform improvised notes into great music, while enabling the freedom to customize your song, instrument, genre, tempo and stage.

To find out where the street performers will be each weekend in November, please visit www.WiiMusic.com. This weekend’s lineup is as follows:

Nov. 15-16, 11am-5pm
Atlanta: Perimeter Mall Toys “R” Us
Boston: Natick Collection
Chicago: Water Tower Place
Dallas: West Village
Los Angeles: The Commons (Calabasas, Calif.)
New York: South Street Seaport
San Francisco: Stonestown Galleria
Washington, D.C.: The Market Common Clarendon (Arlington, Va.)

Nov. 22-23, 11am-5pm
Atlanta: Perimeter Mall Toys “R” Us
Boston: Emerald Square Mall
Chicago: TBD
Dallas: Mockingbird Station
Los Angeles: Hollywood and Highland
New York: Staten Island Mall
San Francisco: Pier 39
Washington, D.C.: Potomac Hills

Related Posts

• Smash Bros. site updates with Pikmin music
• Nintendo launching Holiday Mall Experience this month
• Wii Music is booked for October

Speaking of video games and music, the numbers are in for Wii Music‘s first two weeks on store shelves, and they’re not all that high. Nintendo’s own Cammie Dunaway, citing NPD figures, says the non-game sold “65 or 66,000″ units. Cammie isn’t worried, though.

We’re predicting that it’s going to be an evergreen title. And if you look at titles like ‘Brain Age,’ it’s about the same as what ‘Brain Age’ did during it’s first few weeks and went on to sell 2.5 million copies. ‘Wii Fit’ certainly had a larger launch than that. But I think that people are starting to understand ‘Wii Music.’

She does have a point. Nintendo’s other casual games like Wii Play and Wii Fit sold consistently over a long period of time. Wii Fit is still selling like crazy. I still haven’t found any solid proof that Wii Fit even exists and the media isn’t just playing the most elaborate prank in history on me. Still, Wii Fit sold more than ten times “65 or 66,000″ copies during its first month. Will Wii Music pick up steam? It will if Dunaway has anything to say about it.

I feel as EVP of sales and marketing, [it is] both a responsibility and a real opportunity and privilege to take this game that is so unique and so much from the heart of Mr. Miyamoto, and make sure that people are exposed to it and understand it.

How’s she going to do that? Well, she seems to have a few tricks up her sleeve, such as working with schools over 100,000 music educators to incorporate Wii Music into the American music curriculum. No matter how you feel about Wii Music‘s existence, you have to admit, that’s pretty cool.

MTV Multiplayer

Related Posts

• Final Fantasy IV opens up the DS’s multi-media potential, even when closed!
• Wii Music may yet get an encore, says Miyamoto
• A little bit of Sunday chat: Video game music

Everyone loves music; it’s an undeniably inherent trait in each of us. It should be no surprise that even among the general population around us, just about anyone can find some fun in music video games. Many of those games include popular songs that are familiar favorites, and that alone is enough to draw a player into the game, regardless of whether or not they can actually play the game.

Wii Music, however, is built on a different philosophy, and one new to music video games. It’s such a radical departure from existing music video games that I’m sure many of you watched the videos and heard the hands-on impressions from the E3 unveiling and immediately wrote the game off. To be completely honest, I did, too. As a soon-to-be music educator, I had been hoping for another music game that could potentially be used to make learning about music fun for people. At E3, I was introduced what seemed to turn music-making into a dumbed down waggle-fest for the casual crowd, and I was convinced that this game wasn’t going to be a big title for me this year. I was completely wrong.

First things first, let’s get one thing straight: this isn’t Nintendo’s version of Guitar Hero or Rock Band. It’s not even their version of Elite Beat Agents (which Nintendo even published!) with added motion control. No, those are all music games based purely on the accuracy of rhythm. In fact, because of the visual cues that help you anticipate hits in Guitar Hero or Elite Beat Agents, you could theoretically play the game with the sound off and still score 100%. The music is simply there to make it easier to play. What Wii Music does is throw that blueprint for a music game out the window, and embrace the core of music education: the game enables players to gain an understanding of musical styles and experience the art of creating and reacting to music. If Guitar Hero is like giving sheet music to a MIDI player, Wii Music is like handing someone an instrument and shoving them to the front of a live jazz band. It’s no longer about getting all the notes right according to someone else’s design, but being able to understand and feel the music that’s being heard and injecting a little bit of yourself into that creation.

The first thing you’ll notice with Wii Music is that it’s very simple in terms of layout. You’ll begin the game with a quick tutorial on four basic control schemes (that mimic a piano, a guitar, a trumpet, and a violin), instructed by a Mii named Sebastian Tute, who looks and sounds like a Muppet while resembling Mozart. Or J.C. Bach. Or Haydn. With a mustache. He’ll show you how to follow the dancing metronome (known as the “Be-Bops”) and play along a the melody on piano. From there, you’ll learn that you can shake to your own, non-standard rhythms, and the game will automatically pick an appropriate note to play. Basically, you’re free to improvise any and all parts. After the tutorial, you’ll get to record your first performance of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” be shown how to save the performance as a music video, and then be let loose to the rest of the game.

You’ll be spending most of your “play” time in Jam Mode. Here, you’ll be able to try out the game’s fifty songs and over sixty instruments (once they’re all easily unlocked, of course). The Instrument Improv mode lets you easily browse through the instruments you’ve unlocked, review how to play them, and try them all out. Band geeks such as myself may be disappointed at the lack of trombone, French horn, oboe, and bassoon, but that’s just the trade off for getting awesome instruments such as a cat suit, rapper, and a cheerleader. There are a wide variety of instruments to choose from, and they’re not restricted to the four control schemes you’re taught initially, so don’t be afraid to try them all out.

When you’re ready to jump in and start making music, you’ll start a Jam Session. There’s the Quick Jam option for those who just want to get playing and don’t mind what song, instrument, or part they’re performing. Nine times out of ten, though, you’ll go into a Custom Jam. You’ll be able to choose your song out of a selection of classical, traditional, popular, and game songs. From there, you’ll decide who will play melody, harmony, bass, and percussion, you’ll choose your style (such as playing “Twinkle, Twinkle” as a march or jazz arrangement), and you’ll get playing.

As I said before, the game puts more emphasis on creativity rather than accuracy. You can opt to view basic sheet music as you play by pressing the (-) button, especially if you’re not yet familiar with the original tune. Eventually, though, you’re going to want to use merely the Be-Bops and the band behind you as your guides while you improvise and play each part, based on your knowledge of the song and the styles you learn in the Jam Mastery Lessons you take elsewhere in the game. It’s really about having fun and creating your own unique recording of a song and not about how well you play. In fact, you aren’t even given a score or grade by the game like you would be in other music games. In Wii Music, you give yourself a score, and its merely for organizational purposes when you save and browse through your music videos. It’s an appropriate system for the game because once you’ve scored 100% on songs in games like Guitar Hero or gotten perfects in Dance Dance Revolution, there’s little replay value aside from the need to show off. With an improv-based game such as Wii Music, you have endless replay value, just as you have an infinite number of ways to perform a jazz chart. That system works here.

One of the fun features in the Jam Sessions is the ability to record yourself playing one part – such as the drum track or the melody line – and then play another part while overdubbing your previous recording. You can potentially record yourself playing up to all six parts to a song, save it to a music video, and hear an entire ensemble made up of just you. It doesn’t have to be all you, though. You can overdub parts with your friends in the room, or send your music video to a friend via WiiConnect24 for them to overdub a part or parts and send back to you. The collaborative creativity unique to Wii Music opens up a whole new door for music games and begins to blur the line between games and, say, two jazz soloists “trading 4s.”

Aside from the Jam Modes, there are several other modes that define what this game’s all about. You can take Jam Mastery Lessons to learn about different musical styles from rock to jazz to Latin to electronic. You can play and record all the songs in any style of your choosing, so these lessons are where you’re taught the difference of how to play a rock drum beat versus a pop or march drum beat, how to play a walking bassline as opposed to a power bass line… all that jazz. For those that want to develop some aural skills and do a little ear training and some listening exercises, there’s a timed challenge mode called Pitch Perfect that serves to test your musical ear.

Other modes that might appeal to select groups are Mii Maestro, Handbell Harmony, and Drum Mode. Mii Maestro is the conducting mini-game we’ve been expecting since Iwata revealed the Revolution controller trailer back in 2005. It’s limited to a mere five songs, and you are in fact graded on the steadiness of your conducting pattern as well as your musical use of accents and rubato. If you don’t know how to conduct, that’s okay – the game is more concerned that you can give a consistent flick, or “ictus,” rather than whether or not you know what a “four pattern” is. As for Handbell Harmony, it’s the one mode that’s about as close to Rock Band as this game is going to get. You again have a limited choice of songs to play, but up to four players can control two bells each, sounding their bells as the icons pass along the screen in typical fashion. Finally, Drum Mode is another single-player mode that simply serves as an added bonus for those with the Wii Balance Board. You can play the same variety of drum sets as before, now with the hi-hat and bass drum pedals mapped to your feet on the Balance Board. It doesn’t emulate a set nearly as well as the games with pedals do, but it’s a nice addition to an otherwise wrist-oriented game.

Of course, as both a music educator and game reviewer, there are several aspects of this game that could have easily been improved. My first issue was with the game’s navigational system. Often times, there would be no way to simply go back in a menu system other than to go back to the main screen. Also, once you finished certain Jam modes, there was no direct way to quit, forcing you to either save a Jam video or navigate your way through the “Change Instruments” screen to make your exodus. Another issue included the selection of songs for the game, most of which fall into either the “owned by Nintendo” category or the “public domain, and therefore free to Nintendo” category. Fifty songs may sound like a lot, but neither a gamer nor a music teacher will find much excitement when half of them are songs like “The Flea Waltz” and “Oh, My Darling Clementine.” Aside from that, my final issues with the game lie in the instrument controls. Lumping cello playing with violin controls (when they are in fact inverted), restricting guitar and bass playing to downstrokes-only unless certain buttons are held down, the lack of trombone, and sound production on the violin caused by finger tapping rather than the stroke of the bow are all pedantic control scheme issues that only music enthusiasts would lose sleep over, but if you’re going to create a complete control scheme for several single instruments such as a DJ Turntable, surely a cello or trombone should be no problem.

Nevertheless, Wii Music should be considered a success. It is the first major music video game of its kind to embrace such creative freedom all while attempting to advance the education of music among the general public. Gamers looking for Rock Band: Mario Mix may have to keep on waiting, but eager musicians looking to learn about musical style, develop their ears, and get a feel for what it’s like to hear music and be able to do a little improv here and there have a good reason to be excited. As a music educator, this is a game I wouldn’t mind recommending to my students. Wii Music may not be a deep game, but it has convincingly shown us a brand new path for future music games.

The Tanooki Rating – 7.9

Related Posts

• 
  Wii Music – Video Review
• Wii Music – Hands On
• Wii Music is booked for October

It’s pretty hard to give you an idea of how Wii games play these days. It’s not as easy anymore to assume you’ll simply be mashing buttons. You need to know exactly how you’ll be using that Wii Remote, that Nunchuk Controller, without having to worry about going out and finding a playable Wii kiosk with the games you want. You’d think that by this point, we’d have a Channel on the Wii that potentially allows for the download of free demos. Oh, wait.

That said, I really think you need to experience Wii Music before you can decide if you want it or not. On paper, it sounds pretty great. After playing it, I’m convinced it’d be a decent party activity, especially if you have friends that don’t necessarily want to create a jazz combo upon meeting up to hang out. I can think of several grown friends of mine that would have a blast with this game. On the other hand, if you’re looking for Rock Band: Nintendo Edition, well… this won’t cut it.

Related Posts

• Wii Music is booked for October
• Wii Music – Review
• E3 2009: Konami brings pop’n music to the Wii

At $50 for 60+ instruments, you’d think Wii Music is a steal. Based on what we’ve played of the game, it may be a bit on the easy side for rhythm/music game enthusiasts, but for others, it can make for a fun party pasttime. As a future band director, I’m horrified of the possibility that kids will grow up thinking they can play notes at any time and it will sound good, but as a music educator, I’m looking forward to the creative outlet and exposure to so many new instruments.

If you’re not yet decided on whether or not to pick up the game, Nintendo’s launch press release can be read after the break talking about the details and modes of the game. I’ll try to get a review of the game done by next week, but seeing as I’m still playing through Sonic Chronicles…

NINTENDO’S WII MUSIC LETS PLAYERS UNLEASH THEIR INNER MAESTROS

Unique Music Game for Wii Focuses on Improvisation, Creativity and Fun

REDMOND, Wash., Oct. 20, 2008 – The sound of trumpets, the clash of cymbals and the thunder of drums herald today’s launch of Wii Music™. Just as Wii Sports™ attracted millions of new players to the world of video games and Wii Fit™ showed people that fitness could be fun, Wii Music creates a whole new genre in video games, one that lets players have fun experimenting with music as they strive to produce fun, masterful arrangements.

“Music is a universal language that inspires and moves people,” said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. “Wii Music provides a fun way for people to play together and be entertained while building a fundamental understanding of musical themes and rhythms. Wii Music can motivate people to learn real instruments or enhance their appreciation of musical performances.”

Wii Music brings more than 60 instruments to your living room, where you’re free to experiment with them in a variety of different ways. Unlike other music video games, Wii Music lets you put your own spin on songs. It’s all about improvisation, creativity and fun. The goal is to explore your inner musician to find creative and interesting new blends of instruments, tempos and styles.

To play each instrument, you use the motion-sensing abilities of the Wii Remote™ and Nunchuk™ controllers to mimic the real-life motions of instruments: bow a violin, strike a vibraphone or pluck a sitar. The controllers know if you’re playing fast or slow, hitting the notes gently or really jamming. Musical novices can understand how to play and start carrying a tune instantly, while people who are really into music will have fun creating mixes, rearranging tunes and sharing them with friends.

Songs in the Wii Music catalog can be rearranged with different instruments for a virtually endless variety of sounds. Imagine putting a reggae spin on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” or turning pop favorites like “Every Breath You Take” or “Please Mr. Postman” into heavy metal tunes. The song list contains everything from American classics like “The Entertainer” to international favorites like “La Cucaracha.” Video game fans will find several Nintendo favorites, like the themes from Super Mario Bros. ™, The Legend of Zelda™ and even Wii Sports.

Wii Music builds on the social gaming trend that Nintendo has pioneered. Not only can up to four musicians jam together on the same song, but once you’ve created your masterpiece, you can send it electronically to friends and family members who have Wii Music so that they can bask in your musical mastery. After they’ve had a listen, they can take your arrangement and add their own flavor to it with new instruments or a different tempo and send it back to you. This allows you to jam together even if you are miles apart.

Finally, Wii Music includes a variety of mini-games that let players create music videos, conduct an orchestra, play in a handbell choir, test their musical ears or even rock out on a virtual drum set. Drum Mode lets you use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers as drumsticks to play like you have a real-life drum set. Drummers who purchase Wii Fit separately also can use the Wii Balance Board™ accessory as virtual pedals for the bass drum and the hi-hat cymbal. But the basic Wii Music experience does not require any extra accessories. All 60+ instruments and 50+ songs are included at an MSRP of just $49.99.

Remember that the Wii™ console features parental controls that let adults manage the content their children can access. For more information about this and other Wii features, visit Wii.com.

For more information about Wii Music, visit www.wiimusic.com.

About Nintendo: The worldwide pioneer in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co., Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its Wii™ and Nintendo DS™ systems. Since 1983, when it launched the Nintendo Entertainment System™, Nintendo has sold nearly 2.7 billion video games and more than 470 million hardware units globally, including the current-generation Wii and Nintendo DS, as well as the Game Boy™, Game Boy Advance, Super NES™, Nintendo 64™ and Nintendo GameCube™. It has also created industry icons that have become well-known, household names such as Mario™, Donkey Kong™, Metroid™, Zelda™ and Pokémon™. A wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere. For more information about Nintendo, visit the company’s Web site at www.nintendo.com.

Related Posts

• Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 learn to play nice
• The Beatles: Rock Band named, dated, priced
• Rock Band gets a release date for Europe

Nintendo has announced the official release date for their most recent stab at the casual market, and Wii Music will be taking the stage on October 20th. All of the maestros in the making out there ready your WiiMotes, and prepare to waggle… er, conduct to your heart’s content in just over a month. I’m going to be dancing up a storm playing the virtual sax. Nintendo’s full press release after the break.

ON OCT. 20, NINTENDO’S WII MUSIC MAKES MAESTROS OF EVERYONE

Wii Sports™ introduced new players to the world of video games. Wii Fit™ got even more people interested in fun and fitness.

Now Wii Music™ builds on that inclusive legacy by letting people turn their living rooms into fun concert halls. It brings the experience of performing music to people who think learning an instrument is too difficult. Wii Music launches exclusively for the Wii™ console on Oct. 20 and aims to bring a deeper love and appreciation of music to everyone.

Players can improvise jams on the fly with more than 60 instruments. You will find rock favorites like the electric guitar; orchestra standards like trumpet, saxophone and clarinet; and even international instruments like steel drums, marimba and sitar. Players simply select their instruments, and then move their Wii Remote™ and Nunchuk™ controllers as though they were playing the real thing. Wii Music turns players’ movements into great music, even if you’ve never picked up an instrument before.

Budding musicians can play along to the beat of a diverse array of more than 50 songs from a variety of genres including popular, licensed, classical and Nintendo songs. Or players can improvise by adding new beats or creative twists to the songs. The combinations are endless, and it’s all for the joy of creating fun new tunes.

Once players have their song the way they like it, they can forward it to friends who are also playing Wii Musicvia the Wii Message Board. Those friends can then put their own spin on the tune and send it back – or pass it along to their friends.

For more information about Wii Music, please visit www.WiiMusic.com.

Related Posts

• Wii Music sitars, shamisens, and more!
• Wii Music-ians take to the streets this month
• Wii Music – Hands On

For everyone who can’t wait to get their air-strum on, don’t fret. Wii Music is set to land in Japan on October 16th. What that means for aspiring air musicians in other regions? You’ve got me. I suggest asking Iwata, he might know. Around 60 instruments and 50 songs will be included in the final build. Personally, that number just moved this game up my list a few slots. I don’t think I can even name that many instruments, can you?

Kotaku

Related Posts

• Final Fantasy IV dated for Virtual Console… in Japan
• Final Fantasy Gaiden dated for Japan
• The Beatles: Rock Band named, dated, priced

• Captain Rainbow will launch in Japan on August 28 for ¥6,800 (or $63.32 USD)
• Wii Music will launch in Japan on October 16 for ¥5,800 (or $54 USD).
• Colored Wrist Straps (in white, pink, blue, and green) for Wii Remotes will be available for ¥300 each ($2.79). Packs of four will be available for ¥1000.
• Valkyrie Profile will launch in Japan for the Nintendo DS on October 2 for ¥5040 (or $46.93 USD)

I guess coloring the wrist straps is one way of providing colors to Wii owners while still trying to quench Wii demand in a single color. I hear wrist straps on electronics are huge in Japan, so I expect those to be promptly snapped up.

NeoGAF

Related Posts

• Nintendo warns Wii owners directly about wrist straps
• Nintendo comments on straps
• What to do with your old Wii wrist strap?

Along with all the other announcements that Nintendo made at their press conference yesterday, they also mentioned that Wii Music would be arriving on store shelves later this year. Check out the video above for the big announcement, as well as a Wii Music jam session from Miyamoto and several other Nintendo execs.

Daily Motion

Related Posts

• Wii Sports: Beach Resort Video from Nintendo Press Conference
• Wii Music footage from Nintendo Conference
• 
  Video: Nintendo E3 2011 press conference LIVE

Stopping by the Nintendo booth, I got a couple of song in with Wii Music. The game is just as it looks – you shake the controllers for mallet instruments, strum or bow using the Wii Remote for string instruments, or press the 1 and 2 buttons for wind instruments. The game doesn’t require extreme precision, and doesn’t feature a mode at the moment to present a greater challenge for fans of existing rhythm games.

That said, the game does seem like it will have that pick-up-and-play appeal. You can literally play notes at any time and use rhythms as complex as you want, and the game will pick the actual sounded notes for you so that it sounds in harmony with the piece.

In band mode, you begin by selecting which instrument you want to play and functional part (melody, harmony, bass, percussion) you want to cover. You then pick your song, which was limited to five songs for the demo. I’m told they’re still in the process of selecting songs, ranging from Nintendo game themes, to modern pop, to classic symphonies.

While playing marimba for the Super Mario Bros. theme, you use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk as single mallets, and can play notes at the same time. I assume the same scheme is used for using the drum set in the band setting. The shared control schemes goes for woodwinds as well. While playing tuba in Dvorak’s New World Symphony, I was told I had to play the Wii Remote, pointer towards my mouth and pressing the 1 and 2 buttons – as if I was playing a trumpet. You then play louder by angling the remote upwards, and quieter by pointing downward.

To help you out, there will be a visual metronome in the bottom right of the screen, as well as audible clicks coming out of the Wii Remote speaker. Obviously the game allows freedom and leeway as to when you choose to play notes, so that metronome will help provide some stability for the game.

An additional mode in the game allows you to look at the actual sheet music for the song. You can then use it to either learn how to “properly” play along to each song, or you can compose and make your own changes to the notes that will be played.

Another mode will serve as a mixer mode for the game. You can, for example, record the trumpet melody to a song, and then play it back while overlaying a saxophone or marimba harmony. Drop a drum beat and you’ve single-handedly recorded your own song.

WIi Music will support Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection functionality. You’ll be able to record your individual performances, send it your friends for commentary, and allow them to play with the file as well. At the moment, that’s all the Wi-Fi functionality we know of, but I’m willing to bet that there are at least a few more, simple bonuses included.

The game looks like it will have several modes and features allowing for enjoyment beyond that of Wii Sports, but it’s more apparent that the simulated activity of playing a musical instrument will be dumbed-down more than the swinging of a tennis racket was.

Related Posts

• Wii Music-ians take to the streets this month
• 
  E3 2010: NBA JAM hands-on game impressions
• Rock Band 2 – Hands On