Thursday 12 Mar 2009

I have been having an internal conversation about just what I think of Wii Music these past weeks. Nintendo have done something remarkable just to accomplish this – a game that is not a game but tries to do more and in so doing becomes something of a stumbling block for most gamers.

I adore music. Not just as a consumer (an apt description), but as a musician too. I can’t pretend to be a virtuoso but I am able to play a number of instruments in a pleasant sort of fashion. This is important because it colours my experience of Wii Music to a large degree. If you do not play an instrument, haven’t learned music theory or haven’t ever really listened closely to the music you hear, then your experience will be vastly different to mine.

Wii Music is far more ambitious than other rhythm games I have played. It seems Nintendo, through it, are trying to foster an appreciation for music itself, not a particular popular set of songs. But I can’t help but feel it has fallen short of this admirable goal by being limited in scope. There is so much more to discover in the world of music that playing Wii Music is like scratching around in the dirt for quartz while there are diamonds in the rocks beneath. Then again, if you’ve only ever been a listener, or one who pseudo-plays along (as in Guitar Hero or most rhythm games) then there is still much joy to be had in finding those quartzes.

Start Wii Music up and Sebastian Tute will start jabbering away explaining the various ways you can play instruments with your Wii Remote and Nunchuk. There are a number of modes, such as the piano mode which involves moving the remote and nunchuk downwards to hit a note, or the guitar mode which involves making a strumming action with the remote. All the modes imitate real instrument playing in motion (and thus rhythm), but in a highly scaled down way so as to remove those painful first six months of instrument lessons. Almost immediately you’re playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the piano. The timing and volume of the notes are provided by your movements while the pitch is provided by the software.

After you’ve performed you can save the performance onto a virtual DVD for posterity. There are no ratings applied other than what you personally thought of it, no scoring or comments offered by Sebastian Tute. This removes one of my criticisms of the Guitar Hero games – what if I want to do my Freebird solo differently to Lynyrd Skynyrd? What if my interpretation sounds better? Granted, it’s highly unlikely in that case, but I could certainly improve on Through the Fire and Flames by simply removing three quarters of the notes. Wii Music focuses on our own appreciation of the music instead of our gamer instinct to mini-max everything by removing points altogether.

Of course, this is why many gamers consider it a pointless game, and as a game that would be an apt description. As an activity I would disagree – making your own version of The Legend of Zelda theme tune can hardly be called pointless. This is why I would call Nintendo ambitious in Wii Music – they have tried to get us to enjoy music not as it was performed by others, but as we perform it ourselves. Anyone who has learnt to play an instrument will say that their appreciation of that instrument and music in general has increased because of it. It might be that Guitar Hero has increased people’s appreciation of The Who (or simply made a new generation aware of them), but how has it helped in the appreciation of the broader canvas of music?

But herein lies the rub: to the end of learning about and enjoying music more you are much better served by buying yourself a guitar, paying for some lessons and practicing. To the end of learning about different music styles you are better served buying a few albums of a different musical genre than what you know. It is perhaps only in the arrangement of instruments in a band or the art of recording music by layering melody upon harmony upon base and rhythm that Wii Music is able to impart knowledge that is hard to gain without actually being part of a band or orchestra – something most of us will not ever do. Buying an instrument and lessons and devoting time to practice is quite a bit harder than playing Wii Music, just like buying a gym membership and going to gym is harder than playing Wii Fit, or going out and joining a tennis club is harder than playing Wii Sports.

So you might say this criticism could be applied to those games too. I would say no – that even should you have tennis skills and a club membership it still requires more effort to go and play a game of tennis than to pop in Wii Sports. But if you have the ability to play a bit of guitar it is hardly more effort to pick it up and pluck a few strings than to pop the Wii Music disc into the Wii and switch it on. If I am in the mood to play a bit of music I would much rather go sit at the keyboard and play it than play the piano in Wii Music: that is the key, and I don’t think the same applies to the other Wii series games – I would never play Wii Sports tennis as a substitute for real tennis, that is besides the point. Wii Music does allow you to enjoy the feeling of improvising without having to ever practise your scales, but I cannot speak for what that is like.

What then would I like to have seen more of? The pitch recognition mini-game is a great start as it teaches us to listen more carefully to music and to recognize what we are hearing. More in this vein, much more, would make a fascinating music game. The conducting game seems to have left the basics of conducting on the cutting floor because you can’t make a real 1, 2, 3, 4 movement and instead have to wave your hand up and down in huge gestures to get any sort of sense out of the orchestra. A game centered on learning how to conduct could be really fun, but it isn’t in the half-formed diversion found here. The co-operative bells mini-game is fun, a bit like playing Donkey Konga with the Wii remote and nunchuk, but its songs are limited. The DJ Table instrument was really exciting until its limitations became apparent – but what a unique idea! I would love to see that fleshed out more too.

Finally, the music styles lessons are really interesting; especially the ones more obscure to me like the Japanese and tango styles. But they’re ruined by the endless recycling of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Each music style has between four and six tracks, and there are about 12 music styles, which means I have played this traditional children’s song at least 80 times. I was tired of it after the first three. I understand that the makers want us to see that you can play the same song in a variety of styles – that genre has little to do with melody and everything to do with rhythm and arrangement – but for the sake of hammering home the point they have made learning the styles arduous to a point.

The majority of the game is in the jams, where up to four players can be part of a band playing a selected song. The song selection is not at all good to my ears. For every Legend of Zelda theme (love) there is an O Christmas Tree O Christmas Tree (horrible). For every From the New World (love, love, love) there is a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (never again). Why not good folk songs? Greensleeves, or Londonderry Air or Auld Lang Syne? Instead we have Frere Jacques? It says something about where the game is pitched when Frere Jacques is a song you learn when you go for your first few recorder lessons as a child. I should add that this goes for the by-now-infamous Twinkle too. I would also ask why the tour through the music is not guided in any way – you’re left completely to your own devices after the style lessons are complete, and I could find no indication as to how I could unlock the songs I wanted to try out, like September by Earth, Wind and Fire.

Wii Music has unmatched polish – what is there has been shined to a degree I’ve not seen in a game before. It also has lofty ambitions to educate and entertain, to make people listen to music in a new way. For me those ambitions were not nearly lofty enough, but if you have not had a musical upbringing or experienced the joy of jamming on an instrument then Wii Music might be the thing to motivate you, just like Wii Fit has motivated many to begin a fitness program. You also might learn a thing or two about music and what makes up a song. You will certainly learn more about music than in any other rhythm game, but the question becomes: how much fun are you having while you’re learning.

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Contributor:	Peter

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