Guitar Hero and Rock Band

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

• cover
• market
• speaks to
• media

• consumers
• shell out
• up the ante
• stat

• license
• boost

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

Karaoke is fun, but why limit yourself to just vocals? You could do karaoke on guitar or drums. What’s that? You don’t play an instrument? No problem. There are some new video games that let you pretend you can.

In a way, Guitar Hero and Rock Band are even better than karaoke since you don’t even have to know how to sing to play them. It’s a lot like Dance Dance Revolution. As the music plays, the screen tells you what to do and your score is based on how accurate you are.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band have become very popular and are even helping to make bands like Cheap Trick and Aerosmith, who are featured in the game, sell more albums than they have been lately.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Marni

Mason

Marni:  Do you play Guitar Hero or Rock Band?

Mason:  I don’t as much as I want to because it’s that awesome.

Marni:  It is that awesome!

Mason:  I don’t have it. I won’t shell out for the equipment.

Marni:  And do you have a preference? I think Guitar Hero is great but then I think Rock Band really upped the ante by brining in drums and vocals and you can create your own band.

Mason:  I haven’t actually played Rock Band yet. But I’ll tell you what I like about the idea of Rock Band most is you can download the songs.

Marni:  Yes, you can.

Mason:  I heard a stat that just, like, more songs were downloaded for Rock Band than purchased on iTunes.

Marni:  I don’t doubt it. Where here’s an interesting thing. All these artists, you know, declined having their songs licensed so they had to have a lot of covers and things and now actually, they could have made a lot of money off of it. I think they were thinking that they didn’t want to give up the licensing, they’re not getting anything for it, and in fact they would have made a lot of money off licensing their songs.

Mason:  It’s really interesting how these have kind of created a new market. It really speaks to the way people want to interact with their media now. Right? We don’t want to be passive consumers anymore. We don’t want to listen to a song, we want to play the song.

Marni:  You want to be part of it. I know my brother feels like Rock Band has turned him into a better drummer, like by practicing the drums he feels like a better drummer. He’s drummed for years.

Mason:  I think it’s definitely going to be a gateway.

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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