Miyamoto: Wii Music is a music education tool
Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 2:36pm by Derek
Nintendo has already conquered your living room. Now, the heralded games maker is setting its sights on your childrens’ classrooms.
In a candid conversation about Wii Music, the company’s controversially basic new rhythm game, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata and development mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto discussed the goals and design decisions behind the game.
They also talked about the possibility of using Wii Music in schools for childrens’ music education. Kotaku has the translated bit:
Iwata: Well, there, with Wii Music, there’s a strong possibility of raising people’s basic level of music education.
Miyamoto: Yes. Thus, from now, I’ve even thought it would it would be great if kindergartens or elementary schools got Wii Music and began kid’s music education with that…
Maybe the Japanese have some strange musical instrument that requires random button presses to create sound, but here in the States, it actually requires a bit of skill to perform music.
Aren’t developing skill and experiencing failure good life lessons, too? Wii Music is set for a late Oct. release in Japan and North America.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Everyone who reports on Wii Music and makes naive remarks about how it plays is now automatically a cunt.
Maybe people should try actually reading up on how Wii music works.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Uh… and since when was Wii Music a “rhythm game”? Nintendo certainly never ever described it as such…
September 25th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“…Needs an awful lot of explaining, right? Not really. Hold your hands as if you were playing the instrument, make the motions you’d make to play – if that’s pressing the keys on a wind instrument, it will be pressing buttons on the remote – and the notes come out. The A and B buttons work as modifiers, often offering sustained notes or pizzicato plucks. Your Mii appears on screen, playing along with you.
The nunchuk, when used, also offers modifications on the control stick, such as holding down to strum super-fast on the guitar. The d-pad makes your Mii pull moves on the screen, as do certain gestures with certain instruments. When playing a trumpet, holding your head down plays softly and tilting it back plays loud, in a brilliantly intuitive caricature of jazz styles.
We could detail more, but much of the point of Wii Music is experimenting with each instrument to find out what you can do with it, and then letting rip. The game works out the notes you play according to the tune you’re playing and the style you’re playing in. Simple, steady rhythms with no modification play a straight melody, while cutting loose with the controls and improvising around the rhythm (it’s shown on the screen by pulsing notes) produce wild, extemporising solos.
It’s a highly unusual and surprising system, and we reckon there’s deceptively clever software under Wii Music’s hood. The results aren’t always pleasant to listen to – they’re sometimes downright, hilariously horrible – but you can’t argue that the game flawlessly captures the flair, mood and accuracy with which you’re playing. There may be no sophistication to performing in Wii Music, but there is most definitely an art to it, and producing a performance that’s both expressive and accurate will take practice and skill.”
“More than any Wii release to date, Wii Music is a toy. We don’t mean that as a criticism – it’s a technically amazing, totally accessible, funny and entertaining toy, and will be a proper riot for anyone in the right kind of loose company. It will probably be misunderstood by many who look for gameplay systems in it rather than suspending disbelief, letting themselves go and expressing themselves through it. Those people love it. And the people watching them from the sofa might even love it a little bit too, through the winces and the gritted teeth.”
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=190057
Take note of the last line of the 4th paragraph that’s quoted and last paragraph especially.
Quite simply:
How is a game that encourages experimentation worse off than a game that encourages pure imitation?
Wii Music allows you to change instruments (60 of them remember), pitch and tempo while playing along, allows for collaborative composition (You can send performances off via NWFC, and the person on the other end can add their own parts and send them back to you) and Billy No Mates composition (do everything yourself – do the guitar part, then add the piano part, etc) and other little games that more closely follow the RB/GH template, along with the seperate drum section of the game.
How is that less advanced than a game where you press entirely pre-defined buttons and a much more limited selection of instruments to said songs?
Oh jah, because it uses motion control a little bit. Excuse me, I mean waggle.
September 25th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Maybe the Japanese have some strange musical instrument that requires random button presses to create sound
Random button presses create a sound on a piano.
It sounds to me like Wii Music is a musical instrument. It’s an unusual synthesiser with an unusual play method, but it’s simply ridiculous to claim that it will be “random”. I’m willing to bet that doing the same thing twice in Wii Music will produce the same result.
And why can’t people learn about rhythm and time signatures and the like by playing a game? It’s not like Miyamoto is saying Wii Music is going to replace traditional musical instruments, and it might actually be of benefit to kids to be able to jump right in and make music without dealing with the complex mechanical aspect of an instrument. It means kids who lack the coordination to play an instrument can still learn along with their classmates.
Infendo is starting to annoy me with its constant snark, and this is one of the worst examples yet.
September 25th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I also think that aside from Jack, infendo is getting a bit too elitist and snarky as red puts it.
Liking Wii Music isnt some fanboy delusion, and even if you dont like it, the level of hate its getting is ridiculous and uncalled for considering no body has played the final product, and most of the detractors are only hating it because of a bad E3 representation and because they dont think they will like it, so they ignore all that its offering. and make up stuff like saying that its only random movement as if nintendo is EA or some other developer who doesnt care about quality and just puts out willy nilly cheap software for quick cash.
i am with red mozzie, and will add that wii music does have lessons built into the game, and the button presses are not random. While the wiimote can lack buttons to fully represent all 60 instruments, it can approximate all 60 to a degree where you can get the music you want with fair accuracy. You can create enjoyable music for sure, and reproduce it each time you play because the same button combos,movements create the same noises each time.
Also, he is only talking about this for elementary/kindergarden basic learning.
The game can still teach rythm, tempo, note recognition, amongst other basics while making it enjoyable. It also can make music fun even for people who normally dont, if it can make music learning fun, get them far enough in the learning process to find a creative streak they didnt think they had that will help them understand what they were missing before.
Open your mind to the possibilities and you will be amazed what the right product can do.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:57 am
I believe prejudice has colored Wii Music’s understanding. A few journalists’ childish angst at a demo of the game spread like the plague.
Thankfully, the target market (i.e. most everyone) hasn’t listened to those journalists for a long time. They’ve bartered away their credibility to score cheap points with the self-labeled “hardcore” set. What they don’t realize (coming from a journalist who has seen this happen) is that credibility is the most precious resource a journalist has, easy to lose and very hard to regain.
But this generation most game journalists have given theirs away. Is it any surprise that the most popular game magazines Nintendo Power, whose judgment section on games is reserved for the back of the issue and very small compared to others? They obviously want you to make your own decisions. And they haven’t traded their credibility in, even though they are an official company mouthpiece.
Think about that for a second. Let that sink in. Nintendo’s own internal, company-owned press has more credibility about games than EGM or 1up.com or IGN or Gamespot. It’s what happens when you ignore, slander, and libel and entire fanbase for 4 years and they turn out to be the majority.
So no wonder nobody believes the journalists about Wii Music. What else have they been wrong about in the past 4 years? Oh, let’s see… Nintendogs, The DS, The Wii, Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii… etc. etc. forever and ever amen.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:42 am
I had already written a long response to this article before my browser crashed, so I’ll keep this short:
I agree 100% with waltermh and Red Mozzie. Apart from Jack, Will, and David, this site has been on a continual downward spiral into cynicism and snarkiness. The worst part about it is that Derek actually considers himself a news journalist. He is, after all, a news editor at the more “serious”, “mature” video game news site Kombo.com. But it seems few video game journalist are anything more than jaded, energy-drink guzzling failures who despite claims to the contary never really grew up. I’m talking about the people who rejoice when things go wrong for people like Jack Thomspon, people who go up in arms whenever their precious video games are being questioned by the real news media all while pretending to be part of the news media themselves.
CNN.com is a real news site.
CNN.com wouldn’t use something like this to make a point: http://wii.kombo.com/images/content/news/derek_092508_wiimusic2.jpg
In fact, real news editors aren’t nearly as opinionated as video game news editors, who treat each and every report as though it were an entry in their very own blog. Mind you, I’m not talking about Kotaku—they claim to be a video game news BLOG. I’m talking about Derek’s other site, Kombo, where this news was also posted.
“Maybe the Japanese have some strange musical instrument that requires random button presses to create sound”
This has already been rebutted, but I thought someone should mention it again, if only just to force you to open your eyes a bit wider, grow up a little more, and take your job more seriously, Derek:
Randomly pressing piano keys makes sound, and therefore music.
Randomly plucking guitar keys makes sound, and therefore music.
Miyamoto explained from the very beginning when Wii Music was first demonstrated that he wanted to make a game that everyone could play and enjoy the feeling of playing music. Playing music isn’t enjoyable unless you learn an instrument. Learning an instrument isn’t fun. Therefore, ditch the learn process and let the people just play.
What he has made–see if you can wrap your tiny little brain around this, because God knows you never understood when Malstrom explained it—is a musical toy.
Derek, both you and Blake will eat your words. Come October, you will both have to admit that there is something incredibly fun about pressing buttons and moving your hand around, and playing music at your own speed and tempo. You two aren’t the first to be foolish enough to question Miyamoto’s judgment; all the same, fellow Infendo readers, isn’t it sad that these people are even staffers here, much less considered news editors at more “legitimate” news outlets?
http://wii.kombo.com/images/content/news/derek_092508_wiimusic2.jpg
I mean….seriously.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Wow, Poochy, it’s flattering you’re following my work so closely. I appreciate the traffic you generate for each of the respective sites I work for. I’m anxious to see if you dig anymore of my stuff up.
I take my work very seriously. I have had nearly a decade of journalism training, too, and a degree to prove it. To be frank, I’m damn good at what I do. Writing for certain other sites and catering to whatever tone requirements said sites implement is unfortunately a part of that. We all have to start somewhere in this business, and I’m working hard toward establishing a career for myself doing what I love:
Providing people like you with sharp, astute, well-written games journalism, no matter what the fanboy inside of you wants to hear. I’m glad you enjoy it.
You can insult me over a differentiating opinion (over a video game, too) all you want. That speaks volumes about you sir, not me.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:11 am
But Derek, that’s not sharp, astute, well-written games journalism.
This:
http://wii.kombo.com/images/content/news/derek_092508_wiimusic2.jpg
is common jackassery disguised as video game journalism. And the text of the article itself was neither sharp nor astute since you were clearly quite unfair in your criticism of the game. Don’t insult your reader’s intelligece—I think most of us hear have read what Malstrom wrote on the subject of Wii Music, and unlike your angry rants about random button pressing, HE actually made sense.
But don’t take my word for it. I mean you have a degree, for Christs’ sake, and I’m just some dumbass who reads your website. But take into account Jeff’s post about game journalist losing their credibility.
Is it true? Could it be that far too many journalists jump the gun when prematurely criticizing, that they should be paying more attention to market and industry trends before ranting about this, that, and the other?
I know you have a degree, but it really doesn’t impress me. That one little JPEG spoke volumes about your level of professionalism. Until the video news media decides to grow up and drop “FTW”, “epic fail”, *insert comical, usually vulgar image here*/whatever-the-newest internet-meme-is from their reperetoire, and also does away with anger-fueled rants/jests (the kind that the mere mention of the name Jack Thomspon draws out of any one of Kotaku’s editors), video game journalism will not come close to resembling real, proffesional journalism. A degree won’t do shit until you can report news while acting your age.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:16 am
“You can insult me over a differentiating opinion (over a video game, too) all you want. That speaks volumes about you sir, not me.”
You missed the entire post. I never insulted you over a differing opinion. I insulted you for being incredibly unproffesional when expressing that opinion. Sorry for the confusion.
Maybe the fact that you missed the entire point I was trying to make (kind of like you miss all the hardcore-crushing points that Malstrom makes on his blog) speaks volumes about you (sorry, I couldn’t help but snowball that one right back at you).
September 26th, 2008 at 3:50 am
“You can insult me over a differentiating opinion (over a video game, too) all you want. That speaks volumes about you sir, not me.”
So what, videogames aren’t important now? So then it doesn’t matter which ones are “art” or “hardcore?” You can’t just torch the field just because stiff competition shows up.
September 26th, 2008 at 4:17 am
“Maybe the Japanese have some strange musical instrument that requires random button presses to create sound, but here in the States, it actually requires a bit of skill to perform music.”
And you know, this kinda shit just irks me. Which music from the States are you talking about? Rap, where you thief samples from other songs and say stuff randomly about the poe-lice and inner city thug lyfe? Pop, where post-production covers for all lack of talent? Rock, which traded in its meaningfulness for self-aggrandizing preening?
And what’s the point of this comment? I mean, Shigeru Miyamoto is Japanese, yes. Is he every Japanese person? Are you every American? Are you engaging in the same kind of crass generalization Jack Thompson does? You might as well have just said “Oh ho ho, those slinky Japs think they know about music!” What means this nationalism?
You know why Wii Music appeals to a lot of musicians? Maybe because something other than the electric guitar is featured. Rock has basically dominated rhythm games since Guitar Hero. I’m tired of “Greatest hits from the 80’s.” I see all that crap on the compilation CD commercials at 3 AM. THIS is the state of music games. POWER BALLADS. ROCK ANTHEMS. \m/ UNF UNF. That was boring DURING the 90’s. Different Music, like the prelude to Carmen, like The Entertainer, songs without lyrics, has never been represented, ever.
Also, when I played Wii Music 2 years ago at E3, it was basically just conducting. And I LOVED IT. I always wanted to conduct an orchestra. And now I’ll get to. So Wii Music, to me, is a superior product than Guitar Hero or RockBand or any of those games that demand robotic imitation.
Ask any musician how they started and they’ll usually tell of playing their father’s or mother’s guitar, quite randomly. In fact a common thing musicians do is a “jam session” where… you guessed it, they play parts of songs in random fashion in order to see what “feels right.” This is what Wii Music represents and hopes to capture, and it’s a whole lot better than just mashing a few buttons in time with some rock band’s most popular song.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Thanks ModplanMan for posting that. I hope some people around here read it. Specially when they use the word “skill”, you should’ve put that on caps and bold. We all still need to know more about wii music, but so far I’m liking this toy!
September 26th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Derek… some of your stuff is credible and enjoyable to read but how you’ve come across on this post, and your follow up comment to Poochy is very elitist and won’t win over any fans!
I think Poochy on the otherhand raised some very good points that I found more entertaining to read than the post itself
One other thing…
“Maybe the Japanese have some strange musical instrument that requires random button presses to create sound, but here in the States, it actually requires a bit of skill to perform music.”
Where this statement falls apart is where you’ve used the words “create sound” and “perform music” as though they can be compared.
Plenty instruments require “random button presses to create sound”; you then use those instruments to create music.
The comparison (and it is that, because you’re comparing the Japanese to Americans) is just silly and makes little to no sense.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I’m still not at all interested in Wii Music. Yes it’s more creative than that of Guitar Hero and Rock Band where you mimic you’re favorite songs but it just doesn’t come off as appealing. Any idiot (no offense to anyone) can play an instrument, and that’s what this game is saying. I can pick up a flute, guitar, piano, whatever instrument and start playing it by pressing random keys, strumming random strings or blocking certain holes on the flute and blowing into it. But to play real music with decent quality does take some skill.
I remember at E3 though that the game was going to include drumming lessons. How effective they’re going to be is beyond me. I don’t think that it’ll teach you to become a pro because of the fact that you DON’T have the actual instrument in front of you. If anything all those ‘imitate your favorite song’ games like Rock Band and GH should have a feature or something that let’s you connect a real drum kit, a real guitar and what not (now featured in both GH WT and RB2) to let players use real instruments and even throw in some freebies like lessons on playing drums and guitar along with the sequencer.
This is probably a game I’ll borrow from someone for a weekend, play it with some family and friends, then return it. I probably won’t spend more than $20-$30 dollars on that. If you spend $50 on that game then I’d say you are indeed a fool.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:26 am
“…but here in the States, it actually requires a bit of skill to perform music.
Aren’t developing skill and experiencing failure good life lessons, too?”
Well, here in Canada…
Who ‘performs’ music? Wouldn’t you rather ‘create’ music? If all you want to do is memorize some button strokes and timing then stick with RB/GH. But if you want to try to make music, Wii Music seems to be the way to go.
It may require ‘a bit of skill to perform music’ but it takes a lot of skill to make music. Unless you are my three and four year olds who enjoy the cacophony from some pots and lids. It is greater music to my ears then watching my eleven year old trying to imitate a popular commercial recording.
September 26th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Man the comments sections on some of these sites are the only reason to come to them. Man It would be nice if such degree holding people like Derek would do his job a little better. Part of reporting is understanding your subject is it not? It you can’t dig any farther then why make stuff up? You will only piss people off. If you want to be a sensationalist writer then go join the sun or some thing. There are too many people waiting to replace you and your experience.
Write some thing that doesn’t insult your reader. No one likes a$$ holes and not every one likes rock. It’s cool to have an opinion but really the more you are not open minded the more people that will stop listen to you. Unless you are going for the a$$hole crowd. Then when you look up and your surrounded by slack jaws you will wonder how such a thing happened.
September 28th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Has anyone seen my steak.
September 28th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I actually see what Miyamoto’s getting at with this but perhaps his point was blown out of proportion with teaching it at school.
Sure, Wii Music doesn’t allow you to fail, but it CAN teach you how to keep a steady beat to make the music sound good (otherwise you get something nasty like the Nintendo press conference). Certainly THAT is a very important part of playing music, but aside from being very basic and failure free, I don’t see this being the best of tools to teach you how to have a mental metronome.
October 4th, 2008 at 1:52 am
… I know I’m *really* late to the party here but…
“I don’t see this being the best of tools to teach you how to have a mental metronome.”
This is a failure to understand music the way musicians do. The game isn’t trying to teach, at it’s core, how to stay in perfect time. That’s a technical skill that you develop as you play an instrument, but it’s a double edged sword. A good musician knows when *not* to keep proper time. Anyone with the manual dexterity can learn how to stay in rhythm and keep time with a particular song. GH and RB prove that. What differentiates a skilled musician from a person that is “only” technically proficient with their instrument is their ability to know when to break the rules, how to put their heart and soul into the music and not *just* duplicate the notes on the page. It encourages you break that beat, to play with that rhythm, and it doesn’t punish you for it, because it wants you to look at those parts, to gain an understanding of what beat and rhythm *mean*, not in sense of how the notation reads, but on a much more visceral level, to know what they *feel* like.
Wii Music aims to help demonstrate how *that* part functions. To foster that creativity and experimentation that someone who really *loves* their craft will bring to it. How well it succeeds at doing that is not something I’m going to remark on, cause I haven’t, you know, played the game. But that’s the intent behind it.
It’s not about randomly pressing buttons and having sound come out. It’s about making that sound sound good. And there is no way to play with that concept in an environment that has a score, or a way to lose; you *cannot* program the game in a way that allows it to objectively score what is inherently a subjective process.
I will repeat that for emphasis: you *cannot* program the game in a way that allows it to objectively score what is inherently a subjective process.
The only thing that you *can* objectively measure is whether the player hits a note on time. The rest is emotional, up to the listener to decide upon. So the only way you can have failure is if you *only* pay attention to the rhythm part of the game. If you could lose Wii Music, then it would be a categorical failure at doing what it’s trying to do; it’d mean that you’d only be able to imitate and not create, that you’d only be able to mimic and not explore.
I’m really glad to see that there seems to be something of a shift in terms of how Wii Music is being viewed though, because this is the same stance I took when it was first announced, and it seems like people are waking up to what he game is, rather than what it isn’t.
And this is directed to Derek: while this is just a blog and criticism (in the sense of, being a critic) of a product has very little to do with journalism, being unprofessional doesn’t do you any favors.