Your Song Featured in Guitar Hero II

JamesO writes "RedOctane has launched a competition in which budding musicians can get a song featured in Guitar Hero II." From the article: "To enter simply submit your song at beaguitarhero.com before 11:59 p.m. PST on June 30, 2006. There are a few rules that each entered song must adhere to though. The song must be from independent artists, must be an original piece, and must fall under the 'hard rock' or 'heavy metal' genre. The track must also feature a lead guitar. The winner will get their song featured in Guitar Hero II, plus will be eligible for additional publicity through the game's launch promotion." The winner also gets a kickass set of prizes, including a guitar, drumset, and wah pedal.

But I play bass

[zeronode]

you insensitive clod!

Re:But I play bass

[dunkelfalke]

then just don't use the b and small e strings of the guitar ;-)

The Actual Prizes

[hotdip]

I didn't see any information on winning a guitar... The actual prizes are EMG guitar pickups, a Krank distortion pedal, a Moreley wah pedal and a PDP 5pc. drum set. Looks like the singer and bass player get the shaft. :)

Re:The Actual Prizes

[PFI_Optix]

The drumset is a confusing prize. What they should do is give away a drummer, bands never seem to be able to keep those. Drumsets are a dime a dozen, though.

Re:The Actual Prizes

[hotdip]

Yeah, i saw the listing of the guitar in the article, but no mention of it on the beaguitarhero website.

Re:The Actual Prizes

[Forum Joe]

Interestingly enough, they put the retail value of the first prize (the actual use of your song, with credits in manual etc) as $1000. Does this mean any independent band with $1000 could just buy their way into Guitar Hero II and forget about the whole competition process?

Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[AEther141]

Looks like someone's gonna get totally screwed over. These contests are almost invariably the same - a cheap way of aquiring content, with the T&Cs robbing the young, naive winner of their rights as an artist. Photography contests are notorious for this, with the prize often going to a friend of the sponsor and the runner-up images appearing all over the place after being sold through stock libraries. The majority of wildlife and nature calendars get their images this way.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[lennart78]

I disagree. If your song gets featured, it will mean a lot of exposure, which to independent artists is very valuable.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[Hannah E. Davis]

Well... yes and no. It is a cheap way of acquiring content, but for a relatively unknown band, this could also be the chance of a lifetime. Free advertising in the sequel to an extremely popular game is not something to take lightly. Whereas a photographer contributing to a calender would just another essentially anonymous source in yet another generic wildlife calender, the band that wins this contest is actually going to stand out.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[Spinalcold]

And the satisfaction of having one of your songs distrobuted across the world is nothing, right? It's a single song, bands put out songs a free promos all the time, and this is a great way of doing it. Unfortunately, I don't think they want Black/Death Metal songs.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[GiMP]

> And the satisfaction of having one of your songs distrobuted across the world is
> nothing, right?

That isn't anything netcat couldn't fix...

bash$ for host in $(function count() { i=0; while [ $i -lt 255 ]; do i=$(($i+1)); echo $i; done }; for num in `count` ; do for num1 in `count`; do for num2 in `count`; do for num3 in `count`; do echo "$num.$num1.$num2.$num3"; done; done ; done ; done); do nc $host 80 audio.au ; done

I used port 80 as an example, but perhaps you can think of more interesting ports

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[mconeone]

Nope, its just plain heavy metal. Death metal is more gutteral and faster. That being said, I think they might accept a death metal song as long as the vocals were cleaner and the song wouldn't be a mess to put in the game.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[MustardMan]

So the RIAA has been right all along... it's all about the money, and the art doesn't matter one bit.

Maybe there are people out there who make music solely because they enjoy making music, and hearing their song in ANY sort of widely distributed format would be pretty sweet. I know I'd sure love to see a picture I took featured in a calendar at my local supermarket, even if I never got a cent for it.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[jackbird]

I know I'd sure love to see a picture I took featured in a calendar at my local supermarket, even if I never got a cent for it

I'm guessing you have no desire to be a pro photographer.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[MustardMan]

You're right - I have no desire to do anything artistic professionaly. If I was doing it for money, I would be tempted to produce what people are willing to pay for, and not what gives me personal satisfaction.

Re:Guitar, drumkit and wah pedal vs royalties...

[ClamIAm]

Did you read the actual legal text? The terms don't sound all that bad. The worst part is probably the fact that if your band eventually makes it big, they can keep using the recording they have in Guitar Hero 5 or whatever, and they don't have to pay you any royalties.

Bah I forgot something

[ClamIAm]

And if you don't win, you don't give them hardly any rights at all, just the right to post your song for download and let people vote on it.

Wah pedal?

[FirienFirien]

Dammit, I wanted a Woo pedal. Then I could use it when I beat something, or get a good drop, or just need cheering up. Wah pedal just sounds depressing! ;)

Re:Wah pedal?

[Dorceon]

Can we get a Wii pedal instead? Maybe we Revolution owners want to play Guitar Hero too.

GameCube controller for Guitar Freaks?

[tepples]

Maybe we Revolution owners want to play Guitar Hero too.

Even the GameCube standard controller would work [jk0.org] for at least a 3-key game such as Konami's Guitar Freaks.

Re:Wah pedal?

[ph0tik]

It could be worse, Nintendo is released the "Wii" pedal and no one know what that does.

Just to make it harder..

[shidarin'ou]

Anyone who submits songs should submit with this in mind:

http://xkcd.com/c70.html [xkcd.com]

They did this for the first game too.

[merreborn]

"Graveyard BBQ" won last year. The song's one of my top 10 favorites to play.

It's really a win-win-win situation. Harmonix gets some cool songs free, you get to play kickass songs you've never heard, and indie artists you've _never_ heard of get some publicity. There were a good dozen songs by Boston-area indy bands that you could unlock in the first game, that were totally separate from the main set of songs you had to play through to advance -- and half of those bands included Harmonix staff members.

Joe Stump

[mobby_6kl]

They should try getting something from Joe Stump [joestump.com], the album/song titles on their own would be worth it:

• Night Of The Living Shred
• Paganini's Revenge
  
• Psycho Shred Suite 1st Movement
  
• 2001: A Shred Odyssey
  
• Where No Men Dare Shred
  
• Strat Attack
  
• Survival Of The Fastest
  
• Prestissimo/Facemelter
  

Dwelling of Duels

[Spaceman40]

Virt should apply, with his Blood of Ganon [dragolf.net]. That would be an awesome one to play.

EJ

[iamjoltman]

I can't be the only one who thought, why are they putting Elton John's Your Song on this, can I?