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[[File:Rock_Band_Mosaic_5802.jpg|
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Remember ''[[Guitar Hero]]''? The hours you spent wailing away on [[Your Little Dismissive Diminutive|your little plastic guitar]], [[Rhythm Game|pretending to be a musician]]? Well ''Rock Band'' takes that feeling and cranks it [[Up to Eleven]] with the introduction of [[Rock Band
Let's clear up some confusion first: Harmonix made ''Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s'' ([[They Just Didn't Care|under contract]]), and then went on to release ''Rock Band'' in 2007 under MTV Games, which in turn is under Viacom. (''Lego Rock Band'' was handled by Traveller's Tales with the ''Rock Band 2'' engine, although Harmonix took care of the note charting). ''Guitar Hero 3, Aerosmith'', and all games after that were made by Neversoft under Activision Blizzard (Except for ''Smash Hits'', which was handled by Beenox, and ''[[Van Halen]]'', which was handled by Underground). At the end of 2010, Harmonix and Viacom announced that they are parting ways, with Harmonix sold to its holding company, effectively making it independent again.
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''Rock Band'' was the original release, a [[Spiritual Successor]] to Guitar Hero 2. Differences from Guitar Hero 2 include all-black highway backgrounds, rectangular gems instead of round ones, the extensive use of original masters instead of covers; perhaps most important is the addition of vocals (with Harmonix using their experience developing [[Karaoke Revolution]] to good use) and drums, which join the pre-existing guitar and bass modes, allowing for a total of 4 players (bandmates) at once and expanding the number of ways to play from 1 to 3 (as the guitar and bass modes share similar gameplay).
''Rock Band 2'' was released a year later (2008), with significant upgrades to the often-criticized instruments - including the $300 Ion Drum Kit, which can also be used as a regular MIDI drumkit. Not to mention drum tutorials, a World Tour playable alone (or without needing to sing while you do), the ability to port over songs from Rock Band 1 for a small fee (on the 360 and [[
Two years after the release of ''[[Rock Band]] 2'', the third game, ''[[Rock Band]] 3'', is now available as of October 2010, with a great deal of new features. The game introduces an all-new keyboard controller, with its own notecharts for the 60+ songs that have a real-life keyboard (or substitute) part. Also new is the [https://web.archive.org/web/20100918092204/http://www.rockband.com/zine/rb3-features-pro-guitar "Pro" guitar mode] with two new controllers: the Mustang controller aims to simulate a six-string with a fret board of over a hundred buttons that costs about $130, and another one that was recently discontinued that ''is'' a six-string that can be used both in and out of the game (
▲Two years after the release of ''[[Rock Band]] 2'', the third game, ''[[Rock Band]] 3'', is now available as of October 2010, with a great deal of new features. The game introduces an all-new keyboard controller, with its own notecharts for the 60+ songs that have a real-life keyboard (or substitute) part. Also new is the [http://www.rockband.com/zine/rb3-features-pro-guitar "Pro" guitar mode] with two new controllers: the Mustang controller aims to simulate a six-string with a fret board of over a hundred buttons that costs about $130, and another one that was recently discontinued that ''is'' a six-string that can be used both in and out of the game ([[http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Squier<!-- 2623174%3B+-+Rock+Band+3+Game+Guitar+-+Black/1601028.p;jsessionid=CB38FE7B975952C4D39F81377270AFA9.bbolsp-app02-25?id=1218272665437&skuId=1601028&st=Rock_Band_3_Fender_Midi_Guitar_Items_20101215&cp=1&lp=1 costs $280]]). The Pro Drum mode forces players to hit cymbals appropriately, and the [[http://www.rockband.com/zine/rb3-features-pro-keys Pro Keyboard mode]] uses all 25 keys on the new peripheral. A MIDI-to-game adapter is available that allows certain real life e-drums and keyboards to hook into the game. The pro guitar is also made to an open standard, so third-party instruments such as the You Rock Midi Guitar work with the game as well. Harmony support like in the Beatles and Green Day games is also present, as well as a much-improved drop-in\drop-out system, similar to the Party Mode in ''Guitar Hero 5'' which allows players to drop in and drop out any time, even in the middle of a song. The game allows up to 7 players to play at once, provided one has [[GottaCatchEmAll all seven controllers]] (two guitars, a set of drums, a keyboard, and three microphones). This time there are 83 songs, which all have guitar, pro guitar, bass, pro bass, (pro) drums, keys, pro keys, and up to 3 vocals charts except in cases where the appropriate instrument doesn't exist in the original song. -->
An expansion disc featuring the set-list from the ''AC/DC - Live at Donington'' concert DVD was also released (a must because AC/DC didn't want their songs online, or available outside of Wal-Mart, one of their sponsors). Track Packs containing otherwise downloadable songs alongside, more recently, timed exclusive songs included as an incentive to purchase are also available.
A [[Mission Pack Sequel]], ''[[The Beatles]]: Rock Band'', was released on September 9, 2009, followed by another one based on [[Green Day]] was released in June 8, 2010. The latter game can be exported to the main platform. Both games are [[Exactly What It Says
Finally, ''[[Lego Adaptation Game|Lego]] Rock Band'' has also been released. The game adds new songs (obviously) and also (on the PS3 and 360 versions, at least) the same downloadable content that the main Rock Band games allow for, assuming they have been rated "Family Friendly" (See also: [[Lighter and Softer]])
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== Track Pack releases of the series: ==
* ''Rock Band Track Pack Vol. 1'' (Wii and [[
* ''AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack''
* ''Rock Band Track Pack Vol. 2''
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* ''Rock Band Country Track Pack Vol. 2''
Between all of the games (all of which besides the Beatles can be exported to the latest game) and the $2 a la carte downloads (and slightly discounted packs), there are '''[
{{tropenamer}}
* [[Big Rock Ending]]: Charted as a [[Button Mashing]] part. The first game got a little carried away with these, placing them on every song that could even remotely qualify, and musically ''adding'' them into many of the covers that didn't (and even a few master tracks!). Also, the AC/DC pack has some ridiculously long "BRE"s, but those ones are justified.
* [[Bladder of Steel]]: This what has to be the biggest modern example this side of MMOs. We're talking over ''six hours'' without failing or pausing. The songs go in ascending order of difficulty as well, so you're probably already tired out by the time you get to [[That One Boss|Visions, Panic Attack, Painkiller, etc.]], making failure even more likely.
{{tropelist}}
* [[And Your Reward Is Clothes]]: And instruments, and vehicles. In the earlier RB games, you earned cash per song with which you could buy stuff; in RB3, you earn clothes and instruments from passing "goals" listed in the shops and detailed in the "My Goals" menu. Annoyingly, a few of the clothes in RB2 are only unlockable in 3 through much more difficult (and\or controller-requiring) means.
* [[A Good Name for
* [[After Boss Recovery]]: While playing setlists, your rock meter resets to its default possition at five-sixths of the way full when a new songs starts, no matter where it was at the end of the last song. Sadly, there's no such easy recovery for your fingers/arms.
** Sure there is, it's called "Hit the Pause Button for a few minutes." Unless you're going for [[Bladder of Steel]], of course...
** Outside of Battle of the Bands, your overdrive also empties itself between songs.
* [[Anti
** Some songs include drum beats where the high hat (usually charted to yellow lane) and the toms (which would be charted to blue and green lanes) are played simultaniously, meaning if the song was charted as is, it would require you to cross your arms awkwardly. For songs like this, Harmonix frquently charts the high-hat to the green lane instead, so you don't need to cross your arms. This can be seen in "[[Metallica|Battery]]", "[[Metallica|...And Justice for All]]", "[[
** If [[
*** Unfortunately, Pro Drums will undo this swap if you have the yellow cymbal notes turned on, since it uses the "Disco Flip" flag. Fortunately, the part is still playable: toms alternating blue-yellow with the snare on red isn't too terribly hard to do, and Guitar Hero 5 vets that are used to playing with the RB drums will have little difficulty hitting the part on stock drums.
**** In "Lego Rock Band" you only lose studs if the crowd meter was empty.
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*** Similarly, any song you're playing will rewind itself a bit after you exit the Pause menu, which means you can continue without [[Serious Business|disrupting your score]] and [[Rage Quit|flipping out]].
* [[April Fools' Day]]: In 2012, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueS7rbHqo_k&feature=player_embedded Rock Band Board Game].
** If one wants to try and play it, the game board can be found [https://web.archive.org/web/20120906140923/http://www.rockband.com/content-assets/2012/03/boardgamePrintable.jpg here].
* [[Artifact Title]]: Arguably, now that the series is focusing on so many different genres of music, although the devs have claimed the title refers to the common lead-bass-drums-vocals ensemble that most rock bands use and not rock music in particular. And, for what it's worth, the vast majority of the series' music library is made up of rock songs.
* [[Audience Participation Song]]: On most of the on-disc songs, as well as a few DLC (such as the Best of The Who pack, George Thorogood's seminal Bad to the Bone, and The Cult's She Sells Sanctuary, as well as others), there's an additional audio track of a crowd singing along with key parts of the song.
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** In "Wanted Dead or Alive", the audience will ALWAYS sing the second "wanted" during the chorus, even though that happens only once in the song. [[Fridge Brilliance|People do that ALL THE TIME when listening to that song.]] It really makes you feel like you are performing to real people.
** Unfortunately, none of the on-disc songs on RB3 do this anymore, which is a shame. The engine still supports them on the relevant songs (imported or DLC).
* [[Biting the Hand Humor]]: Several of the songs in Rock Band 2, rather than being done by professional bands, were by [[Nepotism|bands made of Harmonix employees.]] Hilariously, two songs ([[
** Well, Get Clean is more about [[Completely Missing the Point|the singer being a Jew in a concentration camp.]] [[Captain Obvious|The jobs they were forced to do were unpleasant.]]
** Before patches, accepting Hot Topic's (who presumably [[Product Placement|paid to be in the game]]) offer to sponsor your band for money in ''Rock Band 2'' made you lose a lot of fans, without prior warning, likely for "selling out". Harmonix PR says this was only changed due to user confusion (rejecting an event makes it appear more often, so savvy players would keep getting this offer instead of other ones). Apparently, no one at Hot Topic noticed or minded the implications.
* [[Bonus Boss]]: All of the [[That One Boss|really difficult]] DLC songs count.
* [[Book Ends]]: Meta-example: [[
* [[Boss Dissonance]]: See [[Anticlimax Boss]] under [[Rock Band
** Rock Band Network 1 songs got the short end of the stick with the bulk of their songs undertiered in Rock Band 3. The problem is that the community is only trusted to set the difficulty to one of seven Rock Band 2 tiers (giving the chart the lowest difficulty rank that puts in that tier - which also causes issues when the "easiest Impossible RBN song" makes Satch Boogie seem easy.). Rock Band 3 raised the instrument cutoffs at the higher tiers, so even the highest rank that can be allotted to RBN songs doesn't qualify as Impossible. The strum-limit-breaking Baptized By Fire? "[[Blatant Lies|easier than Walk Of Life]]"
*** RBN 2 tracks will use the updated RB3 tier cutoffs. The reason for this is that the values that are set for tiering, and for sorting within those tiers, are actually ranging between around 100 and around 700. The cutoffs for each game are set to put an equal number of songs in each tier, and it just so happens that the difficulty numbers that were set to put them at the bottom of each tier in RB2 put them in the previous tier in RB3.
* [[Boss Rush]]: The "Guitar/Drum/Vocal/Bass Legend" setlists in career mode, in which you play the five hardest songs on each instrument in order of difficulty.
** Subverted a bit with the Rock Band 3 Hall Of Fame Induction goal setlists, which are just 8 predetermined songs.
* [[Bowdlerise]]: Being a T-rated game, swears such as "fuck" and "shit" are muted from the vocal track (and removed from the vocal chart). The themes, on the other hand, [[Rock Band
** Of course, they make sure that there's no penalty for singing during "empty" sections. If the swear is in the right place, [[This Is for Emphasis, Bitch|you can launch overdrive from it]].
* [[Bragging Rights Reward]]: Some songs like "Run to the Hills", "[[That One Boss|Visions]]", and most of the songs in the Mayhem Pack are difficult throughout their entirety, with no easy spots to gain overdrive from. As such, it takes less skill to simply survive those songs than it does to survive them ''and'' earn some overdrive on the way through. What this means is that you won't have the luxury of overdrive to help you beat these songs until you are good enough that you don't need it to beat the song.
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** {{spoiler|Which was actually foreshadowed in one of the "LEGO Legend" loading screens: "The Inflatable Pig holds the record for longest distance traveled into space by an inflatable pig."}}
** The octopus who auditioned for drums and was rejected in the tour/story mode's opening cutscene comes back with his dad in one of the levels.
* [[Bulk
** The exportable songs for ''Rock Band'', ''Rock Band 2'', ''Green Day Rock Band'', and the ''AC\DC Track Pack'' (except for a couple of songs by [[
* [[Bullet Hell]]: Some difficult songs on the guitar, drums, or bass will feel like an inversion of this trope. Though many difficult songs will still have a relative pattern to their notes that can be mastered with practice, some songs have notes all over the place that don't seem to follow any reasonable pattern (they usually do, as [[Bullet Hell]] is supposed to, but getting used to that pattern is not easy). Of note is the guitar solo in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wtPdpPKrWA "Don't Tell Me You Love Me"], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7yhIT3LCog#t=4m38s this part] of the solo in "Blackened", [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Ea9LPwHAY this part] of "Death Quota for Purification", the drum fills of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VNtCInpPZM "Day of Mourning"], the drum fills in the intro of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reH2KjzeNMY "Young Man Blues"], much of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzWwmzyct-4 "Guns of Summer"] on drums, and on the, erm, "easier" side of things, the entirety of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1NgbcsGDHU "Rude Mood"] on bass and the chorus of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jdnc6Axd2U "Science Genius Girl"] on drums.
** You can't talk about a mad hail of notes without mentioning the end of the guitar solo from [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r57nklX46_4#t=5m32s "Constant Motion"], which is easily the most difficult 15 seconds of guitar in the game.
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* [[Camera Abuse]]: Good part of the stage animations has your three frontpeople kicking the camera, shoving it away or what have you.
* [[Celebrity Is Overrated]]: The ending of Rock Band 3's last Road Challenge. {{spoiler|Your band is now the biggest in the world...and now has to deal with the paparazzi, the raging fans, and the like. This leads to the bandmates faking their deaths in a plane crash and finally getting some peace and quiet on a deserted beach.}}
* [[Celebrity Power]]: [[The Beatles (
* [[Censored Title]]: Some songs have titles that aren't T-rated, like "Beethoven's Cunt" by [[System of a Down
* [[Centipede's Dilemma]]: Possible everywhere, but probably the hardest hit are drum charts with weird rhythms, such as Use It, and A Jagged Gorgeous Winter. "Hey, I'm nailing this, it's not as hard as it looks, I mean, it just looks hard because of this weird bass pedal here... uh... and then there's this weird snare here... and... uh... how I was I doing this again?"
** Backbeats on the drums will take a while to learn, then be easy to do, right up until you start thinking about it. The inclination to move your hands in time with your feet is easy, but if you think about it too much you ''will'' want to move them in the same direction at the same time.
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** The Clash's London Calling was a double-album priced around the same as a single album. This is the case in the Rock Band store as well, where the price is $20 for 18 songs (not bad for getting both the songs and 4 to 7 gameplay tracks with each song<ref>guitar, bass, drums\pro, vocals, and sometimes keys, pro keys, and harmonies</ref>). Train in Vain isn't part of the album bundle as it was released for $2 separately well before the album release. Train in Vain also doesn't appear on the actual album notes (it was on the actual album but was added too late to be noted).
* [[Couch Gag]]: The "Press Start" screen in Rock Band 3 has a billboard on one of the buildings comprised of the album covers of two on-disc songs, randomized each time you start the game.
* [[Cover Version]]: A few songs from the first game, and some DLC from that era; averted from now on, as Harmonix now only works with acquiring and charting masters. Professionally-performed covers, such as The Muffs' "Kids in America" (originally by Kim Wilde), Alien Ant Farm's "[[Michael Jackson|Smooth Criminal]]", and Social Distortion's "[[Johnny Cash|Ring of Fire]]" (please note that the original is available as well), are exceptions. The last in-house cover version for the series was "Beetlebum" by [[Blur (
** [[South Park|Eric Cartman's]] cover of [[Lady Gaga]]'s "Poker Face" is available as DLC. Alongside the original.
*** [[Funny Moments|And it's got]] [[My Real Daddy|a higher rating]].
** Special mention to the original game's "Train Kept a Rollin'" which is specifically noted as a cover of Aerosmith's cover of the song.
** Mostly averted by the Rock Band Network, where covers of public domain songs are allowed, but only if it's not a cover of an existing arrangement. This allows for classical pieces [https://web.archive.org/web/20100612143250/http://www.rockband.com/music/artists/Paul_Henry_Smith_%26_The_Fauxharmonic_Orchestra as done by Paul Henry Smith & The Fauxharmonic Orchestra], [https://web.archive.org/web/20121021090651/http://www.rockband.com/songs/UGC_5002361 The Itsy-Bitsy Spider], and more. One exception to this arrangement--sort of--is Jerry Naylor, who covered Buddy Holly & The Crickets' [https://web.archive.org/web/20121020165943/http://www.rockband.com/songs/UGC_5009067 Not Fade Away], since Jerry Naylor was a vocalist for The Crickets. His cover of [https://web.archive.org/web/20121020151235/http://www.rockband.com/songs/UGC_5008456 Real Wild Child] is also available, although technically the Crickets' version was also a cover. (Further adding to the confusion: Everlife's cover of Real Wild Child is also available on Lego Rock Band.)
* [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!]]: Sight-reading [[
** This also screwed up a lot of Guitar Hero 2 players when "Hangar 18" came out for Rock Band; the RB chart is quite different from the [[GH 2]] version.
** If you're left handed, but play guitar right handed due to your more dexterous left hand, you'll probably be playing keyboard with your left hand. There is no lefty flip option for keyboard. You're probably going to try to play green notes with your index finger and orange notes with your pinky, even though you will want to do the opposite.
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** Switch from guitar to keyboard causes this in any combination, really, mainly because you have to use five fingers rather than four.
** Can also be inverted. The player can experience moments where he/she nails a difficult section perfectly and thinks "how did I just do that?" That's your muscle memory helping you out.
* [[Defeat Means Friendship]]: A meta-example: some songs by [[Guitar Hero
* [[Difficult but Awesome]]: Using the bottom frets on a Fender Stratocaster controller during guitar solos. During a guitar solo, you can hit the notes using the buttons on the bottom of the guitar controller without needing to strum. However, because the game counts each time you hit a button on the bottom fretboard during a solo as a strum and penalizes you more for strumming when there isn't a note than for missing a note, you'll likely do worse using these buttons than you would using the top buttons and the strum bar, at least the first time you try it. HOWEVER, with practice, you can use these buttons to great effect during certain difficult solos. What makes this technique so effective is that you can use both of your hands to hit notes, whereas you would otherwise only be able to use your non-dominant hand to hit notes.
** One example of where this technique is useful is the solo in [[
** Joe Satriani's "Surfing With the Alien" features some of the fastest trills in the series, but since the vast majority of them alternate between orange and a different note, you can hold down the other note on the top fretboard and mash away on the orange button on the bottom fretboard (using two fingers is recommended) to hit those trills.
*** An even MORE difficult technique is to hold ORANGE down on the shredboard and tap madly at the other note. It seems like it shouldn't work, but [[Violation of Common Sense|it does.]]
** The infamous Solo 2 (also known as the [[Guitar Hero|Surf Solo]]) in "[[That One Boss|Satch Boogie]]" is another place where you can use this technique to great effect by holding down the green button on the upper fretboard using your other hand to hit the other notes on the bottom fretboard. You may need to cross your arms so you can use your regular fret hand (your more dextrous hand) on the bottom fretboard, where you will be hitting the majority of the notes, but the song has a long sustained note ([[This Is Gonna Suck|as the final note of a Overdrive phrase no less]]) before Solo 2, giving you time to do just that and also start the section with a full overdrive gauge.
** Another place where holding down on the green fret is more or less necessary is the intro to ''Thunderstruck'' on the [[ACDC
* [[Difficulty
** This was finally fixed with the retroactive tweaks to tremolo strumming in Rock Band 3.
* [[Difficulty Spike]]: Moving from Medium to Hard on guitar or drums. Guitar charts start including the orange fret, meaning that you have to start moving your hands around instead of having your four fingers sit on green, red, yellow, and blue all the time. On drums, the bass pedal finds itself on the off-beats more often, forcing some extra limb independence out of players, and that's not taking into account the presence of drumrolls and fills with much more notes than one would see in a Medium chart. Moving to Expert is even worse, since the number of notes charted in Hard modes tends to be reduced until a certain standard of reduced difficulty is reached, while Expert is the song in all it's difficult glory. Expect to be murdered by the guitar solos.
** Moving from Medium to Hard in pro guitar has an equally difficult curve. Medium mostly has you doing not much more than calm streams of two finger power chords which are easily voiced as 0-2, 7-9, 5-7, whereas Hard starts throwing relentless walls of three finger chords, arpeggios, and even barre chords at you.
** The drums in Rock Band 2 suffer from a general difficult spike in the Impossible tier. The first few songs ("[[Motorhead
** For bassists, the first real difficulty spike came on the day that "[[Muse (
** Starting with Rock Band 3 and with all DLC since around June 2010, songs are required to use all buttons/pads on the various instruments at all difficulties if that button/pad is used in expert. It will still be fewer notes for the player to hit, but this helps with the hand position aspects.
** Of course, in reverse, the introduction of Pro mode will likely find many Expert players dropping back to Easy Pro mode to learn how to acually play a stringed instrument.
** Remember [[Beatmania]]? Remember how many songs have a very difficult part right at the end? Well, I present you: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffrdLPmrrtY&feature=player_detailpage#t=436s Through The Fire And Flames Expert PRO Guitar ending]. The end of the song is [[Up to Eleven|even harder]] on basic guitar. Due to the way tapping solos work on pro (no need to strum at all), and the fact that the tapping solo on pro is "anchor 3rd fret and tap 10th and 6th", it's far easier, as on basic, the solo is "miss a note, you're done, you have to strum to start up again", not to mention the fact that it's anchoring the red fret then tapping the orange, blue and yellow frets.
** Some song\instrument combinations have a large spike from one difficulty level to the next. For example Visions on Hard Guitar is much, much harder than Visions on Medium Guitar.
* [[Doing It for
** According to their PR, almost every person on the development staff is a musician in a band and Harmonix is their day job.
** Well, given the large number of Harmonix bands in the games (Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives, The Main Drag, Anarchy Club, Bang Camaro, That Handsome Devil, and Breaking Wheel to name a few), it's not hard to believe.
* [[Double Play]]: Not officially supported, but the game drops a lot of hints about using a mic with another controller. There are also Youtube videos of people doing [[Self-Imposed Challenge|all 4 at once]] using modified controllers.
** At least one person has [[Flawless Victory|Full Comboed]] Rock Band 2 (considered the hardest game in the series) playing guitar and singing at the same time.
* [[Downloadable Content]]: If each song is a pound, there's over a ton of it.
** Just to provide perspective, Harmonix fully expected there to be well over '''one thousand''' songs playable in the ''Rock Band'' franchise by 2009's end, and [https://web.archive.org/web/20100211164455/http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174116 they met that goal on Nov. 25.] ''The Beatles'' has its own store, too, making it the first band-centric game with DLC.
*** With Rock Band 3's release, combined with all previous games and DLC and the RB Network, Harmonix expects 2000 songs by the end of 2010 to be available. They're meeting '''that''' goal on October 12th!
** Not to mention with Rock Band Network, more and more [[Downloadable Content]] is available on a daily basis. Day One of RBN provided over a hundred new songs for people to download. And the RBN has updated with more songs ''every day since''.
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*** [[Serial Escalation|And it's incomplete]], considering the songs that came out after this photo was taken.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jil7OnrpRmc Here we go again].
* [[Drop
* [[Dueling Games]]: with ''[[Guitar Hero]]''. ''RB3'''s "realistic instruments" implementation is dueling with ''[[Power Gig]]''.
** And winning ''handily'', thanks to how [[They Just Didn't Care|painfully]] [[So Okay It's Average|mediocre]] ''[[Power Gig]]'' is.
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*** ''Green Day'' stopped being subtle with that, and openly admitted that No Fail Mode was on if you picked Easy.
* [[Efficient Displacement]]: The second game has an intro video that end with all the rockers jumping through a billboard, leaving perfectly rocker-shaped holes in it.
* [[The End]]: After finishing the story mode of ''The Beatles: [[Rock Band]]'', there's one more song to play. [[Exactly What It Says
* [[Epic Rocking]]: ''RB3'' lets you filter by duration, including the category "Neverending Epic Songs" (which clock in at over 9 minutes).
** Just giving some examples, we have "Foreplay/Long Time", "[[The Who|Won't Get Fooled Again]]" and "Green Grass and High Tides" in the first game; "[[Dream Theater
*** Somewhat averted pre-Rock Band 3 - if you picked Green Grass and High Tides solo vocals, you get a version with shorter solos (but the same number of tambourine notes), and with Foreplay/Long Time, the game [[Accidental Innuendo|skips Foreplay]].
**** But completely played straight on the Wii version. Instead of shorter versions, you play the full song. This actually allows Wii players to get higher scores on Foreplay/Long Time (the tamborine notes during Foreplay are absent on the other versions).
** And now, we have 2112 from [[
* [[Everything's Better
* [[Everything's Better
* [[Expansion Pack]] / [[Mission Pack Sequel]]: The Track Packs, which are largely intended for players without access to online who want to play a sampling of the songs available for downloadable purchase. These can be turned into [[Old Save Bonus|Old Save Bonuses]] with an included code.
* [[Expy]]: Several of the prefabs/session artists from Rock Band 1 and 2 are dead ringers for classic [[Guitar Hero]] characters like Clive Winston and Judy Nails.
* [[Fake Band]]: Much in the tradition of using songs from [[Homestar Runner]] in the Guitar Hero games, the first Rock Band has the eponymous song by [[South Park|Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld]]. Vocalists beware.
** You can also download the song "Still Alive" by [[Portal (
** Which, let's face facts, qualifies as a crowning moment of awesome.
** And "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" by [[The Colbert Report|Stephen and the Colberts]].
** And now two songs by [[The Naked Brothers Band]].
** And as of March 31st 2009, three songs by
** Counting Lego Rock Band, there are 15 songs from [[This Is Spinal Tap|Spinal Tap.]]
** Also on Rock Band Network? [[Left 4 Dead|The Midnight Riders.]]
** And, courtesy RBN, another two: [[Lost|Drive Shaft and Geronimo Jackson]].
* [[Fake Difficulty]]: The drummers are usually the ones directly affected, but vocalists also have it bad sometimes. In Rock Band 1 and 2, when a song includes a harmony, with two vocal tracks sung at different pitches, Harmonix charts one of them for the vocals and penalizes you if you sing the other one, since you are technically singing the wrong pitch. This is fine in most cases, but sometimes they chart the quieter, less audible pitch as the pitch at which you need to sing, rather than the one everyone knows and will try to sing. "[[System of a Down|B.Y.O.B.]]", "[[No Doubt|New]]", and "[[Judas Priest
** They can only activate overdrive at predetermined points in the song, which reduces the number of notes they can hit. Yes, this means two people can "Full-Combo" a song with different numbers of notes hit.
*** There are no such points during a Drum Solo in Rock Band 2. Subverted here since all the (marked) drum solos are actually noticeably easy except for the opening one in [[That One Boss|Painkiller]], where outside of battle of the bands, you will not have overdrive there to begin with. This particular kind of [[Fake Difficulty]] is played straight, however, with [[Jimi Hendrix|The Jimi Hendrix Experience's]] "If 6 Were 9," a DLC song which has an exceedingly difficult drum solo whose challenging part doesn't start until a good way into the solo, long after your overdrive would have run out if you activated it before the solo started.
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*** Songs with reversed red and yellow are actually charted like that to AVERT [[Fake Difficulty]]. A real kit has the hi-hat to the left (if you're right handed) of the snare, and doing a pattern like Run to the Hills or Everlong with a constant roll on the hi-hat means that both hands are usually to the left of the snare, with one going to the right to hit the snare. If the red and yellow weren't reversed, you'd have to lead with your weak hand, making any song with that kind of pattern stupidly difficult and awkward.
**** And yet this makes it much more evident on songs that place similar hi-hat runs on the yellow pad. Additionally, anyone with an ION Rocker more likely than not has the yellow cymbal positioned to the left or above the red snare pad so that they can do such patterns on a whim. Rock Band 3's Pro Mode ignores the so-called "Disco Flip" if a yellow cymbal is present, keeping the hi-hat (and hi tom) on yellow instead of allowing it to be on red.
** You are penalized more for missing a Kick Bass note or a snare note than any other note (including when the hi-hat and snare are flipped like Run to the Hills and Everlong). "Miss" includes [[Captain Obvious|actually missing the note]] in addition to playing a non-existent note. (incidentally enough, knowledge of this actually makes [[That One Boss/Rhythm Game|Visions]] [[Subverted Trope|a lot easier to manage]].)
*** Additionally, if you accidentally hit one note out of order in a pair of quick non-simultaneous notes on different surfaces, you get penalized for missing the first of the two. This does get carried over to [[Guitar Hero]] when they implement drums, too.
*** On this tangent, Solo Tapping on Guitar also has this bit of fake difficulty. It's probably easier to illustrate the point than to explain it, so let's assume you have a yellow note in a solo. If you tap blue or orange on the shredboard (or have a shredboard fret held down when you press blue or orange on the lower frets), it counts as a miss and combo break. Fair enough. If you tap Green or Red, which are BELOW Yellow, it ALSO counts as a miss and combo break, even if there is a smaller (HOPO) green or red note immediately after the yellow note. Upside? you don't HAVE to release higher frets for single-fret notes during solos when tapping them. [[Guide Dang It|Oh, and neither the game nor the manual ever tells you any of this]], making some songs much harder than they should be (Especially those with fast multi-fret solos - Constant Motion and Satch Boogie stand out in this respect, as neither one's fast solo runs can be Overdrive-bluffed)
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*** To clarify, during the verse double-bass parts, there are two kick-pedal sounds per beat in the actual song, and one kick-pedal note per beat on the in-game drum-track, per usual. During the chorus double-base parts, there is one kick-pedal sound per beat in the actual song, and one kick-pedal note per beat on the in-game track, when there should be one every two beats.
*** The possible justification is that the player shows he can hit the kick-pedal that quickly during the verses, so why not map it that way during the choruses? An immediate rebuttal would be that, given the choice, most real drummers would want two pedals to hit a double bass part as quick as the one in the chorus.
*** [[Disturbed
** Bornholm's "Where The Light Was Born (Thule Ultima A Sole Nomen Habens)" features two sections where every kick-pedal hit is charted in a part where the drummer clearly used double-bass. That said, if you aren't good enough to get through those parts with one kick pedal, you probably don't have the stamina needed to survive the middle of the song.
** And lastly, Harmonix rarely charts closed hi-hat and open hi-hat notes on the same lane, typically using yellow for closed and blue for open. One of the FEW times the two are charted accurately is on the cover version of ''Run To The Hills'' on Rock Band 1.
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** Except that you can only have four members on stage at a time. Keys will replace either bass or guitar.
** Subverted in the DS version, where your guitarist alternates between guitar and keyboard during songs that have keyboard parts.
* [[Flawless Victory]]: Though not officially recognized by the game (but acknowledged once per Expert-level instrument per song by the metagame; for example, two Full Combos of Eye of the Tiger on drums counts as one Full Combo, but one on guitar and another on drums counts as two Full Combos, one in each instrument category), a lot of people try for Full Combos of songs (100% accuracy without hitting any nonexistent notes).
** Note that getting a Full Combo is ''not'' the same as maximizing your score. To do that, you have to know ''exactly'' when to deploy overdrive.
* [[Four More Measures]]: Or four fewer.
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*** However, the Limited Edition of The Beatles: Rock Band included a metal kick pedal for the drums.
*** The Rock Band 2 drums also put a metal plate on the pedal.
** [[
** The last two DLC released for ''Unplugged'', Sex Type Thing and Constant Motion, have the potential to delete the rest of your DLC if you download them. Buyer beware, indeed.
* [[Game Mod]]: Mostly hardware adjustments for the drums. Less necessary now that better instrument controllers are available, but sites like [https://web.archive.org/web/20111113211817/http://www.area51moto.com/mega/ MegaPedal] offer aluminum replacements, and then there is the more luxurious designs, like an actual kick pedal augmented with magnetic contacts...
** In a somewhat more traditional example, the Rock Band Network will allow users to submit their own songs for review to be made available for downloadable purchase. This requires a multitrack master of the recording and for the user to chart the song's notes himself. Oh, and the rights to do so, which can be harder than actually charting the song...
** "Jukebox" mode. Turn off the crowd sounds, enable no-fail and performance modes, and select vocals. Then just pick any song that you would like to listen to without fear of the game punting you out for losing.
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*** And don't forget to change your difficulty and continuing just before the song begins, or else your zero-point score will be saved. Plus, doing this will prevent the crowd from booing you during the song (as your crowd meter ''will'' decrease, inevitably), which really ruins the experience.
** The Wii version of RB 2 is compatible with [[Rawk SD]], a bit of homebrew that lets people import songs from any Rock Band or Guitar Hero game as well as play fan-made songs. Considered a killer app.
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: [[Rock Band
* [[Greatest Hits Album]]: Bob Marley's ''Legend'', No Doubt's ''The Singles 1992-2003'', and Bon Jovi's ''Greatest Hits'' compilations were released as DLC, as were large packs from The Who, Iron Maiden, Queen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and The Doors.
* [[Guide Dang It]]: A minor example, but it still counts. There is one cutscene in ''3'' which can only be viewed if you finish a setlist (in any mode) with at least two individually-scored members (Harmony Vocals counts as 1 person), but there's no indication of it anywhere, making players who have beaten the game with gold ratings in all Road Challenges wonder why there's still one ??? in Band History.
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*** Actually, some guitar parts are easier on the keyboard than guitar, because some things are easier to do with your fingers pointing down than pointing up (like the crazy solo part in Freebird). Other songs that have a lot of strumming on the same note are significantly harder, though, like Beast and the Harlot (still doable though).
*** Speaking of keyboards... Bass on the keyboard is easy enough. Try [[Evile|Thrasher]], or BYOB, or any song with fast strumming. Have fun trying to keep combo!
* [[
** And in RB3, there is a new band goal to hit every note in the 83 on-disc songs in the game. All of them. Thankfully, it only actually requires it be done on one chart per song.
* [[I Don't Know Mortal Kombat]]: Real life guitarists can still suck at the game on guitar. Here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btcvSWoQWV0 Rush bombs "Tom Sawyer" at 31%], while [[Jonathan Coulton]] And His Backing Band [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAgutrkFjBQ struggle through "Still Alive"].
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* [[I Know Mortal Kombat]]: The game guitar won't help much for real guitar. Also, even on Expert, one can be partially off-key with their vocals, and the octave doesn't matter at all.
** Quite possibly [[Averted]] with the drums, especially if you can play on expert. Don't expect it to help much beyond a primer for actual drums, but that's a start.
*** In a bizarre mix of real and fake, the game can be played [https://web.archive.org/web/20110408131953/http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56287
** Interestingly, the Rock Band website is starting a [https://web.archive.org/web/20100125164442/http://www.rockband.com/zine/category/berklee series of articles] intended to teach people how to play real life instruments. As well as [https://web.archive.org/web/20100211103010/http://www.rockband.com/zine/berklee a section] full of links to online music courses at the Berklee College of Music.
** What with the Pro mode to be introduced with RB3...
*** The biggest difference between playing Rock Band and a real instrument, is that while Pro Mode can help to teach you how to sightread like a boss, it won't teach you actual musical theory. It's the difference between being able to read and pronounce a word, and knowing what that word ''means.''
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** The first game had two more difficulty ratings, so as to divide their 45 main songs equally among them: Skilled (between Moderate and Challenging) and Blistering (between Challenging and Nightmare).
** And with Rock Band 3, you can now also choose between normal and Pro modes with all of the above, effectively creating a three-dimensional matrix of difficulty levels which some of the game's goals are named after (e.g. '''Nightmare Medium Pro''' Guitar).
* [[Incredibly Long Note]]: "[[Fall Out Boy|Dead On Arrival]]", "[[Judas Priest
** Avenged Sevenfold's song "Afterlife" has one particularly painful one: after the guitar solo, the singer has to hold a scream note for ''twenty-five seconds''. Hope you took a ''really'' deep breath!
* [[Instrumentals]]: Introduced to the franchise with Rush's "YYZ", with many released via the DLC and RBN since then. Vocalists in the band prevent these songs from being accessed at all, except in ''RB3'' if these songs are part of a setlist.
** In another form of this, "The End" by Pearl Jam can't be played if you have a drummer.
** As of Feb. 9th, 2010, there is now a song on the platform with no guitar track: [[
** This form was averted with [[The White Stripes]] tracks - although they don't have a bassist, the rhythm guitar was charted to the bass line (similar charting practices have happened with songs by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who also don't have a bassist). However, one song from the second pack (Fell in Love With A Girl) doesn't have a bass line charted, so now all four instruments have at least one song without it.
** The Rock Band Network brings us a few interesting examples: aside from the typical instrumentals that lack vocals, there's "Buster Voodoo" by Rodrigo y Gabriela, which has only a guitar and bass part (though the bass is really the rhythm guitar), and "Upstream" by Cory Wong, which is only a guitar part and nothing more.
** Also included is a drums only song called (funnily enough), "Drum Exercises for the Sufficiently Masochistic" by Shylo Elliott. Somewhat ironically, the song isn't all that hard compared to some of the other DLC songs.
** In an unusual example for the series, "Positive Force" and "Pressure Cooker" from ''[[
** Inverted with [[Green Day]]: Rock Band. The song "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw8MKIXOjf0 Song of the Century]" only contains vocals, whereas "Good Riddence (Time of Your life)" Only has a drum part missing.
* [[Interface Screw]]: At two points during "The Killing Moon", the camera flashes a bright red fade-away. Unprepared players can easily misinterpret this as the "you're about to fail out" signal, especially if they're a) playing an unfamiliar instrument or b) haven't yet failed a song in RB3.
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*** And if you imported LEGO Rock Band into RB3, it's reincarnated as one of the many goals.
* [[Lego Adaptation Game]]: ''Lego Rock Band''.
* [[Lighter and Softer]]: The whole point of a Lego spinoff is to let the kids play without exposing them to [[Sex, Drugs and Rock
** Though many of the Rock Band characters (plus, [[Iggy Pop]]) appear in the game in Lego form.
* [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition]]: So far:
** ''[[Rock Band]] 2'' shipped with a special edition bundle with enhanced instrument controllers, including a guitar controller with much more quiet fret buttons and a camera and microphone to make calibration easier, and a drum kit with a sturdier kick pedal.
** ''[[The Beatles]]: [[Rock Band]]'' had a special edition bundle with Beatle-themed instruments, including a guitar shaped like Paul McCartney's Höfner_500/1 bass, with instrument peripherals modelled after John Lennon's Rickenbacker 325 and George Harrison's Gretsch Duo Jet sold separately. The game is also sold as a Singstar bundle with two microphones (for the [[
** ''[[Green Day]]: [[Rock Band]]'' was released in the States as both a standard edition as well as a 'Plus' edition at $10 extra, which allows players to transfer all the songs in the game to other [[Rock Band]] titles for free, and comes with all previously released [[Green Day]] [[Downloadable Content]].
* [[Lost Forever]]:
** Challenge rewards can only be obtained one time per band. While the "impossible [instrument] challenges" clearly show what the costumes look like (before coloring), the "Impossible Marathon, part 2" challenge has a reward of ONE (not a set. ONE) "crazy instrument" for each active player, corresponding to whatever instrument that player cleared Painkiller with. In order to get all 4 crazy instruments on one character, the entire challenge ladder must be gone through four times, each one in a different band. The amount of time one such run takes is comparable to the time it takes to clear [[Marathon Boss|Endless Setlist II]].
*** Remedied in Rock Band 3 - unlock once, use on every character you want for that profile.
** There are a couple of songs that were pulled from the store due to copyright issues.
* [[Luck
** Rock Band 3 actually lets you do something about both this and having Say It Ain't So appear constantly by the means of rating songs on a "5-lighter" scale. Higher-rated songs have a higher chance of appearing when a random song is picked by the game. This is very important, as not only are Rock Band 1 and 2 songs exportable to Rock Band 3 (and thus can appear in random setlists), ALL DLC, including Rock Band Network DLC, can also appear in random setlists in Rock Band 3, so unless you like the idea of possibly having ''[[That One Boss|Death Quota for Purification]]'' as your first random song, you might want to go through your setlist and 1-lighter all the songs you know you can't pass.
* [[Marathon Boss]]: "Green Grass and High Tides" by The Outlaws, which was featured in the original Rock Band, was almost ten minutes long. "The Camera Eye" by Rush, a song available in the DLC store, clocks in at eleven minutes long, but that doesn't even compare to [[The Who]]'s "The Who Super Bowl S-Mashup", another DLC song, which features multiple [[The Who]] songs played back-to-back and is about fifteen minutes long. Credence Clearwater Revivial's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" has the longest guitar solo of all collectively released tracks, taking up most of the 9+ minute song.
** On keys, there's [[Meat Loaf]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fndzbtAhEWc Paradise by the Dashboard Light.]
*** The [[ACDC
** And now, for your DLC pleasure, "Do You Feel Like We Do (Live)" by Peter Frampton. At 13:46, it's one of (if not the) longest songs in the game, and fairly difficult on everything but vocals. Good luck.
*** That's it? Beatles Rock Band has the Abbey Road Medley, which is -- are you ready? -- [[Exactly What It Says
** Released December 31st 2011: ''[[Rush
* [[Marathon Level]]: The Endless Setlist (and the Endless Setlist II and III). They ''are'' comprised of every song in their respective game, after all.
** This is then beaten by the Infinite Decade challenges in Challenge Mode - which cap out at 99 songs (the cap for setlists) and always use the hardest (band-rated) available songs for the decade from the disc AND your DLC. The catch? if you've already done the challenge once, you cannot quit-and-save in the middle of the challenge on subsequent plays.
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* [[Metagame]]: There is the above mentioned Full Combos; many people seek a high FC count. Then there's the leaderboards -- getting high scores on the leaderboards requires a tactic called "squeezing", requiring you to activate Overdrive off-rhythm (which means hitting a crash off-rhythm in the case of drums) to "squeeze" more notes under overdrive -- that's right, [[Violation of Common Sense|playing off-rhythm in a rhythm game gives you a better score]]. Both of those are a game that exists next to, but differs greatly from, simply playing the songs. Moreover, before Rock Band 3, there was a glitch that let you hit gems hidden at the end of a fill by triggering OD early and then hitting the (hidden) gems on beat. All of this only has a small impact on your score though, so it only matters if you're playing perfectly otherwise.
* [[Milking the Giant Cow]]: Any character acting as the lead singer while using the Metal-attitude responses tends to do this fairly frequently.
* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Likely in any Party Shuffle if the player(s) have given high reviews to a wide varity of music. For example, you can get a setlist starting with [[Neil Cicierega|The Ultimate Showdown (of Ultimate Destiny)]], followed up by [[Fleetwood Mac|Landslide]], then topped off with [[Megadeth
* [[Multi Platform]]: For the best results you'd better own an Xbox 360 or [[
** Solely Xbox 360 if you want to take full advantage of the Rock Band Network, though. It's obvious which platform Harmonix prefers (or maybe it's just obvious which platform doesn't have an equivalent to XNA, the system that allows Xbox users to submit songs in the first place), even if people don't like to admit it.
*** Due to license agreements with Sony, the [[
* [[Mission Pack Sequel]]: Just about every disc release for the series can be considered one, especially in light of all the improvements [[Rock Band]] 3 adds to the platform. In fact, Harmonix deliberately chose to break their annual release cycle so they could perfect everything for [[Rock Band]] 3.
** As far as the numbered games go, [[Rock Band]] 2 can be considered a particularly blatant [[Mission Pack Sequel]], for including almost all the content from the original game (specifically the custom clothes and stages, and even some of the events are copy-pasted with a small alteration), with a modest interface change to make browsing through song menus easier. The only noticeable changes in actual gameplay are the drummers being able to have 8 velocity-sensitive surfaces instead of 5 surfaces, the drummers can get solos now, and the bassist has a unique effect ("Distortion" which replaces "Echo")
*** [[Porting Disaster|Unless you're on the Wii.]] RB2 was the first time Wii owners got the chance to make custom characters or even select which premade character to play as; download individual DLC tracks of their choice which would then be incorporated into the general track library; make setlists; or have any choice in what venue to perform in.
* [[Mythology Gag]]: Beatles Rock Band is full of this. The dreamscape for ''Yellow Submarine'' sticks the band in the outfits they wore in [[Yellow Submarine|the film of the same name]], ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' appears to be performing in Pepperland, the dreamscape for ''Hello Goodbye'' references the promotional video for the song, and so on.
** Even the regular version gets in on this a little. When playing Gorillaz' song "Clint Eastwood", lines sung by Del are sung by the virtual band's drummer instead of their singer, a reference to the song's music video. Plus, the colours go inverted, and your drummer is blue!
* [[Name's the Same]]: Several, including:
** Testify by Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble, and Rage Against the Machine. Incidentally, that's another [[Mood Whiplash]] setlist.
** Also, there are three songs called "Monster": the one by [[Lady Gaga]], one by Skillet, and one by the Welsh band The Automatic (the latter available in ''Lego RB'').
** We also have two live renditions of songs named "Jailbreak"--denoted in-game as "Jailbreak (Live)"--by [[Thin Lizzy]] and [[ACDC
** There are also five different songs named "Burn;" two (by [[Rob Zombie]] and [[Nine Inch Nails]]) available as standard DLC and three (Captor, Mike Orlando, Big Square) on RBN.
** "Photograph" by [[Nickelback]] and "Photograph" by [[Def Leppard]] are both available as DLC.
* [[Nintendo Hard]]: Getting all the achievements\trophies in Lego Rock Band requires a great deal of skill, thanks mostly to The Final Countdown solo. The Beatles game has a few challenges to get [[Flawless Victory|100%]], on [[Harder Than Hard|Expert]], on ''some of the hardest charts of the game''. In the case of guitar, you also need to do the hammer-ons\pull-offs properly; one strum where you don't need to and it's all a waste. The Green Day game is also like this.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20100815050203/http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/28566/rock-band-3/videos/e310_rb3_inv_061610.html Pro Guitar]. Hope you like numbers!
*** The "Obsessive Compulsive" goal in 3, which requires you to full-combo ''every song in the game on Expert''. Good luck.
** Beatles Rock Band has an achievement for a perfect playing of Ringo's only drum solo in the band's career, just after the beginning of "The End". As if that's not bad enough, there's one for finishing all the Beatle Beats training tracks, the last of which is... THE DRUM SOLO FROM "THE END".
* [[No Export for You]]: The huge DLC sale for [[
** Rock Band 2 never got released in Australia. RB1 only came out in Australia and New Zealand more than a year after its original release. And given that you need an original copy of RB2 to export the tracks from that game to RB3... Aussies can only access the nine bonus tracks from that game. Let's just say the importers are doing a roaring trade on that game with those down under. And that was the one game with studio AC/DC track...
*** There's still the ''AC/DC Live'' Track Pack though.
* [[No One Gets Left Behind]]: Harmonix is working towards not only making every ''Rock Band 2'' song exportable (which, as of the initial feature, isn't possible), but going back and securing the rights for the songs which were dismissed from the '''original''' ''Rock Band'''s exportation so that they can be available in the third game. Now ''that's'' dedication.
** On the other hand, both the ''[[Rock Band]]'' and ''[[Rock Band]] 2'' exports seem to be missing a handful of songs in ''[[Rock Band]] 3'': Not only are songs like "[[Journey (
*** Rock Band 3 came out with a patch in November 2011 which finally made ''Black Hole Sun'' and ''Dani California'' (the ''Rock Band 1'' tracks that previously could export to ''2'' but not ''3'') playable in that game, thus playing the trope straight.
*** The Harmonix team member band tracks from RB2 have been released as free tracks... unless you're on the Wii. Just like pretty much every other free song.
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** ''Lego Rock Band'' allows all 45 of its songs to be exported via a one-time use code (included in the case on a separate, rather easily lost/stolen sheet, not on the manual itself) coupled with a $10 fee for the licensing. ''Green Day: RB'' has the same permission and cost, though pre-ordering or getting the more expensive Plus version eliminates the cost.
** Of course, all songs released prior to Rock Band 3 will not immediately feature keyboard parts, harmonies, or Pro mode support (besides drums) within Rock Band 3, but there has been word HMX is seeking fan input on what past songs should be updated with these features.
* [[One Game for
** Inverted software-wise in that after you have these controllers, every disc is a full guitar game (plus bass charts), drum game, karaoke game, and, starting RB3, also a keyboard game and another entirely different guitar game (also plus bass charts); the value of the game itself is pretty good for any one of those five, except possibly keyboard which is sparse or not present on some songs. The other four can all be played in over 80 songs. Compare the first Guitar Hero five years ago by the same company, which was only a guitar game and had less than half the songs (which were covers). From that game to Rock Band 3, the chart count has risen from around 40 to around 600 (or from
* [[Overly Long Gag]]: Some songs have '''very''' long big rock endings, to the point where it goes from fun to boring to, "This is going to end, right?" "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB7N7hEMmfI Iron Maiden (Live)]" takes the cake, with a big rock ending that lasts ''a minute and twenty seconds''. That's about a quarter of the song. Nearly every song from the AC/DC live track pack too.
** You want a LONG Big Rock Ending? Try out "Let There Be Rock (Live)" from the AC/DC pack, with a Big Rock Ending lasting '''NEARLY TWO MINUTES''', and is quite possibe to rack up 50K of bonus points on ''one instrument''. Unlike Iron Maiden (Live), the song itself is over 9 minutes long, making it 'somewhat' justified.
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** On the RBN, there's "I am S/H(im)e[r] as You am S/H(im)e[r] as You are Me and We am I and I are All Our Together -Our Collective Consciousness". The final part of the title even had to be cut.
** A [[Game Breaking Bug]] (thankfully patched) would delete your whole save file if you played a rock challenge that involved a band with a name of over 25 characters (e.g. The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets; counting spaces, that's 36 characters), and quit the challenge without completing it.
* [[Panty Shot]]: Since the game uses the same animations and camera angles whether your character has pants on or not, a girl in a short skirt or a [[Man in
** The Practice Mode in ''RB3'' has characters slouching regardless of their outfit.
* [[Pause Abuse]]: When the player pauses and unpauses in the middle of a song, the track scrolls back a few bars to help the player catch up after a pause, which can be abused to split up a really hard track into smaller, manageable sections. While this has never been outright fixed, the game was eventually patched so that players who pause often will have their scores nullified.
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** [[Crowning Moment of Funny|It's back in the third game's Modifiers menu.]]
** A more legitimate [[Power-Up Letdown]] would be Keys On Guitar mode. "Hooray", you think, after finally unlocking Keys On Guitar, "Now I can play the keyboard parts without having to buy the keyboard peripheral!" Sadly, the keyboard notecharts are frequently too complex to comfortably play on a guitar controller, and your playing doesn't count towards any of the game's keyboard-specific goals (well, technically, they do count, but they don't register as completed until you go back and play at least one song on an actual keyboard).
* [[Preorder Bonus]]: Done occasionally, often in the form of preliminary access to downloadable content or special codes to unlock new in-game instruments. Thankfully, none of it stays exclusive to preorders (songs are eventually put in the RB Music Store, and instrument codes make their way onto [[
* [[Rags to Riches]]: You get to see your band like this in ''3'', as you complete the Road Challenges.
* [[Rank Inflation]]: Playing on Expert allows you to get "gold stars" if your score reaches 150% (the 5-star cutoff score plus half of it) of the cutoff point for a five-star ranking. All other difficulties only go up to five.
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*** And none of these goals are actually required to hit the highest rank (Completionist) - but if there's one you can't do, they are able to cover it off. You do need all the exports though - RB1, 2, Green Day and LEGO. Given that The Final Countdown 100% solo goal appears... you might actually want to grab some DLC just to avoid it, if you're close.
* [[Rockers Smash Guitars]]: Some of the songs end this way.
* {{spoiler|[[
* [[Rooftop Concert]]: Naturally, the final leg of the story mode in ''The Beatles: Rock Band'' is the group's rooftop concert.
* [[Save Scumming]]: Sort of. The RB3 Pause mechanic actually rewound the song, giving you in effect three seconds to breathe before the song started back up, allowing you to to repeatedly pause and hit difficult chord shifts/drum rolls with 100% accuracy. Harmonix released a patch where excessive pausing turns your crowd meter grey and discards your score for that song.
* [[Schizophrenic Difficulty]]: Every incarnation of Endless Setlist has a tendency to jump around a bit on individual parts since it's ordered by band difficulty rather than any specific part, but on vocals it's significantly more noticeable, although what's easy for one vocalist could certainly be hard for another and vice versa, so it's a difficult instrument to balance in the first place.
** Also RB2's on bass, because they're ordered by band difficulty rather than instrument difficulty. You're likely to run into this in general if you play bass and try to play the songs in order of difficulty, because when the game sorts them it assumes you want them ranked by ''guitar'' difficulty. Rock Band 3 sorts it by whichever part you're looking at the scores for (unless you're in multiplayer, in which case it sorts by band difficulty)
** Being randomly selected and all, Mystery Setlists/random setlists have a good chance of turning out this way.
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** Players also have the option to turn off the note track that tells them what to do (meaning you must play from memory). You also can turn off the master track's vocals (so your voice is the only one you hear), and you have to play ''entirely'' from memory.
**** If you can do this as a band, go on tour as a real gig, and pick up your crowning moment of awesome on the way.
* [[Sensory Abuse]]: The thankfully patched glitch on ''Rock Band 3'' for the [[
** On the other hand, ''RB3'''s music video venues can be unforgivingly blinding at times, even if you have the lights on in the room.
* [[Sequel Difficulty Drop]]: ''2'' added No Fail mode, but nothing can be saved while it's on. ''3'' has a stricter crowd meter, but almost everything can be done with No Fail off (most goals now revolve around getting a certain number of stars instead of survival).
* [[Sequel Difficulty Spike]]: ''Rock Band'' has 2 songs that fall into ''Rock Band 2'''s "impossible" tier, 3 if you count the cover of "Run To the Hills" (which doesn't transfer over due to licensing issues, though the original version is now in the Music Store). Rock Band 2 has '''12'''!
** Vocals got the biggest boost in difficulty in Rock Band 2. Some of the songs that were in the impossible tier for vocals in Rock Band are in the ''fourth tier out of six'' in Rock Band 2. "Foreplay/Long Time", the hardest non-bonus song on vocals in the original Rock Band, was placed right at the bottom of tier five in Rock Band 2, meaning most of the songs in the upper ''two'' tiers of difficulty in Rock Band 2 are harder to sing than Rock Band's hardest non-bonus song.
** The Rock Band Network is seeing this in a ''tremendous'' way; the amount of songs rated at the maximum tier in at least one category, let alone multiple ones, is staggering. Vocals is usually the exception, as the songs in question are metal tunes with talkie lyrics without regard to pitch measurement.
** Interestingly, this trope is inverted for the regular DLC store, which has a lower percentage of "Impossible" songs (in terms of band difficulty) than ''Rock Band 1'', even if you don't include "Run to the Hills" in that percentage.
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** This by itself is impressive. The addition of Pro Mode makes the IDEA of having a keyboard sane. For those that haven't read about it yet, Pro Mode makes the following changes to gameplay for the players with it on:
*** Drums differentiate between pad and cymbal hits. hitting yellow pad instead of yellow cymbal counts as a miss and an error.
*** Guitar (requiring a specific type of controller) will require the ACTUAL frets be hit (and correct strings strummed) instead of a catch-all fret button being held down. What TRULY makes this a major escalation is that they will be releasing a '''102-button''' (6 strings, 17 frets) controller to play it that way.
**** Not to mention an ACTUAL Fender (well, Squier) Stratocaster, with circuitry built into the neck that senses your finger positioning (some advanced techniques notwithstanding). Thus, you can play a song on Rock Band and through an amplifier at the same time.
***** Unfortunately, it has been revealed that a string muting device needs to be applied for the game to pick up the strums reliably. It doesn't hurt technique, but it does hurt the sound. The device can be removed outside of the game (or in the game with no-fail on). E-drums fare better in this regard.
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* [[Scary Shiny Glasses]]: Can happen occasionally [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9RYcHOKwOQ#t=4m9s in a dark room to glasses-wearing characters].
* [[Shown Their Work]]: Harmonix has stated that, while creating the pro guitar and bass charts, they consulted with the actual artists of the songs to proofread and confirm they were correct. Well, for the most part- the plastic Pro Guitar only has 17 frets, so notes played above fret 17 are moved elsewhere (in some cases, down an octave). There are separate charts for the 22-fret models such as the Squier.
* [[Shout
** It also features an achievement for whoever can nail 53,596 HOPOs. The number is the exact same as necessary to get the "Z-Genocider 2" achievement in ''[[Dead Rising 2]]'' (which was just two zombies up<ref> Valve one-upped Capcom in ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'', commanding you to kill 53,595 zombies. Harmoix tried to continue the joke</ref> from the original game's "Zombie Genocider"). The name of the achievement? "HOPO-cidal Maniac".
*** Most of the default characters in the Rock Band Series (Not Counting The Beatles Rock Band, Green day Rock Band, and Rock Band Unplugged)are referenced.
** RB2 had an achievement called The Bachman-Turner Award, for holding Overdrive for 60 consecutive seconds. RB3 had the same achievement, only this time with the title You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.
** Most of the clothing options' names are these. There's even a top called [[Doctor Who
* [[Siamese Twin Songs]]: Harmonix (and the Rock Band Network Community) is actually pretty good about handling these, as consecutive tracks that should play back-to-back uninterrupted are charted as one song instead of two most of the time. This does end up being impossible to do at times with songs in the Rock Band Network due to the 10-minute length limitation (One song, Andromeda's 18-minute-long Veil of Illumination, had to be split into two parts to be distributed via RBN).
** The most obvious example of not doing this is ''We Will Rock You \ We Are The Champions'', which is two separate songs in ''Lego Rock Band'' as they serve as [[Book Ends]] to the story. When the songs are exported to the main platform, they're still separate.
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** The Trope Naming song is in the game, of course, it's still possible for this to happen given how many words fly by.
* [[So My Kids Can Watch|So My Kids Can Play]]: ''Lego Rock Band'' features a new "Super Easy" mode (combining No Fail with being able to hit pretty much anything to count as a success) and locks out songs from any previous version deemed potentially harmful to minors from being played. These both are for the youngest ones, so they can play without being exposed to songs like "Holiday In Cambodia" or "White Rabbit".
** [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: That said, songs that are less blatant about their subject matter can still be played. Most of the ones that are more subtle about [[Intercourse
*** The filter seems to be a bit hit-and-miss, though - "Uncle John's Band" by [[The Grateful Dead]] was playable in LEGO Rock Band, lyrics with the word Goddamn in them and all.
* [[Take That/Video Games|Take That]]:
** When Harmonix was developing the Rock Band Network, they code-named it "Rock Band: [[Nickelback]]" specifically to divert press attention (both have the same acronym: RBN). [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|It became less funny]] when [https://web.archive.org/web/20120501054554/http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194216 they actually put Nickelback in the DLC store].
** Not so much a Take That as much as simply a cheeky move, [http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/09/17/psn-exclusive-rock-band-dlc-sale-next-week/ Harmonix announced a 50% off sale for the PS3] (hopefully to counter the arguments for their apparent 360 favoritism). Amusingly these were made-up entirely of albums and packs containing songs that had been announced for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock along with several singles<ref>[[
{{quote|
They have three [[Megadeth]] songs, well we have ''Rust In Peace'' which contains one of them.
▲{{quote| They have "[[Janes Addiction|Been Caught Stealing]]?" Well, we have that on-disc, and the ''Nothing’s Shocking'' album, too.<br />
They have
They have "[[
They have "[[Foo Fighters
▲They have "[[Foo Fighters (Music)|No Way Back]]"? Well, WE have so many packs of theirs (and an entire album) that we're going to offer our latest one (at the time, it was Pack 03). }}
** Rock Band 3 ''and'' [[Guitar Hero]]: Warriors of Rock both have Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. So what do the Harmonix devs put in to put highlight on the fact that they have Vocal Harmonies? A goal called "Bohemian ''As Intended''", unlocked by playing in a band of at least four of the game's capacity of seven players (exactly the sum capacity of players for GH:WoR), along with further special goals that can ''only'' be attained by ''all three'' parts being done 100% perfectly. Only a very few songs get special goals like this in RB3 (whereas they are extremely common in Guitar Hero), making the choice of this song getting them a fairly clear Take That.
** Rock Band Blitz features city graphics with buildings on the side. Already in the previews, one of the buildings is "Bailout Bank".
* [[Terrible Interviewees Montage]]: The start of Lego Rock Band's tour mode.
* [[The Theme Park Version]]: ''Lego Rock Band'', though besides having an easier difficulty setting and the songs being a bit easier on average, the gameplay mechanics are all the same as ''Rock Band 2''.
* [[Took a Level
** However, Texas Flood (from the original ''[[Guitar Hero]]'') is now much easier (especially at the solo) due to the much better hammer-on/pull-off system, though still pretty difficult.
** Don't forget Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son, which was in the 2nd easiest tier in ''[[Guitar Hero]] II'', but the 2nd ''hardest'' tier in this.
** The addition of the drums in Science Genius Girl from Karaoke Revolution took a reasonably easy vocal song and turned it into [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9Q5ii1-m0Y the most badass drum chart ever].
** Many of the Freezepop songs themselves [[Took a Level
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngEmBsuiMgQ Space Oddity on Guitar]. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_868433&v=lzKtfoIONVg#t=3.1s Space Oddity on Pro Guitar]. Any questions?
* [[Trrrilling Rrrs]]: in Oye Mi Amor, there's one of these with no word attached to it, charted "rrr".
** Also in [[Rammstein
* [[Unlockable Content]]: Rock Band 1 and 2 require you to unlock the setlist for quickplay by playing the career mode, and a few outfits and instruments can only be unlocked by playing particularly difficult [[Self-Imposed Challenge]] setlists. Rock Band 3 gives you all the songs right away, but somewhere between a quarter and a third of the wardrobe and instrument catalog has to be unlocked via achievements (which replaces the need to earn in-game money and buy them).
* [[Unwinnable By Mistake]]: Certain road challenges in Rock Band 3 are completely impossible for certain players to get anywhere on. Just from the on-disc songs, Antibodies on Vocals by itself during the Overdrive Chain challenge is an automatic loss of 5 spades - as even the full 13 seconds of overdrive obtained by the 3 overdrive phrases does not affect the spade meter.
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** Also, the RB3 versions of some songs, from [[Queen]] and [[Bon Jovi]]. Mostly the same charts as before, only modified to take advantage of the new features (on Expert; the lower difficulties were also modified to accomodate use of all five lanes).
* [[The Unexpected]]: All over the place on the main-disc set lists; imagine how many people could've predicted The Muffs would make two appearances in the series. In fact, this phenomenon nearly got [[The New Pornographers]] cut from the first title.
** This is also present in a few artist-themed packs. Usually at least two or five songs (depending on the pack-size) are or are among their best-known hits with one of them being a lower-charting-single, non-single, "underrated" fan-favorite (for example, "Crazy Babies" in the first [[
* The Who made an appearance on the three on disc setlists, in reverse chronological order, during the time Keith Moon was with them.
* [[Urban Legend of Zelda]]: Rumors circulated for a while concerning "evidence" of [[Led Zeppelin]] being mentioned in the files of ''The Beatles: Rock Band''.
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* [[Viewers Are Geniuses|Players Are Geniuses]]: Rock Band 3 has no tutorial except for pro guitar, probably because most people just dive in anyway. It does have trainers for drums, pro keys, and pro guitar, and practice mode for all instruments.
* [[Virtual Paper Doll]]
* [["Wake
* [[We Sell Everything]]: The Rock Band Store, to some people's annoyment about what a game called '''''Rock''' Band'' should entail. Seriously, if there's not even one song genre (or even just one SONG) listed that you like, you're just trying to be offended at that point.
** Their store on the web used to sell quite a lot of things you wouldn't expect to, including figurines of the characters you created, as well as tee-shirts, mousepads and coffeemugs of your bands. With the new site revamp, the ability to take new pictures of your Rock Band 2 band was removed, although existing pictures are still there. No word on a Rock Band 3 equivalent for this, though.
* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]]: From ''Rock Band 3'': La Pesadilla Mexican Restaurant.
{{quote|
* [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?]]: Most of the outfits are either harmless or mildly sexy or badass looking. A few choices however are straight up BDSM clothing that would not be out of place in something really...well, not for kids.
* [[A Worldwide Punomenon]]: The Rock Band Network's song compilation tool is called Magma. [[Word of God]] [http://vimeo.com/7706836 states] (about six minutes into the video) that this is "'cuz it's where rock comes from."
{{quote|
** Some of the clothes and instruments have very punny descriptions. Probably the worst one was the microbone in Rock Band 2. "[[John Lennon|You may say it's a femur, but it's not the only one]]". Yes, you just read the in-game description.
* [[Wrestler in All of Us]]: During some Big Rock Endings, your guitarist will not only smash his guitar against the stage, but also elbow drop on it (see the studio version of "Let There Be Rock" in ''RB2'' for an example).
* [[You Fail Physics Forever]] / [[Rule of Cool]]: The intro movies from the first two games, which had bands playing on top of their speeding cars, and making Isaac Newton squirm in his grave in the process. The singer is able to stand on his car's windshield, only supported by his feet, and with his body leaned forward almost horizontally. ''Without falling''. Repeated in the "dueling bands" intro for ''RB2'', where ''both singers'' do this by planting their feet '''over the radiator grills''' and leaning forwards in the same way, as if they were trying to faceplant on the running asphalt below.
* [[Zero Effort Boss|Zero Effort Song]] / [[Unwinnable]]: There are some songs that have so few notes that you can pass the song without hitting any notes, but it's still possible to fail them by simply hitting notes when there are none. Then there's "Thank You, Boys" by [[
** "Polly" by Nirvana on Drums. There are 8 notes to hit on Expert. 4 on Medium.
** In RB2, with various talkys (songs that have extremely few tonal vocal parts, which include "So Whatcha What" and "Give It Away" [one tonal phrase at the end] and "Visions"), one can play the microphone in front of the speakers and do nothing and pass the song, even at expert.
*** This also happens in RB3 with "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver": pretty much 95% of it is talky.
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