Have you ever heard of the qayroq? It's a simple #percussion#instrument from Uzbekistan consisting of a metal piece and a stone; often a set per hand, and the rhythms can get really complex.
This is Abbos Kosimov, possibly one of the most talented Uzbek percussionists, with a demonstration qayroq solo. When I met him, he let me try them and taught me how to move my hands. It was really tricky. #Music#Ethnomusicology#WorldMusic#rhythm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eurZ34Wxeqg
Erin Hannon and I wrote a short commentary on Nori Jacoby et al.'s fantastic paper on people's rhythmic reproduction tendencies in a bunch of different parts of the world and sub-populations in those places.
#TheMetalDogArticleList #MetalInjection
JOSH FREESE Talks About The Nerve-Wracking Call When DAVE GROHL Asked Him To Join FOO FIGHTERS
"On my children's lives, I had zero plans of being called to be the drummer."
I was reminded of some old studies by Toukhsati and Rickard on how rhythms can facilitate learning in young chickens, which have been mostly ignored over the years, probably because they were ahead of their time.
But they seem especially relevant to those of us in music cognition who are increasingly interested in the neural mechanism of rhythm, beat, meter, and groove in both humans and non-human animals. Not to mention the health and education applications of music!
As stated in the post title, this online raft's not only for players, but also enthusiasts, both casual and dedicated, of the non-profit, four-key rhythm/mystery visual novel game that's bound to test your hand and sight reflexes with well-made song charts and course journeys, vivid/statis, itself made by Hajimeli and Team...
Here's to a new mag/community hub for one of my recent favorite games for this year alone. vivid/statis. Yes, it's also a quirky yuri game, per one of the comments of SiIvagunner's sole rip vid a few months back. Feel free to either post your plays, help build this place up, or even both!...
I've created a new kind of app for #musicians: you tap a #rhythm as you hear it and the app does its best to detect BPM + Meter and display the rhythm in a sequencer-like layout.
It is available at https://ritmas.eu/
You can "Add to Home Screen" on mobile. Should work offline.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
Metal: Hellsinger is a rhythm-based FPS. The rhythm in question is heavy metal. Very heavy metal.
This is the second of the October Humble Choice Bundle games, and the second game that I'd looked at before and decided "Ah... no."
It's nothing to do with being an FPS, or a fundie* aversion to the setting, or being a rhythm game.
It was the soundtrack, which seemed to me more like death metal than heavy metal, but I'm old.
In any case, you're more likely to find me listening to Sara Bareilles than Slayer. Dire Straits rather than Dio. Counting Crows, not Cannibal Corpse.
You get the idea.
The idea of a game with a soundtrack featuring the lead singers from bands like System of a Down, Dark Tranquillity, Trivium, and Lamb of God is not my idea of a good time.
I found Nine Inch Nails in Quake was a lot to deal with.
So... I was wrong. Killing mobs in hell, slashing or firing on the beat of screaming thrashing metal is an intense but incredibly fun time.
It's not a game I'm going to play to unwind, by any means, and I can't understand a single word they're singing (which is probably for the best), but Metal: Hellsinger is:
October 26, 2023 - Day 298 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 318
Game: Dub Dash
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 17, 2016
Installation Date: Oct 21, 2023
Unplayed: 5d
Playtime: 27m
Dub Dash is a dubstep-themed rhythm arcade game.
Using a couple of buttons, you need to time your button-presses just right to dodge the obstacles that pop up in front of you, in time with the dubstep soundtrack.
I have a bit of a thing for rhythm games, but I struggle a bit with games where I need to memorise an exact set of moves and repeat them perfectly. This is a combination of both.
The first level is a top-down level where you're a rolling wheel in a trench dodging the obstacles popping out of the side-walls of the trench. Kind of like the Star Wars trench run meets Skrillex.
The thing I found mildly irritating is that most of the required moves are on the beat, and then suddenly one that's off-beat, and not necessarily in a way that makes sense.
I'd feel like I was in the groove, and suddenly I'd smash into an obstacle that was on the third beat. I eventually beat the first level, but this is definitely one of those "I might play it again if the mood strikes me" games.
BPM: Bullets Per Minutes is a rhythm-based FPS roguelike. I discovered BPM when I was reading about Metal Hellsinger, and added it to my wishlist.
Joke was on me. Turns out I already owned it.
After the 250Mbps fibre was installed today, I went looking through my unredeemed Steam keys list, and spotted BPM. "Ooooh! I'll install that!"
While this has the same basic concept as Metal Hellsinger, it plays very differently.
Instead of raiding hell, you're a Valkyrie raiding randomly generated Viking-esque dungeons, rendered in an eyewatering, almost monochromatic colour palette.
You also absolutely MUST fire on the beat, or the gun just doesn't fire. Even on easy mode, the mobs hit hard. Each hit does 25% damage.
You walk into a darkened room that may or may not have a wild number of mobs in it, and you run around trying to make out where you're going, and not get hit.
If you're unlucky, there's a boss in the room, who might completely blind you for a moment... and then you're dead.
Ultimately, it was the graphics that killed it for me. I would probably persevere if I could easily make out what I'm shooting at against the backgrounds, but it just becomes too much work, particularly when there are a lot of mobs on screen.
I really wanted to like this game, but unfortunately, BPM: Bullets Per Minute is another:
November 23, 2023 - Day 326 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 346
Game: Soundfall
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 12, 2022
Installation Date: Nov 11, 2023
Unplayed: 12d
Playtime: 16m
Soundfall is part rhythm-based top-down dungeon-crawler, part looter-shooter.
So far, one level in, this musical odyssey feels like a dungeon-crawler in name only. So far the dungeons are brightly-coloured floating islands, adorned with equalizer level bars rising and falling in time with the ear-wormish pop soundtrack.
Existing in a third space between Hi-Fi Rush and Metal Hellsinger, this is an interesting take on a rhythm game, and the only reason I'm writing a review instead of continuing to play is that it's been a tough day, and I can barely keep my eyes open.
The only issue I have with the game is that in spite of having previously needed to calibrate my video and audio latency for other rhythm games, the calibration tool in Soundfall insists my calibration requirements for both are 0ms.
I think it's this that left me feeling like I was constantly slightly off-beat, just enough that it didn't feel quite right.
Even so, Soundfall is already fun, and I'll happily say it's:
Wandersong is a 2D music-themed rhythm adventure platformer.
As with so many other platformers, the game opens with your character standing defenceless on the left hand side of the screen, and setting out on their adventure.
The game world is rendered in a brightly-coloured papercut stop-motion animation style. It was here that I ran into my first problems with the game.
It's definitely a controller-based game, but the UI for menus is so frustrating that I resorted to keyboard and mouse - and STILL had problems.
I lost close to ten minutes (which I subtracted from the playtime to get the total above) just wrestling with the options UI and trying to get it to commit the resolution I'd chosen.
With game actually running at a reasonable resolution, I set off to the right, to embrace my destiny. A sword! Every adventurer needs a sword!
This is when I encountered what felt like the weirdest weapon interaction I've ever encountered: to use the sword you select a direction for the sword to point with the D-Pad (or left stick, but I recommend D-pad) and then move towards the target.
Enter battle... and immediately lose your sword forever as it flies out of your hands and plummets offscreen.
As it turns out, this is not a fighting platformer, it's a musical platformer.
After some further scene setting, you're into the game proper.
Fights in the game are effectively a complicated version of the memory game "Simon", with a C major scale's 8 notes instead of Simon's 4.
As an example, an early fight with a ghost involves replicating the notes and patterns that the non-vocal ghost is making. This is where using the d-pad is more effective than trying to use the left stick. You need to hit the right notes in the right order, and it's too easy to slide through a wrong note with the analog stick, meaning you need to start the pattern again.
For the most part, it's effective, and the music is quite lovely, but it's definitely a game I'm going to need to be in the mood for.
Part of the reason for that is that the bugginess of the UI extends into the game itself, with the game intermittently pixelating as if dropping to low resolution, and intermittent visual glitches.
During the battles with a ghost, the screen colours invert, and the soundtrack changes accordingly, and usually switches back after winning the battle.
However, after one battle, the colours and soundtrack started inverting and reverting non-stop, making the game virtually unplayable.
Unfortunately, the general bugginess took the edge off a game I quite enjoy otherwise, leaving Wandersong at:
March 15, 2024 - Day 440 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 475
Game: Everhood
Platform: Steam
Released: Mar 4, 2021
Installed: Aug 4, 2022
Unplayed: 588d (1y7m11d)
Playtime: 18m
Everhood is a pixel-art adventure RPG rhythm game mashup.
While it's an incredibly self-aware game that revels in its own weirdness, it effectively gates that weirdness off by the use of the rhythm game sections.
To progress in the game, you need to beat various characters in rhythm games, a la Rock Band, Guitar Hero, or Beatstar.
With one slightly, and incredibly frustrating difference. Instead of having to hit the marks on the beat, each rhythm section gives you five columns where you need to dodge pulses coming from the boss of the moment.
Even on the easiest level, I found myself frantically mashing the arrow keys and dying continuously.
Which means restarting the battle. Over and over.
I finally quit in frustration after 15 minutes, just to find I'd only been playing for 10 minutes.
I went back into the game, and found that if I stayed in the centre column, and mashed the up button with just the right timing, and no dodge attempts, I could manage to beat the first rhythm game.
A few minutes later the second rhythm game sent me back to the escape key to quit out.
While it seems like a fun game is somewhere in Everhood, am I going to go back and try to find it?
March 17, 2024 - Day 442 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 477
Game: A Musical Story
Platform: Steam
Released: Jan 24, 2019
Installed: Dec 26, 2022
Unplayed: 447d (1y2m20d)
Playtime: 28m
A Musical Story is part visual story-telling, part rhythm game.
I've never played anything quite like it.
There are no words, other than the opening menu. The entire story is told through vignetted painted memories of the lead character, a musician named Gabriel, and varying musical motifs.
There are only two keys used, but it requires perfect timing to follow Gabriel's musical odyssey through the 70's; it forced me to focus and feel the music, to find that part of me that used to stand on stage and find the zone.
A couple of times I just didn't hit any keys and let the music play over and over, because the music is gorgeous, and captures soul music of the 70's so well.
A-Mazing Urho 20240520 (2024-05-20) (luckeyproductions.itch.io)
Underwater rhythm-maze
vivid/statis - kbin.social (kbin.social)
As stated in the post title, this online raft's not only for players, but also enthusiasts, both casual and dedicated, of the non-profit, four-key rhythm/mystery visual novel game that's bound to test your hand and sight reflexes with well-made song charts and course journeys, vivid/statis, itself made by Hajimeli and Team...
[m/v_s][owner] The hub for all stuff vivid/statis, the free, four-key mystery/rhythm game with an intriguing storyline...
Here's to a new mag/community hub for one of my recent favorite games for this year alone. vivid/statis. Yes, it's also a quirky yuri game, per one of the comments of SiIvagunner's sole rip vid a few months back. Feel free to either post your plays, help build this place up, or even both!...
vivid/stasis Trailer (ACT 2; Q1 2024) (www.youtube.com)