Rock Band and the Plastic Drum Kit

Rock Band came out in 2007 and filled the living room with plastic instruments, from drums to a microphone. New songs arrived every week for over five years.

current mood: loudcurrently listening to: ♫ the kick pedal at midnight

Written by Natalie Brooks · October 9, 202656k: ~1 min

Rock Band was a music game where up to four people played guitar, bass, drums and vocals together on plastic instruments, and it came out in North America on November 20, 2007. It was made by Harmonix, the studio that had created Guitar Hero, and published by MTV Games with distribution by Electronic Arts. Instead of one person with a plastic guitar, it turned a whole living room into a band. New songs came out to download every week, and it became one of the most popular party games of the late 2000s.

From Guitar Hero to a full band

Harmonix had made the first Guitar Hero games, and Rock Band took that idea further. The first game came out on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in November 2007, then on the PlayStation 2 that December and the Wii in June 2008.

The disc had 58 songs. Inside the big box you got a guitar, a drum kit with four pads and a kick pedal and a USB microphone. It was expensive and took up half the closet. Plenty of families and roommates decided it was worth it anyway. By October 2008, the game had sold about 4 million copies and brought in around $600 million.

How did Rock Band work?

Rock Band worked by scrolling notes toward each player on their own track on the screen. The guitar and bass players held colored fret buttons and hit the strum bar. Behind them, the drummer hit the matching colored pads and stomped the kick pedal. Up front, the singer sang into the microphone, and the game checked whether the pitch matched the line on screen.

Everyone shared the same crowd meter. When the band played well, the crowd cheered. When someone fell behind, the meter dropped, and a player who failed could be saved by the others using Overdrive, a bonus you built up by nailing special sections.

That made it a team game in a way Guitar Hero wasn't. Beating your own score mattered less than keeping your friend from getting booed off the stage.

Picking the band name

Before the first song, you made your band. You picked a name and a logo, then designed your characters and dressed them. Band names were a big deal. Some groups spent longer on the name than on the first set. It was a little like picking a screen name, except four people had to agree.

Tour mode took your band from small clubs to giant stadiums, with new venues, fans and gear unlocking along the way. It's the same slow climb as a profile song collecting plays, except the crowd was your roommate.

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The drums

Everyone wanted the drums, and they took the most practice. Four colored pads and a kick pedal sounded simple until a fast song asked your hands and foot to do different things at once. New drummers flailed. After a few weeks, a lot of them got surprisingly good.

Plenty of people swore the plastic drums taught them real rhythm, and some went on to buy actual drum kits. Those pads were loud too. Not as loud as real drums, but loud enough that late-night sessions in apartments came with a rule about the kick pedal.

Singers had their own challenge. Rock Band's microphone didn't care about lyrics, only pitch, so some people hummed whole songs and still scored well. Others gave it everything, which was more fun to watch anyway.

A new song every week

The biggest thing Rock Band did might have been the downloads. Harmonix released new songs to buy almost every week. By the time Rock Band 3 came out, more than 2,000 songs from over 250 artists were available. People checked every week to see what was new, and some bought a whole album the day it came out.

Weekly downloads kept going for more than 275 weeks in a row before pausing on April 2, 2013. They came back with Rock Band 4, which ended up supporting more than 3,000 songs. The final weekly release for Rock Band 4 came out on January 25, 2024, more than eight years after that game launched.

When the Beatles joined in

On September 9, 2009, which was 09/09/09, Harmonix released The Beatles: Rock Band. It came out the same day as the remastered Beatles albums, and a lot of living rooms already had a drum kit parked in the corner. Players could go through the band's whole career, from the Cavern Club to the rooftop concert, with three singers harmonizing at once.

For a lot of families, it was the one game parents and kids both wanted to play. Grandparents who had never touched a video game sat down to sing "Hey Jude." It had the same living-room-tournament energy as Wii Sports bowling.

What changed in Rock Band 2, 3 and 4

Rock Band 2 came out in 2008 with more songs and better instruments. Rock Band 3 arrived in 2010 and added keyboards and a Pro mode, which asked players to play real notes, closer to an actual instrument. The Pro guitar controller had buttons for every string at every fret. It was hard, and it taught some people actual music.

Rock Band 4 came out in October 2015 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Plenty of old instruments still worked with it, which meant the plastic drum kit in the closet got a second life.

By 2009, the series had sold more than 13 million copies, earned more than $1 billion and sold over 130 million downloaded songs.

Things people remember

• Fighting over who had to sing
• The neighbors knocking during a drum solo
• A drummer breaking a pedal on a hard song
• The band name you all agreed on at 1 a.m.
• Checking for new songs every week
• Saving a friend who failed out with Overdrive

1. D#1 Drums
2. G#2 Guitar
3. B#3 Bass
4. V#4 Vocals
5. K#5 Keys
6. P#6 Pro guitar
7. T#7 Tambourine
8. A#8 Air guitar

Every band needs a home

FriendCrib has a spot on your crib for a profile song and the bands you love, plus forums for arguing about the hardest song on Expert. Make a crib and put your Rock Band band name somewhere people will see it. If you liked stepping on arrows more than drumming, you probably also remember Dance Dance Revolution.

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