Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Rock Band Competition - Day 1

Today was our first live gig and our first competition! A big thanks to Ryan Lindsay and the rest of the Hot 89.9 crew for organizing this great event!

The competition started interestingly as we were introduced as the "Macaws" instead of the "Maacas". ;)

Round 1:
We play "White Wedding (Part 1)" on Medium difficulty. We each miss 1 or 2 notes except DMan, possibly due to the wacky calibration. Our opponents get a lower total score and we advance.

Round 2:
We play "Carry On Wayward Son" on Hard difficulty. The best 2 out of 3 bands will advance to the final round due to there only being 6 bands today. We go first once again and do pretty bad, mostly due to calibration issues. Bongoo tries to adjust his timing during the song but doesn't succeed, leading to many unison bonus misses.

The second band, "Totally Nuts" plays next, and they beat our score, even without their optimal line-up. So we are nervous as the third and final band goes on stage to play... Even though it appears that they would beat us, we are happily surprised at the end of the song to discover that they didn't! Phew!

Final Round:
So we go up against "Totally Nuts" in the finals. They are an amazing band (see their SH scores), with their superstars being "CanadienBakon" on drums (#3 PS3 drummer for RB1 and master squeezer), and "curtistheninja" on guitar (#3 PS3 guitarist on SH for RB2).

The bands can't agree on the pick for the final song, so we flip a coin, and guess what, our bad luck continues... "Totally Nuts" gets their pick and we get to play "Bodhisattva" (their choice perhaps due to Bongoo's bad run in Round 2?)

It's their turn to be first so they go on stage to calibrate. After some unsuccesful calibration runs, they finally get a chance to set a calibration that allows them to finish the song.

We are up next and also get a chance to calibrate. After the bad luck with the calibration and the coin toss, things finally start to gel and we all have an amazing run! Bongoo redeems himself for the round 2 debacle and we finish more than 100K ahead of "Totally Nuts" to win the day's event!

Congrats to "Totally Nuts" for giving us some great competition! With better calibration, who knows what would have happened. With the amazing scores they posted on SH (done while unconnected as they're not in the official Leaderboards), they definitely have the potential to be one of the top bands (for example, see the video of their Visions run...).

With our win we now play on Friday, where from 1:00 to 3:00 PM the 4 winners from Monday to Thursday will face off for the big money! A big thanks to those who came to support us and see you all again on Friday!

Video:



Pictures (courtesy of the event's Facebook page):

Phoenix and Bongoo:
DMan:
Raikan and DMan:
Phoenix:
Bongoo:
Crowd + Sylvie, Phoenix and Seb:
CanadienBakon:
curtistheninja:
Victory!
Oh yeah!

12 comments:

DMan3021 said...

For pics, check here:

Pic 1, Pic 2

Raikan said...

I never realized. Do I always look so serious when I'm playing? Sheesh!

DMan3021 said...

dunno, never really looked at you when we're playing.

Btw, I got the video from CTV uploaded to youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js_gQGWOaLI

DMan3021 said...

Also, this is the first time the Reject's (my) face is on the blog, woohoo!

Bongoo said...

We look serious because we're trying not to miss on Medium, especially with that calibration...

Anonymous said...

Awesome job guys!!! I knew you guys could do it!! Best of luck in the finals!!!

Anonymous said...

My band is playing yours on Friday! :)

Were JATTM (Jesus and the Thunderstorm Monsters)

We had decent runs. All 100% on The Middle (medium) except our Bassist missed his first note due to terrible lag.

We went on to play...uhh....OH YA, Anyways You Want It, on hard, and I missed the last note of the second solo and our singer missed a few.

Then into the finals, still with crazy lag, we played Almost Easy and all had 99% runs.

It should be fun on friday! Best of luck!

Bongoo said...

Thanks Max!

Paden, neat of you to post! Looking forward to our showdown on Friday. Good luck to you as well!

DMan3021 said...

Thanks for the comment Paden!

Also, I have issues with CTV's reporting (the video attached to the post):
- First, this isn't a competition for the "Wii Champion Rockband", seeing as how we're playing on an xBox.
- Second, I love how she says that "Place d'Orléans is a Magnet for Kids fun" although we're visibly older than your average kid!

Phoenix5096 said...

we're kids at heart :)

Bongoo said...

Lol omg yo we b kidz? Lmao! Afaik ctv giv tmi ftl! Jk, cya l8r! ;)

Considering the average age of a gamer is around 30 nowadays, it's the competition that is somewhat out of place... :)

And since the report was about all the activities at Place d'Orléans during March Break, the kids reference makes sense. But you're right that it's kind of funny with the images they chose.

DMan3021 said...

Oh noes, Bongoo has reverted to a 16 year old girl...!