Overview
School of Rock is a hybrid trivia/rhythm game/music theory practice app that takes the concept and feel of the movie and pocket-sizes it. Players can earn points by playing any of the mini-games available to them, and unlock other instruments by gaining a certain amount of points. By far, the coolest features of this game are the “name that chord” and “name that interval” mini-games, which are a legitimate way to drill chords, intervals, and scales.
Features
Okay, so this isn’t the whole point of this app, but to me (music geek) it makes this app totally worth every penny. The rest of the components are fun, but practicing music theory on the go is the really useful bit.
- Play Along With the Classics
While the selection here is kinda tiny, jamming out on various drumsets to “Rock You Like a Hurricane” was pretty fun. The drumsets in general were a little laggy, but this is still a cool “extra”.
- Wide Selection of Minigames
There’s a lot to do in this app. Drilling chords or scales, answering trivia about legendary rockers, identifying guitars, basses or keyboards by a zoomed in picture, memory games with classic riffs? If this is the iPhone version of the school of rock, sign me up for the real thing.
Breakdown
The Good:
I am pleased, Paramount. This is a legitimate tool for practicing certain aspects of musicianship hidden within a game. Though it won’t teach you what a minor third actually IS, it’ll help you practice identifying one. I am fairly happy to have a way to practice chords on the road, since I always neglect doing it when I have a guitar in my hand.
I also appreciated the robust selection of guitars, basses, and keyboards included in the “name that axe” mini game. Plenty of instruments that many people have never heard of are in there, so playing this might actually help you increase your conversational knowledge of guitars. In general, the various games and features were more fleshed out than I expected.
Though there is a progression to be done - unlocking all the instruments - this strikes me as more of a tool than a video game. Most of what I have to say relates to its usefulness or functionality rather than how fun or playable it was. This is not a problem for me, and I actually think that this is a good way to get people into theory or music in general. It may lack the ‘realism’ of games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band in that you’re not really playing any instruments, but it’s actually far more realistic in that you’re gaining real musical knowledge.
The Bad:
Not much to complain about. My biggest annoyance was that in the “name that interval” game, a bug cropped up more than once where I was given an interval, named that interval, and was told I was incorrect. This wasn’t a big deal for me, since I knew I was right, but for someone who’s just learning this could be sort of confusing. Other bugs included the drums being a bit laggy in the main mode, and in “Playground” mode where you jam along to classic tracks, the music actually sounded like a CD skipping. This only happened once, but it seems like this game could have benefited from a little extra QA.
While the description in the iTunes store says this app will teach you to “master the basics of rock ‘n roll music theory”, I’m not so sure. The theory mini-games are great for practicing various aspects of music, but nowhere in the game does it actually teach you the basics. Again, since I have training in this area, identifying an Em7 chord is no problem, but a kid who just showed up to the school of rock would have no idea what you’re asking of them. Tutorials explaining some theory basics would have been nice.
Verdict
I’m pleased as punch with most of the facets of this game. It’s useful, it’s funny, it’s user-friendly, and it’s Jack Black. Come on. While I do think that this is more of a practice tool than a learning tool, there’s nothing wrong with that. Paramount might want to change their advertisement that you’ll learn and mastery basic theory, because that’s definitely not the case, but otherwise this app was great. Recommended for musicians, kids, and anyone who’d like to increase their rock knowledge.
