Thursday, February 26, 2009

MUSIC LABELS’ BIGGEST CONCERN WITH ‘SCRATCH: THE ULTIMATE DJ’ AND HOW ‘GUITAR HERO’ HELPED

on MTV Multiplayer
Patrick Klepek- Submitted: Feb 26, 2009
Scratch: The Ultimate DJ(Xbox 360)

The biggest gameplay differentiator for “Scratch: The Ultimate DJ” is an emphasis on users manipulating music to make it their own, and while the concept freaked out record labels, sheer persistence — and “Guitar Hero” — made it possible.

“Scratch: The Ultimate DJ” takes a different approach than “Rock Band” or “Guitar Hero” and places less emphasis on imitating music note-for-note and encouraging users to branch out and organically change the song as it develops.

User generated remixes were a no-no to record labels at first, “Scratch” creative lead Dan Lehrich told me during a hands-off demo of the game yesterday.

“Scratch” comes bundled with hundreds of built-in samples for wanna-be DJs to remix the game’s music to, but more ambitious musicians can plug in a USB microphone and record their own sets of samples. The possibilities are endless. » Full Story on MTV Multiplayer .