Good for a family, or kids, or for people who like to create their own versions of other people's tunes.
But I digress. This is about Wii Music. I decided on it because some reviews I read made it sound like it could be the sort of freeform game that I could drop her in front of and she could have a fun time with it. She's been taking dancing lessons and has always been into music and singing, so it seemed like it might be a good fit. Little did I realize that, while I think it might be something she'll enjoy, it's something I'll enjoy too. It's one of those rare games that has stuff in it to appeal to a variety of ages, though ultimately I think the game will have the most lasting appeal for people who would like creating their own mixes of other people's tunes.
Wii Music isn't Guitar Hero, or really like other rhythm games I've played. It's more like Apple's Garage Band program, in game form. The core of the game is Jam Sessions, where you select an instrument, a part (melody, harmony, chords, rhythm, etc.), and a song, then "play" your instrument during the song kind of any way you'd like. The game plays a metronome sound to help you with the beat, but doesn't judge or score you on whether you keep it. When you play your instrument you aren't choosing the pitch, just when the instrument makes a note - the game takes care of what note is played based on where you are in the song. So when you play a guitar instrument you make the motions of strumming the guitar to determine when it's played, but you don't push buttons to pick your notes - just to control whether or not a note is sustained, or to play a chord instead of a single note, or to add vibrato.
It is, in short, a creative effort more than a game where you're looking to score points. After the session ends you can replay it to see how it sounds, and you have the option of saving a video of your performance (which you can share with friends online, if you're especially proud of it). You assign a score to the video when you save it, but that's solely to help you remember how much you liked it, not something the game uses to determine any unlocks. So the meat of the game is that you play instruments during different tunes, and try to add your own individual style to the performance, and then decide how much you like the result.
This sounds simplistic, and it certainly can be. One option when starting a jam session lets the game randomly pick a song, a style, an instrument, and a role for you, and then you just hop in and see what happens. Very simple. But it can be a lot more complex than that. When you set up a custom jam session, where you select the song, instrument, and role yourself, the style isn't assigned for you, and any backup the game makes just plays a traditional accompaniment (and yes, you can have multiple players on multiple instruments for a jam session, which seems like it would be a lot of fun). Once you've finished playing in that one role, however, you can go back and overdub what you've done so far into the same tune, with you playing a different role. It lets you create your own absolutely unique take on the music. There are even tutorials that teach you what types of rhythms determine a style (jazz, swing, polka, reggae, rock, etc.), so when you go in and play the different roles in a song, you can apply that knowledge to completely change the composer's intent. Want to play La Bamba in a classical style? Or Ode to Joy as a march? Go for it - all it takes is the time and will to get the rhythms right, and then hop into the harmony and melody and freestyle in a way that goes along with your chosen approach.
Playing the instruments isn't as much fun as it could be if you were creating your own notes, to be honest. There are different ways to hold and use the controllers for different types of instruments, but they boil down to moving to play notes, or pushing buttons to play notes. There's some fun in playing air guitar or air violin, but it can get a bit confusing if you're familiar with an instrument and they don't quite emulate it when you're playing it with the Wii controllers. The violin style, for example, uses the motion of moving the bow to determine volume - the actual notes are played when you push a button on the "neck". For someone who played violin, that gets a bit confusing (since I'm used to the bow motion being what plays and starts a new note, while the neck just determines pitch). I guess the instrument playing adds a bit of variety and makes it more like a game, but at times I kind of wished I could just push buttons on a regular controller to get the same effects.
There are three minigames in Wii Music to go along with the jam sessions. They're kind of fun, but a real mixed bag. One has you in the role of conductor for an orchestra, setting the tempo by waving the baton controller, and sometimes pushing a button to emphasize some notes. You get points from keeping a consistent tempo, I think. Unfortunately for the music buff in me, the "conducting" consists solely of waving the baton up and down - real conducting involves more motion of the baton, with the beat of the piece determining the pattern of motion. So it's kind of fun, but not for long - there's only so much excitement one can get from just trying to keep a beat by waving up and down. The second minigame has you playing two colored handbells during a tune (one for each hand), playing each at the right time as the colored bell symbols scroll across the screen. Classic rhythm game stuff, not bad. The third game is for the music buffs, I'd say, since it's an assortment of exercises in quiz form. The questions include picking the musician playing the highest or lowest pitch out of a group, or picking out which instrument in an ensemble played the wrong note, or shuffling players around to make them form a specific tune. I certainly wouldn't ask my niece to play it, but I had fun with it.
There's also a lessons section of the game, mostly there as a tutorial for the game, but as I mentioned previously it includes a section on different styles of music. The first basic lesson introduces you to the instruments and jam sessions, and you're forced through it the first time you start the game. The second lesson teaches about overdubbing, and it's that one that includes advanced topics for about twenty musical styles, letting you play each role in a tune to see what sort of rhythms set that style. It seems like a good way to learn about styles if you're looking to learn, to be honest.
The game does unlock new instruments and songs as you play it. Some unlocks come from the minigames (just completing them, it doesn't appear to be based on your score), while others come as you save more videos from jam sessions. Since none of the unlocks appear tied to a certain performance in minigames or the like, they should all eventually be accessible to just about any player, whatever their musical talent. There are 50 songs in all, and a ton of instruments on top of that, including a variety of pianos and guitars, all sorts of traditional band and orchestral instruments, and some stranger ones (like cat and dog sounds). The songs range from classical music (Ode to Joy, Carmen), to pop music (La Bamba, Daydream Believer), to traditional tunes (Frere Jacque, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), to video game music (the Zelda and Mario themes). Combine the variety of music with the variety of instruments and you have a lot of potential for entertainment if you're someone who would enjoy getting creative with familiar songs.
I can't say for certain that this will distract my niece for long, but it has distracted me more than I thought it would. The instrument playing takes getting used to, and I'm a bit annoyed at having to save poorer efforts in order to unlock new instruments and songs, but I enjoy just being able to hop into a jam session with a computer-controlled backup band and play however I feel like playing. It's like a musical, family-friendly Grand Theft Auto, where the most enjoyment is to be had when you just abandon the script and wander randomly around town making your own fun. Well, or not. Maybe you get the idea.