I wish I had this in music class.

Speaking as somebody who has been classically trained, this is HORRIBLE news. Musicians need REAL instruments. Wii Music doesn't even teach theory.

How about for elementary school kids? You really think most schools can afford to buy instruments to put in the hands of kids aged 6 to 11? Because that's pretty much the example used in the story.

But is there really that much educational value provided by the game?  I suppose you'll learn the names of the instruments, and perhaps some music appreciation.  On the other hand, I'd compare it to teaching kids how to draw by encouraging them to scribble.

The point is to learn rythm. I think pretending to play the same instruments the band you like use is a bit more fun than clanging wooden sticks together.

Ye Gods, if this works out I guess it will be  true then...the US Government will have officially sanctioned torture.  :P

You make it sound like this could make music lessons any worse.

I thought Nintendo didn't want school violence to happen because of them.......

Come on people lets see this for what it is. WiiMusic is a bomb and has floppped and now Nintendo is trying to give it a second wind. This is not about education this is about sales and getting buzz out.

Umm, if you knew anything, you would have realized that this was Miyamoto's intention from the very beginning. He even had a video of him at a school playing Wii Music with the children. That was before the game came out on retail and obviously before any sales data.

So ya, just cuz your shady doesn't mean Miyamoto is.

Oh look a Wii Music thread with trolling, what a surprise!

This is great news. Elementary school kids will definitely benefit from this. The game will teach you different pieces of music composition if you don't treat the game like it's a joke.

Talking as a teacher myself the BIGGEST problem you can find is not having any instruments or any other teaching materials due to funding. So getting real instruments is not as easy as it sounds. Yes, Wii Music, as well as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, are no substitution to the real thing but the simulated idea works well.

As for people saying that Wii Music will never be an effective educational tool the same can be said about EVERY SINGLE LEARNING TOOL. The teacher is given the tools to present his or her class, but it is he or she that MUST know how to use them. In other words, you could have the most sophisticated and elaborate learning tool on the planet but it is completely useless if the child doesn't learn anything from it or the teacher doesn't know how to use it.

So if teachers are planning on using Wii Music as a learning tool they are the ones to create a lesson plan around it and try to make it effective.

Regarding Mr. Vega's comments, this is no different than when Nintendo kept pushing Wii Sports into senior homes and Wii Fit into gyms (both games are insanely successful). They want the games to stay in peoples' minds so it keeps generating profit even if the game is 3 years old. And no, Wii Music is NOT a flop. Its success is quieter when compared to Wii Fit, sure, but it has sold enough despite the cold reception of the gaming media, a terrible first time demonstration and lck of worldwide hype.

And people...would you PLEASE stop bashing these kind of things? I personally hate it when fanboys go ranting about how senior citizens playing Wii or families bonding over the DS is a bad thing. Let's be honest for a second. Yes, this is clearly a marketing ploy to keep the games in people's minds and they keep buying it. But as far as social news go which would you rather hear? That kids are learning to get fit using Wii Fit or that games are turning them into heartless killers?

People for the last few YEARS gaming has struggled with the public perception that games are harmful, separate people and don't bring anything to the table. Now things are changing slightly thanks to games like Wii Sports, Rock Band and Wii Fit creating a positive social phenomenon. Will this be short lived? Maybe. Will this be greatly ignored as the media keep focusing on shock news? Most definitely. But is it worth bashing and ridiculing simply because it doesn't fit your gaming agenda? Definitely not.

children don't need wiimusic they can just use their IMAGINATION !!!!

It's the same thing

See, you really are trolling.

Teens and Adults don't have to buy Guitar Hero and Rock Band since they can use they're imaginations to replicate those instruments too, but guess what: They do!

I'm all for this just like i'm all for senior homes housing wiisports/fit. In fact I'm even MORE for this than then the other two. Why? Because getting kids into music, in any way/shape/form at a young age is a GREAT thing.

I always enjoyed music as a kid but was never able to express it other than having a tune in my head because no one ever encouraged me to take it up. You'd think as a parent seeing their kid spend hours of time in front of a keyboard in a toy store would make you think "hm.. maybe this can be good for him.." but it didn't. I tried to take up trumpet in school, around 4th grade or so, and the teacher was horrible and guess what happened before the end of the year; budget cuts lead to the loss of the music program.

It wasn't until I was a teen with an off the books part time job and an allowance when I could finally dive in to learning music by buying a guitar, and its been a passion ever since. I was never classically trained, nor formely trained for that matter since i taught myself, but its still an awesome thing to learn. Having young kids learn ANYTHING, even appreciation of music is a phenominal thing. For all we know some sort of prodigy could be sitting in a classroom right now, in a school with no music program and no other means to spark that fire inside him/her.

Vega, have you ever played Wii Music? I'm guessing not. If by some chance you did, I'm guessing you went into it with a closed mind, and just flailed the remote around for 2 minutes, decided it was stupid and never played it again.

I'm sure you aren't the only one either. However, there is quite a bit of depth to Wii Music, and this silly fanboy bashing is growing really annoying.

See, one of the problems I see with modern education (and something we've been taught to avoid) is that its putting too much emphasis on facts, traditional courses and development  in knowledge and very little on extra curricular activities outside of sports.

All kids have certain talent. Whether it be great retention of information or great eye for design this talent must be approached and promoted. Not every kid can understand math, but I'm sure that kid that has been labeled as a failure in math can make it up with talent such as writing, drawing and music. Artistic talent is just as important in the growth of a child as it is knowledge and athletic skill.

Once more, Wii Music will never replace the real deal. But its great that the IDEA of music appreciation is at being presented so that kids make the decision of pursuing it as a career. And this is a GOOD thing, folks.

Well learning rhythm is better than nothing I suppose.  But it isn't going to teach anyone how to play, well, ANYTHING.  Guitar Hero and Rock Band won't either though and this is much cheaper for schools to use.

I've never met anyone who became a decent musician though music class anyway.  Private lessons or self-teaching was always the way to get good.  You just can't develop much when you're grouped with 20 tone deaf kids you don't want to be there.  However it is good for practice.  My brother took private lessons and band class in school and felt that band forced him to practice more.

The real good news here is that this will prepare them to play Yankee Doodle Dandy for real.

Back in school the instruments we were handed for learning were mostly those musical sticks that you clang together rythmically so the lack of having to play different notes isn't different from before. Wii Music still requires rythm and that's all the school wants to teach. I know I might have been more interested in that stuff if we used virtual instruments that then play a melody instead of those stupid sticks and maybe today I wouldn't have a total lack of rythm feeling.

Pap sounded like he was arguing my post the whole time but wasnt... lol

Here's the thing: I WAS a musician back in school for 7 years through 2 choir programs (veteran Madrigal, thank you very much), and I see very little in Wii Music that properly teaches anything about Musical Theory.  I absolutely agree with the concept of bringing a fun interactive musical experience into the classroom to raise the next generation of musicians.  I just don't think Wii Music is that program from everything I've seen of it.

i'm just playing around. i don't mean to be offensive.

Man, kids these days get so many cool gadgets and doodads to play with whilst in school. All we ever got were rocks, which the other kids would always throw at me...

This is why i never desired to have music taught to me, and instead wanted to learn it on my own. :)

Dude you don't live on the east side of Berlin do you?  I kid.

But seriously, my school had xylophones, marimbas, and other mallet instruments. We also had recorders; the cheap plastic kind.

Anyway, being one of the few members who actually owns WiiMusic, there's alot more to learn than just rhythm. Mostly, the appreciation and admiration for talented musicians. That's the greatest listen of all.

yeah i know what you mean. maybe why i had so much anger and joked around so much about this was because my school gave me two sticks to play with as instruments. They were sort of like drum sticks but harder and black and you where supposed to hit each other to make a beat. I thought it sucked. So maybe i'm jealous of them deep deep down.

Well, we lucked out at my school in that my High School's music departments have a very good reputation, so we often got to do a lot of cool stuff like contract out to Disney (for example, we were part of Animal Kingdom's opening ceremonies and the Candlelight Processional) and whatnot.  Sadly, outside of our work with Disney we very rarely got to work with any particularly fun music.  Curse of being in a choir program under my taskmaster of a choir director, I suppose.

Lucky.

Elementary school's music classes (that were like twice a week or something) consisted of a teacher.. god i barely even remember. I do remember one woman who had a synth keyboard and changed the sound to a slap bass and played the seinfeld intro.. thats it. They just stood there and talked about music or taught us songs to sing (mainly for stupid assemblys and crap) and thats it. No one had any hands on time with a musical instrument of any sort. There was an extra carricular type program you could join, but you only met up for an hour every other day and because it was during regular school hours, so teachers would try to sneak you extra work for the time you were out of class. BS

Middle school was a little better, at least our class had instruments... even if we couldn't use them. According to our teacher the keyboards in the class were for the honor students only. It was like a cock tease. The only thing i remember learning in that class, other than who wrote the Star Spangled Banner (which i already knew) was the difference between whole/half/quarter notes and how they're written out in sheet music. Slightly helpful i suppose.

Highschool wasn't much different. We didn't have music as an class you could elect to take, so i never even stepped foot in the music rooms. If i did though, the instruments were only for the honor students and they were requiered to be in the school band. Lame. By then though i already had my guitar so whatever.

Dear god, you guys, that's horrible. I remember being in a middle school with next to nothing for a music program. I was lucky enough to have my own instrument, and thus get sent out of class to practice with the 2-3 other kids who owned instruments on our own (i.e. goof off). But generally most of my other schools had very competent music programs, excellent even, with really wonderful musical choices. I was lucky to have great band teachers.

I'll be joining you as soon as I scrounge together some money.

For those saying Wii Music was a flop...

http://wii.ign.com/articles/945/945586p1.html

Hah, I just love how they bitterly admit they failed to "warn" the world.

I don't know why they are bitter. Wii Music accomplishes everything it set out to do. It's fun and it should be a success.

Because they (and by they I mean Matt) were trying hard to see if the backlash would be strong enough in order to prove Nintendo that there wasn't a market for Wii Music.

Funny enough, it seemed to be working during its initial release, but word of mouth along with Wii Music communities trading music videos pushed it into success.

Yeah, IGN has failed but it's not because they didn't destroy the sales for Wii Music.

speaking as a music educator of students of grades k-6, i do not see an educational value of wii music. we can teach rhythm without the use of computerized tools.

one song lyric keeps coming to mind, "the more i try the less i'm alive and it seems i'm getting further away" (amos lee).

music is an ancient tradition, an ancient form of expression, communication, entertainment, etc.
music is a human thing!

computers and computerized equipment cannot replace the human element in music. there is nothing more fulfilling and gratifying than playing instruments and feeling the energy and sense of accomplishment and fun that comes along with it. it is sad to me that people are willing to trade that in for the pseudo.

good point about it helping to develop the fine and gross motor skills, but come on, we've been doing it as a human race since the beginning of time and have gotten along just fine without it so far, why integrate it now?

as far as some schools not having instruments- this is bogus. there are many household items that we recycle or throw away that could be used to make instruments.  dancing and singing and body percussion is great way to teach when there is no money in the budget for instruments.

i am sickened that an association i belong to, MENC, believes this is a good thing and has agreed to integrate it into the classroom. i am saddened that MENC has decided to sell out. they have lost sight of what made us musicians in the first place. i guess people would rather not do any thinking or feeling at all anymore and just computers do it for us. our district's credo is first-hand, kinesthetic, hands-on learning. how can you have first-hand knowledge of anything if you don't fully experience it??? you cannot develop musicianship by playing wii.

in my opinion, wii music should be used sparingly in the classroom, for the purposes of fun and to reinforce the skills and musicianship and information we already teach.

"in my opinion, wii music should be used sparingly in the classroom, for the purposes of fun and to reinforce the skills and musicianship and information we already teach."

Agreed.

"speaking as a music educator of students of grades k-6, i do not see an educational value of wii music."

Wait a sec.

Yeah but if you try to teach me rythm with stupid wooden sticks it's no wonder that I'm going to goof off and not even try to hit the rythm. Those things were so horribly lame they permanently scared me away from playing instruments and now I can't even play something like Step Aerobic in Wii Fit without falling out of the rythm regularly. In a later music lesson where we were told to improvise my teacher said I had "my very own rythm" because even when I started with the same rate as the other students I'd quickly drift out of the rythm and into some other random rate. Sure, nothing can replace hands-on learning (though I don't see much difference between a wiimote and a stupid stick when it comes to learning) but a bad approach can prevent the hands-on learning and I suppose they hope that using Wii Music will make pupils more willing to participate.

As for the "we've been fine so far" argument, we've been surviving before penicillin too but that doesn't mean we should reject it.

I've had about 2 music lessons in my entire 27yr lifetime, back in 3rd grade.  Probably no more than 2 hours were spent total.  We all got recorders, and just made random noise.  What a disaster.

To all of you who got real music lessons as part of some standard curriculum, I said wow.

By your logic, a book, a computer, a piece of paper, a pencil, a toy or ANY TEACHING MATERIAL does not have educational value.

Like I said earlier, the one that puts the value into the material is the teacher. Maybe you were taught different, but in my case we were told to try and innovate with whatever we could find because the power lies in how the teacher uses that to his or her advantage. So Wii Music can either be a failure or a success. Once more, its how the teacher uses it on his class.

Also, you say that music is a wonderful expression of the soul, yet you belittle Wii Music's own way of musical expression. Yes, no mechanical object can replace actually doing it, but if you go online and watch videos you will see that people have done some great compositions and remixes, some never seen before.

Wii Music might be simple, but its still an expression that has just as much value  as any other form of art. People do create songs electronically. The important thing is that it connect to the person's heart, whether it be a rousing symphonic or even the "Happy Happy Joy Joy" song from "Ren and Stimpy".

Its sad that you talk about expression, yet denote one form of it simply because you don't agree with it. Talk about a double standard...

music is being taken out of schools. that's a fact I'm seeing this. Putting wii music into places so that kids will at least be able to get some appreciation for music in a school environment is good. That's all there is to it. You can be all high and mighty about doing things the old way with sticks and coke bottles, but that only works in supportive systems.That's a good accompaniment to an actual music class of some sort. With a music teacher. and time. Not in a place where any class that doesn't make standardized test scores go up is eliminated and those teachers sent elsewhere or forced to do something else.

My school(s) never even gave me sticks to teach rythm...

Anyway I agree with Pap. The most memorable teachers were always the ones that were unorthodox. Pap wins again. Fatality.

Wii Music's virtual environment helps, but I've had some wonderful experiences in music classes without needing instruments. In sixth grade our music teacher taught us to sing ABBA's "Super Trooper" and "Memories" ... that was awesome.

Fantastic news. This game can teach stuff classical repetition and endless scales can NOT teach, and the most important thing is that it wont bore kids to death, resulting in much more productive learning. A good proper teacher can also use their OWN lessons on top of this, for a complete music tutorial. Perfection.

This is what Wii Music was best suited for all along.  I think the kids will have a blast with it.