Crave

Not only are the gifts covered in today's episode perfect to meet the mediocre expectations of a white elephant party, but this episode itself is in essence our very own white elephant gift to you! Interpret that as you will, and have a wonderful holiday, everyone!

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Gifts to bring to a white elephant Christmas

Snuggie for your neck (Thanks, Greg and Sam)

Snuggie for your dog (Thanks, Eric!)

Doormat Scale

Electric rock guitar shirt

Musicians are a paradox when it comes to technology. They have voracious appetites for the latest, greatest gear, but unlike the average tech consumer, they also have a near-religious reverence for all things vintage.

Looking back on what I consider the year's coolest gear for musicians, the thread that ties it all together (well, most of it) is this balance of new and antique. From a guitar pedal that sounds like a tube amplifier from 1959, to USB interfaces that return the look and feel of a pre-Pro Tools era--music tech has a unique way of pushing forward while always acknowledging the past.

To see my completely subjective roundup of 2009's most interesting music gear, click though to our Crave slideshow. If you have some other 2009 music gear you'd like to champion, feel free to add it in the comments section.

Musician tech roundup, 2009

The PS3 version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock includes a wireless Les Paul.

(Credit: Buy.com)

It's a great day to be a PlayStation 3 owner: Buy.com has the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle for just $18.67, plus $3.99 for shipping.

The package includes a Les Paul wireless guitar controller, meaning you don't have to worry about tripping over a cord while, um, getting your Slash on.

The game itself features 70-plus tracks from the likes of Aerosmith, Heart, Guns N' Roses, and the Rolling Stones.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, GameSpot's review of Legends of Rock praises it for having "the best tracklist of any Guitar Hero game to date."

I've never really been into the whole Guitar Hero scene, but for 20 bucks I'd almost certainly grab this bundle--if I owned a PS3. Alas, the Xbox 360 version still runs around $50.

I realize there's a fairly small audience for this deal, so check back later--I might just have something with more universal appeal.

In the meantime...rock on!

The Stage-Gig video-game amp.

(Credit: Altec Lansing)

With the popularity of music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero continuing to climb, there's no surprise that companies outside of video game development are trying to make a few extra bucks on those titles.

Thus it its that on Tuesday, Altec Lansing announced the Stage-Gig amplified speaker. The accessory is designed to work with Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and DJ Hero. According to the company, the amp puts out 40 watts of power. It works with any current gaming console.

Altec Lansing believes gamers who play popular music games want better sound. The company said that with the help of the Stage-Gig's 6.5-inch woofer, gamers should be able to achieve that. The amp can also be easily transported, thanks to a "grab and go" handle. It features a volume knob and RCA outputs for extra speakers.

Whether gamers really want an amp to help them improve the sound of their gaming guitars is up for debate. The video game industry is littered with accessories that didn't quite attract the kind of appeal companies had hoped for.

Altec Lansing's Stage-Gig hits store shelves in early November for $99.95.

Rock Band for iPhone does a nice job recreating the look of the original, if not the feel.

Rock Band's biggest disappointment: When you play vocals, you don't get to sing.

Rock Band. For iPhone and iPod Touch. Right now in the App Store for $9.99.

Just thought I'd cut right to the crucial information, as hard-core fans of the console mega-hit probably don't need to hear anything more. "Rock Band? iPhone? Ten bucks? Sweet!"

Everyone else should listen up before plunking down that sawbuck. EA's official, real-deal port brings the jamfest to the iPhone in style, with gorgeous visuals, great songs, and some solid multiplayer action.

Unfortunately, compromises abound. The songs are great, but you get only 20 of them (and 5 are locked). You can buy more right inside the game (at 99 cents for a two-pack), but I'm still disappointed by the small selection.

As for multiplayer, you can jam with up to three other players, just like in the real Rock Band--but only over Bluetooth. That's inconvenient, to say the least. Why no support for Internet multiplayer like in Tap Tap Revenge 3?

My main disappoint lies with the vocal aspect of the game: there isn't one. Granted, you can choose to play vocals, just like you can guitar, bass, and drums, but you don't actually sing--you just tap pedals on the left side of the screen.

The other three modes shoehorn four buttons into the bottom of the screen, which makes for some fairly cramped (and cramp-inducing) mashing. A wide-screen option would seem logical, but it's nowhere to be found.

Finally, while $9.99 may seem like a reasonable price for an officially licensed Rock Band game with officially licensed songs, it's steep for an iPhone game.

And fans of the genre will be quick to point out that Tap Tap Revenge 3 costs just 99 cents.

On the other hand, that game limits you to one "instrument" and three "strings," so it's not quite as challenging. Rock Band definitely puts your tapping skills to the test with fun and familiar tunes. But I'd say it barely scores a 7 when it should go up to 11.

A book of Rock Band song transcriptions.

A clever press pitch crossed our desk recently that takes interest in music and rhythm video games and uses them to push the age-old business of selling sheet music.

Sheet Music Plus sells sheet music and songbooks for guitar, piano, and other instruments, and in a recent press release, ties that into the popularity of The Beatles: Rock Band and similar games, saying, "As music-driven video games continue to explode in popularity," the company aims to "help gamers channel their passion into becoming active musicians."

Being musically minded, that sounds like a laudable goal, but surprisingly, the Web site doesn't have a Rock Band/Guitar Hero tab or section. We searched for a few random songs from Guitar Hero 5 (AC/DC's "Jailbreak" and David Bowie's "Fame") and the Beatles: Rock Band ("Hey Bulldog"), and found multiple versions of each, ranging from complete multi-instrument scores to "easy" guitar chord books. Many examples of guitar/voice sheet music for a single song are $3.95, but most of the songs we checked are only available in larger collections that usually cost $20-$30.

Music publisher Hal Leonard, however, does publish licensed collections of sheet music based on music video games. Available through Sheet Music Plus as well as other sheet music retailers, we've seen books for Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero, and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.

Of course, just as playing Call of Duty doesn't mean you actually know how to load a machine gun, being a music game wiz doesn't make one any more likely to posses actual fretboard skills--so don't expect miracles if the only guitars you've ever handled have D-pads or power buttons on them.

Agile Partners, best known for creating an exceptionally useful $9.99 iPhone application called Guitar Toolkit that packs in a guitar tuner, a metronome, and fantastically detailed chord and scale charts, on Monday released its first follow-up app.

Tab Toolkit, also available via Apple's App Store for $9.99, enables users to read and listen to real-time synthesized versions of guitar tablature charts on their iPhone or iPod Touch.

Here's Kirk Hammett's guitar solo from "Master of Puppets," displayed in tablature and regular notation on an iPhone with Tab Toolkit. Hit "play," and it'll scroll by in (very fast) real time, with a synthesized version playing through the headphones.

Tab Toolkit won't have as large an audience as Guitar Toolkit, which is immediately useful to players of all levels, as it assumes that you have (or can get) tab charts--and that you know how to read them. But if you're a serious guitarist, $9.99 is a fair deal for a very sophisticated app that performs well--no freezes or stutters, as I've experienced with some other music-oriented apps. (If you're just learning about tablature, the $2.99 iPractice is probably a better first download.)

So where do you get tab files? If you're a songwriter, you can use Power Tab Editor (freeware, Windows-only) or Guitar Pro ($59, for Macs and Windows PCs) to create your own. There are also online libraries of tab files for popular songs and artists--GProTab has a particularly extensive collection of Guitar Pro files--though copyright holders periodically crack down on these sites, which generally operate outside their approval.

Once you have some tab files on your computer, Tab Toolkit lets you transfer them to your iPhone directly over your home wireless network. It also includes an embedded version of Safari so you can download tabs directly from the Web. Tab Toolkit does support PDF and rich-text tabs, but you get the most results if you use PowerTab or Guitar Pro files.

At last, once you have some PowerTab or Guitar Pro files on your iPhone, the fun begins. Tab Toolkit scrolls through the song at the correct tempo, displaying both traditional and tab notation, with a metronome and synthesized version of the instrument to keep you on target. It fully supports multitrack tabs for the same song--for example, I was able to download all three guitar parts, bass, and drums for Metallica's "Master of Puppets," and follow through each individually--and you can stop the automated playback and scroll through the chart manually to learn particularly tricky parts like Kirk Hammett's guitar solo. You can display either a guitar fretboard or piano keyboard on the screen to help you with fingering, and can even flip the guitar upside-down if you're a lefty.

On September 9, classic rock fans will have a chance to strap on a plastic guitar and jam along with the biggest act in popular music history.

Artfully orchestrated buzz has been building for The Beatles: Rock Band since the start of 2009, and the team of developer Harmonix and publisher MTV Games (and distribution partner EA) hope to provide a bright spot in an otherwise drab video game market with one of the few video game products for the 2009 holiday season that has a real chance of appealing beyond core gamers.

We've gotten our hands on a final retail version of the game (minus the new Beatles-inspired instruments, but our old Rock Band gear worked fine), and gave it a test drive in CNET's AV Lab. Check out this video to see our extremely shaky music skills, and read our hands-on impressions below.

Gallery: The Beatles: Rock Band

Dan:
Music aside, this is essentially the same Rock Band game you've been playing for two years, but with nicely done overhauls of the menus, graphics, and interface, including some very cool animated Beatles segments. The biggest change to the actual gameplay is the inclusion of three-part vocal harmonies (you'll need three USB mics). We found out the hard way that these songs are actually pretty tough to sing, and nailing the harmonies is even tougher.

Buy one, get one free.

In a move sure to resonate with recession-minded gamers, Activision's just-released Guitar Hero 5 game includes an offer to get the highly anticipated Van Halen version of the music game franchise for free.

As a value-based pushback against the Beatles: Rock Band juggernaut, it's an excellent idea. Guitar Hero 5 includes 85 tracks (versus just 45 in the Beatles game), plus 44 more in the Van Halen spin-off.

Guitar Hero 5 includes acts from Johnny Cash to Stevie Wonder to Tom Petty, while Guitar Hero: Van Halen has 25 classic VH songs, plus 19 more from "guest acts" such as The Clash and Deep Purple. If you're a VH superfan, note that the game reportedly excludes former members Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, but does include current bassist Wolfgang Van Halen.

The free Van Halen game offer can be redeemed, according to the sticker affixed to the cover of our copy of Guitar Hero 5, by going to guitarhero.com/vanhalengameoffer and filling out an online form, including a unique serial number from the back of the Guitar Hero 5 instruction booklet.

The offer is good until October 1, and says to "allow up to six weeks for delivery," which should still put the Van Halen game in your hands before its official December 22 release date.

Update: After hearing from a few readers, we tried filling out the online form and got the following error message: "We're sorry, but due to overwhelming response we are having difficulties validating your code at this time. Please try again." A few hours later, we were able to complete the process, which ends with a printable form that has to be snail-mailed into a P.O. Box.