Rock Band 3 Wireless Keyboard for Xbox 360

I will kinda cut the actual Rock Band 3 part of this thing out, because the focus here is on the instrument, the 360 version specifically. I'll just say that it does its job perfectly fine with the game and move along.

So, on to the actual keyboard. Anyone who's ever spent ten seconds messing around with one will either know or secretly understand there are usually two things about keyboards when it comes to their construction: the keys have a certain weight to them, and the instrument is usually solidly built (not plastic-y). The MadCatz keyboard fits both of those roles perfectly. It does NOT feel like the vast majority of the other Rock Band 3 instruments, namely the guitar: thin, hollow plastic things which feel like you could snap them over your knee. No, this cat is pretty solid and feels like it could take a battering if need be. The keys have a natural weighted feel and respond just as they should, but with a single addition of ridges over the left ends of...Read more

There is little to say about the keyboard... it's two octaves, the keys feel pretty nice, and it responds quite well. Overall it's well built and functions nicely with Rock Band 3.

The real problem with it is not in the hardware, but in the game itself. You'll find that the disc only has 63 songs with keys out of the 83, and at least 6 of those 63 tracks aren't really worth playing, unless you enjoy hitting 5 notes and then playing nothing for half the song. The songs that do have a reasonable amount of keys, however, are incredibly fun on both standard and pro, and certainly makes the purchase worthwhile. Additionally, downloadable songs will come with keyboard parts when there is one in the song, so you'll quickly be able to add to the small library of key songs.

The pro keyboard mode works very nicely, offering a nice extra challenge on top of the standard instruments for those who want it, and you may even learn a few things from doing it. My only...Read more

Being a piano player for the last 30 years and finding that most rock bands don't have a place for piano players, I was really excited for Rock Band 3 to come out! But then my excitement turned to frustration when I tried to play the pro keyboard setting, and here's why. You have to learn how to read music all over again using Rock Band 3's vertical scrolling-style, and the lines and spaces are so close together that even though the notes are color-coded white and black it's still hard to read on a regular TV screen. Plus the game puts symbols over the special bonus-point notes, and then it's impossible to tell if they're white or black. If they had just put the keyboard part scrolling horizontally across the top of the screen as they do for vocals, and using real ledger lines and notes, this would have been a pianist's dream! As it is, you feel like a 5-year old learning piano for the first time with music as a foreign language. I switched over to the regular keyboard setting...Read more