Learning to play a new instrument is an exciting endeavour until you get caught up in the hours of mind-numbing practice required to get proficient. But if learning the piano is up next on your bucket list, you'll be desperate to get your hands on this clever projection system that makes learning the ivories…

All-robot rockband Compressorhead pays tribute to their namesake in this video. Of course, it's a lot easier to play "Ace of Spades" when your guitarist has 78 fingers and your drummer sports four stick-wielding arms.

Bless the RSI-ridden hands of the Clan of the Gray Wolf, who are live-streaming their second annual Rock Band marathon, where they play 1,000 songs straight. 17 hours in (at time of writing) and they've played 205 songs.

Rock Band 3 is going to make tens, if not hundreds of thousands of gamers into actual guitarists. How? It cleverly shoehorns guitar lessons into a game that kids and adults both love. And this is how it looks.

With each successive version, Rock Band becomes less about pretending to play music and more about actually playing music. Hopefully this is what Rock Band 9 will be like in 20 years when we all have augmented reality contact lenses.

For years, musicians have mocked those of us holding plastic guitars. Fair enough—but we had fun! But with Rock Band 3, we learn what Harmonix was up to all along: Actually teaching us how to play real instruments.

Mad Catz is the official hardware partner for Rock Band 3, and their two new realistic instruments—pro guitar with 102 buttons, and the keyboard peripheral—are the closest you get to real instruments yet.

Rock Band 3 is going to come with a real-deal MIDI keyboard. Yes, this new music game will attempt to teach you to actually play music.

Attention, toy instrument connoisseurs! Make room in your pretend studio for a new addition: the piano. Yes, Rock Band 3 is bringing the ivories to the video game world.

Ever spiced up Internet poker by busting out a webcam and turning it into a strip game? Yeah? Well, have you ever done it while using a Rock Band drum kit to control the game? Here's how.

Controllers can be a hassle to keep track of, and often clutter up valuable home entertainment space. But here comes the Wall Clip, what Mary Poppins would surely have used if the Banks children had been gamers.

Fake musicians the world over are increasingly casting aside their fake instruments, reports video game stats go-to firm the NPD Group. Apparently, the short era of plastic rhythm game instruments and accessories is leveling off.

Look, it's the box art from Star Trek Online (along with new screens and impressions)! Also read on for the latest infotainment regarding Diablo III, a Diablo clone, the Avatar game and, of course, Modern Warfare 2.

On one hand, what's happening here is very simple: Rock Band's singing feature just senses pitch, not words, so it's perfectly reasonable that a flute—or indeed almost any instrument—could do the trick. On the other? This is art.

This little homemade robot takes all of those impressive no-look Dragonforce-on-expert Rock Band/Guitar Hero YouTube videos and destroys them with a cold, clockwork efficiency. Updated.

The disdain I harbored for that ridiculous Altec Lansing Guitar Hero "stage monitor" was fading this morning, but news from Polk that they, too, would be entering the world of fake music accessories revived those feelings anew.

And with this, a $100, 40-watt speaker that looks exactly like a stage monitor but nonetheless isn't quite a stage monitor, the bizarre, alternate universe of rhythm gaming is complete.