This’ll work great! (Artist rendering; final product may differ.) Bach manuscript image (CC-BY-SA) Nathan Siemers. Mock-up created by the createdigitalmusic.com Future Prediction Department… intern.

Kotaku notes that Rock Band 3‘s icons tease something we’ve been awaiting a long time — keys.

It’s ironic that in order to make guitars playable in games, they were effectively made into keyboards, yet it’s taken this long to actually get keyboards. Oh, wait — yeah, there is that whole problem of having as many as 88 keys, two hands, and no convenient way to fit the staff notation into the descending gems view. Not entirely sure how that’ll work out; see also a controller concept, below.

Of course, this also means that, while electronic music is still largely off-limits, synthpop, prog, and synth bands are all now fair game. That’s fantastic news for the Rock Band Network I’ve covered here on CDM, which lets anyone with a copy of Reaper adapt music for the platform.

So, I got one wish… though I do have to say it again, on behalf of the richer gameplay and the chance for VJ backgrounds and electronic tracks. Xbox Network. Frequency. Amplitude. (Or, heck, Google TV/Android. Anything.) Long-time Harmonix watchers know what I’m talking about.

Oh, side note to Kotaku: am I going to have to send Stevie Wonder and J.S. Bach to kick your ass, or will you stop making fun of the keyboard? Yeah, it’s had its embarrassing moments, like any other instrument. It’s no soprano sax, though.

Found: the new Rock Band 3 official keyboard controller, which will… oh. Wait. Even that has too many keys. Maybe they have some other idea here. Photo (CC-BY-SA) LizaWasHere.