At first glance, Wii Music seems rather limited, with just four sections to choose from in the main menu, but when you really look around, the possibilities are impressively vast. Technically, there are only three actual games that you can play. The first is Wii Maestro, where you wave the Wiimote around to conduct an orchestra and are scored for your efforts based on how closely you adhered to the song's tempo. It's surprisingly difficult to figure out exactly how fast to go, and I've yet to break a 90 in my score. Multiplayer works a little differently, scoring you based on how in-sync you are with up to three of your friends as you conduct together. It's also a little tiring to wave your arm around so frantically, but for such a simple concept, it's surprisingly fun. Next comes Handbell Harmony, where up to four players each take two colored bells that they ring in time with the music. It's basically Handbell Hero, but it's more fun to play with others because you're only doing two of the eight bells yourself. You're scored based on how well you do, and it's also represented visually by the crowd you've attracted by your performance. Lastly is Pitch Perfect, which is a series of challenges where you have to have a good ear, matching notes of the same pitch, picking the right instruments to match the correct harmony, and things like that. The faster you answer correctly, the higher your score, so there's incentive to go back and beat your best.

The Lessons section includes both a basic tutorial on how to play the instruments in the game, but also a much more detailed education on various musical styles such as Latin, rock, jazz and electronic. Each lesson takes you through a song instrument by instrument, teaching you how that particular style of music should be played. Slipping music theory into a videogame? How sneaky!

Next we have the Videos section, where you can watch and share the Wii Music Videos that you've created in Jam Sessions. Which naturally brings us to the Jam Session section, which is by far the most expansive. First, you can select any one of the 60 instruments and just tinker with it, learning the controls, and if you want, you can play that instrument with what they call "Tutes." As you play, the game adds backing musicians who play along with whatever tempo you're currently working. It's an impressive piece of programming that the jams sound as good as they do. This is also where you can view instructions on how to play that particular instrument, or some facts about it. (Education again!) You can do an Quick Jam?, which selects the instrument and song for you, or opt for a Custom Jam where you (and up to three friends) pick the song, the background setting for your gig, and pick one of the six parts in the band and which instrument you want to play. After going through the tune, you can then choose to go back and play again as one of the other parts, overdubbing with your own performance until you have played all six parts and created the exact sound you wanted. This isn't necessary -- you can just play one if you like -- but it's the only way you can realize your dream of playing the Super Mario Theme on steel drums backed by conga drums and castanets. What? It sounded great!

Gameplay is simple, yet deceptively complex, making it unfortunately inherently flawed. You don't actually select notes to play; the song does that for you. What you're doing is choosing when to play notes, so you can add your own flair when the inspiration strikes. It's all very improvisational. During Jam Sessions, you can call up a music flow guide that will tell you when to play, but it's more fun to just do your own thing. Controls are specific to the types of instruments. For instance, drumming is as expected, pretending to drum with the Nunchuck and Wiimote. Guitar playing has you holding the Nunchuck where the neck would be while strumming with the Wiimote. It's easy to learn, but hard to master, as pressing buttons on the two controllers will create various other effects like chords or runs. That's where it becomes slightly less intuitive. Still, it doesn't really hurt the game, because that stuff is all gravy anyway. Simply playing through the songs is fun enough.

Graphics are expectedly crisp and clean, and there is some terrific use of Miis throughout the entire game. Sound is where the game really shines. No, the instruments don't all sound completely perfect, but they do sound great, and it's amazing that the game manages to combine all these instruments into songs and somehow make them still sound good. You can totally botch a song, but even if you're completely musically inept, as long as you keep in time with the beat, it should still come out sounding like the song you're trying to play! The song choices range from public domain tunes like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to classical pieces like "Carmen" to pop songs like "Material Girl" and even Nintendo classics like "The Legend Of Zelda Theme." It's a decent variety of tracks, although it's a little heavy on the public domain ones.

Oh, right, there's also a complete drum simulator, which adds the Balance Board into the equation if you've got one. That controls the high hat and base drum. Unfortunately, you don't move the Wiimote and Nunchuck from left to right to select which drum in the kit you want to hit. You instead use a variety of button presses, which complicates things and makes it not really at all like playing actual drums. Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour is still the closest you can come with a videogame. It's also very complex, and there are 15 separate lessons to teach you the ins and outs of drumming. After you learn the basics, you can then choose to Free Play the drum kit of your choice or play in a jam to the song of your choosing, but using the entire kit instead of just miming as usual.

As you can see from this lengthy write-up, there is a lot of content in Wii Music. But remember, it's barely a game. It's more of an experience. The closest comparison I can make is the DS "game" Electroplankton, where you tinker around and create music on the fly using various sounds. Conducting the orchestra or playing along to songs with a multitude of instruments is fun enough, but for some reason, I just kind of enjoy tinkering with the instruments and playing the random jams for fun. Which is the most impressive thing I found about Wii Music. No, it's not a game like Rock Band where you have to hit each note perfectly. And it's not a music creator like the Korg DS-10. It's a kind of musical "experience" for people with very little actual musical ability (like me!). But what Nintendo has proven to be very good at is turning unusual concepts into surprisingly fun games to play. And that's the key word with Wii Music: fun. Even when you score badly on a challenge, the game never fails you and is constantly offering you positive encouragement. Even on the harder drum lessons, I still didn't get that frustrated. I'm also not sure how much replayability there is. The song list isn't terribly expansive, but there are quite a lot of instruments, and the combinations are pretty unlimited. This could very well be a title like Rock Band or Guitar Hero where you still pick it up and play down the road just because it's so much fun to actually play, but only time will tell. No, this game isn't for everyone, and it's a very difficult concept to get across to someone who hasn't actually played it, but if you try it, you might find out you like it! It's worth a rental, at least!

8 out of 10