I’ll admit it: I’m nervous.

It’s Monday morning as I write this, and I’m just tying up some loose ends in preparation for the official launch of Plastic Axe. Tomorrow. I’m compulsively proofreading posts, checking and re-checking my plugins, trying to fake out The Vault’s search function, hemming and hawing and going back and forth about exactly how many posts I want per page. (Seven, in case you wondered. For now, at least.) You know, pre-launch stuff.

Ninety-nine percent of you won’t read this until after launch, of course, which gives this post something of an odd status. It exists in a kind of closed-off time loop; it’s today where I am, but tomorrow — or later — where you are. It’s a unique opportunity to look around and take a breath and organize some thoughts before I initiate the Full Contact Media Blitz tomorrow morning. So let me tell you what I’m hoping to accomplish here.

Have a look around the site and you’ll notice that much of the content so far is fairly news-focused: weekly DLC releases, game announcements, and so forth. That and The Vault are what I see as the backbone of the site. I figure that stuff I’m doing beyond that will be interesting to many of you, but that many of you will use Plastic Axe exactly like I use some of my most-read blogs: simply as a way of keeping up with news about topics I’m interested in. And that’s great.

But I have plans beyond what you see here now. Oh yes. I have no interest in focusing exclusively on news, because to me music and music games are so much deeper and more significant than that. And I have content lined up that will reflect that. I’m not going to get more specific than that at the moment; I’ll need to focus on the more mundane technical details of launching a new site for a bit. But I think you’ll be pleased with the sort of things I’ll be rolling out in the coming months.

I also wanted to say a few words about the games I’m covering right now. At this point I’ve limited my coverage (and The Vault) to a very specific segment of the music game genre: only those games which are based around guitar controllers. That’s why I’ve included, for example, the DS Guitar Hero games — which use a special add-on with fret buttons to simulate guitar play — but not Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP, which is a straight-up rhythm game in the vein of Frequency or Amplitude. Those are fantastic games, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not “guitar games” to me.

But as the site grows I expect to broaden the scope a bit. There are a heck of a lot of great songs in the SingStar and Karaoke Revolution series, for example. DJ Hero is doing some interesting things with mashups. And games like Wii Music are giving people musical experiences without the need for peripherals. I hope to have the opportunity to start covering all these games that give people new ways of experiencing music. But at the moment, I’ll stick with the games I love the most.

Of course, this site isn’t just about me. So if you have something you’d like to read about, don’t be shy — speak up in comments or e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you all. Well, not that one guy there in the back. He’s kind of creeping me out a little.

And now, just a few administrative notes:

Comments are open on just about every post at this point. I know we can all get pretty passionate about music. Please play nice with one another.

If this is your first time here — and unless you’re part of a very small group, it most likely is — you may be interested in The Welcome Post.

And be sure not to miss The Vault, about which you can read more here.

OK? OK. Feel free to drop me a line with any questions, comments, or concerns. And enjoy your time here.