I tried Hard last night for the first time. How in the world am I supposed to do this level!? How do you do all five buttons? I see myself being stuck on Medium forever, because I can’t figure out how to add in the Orange button. Whenever I tried, my hands ended up in the wrong place, either when I was trying to hit Orange or when I was trying to return my fingers to the other keys.
Am I supposed to move my hand or stretch my fingers? My hands are too small to touch both Green and Orange at the same time. Should my fingers default to RYBO or GRYB?
I default to GRYB and generally hit the O with a pinky stretch. But if the O is involved in a chord or if the sequence of notes is going to be on the O side for a lengthy stretch, ill move all fingers over one. It just takes practice. In fact, you should go to practice mode and slow down a song in hard to really get a feel for your technique, 'cause hard is a whole new ballgame. Rock on, and may all your notes be Deadly Accurate.
Practice is key - pick songs at first that have fewer oranges (so that the cost of missing them isnt as bad) and try to keep you movements ‘small’ - it isnt that big a shift to move up one button… the problem is that not only do you have to hit the orange button, there are more notes ‘all around’ to hit.
It just takes practice.
and Time.
and more practice.
ETA - this is also the time to really think about your overall hand position - when I started out, I was really “grabbing” the controller - you left hand shoud be just barely gripping it - you’ll have to find the right thumb position, but you want your fingers ‘loose’ on the keys - not gripping it. (not sure if that makes sense).
Yeah, practice is key - and you will soon be doing things that currently seem impossible. Also, playing in the training mode can help too - slowing down the songs makes the hand movements easier.
One tip I use for songs that use the Orange key extensively is to make RYBO my default position and extend my index finger to play Green. Of course, sometimes you will have to move your whole hand.
I actually found hammer-ons and pull-offs to be more difficult to master - and they are essential for beating the game on Hard (damn Slayer…).
Thanks for the advice! I do have a rather loose grip on the controller, because it was necessary to even get all four fingers on the first four buttons. (My hands are seriously small.) I’m worried now that I simply may not be able to do it, because my pinky won’t even *reach *the orange button. I will keep trying, though. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do Medium, either, and I caught on surprisingly fast.
My technique is to keep four fingers on red, yellow, blue, and orange, and using my forefinger for green and red. If it’s a short passage of green and red, I will just slide my forefinger. Sometimes, I will change my handposition if I must. This technique is much better for me than using the pinky for blue and orange because I have more dexterity with my forefinger.
See whatever works best for you. I’d say either of those techniques are the most common ways of handling the five buttons. I’ve seen other people simply shift their hands around all the time and one who only uses three finger 90% of the time to boot (even on expert). So it can be done.
Just keep practicing. Once you get to five buttons, you’ll find four buttons boring.
Actually I think only Through the Fire and Flames requires it on expert. Or if you’re trying for ridiculously high scores. Like the guy that just got 100% on Jordan in GH2 tapped the solo.
The medium to hard jump is the biggest difficulty wise you’re going to see. I move my hand back and forth and don’t try to stretch too often.
One thing to do when you’re starting hard is watch the note chart in practice and see if there are big chunks of the song where it would be easier to have your hand in one position or the other. For instance if you’ve only got one green every 20 notes or so, move your hand, hit the green and then move back.
Don’t get discouraged. I was in the same boat as you when I was working on medium. I thought that there was no way I’d ever beat medium, let alone hard and expert. I play on expert (mostly) now.
By “tapping” do you mean a long series of hammer-ons? I haven’t played TTFAF yet, but I didn’t know you could actually “tap” (i.e. play a note without pressing the strum key or it being part of a hammer-on, pull-off sequence).
Is the consensus that Slayer has the hardest song in the main career mode path?
That’s how Jeff Healey does it on the real guitar.
Speaking of which, since this game takes almost as much concentration and practice as the real thing, why not try playing the real thing. Just curious, because I play guitar and I would imagine that it would be more rewarding to learn than to master a game that will not be around in a few years.
I just started playing Rock Band on Hard a few days ago, something I’d never been able to do on GH1 or 2. I’m getting it. I’m still mainly in the first three tiers of song difficulty, but I’m getting much better at getting my hand out to the orange and then back to regular position.
I’ve been keeping my hand at GRYB and reaching with my pinky for one-off orange notes or sliding my hand over for extended passages. The problem I have mentally is that when I slide over for a while, I forget that red is now at my index finger, and I’ll get thrown off for a few seconds missing ALL the notes.
Minor hijack–where did you all get your copies? I’ve thought about getting it and while I can find 360, PS2, PS3, and PC versions easily, I haven’t seen a single copy for the Wii.
