I recently put together a budget Rock Band setup for my PS3 from eBay and Amazon, spent about $70 to get the game, drums, and mic. Guitar will come later (maybe.)
How are you guys on drumming? I’ve been through all the songs on Easy level, I caught onto those pretty well except for a few tricky ones like Maps and Enter Sandman, IIRC. And Green Grass and High Tides, that song half kills me. It’s interesting that a lot of music that I never considered very good has such complicated drums.
I’m now about halfway through the Medium songs. It sort of bugs me, especially with the bass pedal, that you don’t play everything, it sort of throws me off when I’ve got a nice pedal rhythm and it leaves that out to simplify another part of the song. And marks you down if you continue the pedal beat. Overall I think the way the difficulty levels work are pure genius though.
When I try to play something like Blitzkreig Bop on Medium, good god that is fast. I did pass it with 3 stars, but I’m trying to get at least 4 on everything. I’m sort of wondering whether I’ll ever master Hard or Expert.
So anyway, what’s your experience on drumming? Love it? Hate it? Practice often?
I liked singing a lot better than I thought I would. I can nail the songs I know, many I’d never heard before though, even though I consider myself a rock dude.
As far as the pedal, it’s difficult to get a comfortable position with it, I found my chair wasn’t quite tall enough. If you find your leg/foot/ankle getting tired, one secret is to keep the pedal depressed a little with your foot, then just push it down all the way when you need it, and only let halfway back up. That way you aren’t stomping the pedal when you need it and less time and motion is required.
I love drumming. I started out absolutely hopeless, because of the bass pedal. I couldn’t make my foot keep its own rhythm, and kept failing out whenever the bass pedal wasn’t on the beat with my hands. But I stuck with it a few days, and started getting it, and now I’m progressing much faster. I’ve got two songs left on hard, and I’m about halfway through expert.
My advice is that you finish medium, and start working through hard. If you get to a point where you start failing songs, stop and go back and start trying to 5* the early songs on hard or the later songs on Medium, wherever your skill level lies. Once you feel you can pretty much nail those songs, try the ones you failed again. You’ll probably pass a few more, then get stuck again. Go back and continue on your quest to 5* the earlier songs. Or, you can start on the first songs on expert (which are easier than the last songs on hard). Just keep working back and forth that way, and you’ll get through.
One thing to note: Once you start working through hard/expert, it’s very likely that you’ll break your pedal. They’re junk. I bought a real bass pedal for $50, stripped the guts out of the old broken pedal (just a magnet and a reed switch), and glued them to a real pedal. it feels much, much better, and you don’t have to worry about it breaking.
Drumming gets to be a lot of fun when you can really hit those intricate fills and complex passages. It’s very immersive - more so than guitar, because you’re basically really playing the drums. The only difference is that sometimes different drums get mapped to the same pad because the original song has more than four pieces to the drum track, you don’t hear slight variations in your timing, and velocity information isn’t used (quiet/loud). But if you can play the drums on expert in Rock Band, you can probably sit down at a real drum set and do a passable job playing the simpler songs.
Actually, the best way to play is ‘heels-up’. Rest the ball of your foot on the pedal with your heel in the air, and keep it depressed fully all the time so you can rest the weight of your leg on the pedal. When a bass hit comes along, you just lift your foot and press it down again. During gaps between bass hits, the pedal should be completely depressed.
That’s a great idea, I smell an eBay business if you have the time to make a lot of them. Actually what would be really really cool is to hook an actual drum set up so Rock Band could use it.
That’s why I started, I’ve always been a wannabe drummer. Having lots of fun so far, and I think this game will pave the way for bigger and better instrument-based video games.
Drumming is my favorite part in Rock Band, though I have fun with all of it. Started off having a little difficulty with Say it Ain’t So on Easy and was getting all sorts of frustrated, and then one day it just made sense. NEARLY done with Medium at the moment (Damn you Honest Bob & The Factory to Dealer Incentives!), but I so far have only played it at a friend’s house. Thinking it will have to be my next big purchase, especially since “I’m Still Alive” from Portals is being released soon, or so I hear!
Let me guess, are they “Run to the Hills” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”?
I’ve been completely addicted to drumming for a couple months now. I’ve gotten through all of the Expert songs except the two listed above. RttH is just plain insane, and WGFA is ridiculously non-repetitive. I don’t think Keith Moon ever played the same two measures in that entire song, and it’s a rather long one.
I find that quick fills are easier to complete if you go through them on practice mode a few times to figure out which drums you should be hitting and when you should be hitting them. That really helped me on “Maps” and “Electric Version.”
Ditto the heel-up technique described above; it’s essential.
What’s up with the double bass kicks in some of these songs? In several of them (Tom Sawyer and Cherub Rock, off the top of my head) I feel like it’s impossible to pull off without a double kick pedal. I can get by in Cherub Rock about 50% of the time by working the system. That is, I try to hit the first kick a split second early and then hit the second one on time. The game registers this as a successful double kick if I do it right. I’m just not fast enough to pull it off legitimately.
No, I actually passed Won’t Get Fooled Again pretty easily for some reason - probably because I’ve been listening to the song for decades and know every beat in it. Run to the Hills is one of them, and the other is ‘Next to You’ by the Police, which isn’t really all that hard but I don’t like the song and have only tried it a few times.
A real bass pedal helps with the double kicks, expecially with a beater attached and a practice pad, because you can let the rebound off the pad help you set up the next kick (just like proper rebound on the pads allows you to do fast rolls). But yeah, some of those double bass hits are brutal.
I started out absolutely pathetic on the drums and was nearly failing out on easy. After a few days, I got better and beat easy and was working my way through medium. Then, the pain started. My right knee, which has bugged me in the past, screamed and begged me not to do it any more. So, I gave up drums.
I feel like I should be passing them, as well as some songs on expert, but my pads just don’t respond well to fast taps. It pretty much keeps me from 100% any songs on hard or expert. If I put the game in practice mode or jam a little bit before the songs begin I can easily see that my pads don’t respond 12-15% of the time. It’s aggravating to say the least.
After a while off (Lent), I’m back to playing Rock Band. Drumming, by far, is my favorite part of the game. The thing I find surprising is the learning curve. When I first got the game, it was wonderful playing along. Then, the frustration with the kick pedal set in. But, once I could devote a bit of time to practice it, it got amazingly fun. Being able to hit the off beats and getting better with each day was one of the best video game experiences I’ve had.
Now, It’s interesting because I don’t necessarily play for fun, but I’m playing to get better. I want to finish all the songs on Hard (yeah, I’m not that good.) Sometimes it’s not all that much fun playing the same song over and over in Practice mode/Slow speed, then Practice/Fast then trying it live, only to fail. But when I finally slogged my way through Vasoline on Hard (like I said, I’m not that good), I felt like I actually accomplished something.
But it’s still a blast to go back and play Cherub Rock, Won’t be Fooled Again, and Tom Sawyer on Medium. And its even better to play it with others.
I always clip the plastic rim around the pads when I try to drum. That game is really frustrating for me on drums. I get 3 stars on medium if I’m lucky, but there’s a very good chance that I’ll fail instead.
I played a lot last night, started going back to the Easy songs and trying to get 5 stars, which I did on most except a couple (I forget which, Maps maybe was one of them.) Some songs like Wave of Mutilation, Here it Goes Again, and Mississippi Queen are just plain fun. I guess I like beating on 2 drum pads at the same time over and over. Other songs like Black Hole Sun are tedious, too slow and no consistent patterns.
I like the songs with no consistent pattern the most. Black Hole Sun, the Rush songs, Won’t Get Fooled again, etc. On a lot of those songs, you don’t try to time hitting the pads visually by watching the notes, you do it by listening to the music and trying to hit the pads at the right time to make the music sound right, just as a real drummer would. Just use the notes on the screen to tell you which pad to hit. For practice with my timing, I’ll sometimes just close my eyes and try to play without looking at the notes at all. Black Hole Sun is particularly good for practicing this.
I did something cool last night, I drummed AND sang on “Say it Ain’t So” (Easy level.) I got a good score (4 stars IIRC) EXCEPT I forgot that the vocals had a “mic-hitting” part, which my gf stepped in and did. Also I really need a mic stand.
Well, there’s plenty of songs that don’t have the tambourine parts. A song like In Bloom will be my next attempt, easy vocals and drums, I’ve heard it so many times.
By the way, Rock Band definitely illustrates that I really don’t know the lyrics of some popular songs, “Gimme Shelter” and “Orange Crush” being two examples. Especially Gimme Shelter, I had no idea.
