Expert Drumming

[KaneTaker]

Just for the hell of it this weekend, I tried to play Ride the Lightning...on Expert. 32% fail. OK...Hard? 41% fail. Damn. I can play all the lower tier songs on hard at 90%+. I can even do Hand That Feeds on Hard and get about 97%. Of course, this is after I played it through on Easy and Medium to get the basic rythm. Pulled it up on Expert and...WTF IS THIS?! Its like I'm playing a completely different song! Failed it at about 20%. Not entirely sure why the beat is so different, but man...I just could not do it no matter how hard I tried.

[davidshek]

Just for the hell of it this weekend, I tried to play Ride the Lightning...on Expert. 32% fail. OK...Hard? 41% fail. Damn. I can play all the lower tier songs on hard at 90%+. I can even do Hand That Feeds on Hard and get about 97%. Of course, this is after I played it through on Easy and Medium to get the basic rythm. Pulled it up on Expert and...WTF IS THIS?! Its like I'm playing a completely different song! Failed it at about 20%. Not entirely sure why the beat is so different, but man...I just could not do it no matter how hard I tried.

For the same reason that I can't beat Green Grass & High Tides on Expert Guitar, even though I can 5- and gold-star every other song in Expert in this game, as well as just about FC GGHT on Hard.

Lars played some pretty complicated shiat back then. :) The beat isn't different on Hard/Expert...you're just playing more of it than you were on Easy and Medium.

[tsl141]

Yeah, the beat is the same, they just add more to it.

[KaneTaker]

Well, Hand That Feeds went from mostly Green to mostly Red from Hard to Expert. Did they just take out an entire drum for the Hard on down versions?

[davidshek]

Well, Hand That Feeds went from mostly Green to mostly Red from Hard to Expert. Did they just take out an entire drum for the Hard on down versions?

I haven't played Hand That Feeds on drums on Medium or Easy, so I have no idea :)

But I don't think there's any song where they just leave out an entire drum. Drums don't have the 3-4-5 button progression like guitar/bass do...

I haven't played any songs on drums on Easy, but from my experience, usually it's more like this:

Medium - In a song where there's 16th notes on the hi-hat, it drops to 8th notes (if it's 8th notes, it might drop to quarter notes). Way less kick drum that the real track, and very simplified fills.

Hard - Hi-hat steps up to 16th notes for the songs that have it, more kick drum hits (but still less than the real track) and more complex fills.

Expert - Hi-hat and snare hits will be pretty much identical to the actual drum track. Same with kick drum hits (except where there's double bass in the real track), and fills are much closer to the real drum track, if not identical.

Of course there are exceptions to this, I'm not stating any facts or rules here. Just general observations from my playing experience :)

[Pdj7969]

Well, Hand That Feeds went from mostly Green to mostly Red from Hard to Expert. Did they just take out an entire drum for the Hard on down versions?
The difference between hard and expert for HTF is that in hard it follows a very straight-forward beat whereas expert actually requires full hand-foot independence. It caught me off guard as well, but once I put on headphones so I could fully focus on the beat instead of myself slapping the pads in frustration to my dwindling bar until I fail, I nailed the song with 94%. Its hard, but once you hit it once, you'll never fail it again.

[KaneTaker]

I'll just finish solo on Medium, graduate to Hard, and then take a crack at Expert again. Just work my way up a little slower!

[kjraisch]

S'what I did, started drumming at easy and worked my way up. After finishing the tour on Hard I nailed And Justice For All at 95%. The progression really does help. It's awesome playing on expert and having someone tell you that you make it look easy while they bomb I Think I'm Paranoid on Easy. :D

[coolcool23]

I made myself a second drum pedal for Ride the Lightning. Otherwise my foot would just QUIT on me during those fast parts. I still can't get "blackened" down either. I fail at about 15%

[AdamWill2]

yeah, um, like everyone said, you're basically jumping way too far at once. try playing some harder stuff on hard or some easier stuff on expert (hope that makes sense :>).

[Tendoza]

I feel too like I've jumped a little too far, except I haven't. Foreplay/Long Time and DFTR are killing me.

What makes me feel worse is that I can beat all of the last teir except for Run to the Hills...

*goes back to practice mode*