Learning the Curve

[seabterry]

I'm a great Rock Band guitar player and vocalist, but not a great drummer. I can do Easy and Medium without fail and I can even do Green Grass and High Tides on Hard and almost 5 star it. My problem comes with songs like Vasoline which is preventing me from moving to the next tier on Hard. Is there a song to practice or some way to break my habit of using my hands and bass pedal at the same time? I just can't get it down.

[ZortheConqueror]

When I ran out of songs I could beat on hard, which was around the same place, I moved up to expert and tried to see how I could do there.

When I went back to hard, suddenly a lot of things just clicked. Vasoline, for example, gave me a great deal of trouble when I would originally try to go through it. When I came back to it after doing this, the rhythm all of the sudden made sense to me and I could play it with little difficulty.

[hawaiianpunch22]

It just comes with time. Songs like Vasoline and Detroit Rock City have tricky beats, but one you learn them they're really easy.

If you're stuck on your career, go to quickplay and play the songs on hard that are further in the career. A couple times a day, go back to Vasoline and give it a shot.

[ReverseEngineer]

My problem comes with songs like Vasoline which is preventing me from moving to the next tier on Hard. Is there a song to practice or some way to break my habit of using my hands and bass pedal at the same time? I just can't get it down.

looks like you answered your own question.
the speed control in practice mode is great for this.

I had the same stopping block. Vasoline is a tricky beat if you don't know it, and it's quick so it's easy to be overwhelmed. I hit it in practice mode until I got the groove of it, and could hit most (no need for all) of the notes. Then I did it in my solo tour, no problem.

With that one, there are exactly two rhythm phrases you need to practice. A bit easier than some songs that have lots of phrases.

[barbaraann72]

Is there a song to practice or some way to break my habit of using my hands and bass pedal at the same time? I just can't get it down.

I practice moded Gimme Three Steps on increasing speed to get this down.

O and... welcome to the boards!!

[seabterry]

Thank you for the welcome! I went to Practice on Vasoline and I am solid around 80% and then 90% and Full Speed everything just goes to hell. All of a sudden I can't get the beat that I repeated slowly earlier. Maybe skipping ahead in quick play or starting Expert is the key. Thank you all so much!

[tiger5150]

Its kind of a cheat but you dont have to try every note to pass vasoline. I was stuck there also, I wanted to unlock the next teir so I just played most of the notes and didnt bother with the tricky parts. You will drop in the red but you wont fail out.

Later I went back and 5 starred it

[seabterry]

Is it pointless to keep playing Medium? I play on Medium during Band World Tour because I don't want to fail out. I've done the whole just hit some notes and get by, but sometimes you just lose your sanity.

[princeofcups777]

Thank you for the welcome! I went to Practice on Vasoline and I am solid around 80% and then 90% and Full Speed everything just goes to hell. All of a sudden I can't get the beat that I repeated slowly earlier. Maybe skipping ahead in quick play or starting Expert is the key. Thank you all so much!

I have the exact same problem with The Hand that Feeds on expert drums. I can do the intro perfectly at 80% speed, close to that at 90% speed, but at full speed everything falls apart. I just keep practicing...

jfs

[seabterry]

Its kind of a cheat but you dont have to try every note to pass vasoline. I was stuck there also, I wanted to unlock the next teir so I just played most of the notes and didnt bother with the tricky parts. You will drop in the red but you wont fail out.

Later I went back and 5 starred it

When did you realize you could five star it? What happened that gave you the edge?

[darknessmoon]

Thank you for the welcome! I went to Practice on Vasoline and I am solid around 80% and then 90% and Full Speed everything just goes to hell. All of a sudden I can't get the beat that I repeated slowly earlier. Maybe skipping ahead in quick play or starting Expert is the key. Thank you all so much!

There are some songs that are much harder on Hard than they are on Expert due to some of the kick notes being taken away n' what not that kind of throws you off, so you should probably just go ahead and practice on steady.

Things that help me practice:

1) Listen to the song multiple times and try to isolate the drum parts when you're listening to it to try and catch the beat (I'm constantly *drumming* no matter where I am: my desk at the office, the dinner table, the toilet, etc...)

2) On songs like Vasoline, the beats are pretty consistent with not many changes in the song. For these types of songs, as soon as you know and catch the speed of the yellow pad with your right arm, try to simply not think about the movements of your right arm and keep it consistent... Just worry about hitting the rest of the notes without even thinking about your right arm and let it flow... Don't know if that makes sense but that's normally what I do. :o

3) A few good songs to help you practice maintain a steady, consistent flow with your right arm and have *tricky* beats to help you separate your usage of your right arm and leg would be: Dani California, Welcome Home, and I can't think of any others at the moment...

I hope some of this helps...

[ReverseEngineer]

Thank you for the welcome! I went to Practice on Vasoline and I am solid around 80% and then 90% and Full Speed everything just goes to hell. All of a sudden I can't get the beat that I repeated slowly earlier. Maybe skipping ahead in quick play or starting Expert is the key. Thank you all so much!

I'm kind of a perfectionist, so when I got hung up on Vasoline I wouldn't let myself play the tiers above it on Quickplay. I switched over to the bonus songs for a bit, started the expert tour, and played the lower-tier songs again and again. Practicing everything will make you better.

[seabterry]

I did Welcome Home fine. I was good with that one. It seems that Vasoline, Paranoid, and Maps all gave me hell. WHEN I pass it I'll post...if anyone cares.

[ZortheConqueror]

Maps on expert makes me sad.

My poor leg can't make it through the whole song.

[Nasenbluten]

trick i used for those tricky off beats is lift your foot when you see it coming. it's hard to explain, but if you time it right, those off beats are cake :D

also practice makes perfect, eventually our leg will go auto pilot as your hands move

[ReverseEngineer]

if anyone cares.

you're about where I was, a week ago, progress-wise. so I care 'cause I'm in a very similar boat.

[barbaraann72]

We wouldn't be reading the post if we didn't care, silly!

[Tender-Surrender]

Here is an interesting article on how to improve skills on the drums. It includes limb independence, too.

Rock Band Drum Tips (http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/rock-band-featu.html)

[ReverseEngineer]

Here is an interesting article on how to improve skills on the drums. It includes limb independence, too.

Rock Band Drum Tips (http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/rock-band-featu.html)

"Ideally, you shouldn’t be using any muscles to bring the stick back to its starting point. The bouncing action of the pads should do that for you."

whose pads are they using?!

[Tender-Surrender]

"Ideally, you shouldn’t be using any muscles to bring the stick back to its starting point. The bouncing action of the pads should do that for you."

whose pads are they using?!

It's obvious they are using a modded set :P

I got me a new set the other day from an RMA, and these ones have bounce and much less noise. But if you do have a set with bounce, then these rules apply! Otherwise you have to mod that stuff!

[tch0rt]

Taking what darknessmoon suggested just a little further, maybe you should take it into practice and play just the bass and snare (red) notes for a while. Vaseline has the right hand just keeping the beat for almost the entire song, with the left hand on the snare and the bass drum providing all variation (its actually a paradiddle pattern with the left hand and foot, instead of with L and R hands). Once you find that the pattern clicks when you're not playing with your right hand at all, then go ahead and add it!

[seabterry]

Taking what darknessmoon suggested just a little further, maybe you should take it into practice and play just the bass and snare (red) notes for a while. Vaseline has the right hand just keeping the beat for almost the entire song, with the left hand on the snare and the bass drum providing all variation (its actually a paradiddle pattern with the left hand and foot, instead of with L and R hands). Once you find that the pattern clicks when you're not playing with your right hand at all, then go ahead and add it!

Yeah, I've heard that and I plan on trying it at 10:30 this morning. Is there any song that sticks out in anyone's mind that it visibly easier on Expert than Hard?

[jjlee138]

What's really getting me on the jump to Hard is the scroll speed. I'm able to play every song on Medium at 98-100% with almost zero effort. I'm definately ready for hard, but the notes come out of no where so fast I'm finding that my reaction time is killing me not limb independence or anything like that. Anyone else have this issue when they moved up to harder tiers?

[o1skinneej]

I had the exact same problem on Vasoline. The bass kicks were just seemed too off beat to make sense in my head. So what I did was just focus on the kicks and once I ABSOLUTELY had the beat of those I added the hands: FIRST the LEFT, THEN the RIGHT. Even after being stuck on Vasoline since back in November, I just had to break the beat down so it made the most sense, and viola I beat it a few weeks back.:)

[PrimeTime]

Well the first page completely sum's up me. Got stuck on Vaseline, practiced on expert, ended up getting it the next day. Same deal with Detroit Rock City. And Now The Hand that Feeds on Expert. I'm still on it, but admittedly I haven't tried that hard to beat it, not that you have to hit a lot of notes, just kind of a funky beat to it.

[seabterry]

I played Missississippi Queen yesterday on Hard and it has that kick with no hit, but I got like 96% on it. Drums is easily the hardest of all the instruments in Rock Band, but in the end I think it'll be just like the guitar. You just keep playing. No matter what it is, just keep doing it. I have so much trouble getting people to go to the next step in this game. My Dad won't go to Hard on guitar and my wife won't go to Medium on Drums. I guess I just answered my own question from three pages ago.

[seabterry]

OK. Everybody that has posted on this thread has been really helpful with a problem that I know is in other threads, but my issues keep arising while I follow the tips that were posted. I'm not failing the warm-up songs on Expert because of the double kick pedal hits. Is there an easier way to hit those fast double notes? Even on slow songs like Creep have me failing out.

[seabterry]

I said that I would post when I had conquered Vasoline on Hard and I just did it. It was a terrible 36,217/84%/33 Note Streak, but I made it through which puts me in the next tier. I didn't play this weekend, but as I learned on Guitar Hero 2 a year ago, you need a break to get better.

[TakeABow]

Probably the best thing I did was to mod an old real drum pedal to replace my Rock Band stock pedal. My scores all increased dramatically, and I could actually pass Run to the Hills because I could concentrate on my stickwork instead of my foot.

You could also just buy the Omega or Destroyer pedals, both of them work wonderfully according to reviews.

The biggest thing is practice. You have to train your foot. Practice Practice Practice. You will get it eventually.

[frizzy_bj]

I really enjoy playing drums because I like the rhythm parts in songs. I usually hear that before I actually listen to the words. I am practicing the drums but I have found that I do far better on vocals right now. :p

[C4Dillon]

A lot of common themes here, that song with the off-beat bass kicks crushed me at first, and Detroit Rock City took a whole night of practice. But, more than anything, wrong calibration made things really really hard for me:

Make sure your screen is calibrated manually!!! I can't really stress this part enough! You can get through easy and medium since it's so slow and forgiving playing a few miliseconds ahead or behind, but when you get to hard and above, you probably won't be able to get very far (or have an insanely difficult time playing ahead consistently) if the beat on the screen doesn't match the beat the game wants you to play.

I had it set up for LCD (the TV I'm playing on) and it still was about 25-30 ms off. It might not seem like a huge difference when doing the manual setup, but believe me, it is critical to keeping frustration down at all levels.

Plus, you might find that you are much better than your earlier scores and efforts would show.

[seabterry]

Passed Vasoline, played the next tier fine until Detroit Rock City. What is with that bass beat? The Red and Yellow Pads are a consistent beat, but the bass pedal is just not following any beat. Looks like my future holds PRACTICE!

[ReverseEngineer]

you've pushed ahead of me! I'm hung up on Go With The Flow. HATE that song.

[bisq]

This has kind of been mentioned before but playing ANY song in expert really helped me with my hard career. The main reason is because of scroll speed. Once I got somewhat accustomed to the fast expert scroll speed, it made hard seem quite slow and I could go back and get over 98% on songs I was only 4 starring before.

This method also helped me beat the last tier of hard, which is quite a bit tougher than the rest of hard (well at least NTY,RTTH, and WGFA are). Foreplay and reaper also have some tough parts. Those are pretty much the only songs that gave me trouble on hard, along with vasoline which now seems so easy but it was definitely rough at first.

I recently got to vasoline on expert and am happy to say I was able to beat it first try so at least it doesn't get much tougher. I'm now trying to figure out Dead on Arrival on expert which doesn't seem too hard when slowed down, I just can't quite play it at full speed without getting off on the beat.

[Nobak]

Passed Vasoline, played the next tier fine until Detroit Rock City. What is with that bass beat? The Red and Yellow Pads are a consistent beat, but the bass pedal is just not following any beat. Looks like my future holds PRACTICE!

It follows a pattern, but it stretches out over two measures. I first ran into this song in my early days on hard drums, playing BWT. Got my ass kicked multiple times and gave up.

I looked up a video on youtube (expert instead of hard. As it turns out, the bass pedal's already all in there at hard anyway) and watched the song multiple times focusing solely on the bass pedal, until I could play the beat in my head. I was obsessed by that song, playing the beat in my head whenever I had a chance for a couple of days, until I reached it in solo play. By then I had a petty solid grasp on the pattern so getting to pass the song wasn't too painful.

It's become my favorite song to play since. The jump to expert took some more effort but that's another story.

[packerfan8675309]

if push comes to shove, you could always have someone hit the bass pedal for you. and if you are really struggling you could even have someone else hit one of the pads

[packerfan8675309]

of course that is cheating so...

[seabterry]

if push comes to shove, you could always have someone hit the bass pedal for you. and if you are really struggling you could even have someone else hit one of the pads

I've always had that in the back of my head, but in Band World Tour I have so much fun and the accomplishment is great. I remember learning the way of the 5 buttons on a guitar and now I play on Expert and people watch me play and just can't believe how someone can play like that. Of course these people are not all players, but even so Expert is an accomplishment. I hope to get to Expert on drums, but it will be awhile. But I always hear "just get someone to hit the bass pedal and get it over with".

[seabterry]

you've pushed ahead of me! I'm hung up on Go With The Flow. HATE that song.

I skipped ahead and played Go With the Flow on Quickplay and I failed it. Today I got to it in Solo and beat it first time around. Detroit Rock City is the hardest of the tier, but Dead on Arrival is just a tricky song. Surprisingly Train Kept a Rollin' is VERY easy if you haven't played it yet. We'll make it through this hell on sticks somehow.

[ReverseEngineer]

I skipped ahead and played Go With the Flow on Quickplay and I failed it. Today I got to it in Solo and beat it first time around. Detroit Rock City is the hardest of the tier, but Dead on Arrival is just a tricky song. Surprisingly Train Kept a Rollin' is VERY easy if you haven't played it yet. We'll make it through this hell on sticks somehow.

Strangely, I failed Dead on Arrival once, then passed it. It's tricky, but it's not the same kind of tricky that Go With The Flow is. I think it doesn't help that I don't care much for Queens of the Stone Age, but that didn't stop me from passing Dead On Arrival ...?

I'm having a lot of fun with my new real drums, too. My neighbors must haaaaate me.

[seabterry]

I own 4 guitars, but this whole learning the "fake" drums experience has made me want to buy a real set. I have no money, but I want nonetheless.

[xerichx07]

Then you should get a part time job, if you really want one =)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure people have already said many, many tips to you, so you can now play on Hard/Expert like a pro, if you said a comment like that.

One thing though: Save your overdrives for parts of the song where there are more notes, especially if you are only playing by yourself. However, if it's just for fun like quickplay, then do whatever you want.

[seabterry]

Then you should get a part time job, if you really want one =)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure people have already said many, many tips to you, so you can now play on Hard/Expert like a pro, if you said a comment like that.

One thing though: Save your overdrives for parts of the song where there are more notes, especially if you are only playing by yourself. However, if it's just for fun like quickplay, then do whatever you want.

It'll be awhile since I quit my job in October and don't have even a part time job. That's because I have a full time job taking care of my daughter at home. I practice Rock Band twice a day. Once in the morning for about 2 hours and then in the afternoon for about an hour and a half. A real drum kit would be WAY too loud in my house. I'll stick to real guitars, fake drums, and an Expert voice. I do know that they are expensive. I could sell a guitar and buy one. Thanks for the tips with the overdrive erich.

[ReverseEngineer]

I own 4 guitars, but this whole learning the "fake" drums experience has made me want to buy a real set.

This was me last week.
Me this week = "real drums are so FUN!!!!!!!1"

[nudgie]

A real drum kit would be WAY too loud in my house. I'll stick to real guitars, fake drums, and an Expert voice.


Why don't you look into an electronic drum kit? It can't be much different than banging on your RockBand drum set. I'm thinking about it myself.

[laughingman1221]

songs that make you work your hands and feet seperately would be mostly on expert as far as i can tell

if you're up to the challenge go into quickplay and do dani california on expert.

[seabterry]

Why don't you look into an electronic drum kit? It can't be much different than banging on your RockBand drum set. I'm thinking about it myself.

Is there an amp that produces sound from that kit?

[seabterry]

songs that make you work your hands and feet seperately would be mostly on expert as far as i can tell

if you're up to the challenge go into quickplay and do dani california on expert.

I take it that this song is ridiculous with the limb separation?

[seabterry]

Passed Detroit Rock City and Don't Fear the Reaper on Hard. Now I'm moving to Enter Sandman. I've only passed the first tier on Expert. I only play Expert when I get stuck on Hard.

[seabterry]

Well, I've managed to make it down to two songs remaining on the Hard tour: Next to You and Run to the Hills. I'm closer to beating Run to the Hills than Next to You. What is the trick to that song?