By popular demand. A dedicated thread for tips n tricks on learning to drum good. Real good. 5-star Expert good.
Let’s start with this excellent article:
Rock Band Feature: Harmonix’s Top Tips For Drummers
Practice. The biggest thing for me was finding a comfortable position to play in (the Cliff’s Notes version: stick a phone book under your kick drum pedal). Another thing that’s huge is preventing the drums from walking around on you. You have to hit Blue and Yellow so precisely that if they are moving, you can’t ever get your muscle memory straight. Also taping my green and red drums helped a lot.
My general progression through the game (having never played the drums before) went like this:
First night, I played on medium (in a band). Then I started the career on hard and made it up to Vasoline, where I got stuck. I didn’t do much replaying and was content with 3 stars.
Didn’t play for a while.
Started back up on hard and made it to the Queens of the Stone Age song, where I got stuck again. Dropped back to medium and played through the whole career with few problems. Moved back to hard and got through QotSA and the rest of the career. Started playing expert, and I’m currently stuck on Vasoline.
I have gold starred 2 things, though – Say It Ain’t So and My Iron Lung.
Can not laud the “flat foot” approach to the pedal enough. Once I got the hang of just sitting my damn foot down on the floor, everything got easier.
I’m a RL drummer and am working on the expert campaign. I agree with this advice - practice is your best bet. Just like real drumming, the key is getting your brain programmed correctly. Of course, I still haven’t gold starred any songs. I fight with the bass pedal registering stuff when I don’t want it to. (It seems to be extremely sensitive, even when you’re nowhere near the bottom of the pedal stroke.)
For me, it was so much easier when I switched from heel-down to heel-up. Really helped my timing and felt much more natural.
Warning about heel-up: I broke my pedal this way because I was pressing in the middle of the pedal instead of by the orange line. This causes the middle to flex on each note as there is an impact support on the end, but not the middle. Thankfully I just got my replacement from EA.
Once I realized that a light stroke from the wrist worked better than belting the drum with all my might, my drumming improved greatly. It seems like the lighter I hit, the better I do.
What perfect timing! I just picked up Rock Band tonight and drums was, of course, my first stop. I’m really glad I read this first since I was able to fly (4-5 star) through more than half of medium without any difficulty before I had to call it night due to the noise. I love the resting the foot on the floor thing. I get screwed up once in a while but it’s easy to get back in the groove without getting flustered.
I generally keep my heel on the floor, but if there’s a long, steady section of bass hits I find it easiest to heel-up to keep the beat steady. Examples of this are Maps and Won’t Get Fooled Again on expert.
When I come across a quick, but short, burst of bass hits (Paranoid), I’ll usually bounce my heel up from the floor on the first hit, so I can get the succeeding hits fast enough, then put the heel back on the floor to save energy.
Dude, eff that. How can you drum and not hammer it?!
You’re a disgrace to drummers everywhere =(
edit: my biggest issue is a seat of proper height. If I’m not at the right angle, I miss everything and my kick pedal action is poop awful.
I guess I probably just have to practice… I’ve never drummed in my life but we’re just about done with the world tour on medium difficulty. Enter Sandman kicked my ass somethin’ fierce, so I should probably improve my technique a bit before I move on to Hard. My coordination just blows.
fortissimo Fortissimo FORTISSIMO!!!
I quit playing the drums because I was so sick of this word. No, I wasn’t being told to play louder, I was being told I was playing far too loud. The rhythm was never a problem, but playing softly? Just couldn’t do it for more than a minute.
After playing for hours on end in Rock Band though it’s definitely to your advantage to strike the pads lightly unless you have wrists of steel. I can’t do it myself, but I wish I could.
It’s just practice. The problem I have now is keeping my wrists in the right position, or I’ll start missing the center of the pads, which fucks me up big time. Also, just let your hands work… I find I did better songs I hadn’t played when I didn’t think about the notes scrolling and just hit what I thought was the right drum.
On a cooler note, Rams Head in Savage, Maryland has Rock Band on Thursday nights where you’re set up on a projection screen at the front of the bar and the game is piped out to all the other TVs in the place. Also, the music being played over the sound system is whoever is playing Rock Band at the time, so people can hear you fucking up and what not. It’s nerve wracking, but a lot of fun when everyone is getting into it, especially when you are playing with strangers.
Erik J.
I was playing so hard that I actually got blisters on my hands. Definitely a new experience for a piano player.
I need to go pick up a decent pair of drum sticks, the ones they include are pure shite. I am hardly surprised somebody ended up with blisters, it’s a miracle I don’t have a splinter yet.
What absolutely kicks my ass right now is keeping 2 fast, different beats on foot pedal and hands. OMG so difficult.
I crushed the Medium career. I only had problems (3-star) on two songs: Suffragette City and Go With The Flow. Something about the patterns in those songs.
On the other hand, the final Drum solo career song, Won’t Get Fooled Again, was no problem at all on medium. I think I 5-starred it even.
I’ve been experimenting with hard on some songs and having reasonable success, depending on how crazy the song gets on kick drum. Practice, practice, practice.
I need to go pick up a decent pair of drum sticks, the ones they include are pure shite.
The Zildjan anti-vibration sticks are the bomb. Get the ones with the larger (“rock” size heads). Always in stock at your local Guitar Center…
Don’t bother with nylon tips. Get the Tama Silent Tips; I got a pair and they work much better than the Plasti-Dip (and easier to remove too), give you plenty of bounce, and do help with noise quite a bit.
But for ultimate in noise reduction, you gotta put felt/foam or neoprene mouse pads on the top. Check the drum quieting thread for info on that.
I just finished up the hard solo tour on drums and liked it quite a bit. That said, I do find it rather odd that some songs appear to be more difficult on hard than on expert**. Occasionally, they take out beats in odd places to make it “easier” and it really doesn’t. The biggest culprit I’ve found it Run to the Hills which breaks up the straight sixteenth notes into goofy groups of three on hard. Damnit, just let me play the song!
Tip: I broke down and taped my red drum so that it was closer to the base, giving it less travel after seeing a couple you tube videos do the same. It helped a lot, increasing the number of quick hits registered and immediately increasing a practice session of Run To The Hills by over 10%. Play with your drums and make sure it really isn’t you screwing the pooch.
** This is also true for medium to hard occasionally but you don’t notice it as much because medium is pretty breezy.
Whoa. I work in Columbia on Thursdays. Any interest in having some QT3 Rock Band in a week or two? I’m working through expert on drums.