Played Rock Band last night, I seem locked at “True Skill” 32. I’d lost only one match the night before, and THAT was to those stupid freeform outros that reward those with the fastest kicks instead of those who can play musically. Rock Band keeps duels close so even if you’re way ahead, someone can destroy you if you lose the outro by just 200 points.
Last night, I got 100% in five songs and aced the outro duel in one song (unusual for slow me), and didn’t lose any matches at all. I can play any Rock Band song on medium drums with nearly 100% accuracy, unless my favorite RB song, The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, comes on. That song takes you ALL over the drum kit, probably as close as RB gets to playing a real set on medium.
I can play hard drums, but I’m not yet good enough for duels. I don’t want to be the loser sitting at “True Skill” 0 or 1. The problem isn’t so much the syncopation, though long passages with the snare/tom alternating with the kick drum sometimes lose me if the beat is too fast.
The problem is with the chair I’m sitting on. It’s too low, but it’s the tallest chair in the house. Fast kicking — and it’s always fast double or triple kicks in hard and expert it seems — is impossible with the angle my ankle is at, especially since the kit sits on two inches of padding so I don’t bug the downstairs neighbors. The best angle for the foot is straight, pressing from the straight to down an inch or two.
So yeah, I need a drum stool, and maybe while I’m at it, longer sticks than the stumpy ones that come with the set which I feel are about due to break (I REALLY get into the drumming) (All I can hear for hours after a really good session are drum beats in everything). This feels like when I was learning flute. It’s tough, and then you break through that into someplace new that you can explore, until you come to the next barrier and start pushing against that.
That’s where I’m at. Medium is easy, Hard is what I’m up against, and I can see Expert over on the horizon (I did the first couple sets of Expert, thinking — I can do this — until I realized that no, no, I could not. Not yet.)
The really, really tough thing about this is embarrassment. I’m going to have to go to a music store and get some drum sticks and a stool and look at all those REAL drums and know that as good as I might someday get at Rock Band, it means nothing until I can play beats on a real kit.
I need a place without neighbors.
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Oh yeah — a note to other Rock Band duelists. DON’T HOARD THE OVERDRIVE. I could be playing perfectly, 100%, and saving my overdrive for a good fast note run for maximum effect and people would make mistakes but still be overtaking me! I figured out why — whenever I wasn’t taking the overdrive and just sitting back, I was not making points I could have been making. And my opponent usually was. I had this rule that as long as I was ahead, I’d hoard it until it was three or four fourths full, then wait for a good section and be on overdrive for a long time.
This was not a winning strategy. People could catch up when I did that. Now, I don’t mind things being equal in the beginning, but by the end of the song, especially one with a stupid freeform outro, I want to be way ahead. So use ’em when you get ’em unless you come to a sucker section — one where there is no drum part. It’s fun watching overdrive drain away while you’re playing no notes.
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Last addendum, I promise. Tug of War and Score Duel are ranked separately, so if you’re grinding levels in one, you can practice without fear in the other. So since I rank in Tug of War, I’ll be practicing the hard duels in Score Duel.
