I put up high quality divx versions of all the drum videos. You can find them all here:
http://crackedrabbitgaming.com/download/Rock-Band-Drum/
Archive for the ‘Rock Band’ Category
Rock Band Expert Drum videos now for download
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008Rock Band Expert Drum videos!
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008I finally put up some drum videos. There are eight of them; the first three have a separate camera for the bass pedal, the rest are zoomed out to show both hands and feet. The three with the separate bass camera are Chiron, Indestructible (gold stars), and Inside the Fire — I did those specifically for people who bitch "why does HMX put out songs that are impossible to play with one pedal?"
Because there are so many different things happening, the compression is terrible, so clicking "watch in high quality" is definitely recommended. My drums drop tons of notes, but oh well.
YouTube playlist for my drum videos
I will put up downloadable divx versions later.
Hayley Williams almost a capella (Paramore)
Sunday, October 26th, 2008Why this was done: So you can hear Hayley's voice almost isolated.
How this was done: The video you're seeing is not what the audio came from. The audio was captured by turning off all sounds (crowd, instruments, etc.), and playing with No Fail mode turned on, with a full band (but not playing). Some tracks can still be heard, as well as some booing, but it's fairly quiet.
The video was done a second time, vocal only (no fail) just so you don't have to stare at the full band charts. You can see my Hayley character singing (it's hard to get an actual likeness with the RB creator).
That's What You Get:
crushcrushcrush:
More Rock Band videos to come!
Video: Tommy Gun's Rock Band 2 Manual Calibration Guide (papercraft)
Friday, September 19th, 2008I spent a bunch of time messing around with the RB2 manual calibration settings (I don't have the new Strat), and decided to make a short video explaining them clearly and simply (I hope). I used this method to calibrate my system, and it works really well. So if you're confused about exactly what the settings do, and which way you need to move them in order to sync up the game, this should explain all of that. I use the drums as an example, but obviously this also works with the guitar.
Let me know if I made any mistakes, and I can add some annotations to the video.
** Download the high-res divx version on the downloads page **
Quick "Rock Band 2" Review
Monday, September 15th, 2008Yesterday, I got up and played Rock Band 2 from around 8am until 10pm, with a few breaks to eat. I still have a lot to unlock. My roommates were gone, so I played the whole thing Solo — which is a great new feature. World Tour can be played alone, and since I'm pretty good, I was able to amass stars and fans very quickly, which meant new venues kept unlocking and I didn't have to replay many songs.
There are a lot of features I have yet to try, but let me run down some of the biggest improvements (and worst removals) Harmonix has made, and suggest some more changes. I haven't played online at all, so I can't comment on that, nor do I have any of the new instruments. I'm calling this a "quick" review only because I'm focusing on specific things that matter to us RB-obsessed players, not reviewing every part of the game.
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Some news about the Rock Band ION drumkit
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008As I've mentioned before, I have an electric Yamaha drumkit, and I would love to use it with Rock Band (my RB drums are pretty messed up now). Since the ION kit uses 1/4" plugs, I was hoping I could just buy their brain and use my pads with it. I started a thread about it on the RB forums, and a lot of other people want it too (see whole thread). I emailed the company and actually got a direct response back:
Tommy,
Thanks for getting in touch. While we do expect to eventually offer the controller module separately, we intend to do so to allow Drum Rocker users who own multiple consoles to use a single Drum Rocker kit with all of their systems.
The module was designed specifically for use with the Drum Rocker drum and cymbal pads, which have a unique set of output characteristics (as do all electronic drum and cymbal pads). Lots of work has been done to ensure that Drum Rocker is optimized for Rock Band performance, in terms of trigger sensitivity, crosstalk rejection, latency, and more, and the design of the module has been tuned to deliver the best possible performance in conjunction with the Drum Rocker pads. Plugging another set of pads that happen to have 1/4" outputs into the Drum Rocker module will not yield the same results as using a Drum Rocker kit, and in fact may not work at all, so we don't recommend it.
However, if your goal is to have a single electronic drum set that can be used with your existing drum module and Rock Band as well, you can go at this from another angle. We would suggest that you get a Drum Rocker set, and use the Drum Rocker pads with your existing electronic drum module. If it's got 1/4" inputs and its input sensitivity can be adjusted, you should be able to combine the Drum Rocker pads with your existing module, and have exactly what you're after – a single kit for playing games and playing music!
Hope this helps!
Customer Service – DrumRocker
Ion-Audio
So of course their solution is to have me buy the whole drumkit, as you'd expect — no thanks. I hope someone buys the brain anyway and tries it out.
Rock Band: 5-starred Blackened! (expert drums)
Friday, June 27th, 2008
I really didn't expect to do that; I guess it's all thanks to my new pedal. I still need work on Kool Thing, Hammerhead, The Perfect Drug, and a few others. I added some of my high scores to ScoreHero, and will add more later.
I've also been trying to raise my career score, and have almost broken the top 500 on the 360 leaderboards. I've been reading about the best overdrive paths to use, so I just thought I'd let everyone know:
The Best Rock Band pedal, 5-starred Disturbed Expert Drums
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008I haven't been able to play Rock Band for the last week and a half because our 360 Red Ringed. Luckily, a friend came over today and brought his Xbox, so we swapped HDDs, bought some new songs, and played for a while. I've been really wanting to play the MTV pack, and now the new Offspring/Avenged Sevenfold.
I finally decided to just mod the pedal that came with my Yamaha DTXplorer, since I play Rock Band more than Drummania nowadays (and it doesn't disable the pedal or anything). This is the best Rock Band pedal there is now (click for large):
This picture speaks for itself.
Friday, May 16th, 2008
No, I don't care about Gold Starring it!
Now that my drums are working almost perfectly, I'm trying to raise some of my scores. I just re-calibrated Rock Band, because it still felt off. I tried harder this time and tested it, and it really felt like it made a difference. I basically have to just guess the settings though, because the "calibration tool" never works.
I five-starred a whole bunch of songs: Dead on Arrival (as you can see. I don't think I've played it since the first month we got RB), Next to You (Yes!), March of the Pigs (although I think I've only played that one once before, not a huge NIN fan), and some others. I still haven't gotten 5 on Run to the Hills, but I'm closer (4 and 3/4?).
I even passed Blinded by Fear for the first time (3 stars), but I played cheaply and purposely missed half of the hi-hat notes. If you just alternate hands (hi-hat, snare) and still hit the bass pedal, it's not too hard, and you'll still maintain your health. I don't think I can physically play that song correctly all the way through, it's just too fast.
So now I only have a small bunch of 4-stars left (including DLC), and just that one 3-star!
Podcast #2 – Rock Band Drum Mods (Tommy Gun + Mojo)
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008There are a whole bunch of mods that can be, and should be, done to the Rock Band drums if you're serious about playing. How do you increase the sensitivity? How do you dampen the noise? What about that crappy bass pedal that always breaks? We discuss all of these things, and the different solutions people have come up with.
Contents:
00:00 – Introduction, Pad silencers/rebound
03:16 – Rock Band Drumsoft
09:44 – Sensitivity mods
15:22 – Bass Pedals
25:00 – Good Wood Mods
34 minutes, 13.5MB:
See a quick video of the mods at the bottom of this post, along with links to all things discussed (you might even want to watch the video first so you know what the stuff looks like when you listen). I also posted some score pics below to show my drums are working pretty well.
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