I play using my Yamaha DTXplorer (two cymbals and a hi-hat) with the MadCatz MIDI pro adapter. The only reason I’m not #1 on all the songs I FC’d is because some people “drum squeeze” to get more points, or because I didn’t use the optimal OD (overdrive) path. I don’t play songs multiple times in a row, so I never remember the path.

Some song notes:

This Ain’t a Scene: this was the second time I’ve played this song. It was really lucky, because the overdrive covered up a really long drumroll that I probably missed a few notes on, but it doesn’t count that. So I still ended up with 100%. A really poor overdrive path accounts for being so low on the leaderboard (I also may have overhit).

Young: Pretty surprised I was able to get this. It’s not that hard, I’m just really inconsistent with disco-beats.

Ring of Fire: the actual #1 on the leaderboard, no tie!

Half Crazy: I love this song!

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Post tags: gold stars, madcatz midi pro adapter, pro drums, yamaha dtxplorer

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177 points away! If I had hit literally ONE more note I would have gotten it! I even FC’d the solo, although I used OD too late, and ended the song with 1/4 full. That would have done it too. So after that I just had to try again, and figured it should be easy since I was ready for a few parts that I messed up during the sightread:

Yay.

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I started with “I Feel Fine” and missed an Overdrive phrase. I played it again and missed one note, while OD was active I think, no gold star. Tried a different OD path, but broke combo three times. Gave up and tried the other song, “I Wanna Be Your Man.” It’s super fast and tiring on your right hand, but I did really well and GS’d it on my first try! Yes! Feeling good, I went back to I Feel Fine. I knew I could do it, and after a couple tries:

Sweeeeet! I was about to turn off the game, but figured I should play Helter Skelter just for the hell of it. I remembered that there are two weirdly timed drumrolls at the end, and that’s where most people mess up. Since I hadn’t played that song in a year, there was no way I would hit those, but it was good practice anyway. I started the song and was doing fine…got to the end, first weird drumroll…broke combo. Second drumroll…nailed it! Wait, did I miss a note or overhit on that first one?

Yes! 100% on my first try! Uh oh, was the achievement for FC’ing it, or just 100%? *achievement popping noise*

So happy. I still have a few achievements to get: two are for guitar, which I probably won’t get. Two are for vocal harmonies, which is really a crime I haven’t gotten those, since that’s what this game is all about! It’s entirely my fault for not playing it more…and not having the ability to sing. It would be awesome to 1k this game. We’ll see.

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http://crackedrabbitgaming.com/download/Rock-Band-Drum/

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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.

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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!

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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 **

Edit: I originally made this video for RB2, but it also works for Rock Band 3, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Green Day: Rock Band!

Edit 2: a French tutorial has been posted by Stéphane

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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.

Solo World Tour

As previously mentioned.

Characters Not Tied to Instruments, No Band Leader

Now you can create a band, create up to 24 characters (per profile), and use any of them. I drummed for most of the day, but when I got tired, I switched to vocals, and then to guitar — something that wasn’t possible in RB1.

Character Stand-ins

This is actually a great new addition, but you might not realize it at first. If you go to your Band Profile, you can choose other characters you’ve made who will stand-in if you’re not playing as a full band (something we always wished for with RB1). I created three new characters, and when I played Solo, they were there on guitar/bass/vocals. Whenever there’s a lull in the instrument you’re playing, what does it show? Not your character obviously, since you’re not playing. It shows the guitarist (or whomever) playing their solo — and now you have your customized stand-in characters to watch!

This also made me want to customize them more, so I switched characters throughout the day to build up their money and buy new clothes. It really didn’t take much, as I only needed ~$500 to get all the stuff I wanted in most cases, but it was fun. The only remaining issue is that you assign them specific instruments (not again, HMX!) to stand-in for, so if I play drums with my stand-in for bass, then some random character joins (unless I take the time to switch the stand-ins around). They should have a few “universal” stand-ins you can select, so you’ll always have your characters playing.

Drum Trainer / Fill Trainer

I had a lot of fun with this. They give you a bunch of drum patterns, and you can change the speed on the fly. 100% a pattern and it’ll mark the speed you beat it at, so you can try for a higher speed, or see which ones you need work on. It’s like a little mini-game that also really helps you improve. The fill trainer is also great, and something I definitely need work on (remembering to do the fills while playing the main game is the big problem).

Challenges / Battle of the Bands

I actually didn’t play much of this yet, but there will be new ones often, which will really help increase the replay value of the game, and add incentive to buying full albums/packs.

No Fan Caps

In RB1, once you hit the cap, continuing to play meant you could only lose fans — stupid, right? Now, you’ll still gain fans, but at a certain point you won’t receive as many unless you switch to a higher difficulty. When I switched to vocals on Medium, I had already hit the Medium “soft cap” (since I play everything else on Expert), but was still able to keep unlocking stuff.

Some new clothes, makeup, hats, piercings, etc.

While the main “stores” contain the same clothes as RB1, there’s a new “thrift store” as well as some other additions. I don’t feel like it’s a very important part of the game, but other people may be slightly disappointed there isn’t more. I’d like to see them work the characters into the game a little more in RB3, so there’s a more of a point to this. Stand-ins is a start. Really though, it’s all about the music.

The Setlist is Great

There were definitely some surprises. Dinosaur Jr.’s “Feel the Pain” was a lot of fun on drums, as well as Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.” There’s always some disappointment when my favorite songs are easy (and boring) to play, but at least they’ll be fun to sing with a group. My most anticipated song, Silversun Pickups’s “Lazy Eye,” has over 100 tambourine hits in a row! But it’s awesome.

Hiring Staff Members

I’m not sure they have a huge effect, but it helps if you’re going for money, or fans, to be able to pick someone who’ll boost that for you. We didn’t care about money at all in RB1, but really needed fans, and this would have helped.

No Fail Mode / Setlists

I haven’t used this yet, but I’m so glad it’s finally here! Drunk parties are not fun when everyone fails ten seconds into the song. Some non-drunks just aren’t very good, and refuse to play if they think they’re going to fail, so this fixes that, too. RB2 can be used as a general karaoke machine now.

Now Quickplay allows you to make a long setlist.

Minor Gameplay Tweaks

There are now drum solos (blue scroll, percentage counter), there are HOPO chords, and they increased the readability of HOPOs by adding dual grooves on both sides.

World Tour is Mostly the Same

I really thought it would be a lot different, with less repetition, but aside from being able to play Solo and without band leaders, it’s mostly like RB1. Of course now we all have tons of DLC, so that helps, but they need to do away with pre-made setlists entirely! Make them themed setlists! Have a randomly generated “80′s” setlist (that we can “reshuffle”), or let us create our own (forcing us to choose only 80′s songs). Make a “Southern Rock” setlist, a “Tier 6″ setlist, and so on, so we can avoid songs we really hate, but still fall within the guidelines.

Some Interface Improvements, Lots Still Missing

Using the music store interface for the song selection is great. It shows the album art, and sorting is much better. You can hold a button (bass pedal on drums, Right Bumper on controller, etc.) to bring up a list of headings (genres, A-Z, decades — whatever you’re sorting it by) and skip directly to what you want. You can also just tap the button to jump to the next heading. No more holding “down” for ten minutes!

While that’s a big improvement, there are still a lot of things missing. How do I get back to the main menu? What? I still have to hit “B” fifty times? They need a “quick menu” assigned to a button that you can bring up at any time to perform various tasks. More improvements in the next item.

Needs More Profiles! For Everything!

I could write an entire book on this subject (being a web designer, usability is a big thing for me), but let me try to be brief.

Your current calibration setting should be displayed on the main screen, so you always know you’re on the correct setting. There should be customizable calibration profiles (that you can name, like “John’s house”). I know the new guitar has auto calibration, but why have to do it every time? Calibrate something once, why calibrate it again? (“…psycho killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est? fa fa fa fa fa fa fa”–sorry.) Speaking of calibration, let me play a song to test the calibration immediately! Don’t require me to back all the way out, go through quickplay, test the song, quit, back to calibration, etc. etc.!

It should save your previous band arrangement, and load it immediately. You should not have to pick your character every time, there should be a “change band members” option available for when you do want to. Give us “band profiles” for often-selected arrangements (e.g., Profile 1: Character “Amy” on bass, character “Tommy” on drums, etc.). Make a thumbnail button for each profile with a picture of the characters on their respective instruments, so we can quickly switch between them.

No Stars Shown…Pretty Much Anywhere.

People. Are. Pissed. Myself included. Ever since the original Guitar Hero, your “stars” were displayed right next to the songs. This way you could scroll down and see how you were doing, and see which songs you needed to improve on. For the hardcore players, this is essential. Rock Band 2 — they’re gone. Not in quickplay, nowhere. The only place the stars are saved is in World Tour, on single song sets. But that would require you to hunt through all the venues to find the song you want to play.

There are some issues here. Since there’s no “solo tour” list like in RB1, they would have to be displayed in (solo) Quickplay. But as it is, you select your difficulty after selecting the song, so they just need to reverse that, or copy the way DDR does it. DDR lets you double-tap up or down to switch your difficulty on the songlist, and it changes your “grades” in real time to reflect that. This NEEDS a patch.

Rock Band 2 also needs a “score sync” feature, so you can play either RB1 or 2, and it’ll update all your scores from the leaderboards. Seriously, for the hardcore players, this is the stuff that matters the most.

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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.

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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:

Public Service Announcement

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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):

I tried attaching the sensors under the pedal, like with my last pedal, but the “bounce” of the pedal set it off because it’s too close, which was unplayable. So finally I attached it directly to the beater, which I know other people have tried, and it works perfectly. It goes off right on the beat, and you can do rapid hits and it won’t miss, since the beater has such a large throw. Since it’s from my real set, it has the back which gives great rebound, and it feels soooo nice. Proof that it works as well as I say (no double-bass):

Once we get our new Xbox, I WILL make some videos, I promise!

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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!

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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.

Corrections and Additional Info:

When talking about using a cymbal pad for a real drum pedal, I said you put it on the floor — I didn’t mean flat on the floor, you put it perpendicular so the beater hits it like a real drum.

I forgot to mention that there is a licensed drum pad silencer set coming out for Rock Band. It probably isn’t actually made by Harmonix, but it has the official logo on it. Not much info is known about that yet.

Regarding the Omega pedal: the switch is actually on the side, and the axle that the beater is connected to is what triggers it. Every time the axle turns, it hits the switch.

Videos:

Here is my drumset with some of the different mods we discussed [Update: new MUCH better pedal]:

Links:

Good Wood Mods – Support Struts
Rock Band Drumsoft – Drum pads. The ones I have are the Gum Rubber Composite.

Drum Modding 101 – TONS of links in this thread.
deepbluevibes’ Infamous Sock Mod
The Rock Band Drum “In-between Sock Mod” (this is my variation that I was talking about. You can see photos here as well)

The Lazy Man’s Authentic Drum Pedal Mod! – Make your own pedal
DESTROYER Pedal
Omega Pedal

Score Pictures:

Just some proof that my drums really are working at almost 100%. I have lots of gold stars, these are just a few that I took pics of.

I broke my streak on this one, but it wasn’t my fault. (hey, I said almost)

I mentioned this one in the podcast, this was right after I put the Drumsoft pads on:

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The Rock Band Drum “In-between Sock Mod”

Here’s a little guide I wrote for a Rock Band drum mod (based off of another mod). It’s working great for me, but I’d love to get more feedback on it. If you try it, let me know how it works!

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The game is awesome.

I’m not going to focus on all the little good things here, so let me just say that I love the game. There are some major usability issues that I’ll be discussing in the future, but the venues, characters, and core gameplay are fantastic.

Stars are displayed as you earn them.

You always know exactly how well you’re doing because the stars have orange circles around them. They fill up as you’re playing, and when you earn another star it “dings.” This can anger you when you’re one pixel away from five stars, but it also creates some cool moments. I finished the Vocal Solo Tour on Medium (my voice sucks). On a few of the songs, I just barely got five stars. I was singing “Suffragette City,” and at the end saw I was so close to five stars. I had already activated my overdrive, and just had a tiny bit left. The very last part of the song isn’t singing, it’s just yelling “Suff-ra-gette!” at the right time. Well I literally got five stars on the last syllable of the song!

The solo buttons on the guitar make tapping much easier.

Not just during the official solo sections, but for any HOPOs, you can use your right hand to hit the small orange button since it’s so close to the strum bar.

The audience sings along.

During certain parts of the song, the audience will actually sing along in the background. It’s great.

The avatars are tied to their instruments.

This part was really confusing me until I actually played it. When you create a character, you do it with the instrument you’re using. After that, you can ONLY use that character on that instrument! So when I went to play the Solo Tour, I had to create TWO more characters in order to sing and play guitar, since my original character could ONLY play the drums. Stupid. This was because our singer and guitarist were on different Xbox profiles. You also can never change height/weight/face of your character, so choose wisely! (You can change hair/clothes later.)

To buy new songs, you need to quit to the dashboard.

There’s no in-game menu for it, you actually have to quit the game, go to the dashboard, find Rock Band on marketplace, then buy songs. It’s just one giant list, and will be very cluttered once more songs are available. (And be careful not to buy a song pack, and also buy the songs again individually.)

Fan limit depends on lowest difficulty.

In BWT mode, there is a cap on the number of fans you can get, depending on the lowest difficulty someone is playing on. So if ONE person is playing on Medium, and the others are playing on Expert, Medium counts. You’ll still gain money, but no more fans once you’re at the limit. For a longer discussion on this, see my future posts.

Drum bass notes “bounce” the screen.

Every time you hit a bass note on the drums, the drum lanes “bounce” on screen. It’s very subtle, but I find it pretty annoying. I’m already getting tunnel vision from the game, and this doesn’t help. Maybe it’s cool on Easy, but on the harder difficulties there are constant bass notes. I don’t really notice it much anymore, but then what’s the point? If you see it, it’s annoying; if you don’t, why bother putting it in?

DLC songs are not well implemented

When you buy new songs, they will appear in Random setlists, or you can use them in “make your own” sets. It’s better than nothing, but I really hope they’ll change this. More about this in future posts.

Band Leader

You need to choose a “band leader” to play BWT mode. After they’re chosen, they ALWAYS have to be playing, and can’t switch instruments. So if you start with the leader on drums, and later want to play guitar/mic with someone, you can’t. Someone will always have to play the drums, or you’ll have to start a new band or play quickplay. Recommendation: make the guitarist the leader, since you’ll probably always have someone on guitar. If you want to play BWT by yourself (must play two instruments), make the vocalist the leader, and then you can switch your other instrument whenever you want. You CAN change your band name whenever you want, so that’s good.

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I started writing this review right after getting the game, two months ago, and have since added to it. There is so much more to say about the game, though, that I have left some things out to talk about later. I have broken it into two parts, and apologize for the unorganized format. It's not so much a review as it is a discussion.

Instruments:

I actually love the guitar. The neck is a bit smaller, so it doesn’t hurt my fingers as much (I have small hands), but it’s also longer, which is nice. I absolutely love the feel of the fret buttons, it’s something you really just have to try. The strum bar is…weird. It’s kind of nice because you don’t have to move it very far, so you can alt strum really fast. However, there’s no click, and it’s so “soft” that it’s not as easy to keep a constant rhythm. So far it has not broken, after two months of play.

The drums: well, I’m pretty biased here, because I play Drummania on a Yamaha DTXplorer set in my room. So, compared to that, these aren’t great. But compared to the home drummania controller, these are way better.

The drum pads are hard, and LOUD. It takes some getting used to the placement of them, and they almost drown out the music. Mine don’t register rolls very well, which is a problem others have had. This is serious. There are songs that I’ve failed on Hard, because it has a string of red notes, and the drum simply can’t keep up with it, even though I’m hitting them. I’m going to get a replacement and hope it’s better. I’ve done the “tape mod” and beat the game on Expert, but it’s not perfect.

I was worried about the bass pedal, but it’s actually better than I expected, and pretty easy to press. Be careful not to step too hard in the middle of it, because you can feel it flex and other people have broken theirs. After beating Expert, I now loathe the pedal. It is okay for a plastic pedal, but boy does it wear out your leg. Since there’s no rebound, it’s very hard to sustain rapid beats. I hope to do one of the “real bass pedal mods.”

I also didn’t get the official “Rock Band” drumsticks, I got cheaper, rough (blank) ones. I wouldn’t use them anyway, since I have my own, but hey, I want some Rock Band drumsticks.

The microphone is good. Just a USB mic, but it’s solid, with a Rock Band logo.

Difficulty:

I was worried about the guitar difficulty, but now I’m totally fine with it. It IS easier than Guitar Hero (save for the DLC), but that doesn’t mean it’s boring. Since the guitar takes some getting used to, it’s probably a good thing they didn’t rival GH3. Plus, GH3 was hard for the sake of being hard, where RB is more logical.

When we started the BWT mode, I played drums on Expert. Compared to Drummania, it’s considerably easier. Due to my dislike of the pedal, and the fact that my other bandmates (roommates) play on Easy/Medium, I just play on Hard for the BWT. There’s no incentive to play higher, and we play for long periods at a time. The only other complaint is the lack of hyperspeed! I play Drummania on 3.5x hi-speed, and some of these songs really need it.

Difficulty Requirements:

In BWT mode, some setlists must be played with everyone on Hard/Expert, which some people don’t like. I don’t mind it, it gives the game legs — keep playing and you’ll get better, and there will be new stuff you can do. But for people who don’t like it, maybe they should have made it like the wagers (e.g., “get five stars for double the fans”). Play on Hard and you’ll get something extra if you pass it. At the very least, I wish the setlist had an icon next to it telling you what difficulty is required. It’s frustrating going through all the venues, finding a setlist you want to play, and then finding out it’s too hard for my roommates.

Logo Creator:

The logo creator is cool, and easy to use. You can grab different pieces of art, change the size/rotation/color, and use multiple layers. The annoying thing is that it takes a million button clicks! You have to select a layer, then select “modify,” then “rotate,” etc. It would be much better to have quick-menus when you pull the triggers. Hold L to select a layer, hold R to select modification — that sort of thing.

Rock Band vs. Karaoke Revolution:

I have Karaoke Revolution, and we’ve had big parties where we all play. But somehow, the RB karaoke is even better, and shouldn’t be underestimated. The scoring is even better in RB.

KR has a meter you need to fill up by singing on pitch. On Expert, you have a bigger meter. RB is different, in that you actually can be a little off pitch on the easier difficulties, but on Expert the “pitch line” is thinner so you need to be more accurate. In other words, in KR your pitch has to be dead-on, most of the time. In RB your pitch can be slightly off the entire time.

The only downside is that RB doesn’t have duet mode with the band.

Tutorials:

The tutorials are pretty cool, because they’re taught by people from the bonus song bands. The vocal tutorial is taught by Helen from Vagiant, while the drum one is taught by the dude from The Konks. I didn’t bother with the guitar tutorial.

Practice Mode:

You can change the speed of the replay by pressing the D-pad, which is great, because it also automatically loops the section you chose. So you can just keep playing it, gradually speeding it up, without ever stopping.

Disconnected instruments:

Just a tip: we accidentally bumped the cord or something, and the mic said it was disconnected. Even after completely unplugging, and plugging it back into the hub, it wouldn’t work. The same thing happened with the drum later that night. If that happens, unplug the whole hub from the Xbox, then reconnect it.

Read part 2 of the review »

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Dead on Arrival:
This was the first song I failed on. Maybe it’s because I really didn’t know this song at all, but it also has a weird pattern that’s pretty fast. I got it on my third or fourth try, scraping by with overdrive.

Foreplay/Long Time:
This song is fun, but the beginning is pretty tough, mostly because of the lack of rebound on the drum pads (haven’t modded yet). There’s a fast “L L R” pattern you need to do, but after that the song is easy.

Next to You:
I forget if I actually failed this song, but it’s definitely hard. Very fast, lots of bass.

Run to the Hills:
Very fast rolls, not very complicated though. The problem was that the pads weren’t registering all the hits, so I failed a few times. On my next try I played really lightly, which helped tremendously, and I passed it. It must have been pretty funny to watch.

In other news, we just got a whole bunch of DLC, including the Metallica pack. I’ll have to see if I can get through Blackened, as that has tons of notes close together. Hyperspeed, please!

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I kept running into the same few people online — because it was late, or not many people play on Hard*, or everyone’s playing Guitar.

* I would play Expert, but the songs are random, and I can’t stand playing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” with its ten billion bass notes in a row.

After playing Shoombabi I think two times, we played again and got “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” This was the final result:

TIE! We both missed the SAME SINGLE NOTE! It wasn’t even an off-beat note or anything! It was almost at the very end of the song (the 986th note, not sure how many there are total). I know I hit it, and he said he hit it too, so what’s up? Either both our drums happened to glitch on us at the same time, or the game glitched. Crazy. Who else has gotten a tie (not counting 100% ties)?

Oh, and I did eventually get the achievement. :)

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Update: Regarding the probability of this happening (if it wasn’t just a glitch):

Assuming there are exactly 1000 notes total, for the sake of simplicity, there’s a 1/1000 chance of randomly selecting a “chosen” note. But we BOTH missed the same note, which would be:

1/1000 * 1/1000 = 1 in 1,000,000!

Correction by WildBillKickoff:

Actually, the chances of missing the same note in a scenario like that would be 1 in 1000, assuming you both intentionally missed one random note. You can’t count the first 1 in 1000. It’s one in a million that you would both miss that one exact note.

However, that probability is only if we CHOSE to only miss one note! But we didn’t, we *accidentally* each missed only one note, and it was the same note. We could have missed more notes. So there’s the probability that we each missed one note only, and the probability that it was the same note, and the probability that we were playing against each other when it happened, and…. [insert head spinning emoticon]

Anyway, the point is, it was very unlikely!

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1. Rock Band: Expert Pro Drums 100% flawless scores Here are some of the more notable 100%s I’ve gotten...

That’s right, I have two of the HIGHEST ROCK BAND DRUM SCORES in the WORLD*!

Okay, this isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds, but I’ve gotta milk this for all it’s worth, since this’ll surely last a whole…hour? (day? week?) Actually the first one is pretty good, five gold stars:

That was my fourth try, and it was so close to 100%. I missed maybe two notes (why no advanced stats?)! It’s an easy song, but there’s this part where it throws an extra snare note in, so it’s red/yellow, red/yellow. Everywhere else the second is a single yellow, so it always threw me off, and I missed a couple notes. I can definitely get 100% if I remember that.

Here’s my other #1, but really, it wasn’t a very good run at all (98% I think). It was on my first or second try:

Clearly, not many people are playing these songs, because I was nowhere near flawless. Both of these songs are downloadable, so not everyone has them. And most people are probably fighting for high scores on Metallica or whatever they think is the hardest song. And only the U.S. currently has Rock Band. *cough* Also, pretty much everyone, including me, has broken drums right now. Once everyone starts modding, things will be very different.

As far as the game goes, I have a big advantage here, because I play a lot of Drummania. To be honest though, I’m only an average drummania player (or a bad one, compared to most youtube videos). Most people who bought Rock Band have never played the drums before, so they’re learning for the first time how surprisingly difficult the bass pedal is — something I learned the hard way a few years ago. The truth is, pretty much any good DM player could destroy every song in this game (more on this in a minute).

Leaderboards vs. 100% scores:

This raises an interesting question: what happens to the leaderboards when people get 100%? This is different from guitar for two reasons:

1. Guitar can activate overdrive anytime, which means people will be able to find better “routes.” Yes, drum overdrive gives you a choice, but it’s very limited, and waiting can actually can be detrimental because it’ll take away notes.

   There’s also a guitar technique called “squeezing” where you activate SP right after a note, and hit the last note early, so it’ll still count (not sure if this works in RB though, it was a GH thing). Basically you just get a couple extra notes under star power.

2. Guitar can whammy more overdrive out of sustained notes, which drums can’t do. Even if it’s just a split-second more, that can be enough to give a slightly higher score.

So when people get 100% on drum songs, and use all their overdrive…that should be the highest possible score. What happens to the leaderboards? Do the newest ones go to the top, or the oldest? If it’s the oldest, there should be a mad rush to 100% every song you can, first, to secure your spot.

There’s another interesting (weird?) thing about the leaderboards: you’re competing against all difficulties! You can see the checkmarks at the left side; they’re color-coded (black, bronze, silver, gold) to what difficulty it was played on. I guess Expert will always have the highest possible score? Still, not really fair, is it? Why would people playing on Easy want to know how they rank against Expert? I suppose this prevents Expert players from spamming the Easy leaderboards, but…eh.

Drummania vs. Rock Band:

So, back to Drummania. It’s way harder than Rock Band drums. Go watch any of the Extreme difficulty DM videos on youtube, and your head will explode. For a point of reference, here are two (the center column is the bass):

Children’s Sketchbook extreme FC (seeing what insane things people can Full Combo in DM makes RB look like child’s play):

DD4 ext speed x1 — his score isn’t very good, but he’s playing on 1x, which is really hard to read, but it makes for a good notechart comparison because RB is fairly slow:

One last screenshot. This one is by no means a high score (#1 is around 250k?), but just more proof that Rock Band isn’t very hard — because, again, I’m not a very good drummer. This was my first time playing this song on Expert (I played it a couple times on Hard), so it was a sight-read (I believe this is in the second-to-last tier of drum songs):

I was being cautious with the overdrive, since I didn’t know if the song would get harder, otherwise I would have had a higher score.

Right now it seems the hardware is holding a lot of people back, not the songs, but I’m sure we’ll see more insane stuff as DLC.

Related posts:

1. Rock Band: Expert Pro Drums 100% flawless scores Here are some of the more notable 100%s I’ve gotten...