Be Excellent To Each Other

Oi Mimi - you sell stuff that you've made, right?
Make some Rock Band drum cushions to stop the awful 'clank' noise (I'm using a couple of towels at the moment). I'd buy some.

This hard:



I must point out, this is me warming up. I get harder as I get more into it. Um,

Excellent. It's a shame the picture on the monitor wasn't a little clearer, but still - excellent. I see you have the same problem I do with keeping your "hat foot" still.

Let me have a look to see if something faced with quilt batting would actually work for this. It might do and if so would be a good idea because I do not like the clunk either.

Davyyd, that is my favourite YouTube moment ever, and you are fantastic and crazy, And I like the shot of you setting the drums and camera up at the beginning up and you concentrated little wonkey smile.

Rules mmememememe! Teh Rulez!

Gah - too late: http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/Product ... t_id=70828

Sorry! I thought I was in the other thread! But it was locked.

I got confuddled :/

remove remove!

I'll let you off

Oh - removed.
Soz.

If you get some let us all know what they are like. I do not like the sound, either.

No worries, I just thought I clicked back to the mafia thread and I didn't realise that Craster had locked it.

Oh well. Sorry about that, guys.

You should see me doing the Rush track, my left foot is all over the place. I hate using the blue pad as the open hihat.

You could use ordinary drum silencing pads, I reckon. I personally like the click. I plan on hacking the pedal and attaching my double kick pedal to it, it's just a magnet for the trigger.

I scored 97% on Expert on that runthrough, as I messed up horribly a couple of times.

Also on there is the complete Rock Band inc. game.

The price? £85.86. Converted from USD, that is.

Go on, who's joining my band? We're called Hitler's Minions.

That's a hideous beard you have, D.Grimm.

Mmm, haven't trimmed it in a goodly while. I wasn't going to go and make myself all pretty for a Youtube video, though, that would be crippling vanity.

has anyone tried making a band online yet?

I did, just then.

No, really, does anyone want to do the online tour thing?

you cant do the tour online, thats the most heart breaking thing about it.

Oh, you're right. Bother.

apparently they were going to do a patch but that seems out of the window sicne its been a fair while since the america release. I heard you can do an online tour on the new guitar ehro if you want to shell out another £130 to experience the life of a band on the road on the interweb.

People on the Rock Band forums were selling drum silencer kits that were custom-cut pieces of plastic foam -- like wetsuit material or mousemat material. I don't mind the clunking so much as I thought I would though. It lets me play a little bit expressively i.e. banging it harder during the exciting bits.

As for the guitar bits being easier -- for me it's a good thing. GH3 was way too hard, I never got into Hard on it but in Rock Band that orange button feels achievable.

So far I've done 28 songs on Medium, two on Hard, one on Expert on the drums. I am amazed just how much fun the drumming is, and how much I don't suck at it. I've a long way to go but I'm not too bad I think.

No, GH3 was easy medium hard and expert as described

Rock band is vveasy veasy easy and medium....

I think Rock Band is about as hard as GH1 was. Go play GH1 and see what you reckon.

GH3 was too hard, and too hard in unfair, clunky, unintuitive, frustrating ways. Rock Band is too easy, though (at least on Medium).

I think it's partly down to my improving skills - going back to GH2 a few weeks ago I five-starred everything on Medium with relatively little fuss, something that would have been completely unthinkable last year when I was first playing it. Mostly though, I think it's the song selection - for example, More Than A Feeling was in the second difficulty tier in Guitar Hero. In Rock Band, its (presumably identical) guitar part is in the fourth difficulty tier. I also don't think it has the rock-hard top-end that any of the GH games had - Highway Star or Run To The Hills don't seem to be nearly as tough as Bark At The Moon or bastard Institutionalised or bastard bastard bastard bastard Raining Blood.

As with Richard (Cheerful)wood, for me that's a feature not a bug. I've been feeling vaguely guilty about not making the jump to Hard difficulty in Guitar Hero, so this will give me the push I needed.

Of course, in Rock Band the songs have to work, more or less, for all the parts so e.g. very long solos with boring drumbeats aren't viable. Free Bird wouldn't work in Rock Band as the singer would be pretty damned bored by the end.

I think I remember seeing some direct comparisons of the note charts for those songs that are the same. Particularly from GH3 to RB would be interesting, e.g. When You Were Young.

I believe this is the case for most people, and that GH3 even just on Hard was too difficult for most people. Putting people infront of it who have never played it before, I found GH3 a tougher sell than GH1 or 2.

Quite why GH4 thinks it is a good idea to add another button to the guitar and another pad to the drums I don't understand. Possibly because it's made by programmers and not musicians, I suspect.

another button!? awesome.

but i wont be buying it...having bought Rock Band.

I might sell rock band, dunno. see how good GH4 is.

unless they release it for xbox I cant really, and refuse to buy more games for the PS2, ive still got some ive never played.

I just wish ROck band guitar was harder. or at least the expert on RB was as hard as Hard on GH3.

It seems like Expert on RB is equivalent to medium with 5 buttons.

So they say. I don't think it's a good thing myself.

have you tried the last five songs on rock band on expert, they are experty no doubt. Id say the whole set is expert though since on hard on guitar hero 3 I could five star the majority of early songs in the hard catergory whereas on expert on rock band its alot more patchy.

Ive got bastard stuck on 2 songs on expert, which I always do on harmonix versions, GH1 stuck on 2 songs, GH2 3 songs, and now 2 songs, deep purple and the outlaws if your wondering.

I don't want to sound obvious, but: Why not just play it on hard, then?

That's too hard! I might not win!

the dreaded orange button, many of my friends can play well on medium just they dont want and dont like that extra button because they havent got 5 fingers for the 5 buttons.

I'm stuck in a middleground where medium's too easy but hard's too hard - I haven't quite managed to make the mental leap to being able to move my hand on the neck in the middle of songs yet.

I'm sure that'll sort itself out as soon as I can get some practice on Hard in the single-player - the same sort of thing happened with learning to use my little finger on the jump to medium, then one day it just suddenly clicked - but it's difficult to kick enough family members off the EggBox to log the neccessary flight-time at the mo. It wouldn't really be fair on everyone else to try and learn it as I go in multiplayer.

Or alternately it's primarily a multiplayer game I'm playing with my kids and I don't want to fuck up their band forcing them to rescue me every 30 seconds. One or the other.

The pedal has broken, at the stress point just below the spring. What should I do? I've looked at the EA site, it only offers help for faulty electronics. In my opinion, it has been sold unfit for the purpose of drumming.

Complain as it is not fit for purpose (albeit the purpose of a maniac drummer...)

To whom? On the box, it says not to complain to the shop you bought it from.

Well that's silly, because you have a contract with the retailer, not the manufacturer.

's what I thought. How likely am I to get a replacement in Gamestation, given that I'm rubbish at complaining?

Given the shortage I'd say a replacement was unlikely - I'd be tempted to complain to the manufacturer if you are able to.

say if you dont give me a replacement I will use you as my drum pedal twerp.

Grr, etc..

I was just starting to get 100% Expert things as well. Angry angry growling Davydd.

Oh god, you'll be recording vocals again soon, won't you...

No sleep for me for a couple of hours then.

They all break there if you are furious with your drumming, sadly. You have a few options.

The first one is to replace it with an aftermarket one that is much stronger -- if you go look on the Rock Band forums there are a number of ones you can get that are essentially real drum pedals with the sensors on. On the one hand, this costs money, but you will likely be happier with it as a pedal and it won't break again. As a cheaper alternative, you can also replace the pedal itself with a metal one here.

As for complaining, you are quite right that you are legally entitled to take it back to the shop and they are legally entitled to replace it. However stock is hard to come by and the shops can't easily replace just the pedal -- they'd have to break the box open. This is the reason for that "please don't go back to your retailer" message on the box. You will likely get better service phoning Harmonix directly. I quite agree that it is not fit for purpose -- you are just going to get a replacement posted out, I think.

Check youtube there is a ghetto quick fix mod. involves gaffer tape and some cheap butter knives.

It also occurs to me that you could probably remove the sensor from the broken pedal, Davydd, and fit it to a real drum pedal.

I'd still push for a replacement - why go to the effort of replacing or mending a pedal that you have already spent money on if they owe you a suitable replacement. At the least I'd suggest waiting for a replacement and then putting your efforts towards strengthening the new one, rather than mending the old, broken one.

I was planning on hacking it, as the sensor is just a magnetic trigger, but I don't have the funds or the wherewithal to do it right now. I'll just concentrate on my mad bass skillz for the time being.

In the meantime, if any of you get more than 93% on Tom Sawyer on Expert, I'll have some catching up to do

Doubtful, Davydd, doubtfull.