rock band 99

Rock Band #99

I still haven't finished the drums on Hard. "Run to the Hills" is a

pure speed song, and that's my weakness. I struggled through "Next To

You" (another ugly pass-my last stylish pass was in 1967), but RthH is

killing me.

I also tried a drum mod which has been reasonably successful. There

were multiple posts in the Rock Band forums/ about gum rubber pads, so

I ordered some (3/16" thick). They make a staggering difference in

sound levels--purely as a subjective guess, I'd say they cut the noise

level in half. What I haven't been able to do, though, is get the

yellow drum to register all hits--the other three pads are fine, and

the yellow pad is fine if I take the gum rubber pad off, but I have a

dead spot when I use the pad.

Believe me, that's not why I'm failing Run to the Hills, though.

There's a prototype drum kit from Ion at CES, and it looks pretty

spectacular. It also includes three cymbals, each one mapped to a

particular color (so you can hit either the drum or the cymbal to play

a note). It looks ridiculously cool, and I think there should be a

sizable market for custom Rock Band peripherals.

What I'd really like to see is a drum company both market an excellent

kit for the game and create an instructional program that would

somehow work inside the game (in conjunction with training mode,

maybe?). I've already been exploring rudiments over at the Vic Firth

website, playing along with some of the audio files, and I know

there's a market for this kind of instruction.

Here a couple of funny Rock Band-related clips. First is a segment

from Conan O'Brien, and it's all funny. Then here's an "ad" for a

product called Mega64's Rock Jam, which is supposed to fix your broken

Rock Band peripheral.

Lastly, Future Nobel Prize Winner Brian Pilnick sent me information on

a meme that isn't technically related to Rock Band, but it should be.

Basically, what you do is get a band name, album, and album cover from

the following sources:

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is

the name of your band.

2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random

Quotations page is the title of your album.

3. The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7

Days is your album cover.

Photoshop away and you'll have something like this:

one

two

three