Wednesday, January 7, 2009

drumming experiment...


most of you guys know that a) i don't know how to play drums, b) I've always had fun playing drums and c) I want to learn how to play drums. Well, ellen's cousin Rachel and her husband recently acquired Rock Band 2 (i don't really play video games, so its sort o like when your friends have a cool game system and you want to go over to their house and play, haha)

Well, we started hanging out more and thus formed the band "Behold! The Scabbard" which features ellen on vocals (for which she kicks ass) and me on drums. So, after playing this game, I decided to do an experiment: I have probably played real drum set approximately a dozen times in my life, however, I am going to see if I can "learn" to play the drums via Rock Band 2 - now I know some would proclaim an injustice in that surely a stupid video game is absolutely no substitute for the real thing. I couldn't agree more, however,thats not the point. Here are a few arguments for my case.

1) the game is fun as shit - and the 80+ songs are practically all the original recordings (i think)
2) the drum is actually set up rather intelligently with of course a bass pedal for the foot plus 4 drums up high from left: hi-hat, snare, ride/hi tom (depending on song), bass tom. So its pretty logical -
3) when playing on hard and expert levels, they do an amazing job of replicating the actual drum part on the system itself

so, anyway, I might not be able to play this game but once every week or two (if that) so Im dorking out and spending an hour downloading all the songs on the game to listen to and study. yes its highly geeky, but what if somehow, after listening to these songs and playing this game a handful of times, when I sit down to a real drum set, I have new skill sets?!

Wish me luck, ....

p.s. I also think that I've always wanted to be a drummer and this is my silly little way of manifesting that :)

1 comment:

Jeremy said...

As far as coordination goes, I think that there's a lot you could probably learn from this game. I used to go through Chapin's jazz drumming book while playing on my living room couch and when I sat down at a set, the coordination applied directly and without any noticeable loss. Tone and dynamics will probably not be factored in, but you always played drums really loudly and obnoxiously any way, so I'm sure the game won't cramp your style!