Lots of nice snare fills.
Vesuvius – Promised Land
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
Cock rock track with synths and all kinds of fun stuff. Tom fills.
Modest Mouse – Float On
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
Great hihat open-close training. Fills with hihat open-close.
L7 – Pretend We’re Dead
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
Pretty standard, straight rock track. Some nice multi-kick sections. Plenty of snare+kick fills. Fun tom+kick fills towards the end.
Lit – My Own Worst Enemy
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
“Standard” rock track. Some nice snare fills. Good ongoing kick-separation to build kick-only muscle memory.
Chorus is straight, quavers on the ride with crash on each bar, and some snare/cymbal fills.
Snare and Kick/Crash fill before the final verse is nice and simple, but flows in nicely. There’s some good Crash+Ride cymbal action towards the end, and a syncopated kick+snare+toms fill towards the end that’s going to take me a couple of goes in practice to get right.
Learning drums with Rock Band: The Return
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
In honor of the amazing Rock Band 3 announcements at E3, I’ve decided to start back at the beginning of my Rock Band Tour so I can use it to teach me a new musical skill: Hihat pedal.
I’ve been playing Rock Band with a midi kit for over a year now, and its trained me up enough that I’ll be drumming on stage very soon. Something I had to learn outside the game, though, was using hihat. The first time I sat down at an acoustic kit I had to start from scratch with my right foot (I’m a lefty drummer).
I’ve now mapped my DD505 kit through a great piece of Mac software called MidiPipe, which allows me to switch between Yellow and Blue cymbals using the hihat pedal. So it’s time to start my Expert tour again, and train up my right foot.
As I go through, I’m going to do a mini-review of each song I play, to document the technical skills each can be useful for learning: Kick training, Double-kick, Syncopation, Fills, Hihat switching etc.
Music Video: Flamingo Crash – Sister Sister
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
We recorded Australian electro-indie-rocksters Flamingo Crash live at Game On Night 5, and it looked so great that they asked if they could use the footage for a music video to go with the track “Sister Sister” from their new album “Triangle Island”. We replied: “Totally.”
Flamingo Crash – Sister Sister from Jaymis on Vimeo.
Game On Night 5: Final Round!
Friday, February 6th, 2009
The second-last in the series of Game On nights was to be our last Herovision performance for a while. So no crowd-hyping was required. We had a lineup of sexy geeks pumped up and ready to go!
After the biggest performance yet from the Dark Side, with a whole stage of Sith, and the Dark Lord Vader himself overseeing a performance of the Dark Lord Ozzie’s “Paranoid”:
Herovision + The Empire: Black Sabbath – Paranoid from Herovision on Vimeo.
This was followed by some truly epic and spectacular performances, most notably from a Headcrab-wearing crew “Llamar Fire Aftermath” who treated us to the epic-est of all tracks in Rock Band 1: Boston – Foreplay/Long Time and The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again.
Herovision: Boston – Foreplay/Long Time from Herovision on Vimeo.
Herovision: The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again from Herovision on Vimeo.
All videos from the night on Youtube.
Photos from the night on Flickr.
Game On Night 4: Little Scout, More Empire, More Rocking, More Awesome
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
Game On Night 4 was kicked off by beautiful Brisbane popsters Little Scout, who made us super happy, and then stomped on a camera.
Little Scout – Dead Loss (Live) from Jaymis on Vimeo.
Fortunately our cameras are rockstar proof, so we were able to continue with the Rock Band/Herovision out-rocking, with some enjoyable (if not massively skillful) performances.
Herovision: REM – Orange Crush from Herovision on Vimeo.
All videos from the night on Youtube.
Photos from the night on Flickr.
Guitar Hero: World Tour – Drum Kit MIDI Note List
Saturday, December 27th, 2008
I’ve been spending the holidays with the family, in a house which has a proper electronic drum kit, so of course we tried plugging it in to the Guitar Hero: World Tour kit. After googling around for a couple of hours I couldn’t find a list of the note values for the MIDI input, so I went through and found them by trial and error.
MIDI Note Number list for Guitar Hero: World Tour drum kit MIDI IN
0. Kick: 36 or 41
1. Red: 38
2. Yellow: 46
3. Blue: 48
4. Orange: 49
5. Green: 45
Playing World Tour drums on a higher-end kit is great fun, super accurate, if you’re looking for apartment-friendly drumming it can be even quieter than World Tour’s kit. Oh yeah!