Playing in Harmony with Rock Band

Published December 11, 2007

With its Stratocaster guitar controller, drum set, and microphone, along with some of gaming's most intuitive gameplay, even the most casual gamer can immediately understand how to play Rock Band™. That it simultaneously proves terribly challenging is a testament to Harmonix's elegant design.

Are you ready for the stage?

After a few solo marathon sessions with each instrument and a healthy dose of the Band World Tour mode with friends and coworkers (including a guest vocal appearance by Denny Atkin), the following tips have been thoroughly vetted and are now available for public consumption.

Pick Up Your Instruments
We'll get to overall game strategy a bit later. Let's pick up the instruments and discover their own unique challenges.

• The beat (drums): Your first priority as a drummer should be to master, or, at the very least get comfortable with, the kick drum. More than any other element, the kick drum can trip you up during a song and ruin any chance at long streaks or high multipliers. Specifically, learn to hit the kick drum in between notes. It may be awkward at first, but just spending time with this technique will pay big dividends down the road.
• Hardly fast (drums): Would-be drummers would be wise to consider that the beat is hardly ever as fast as it may appear. Even when faced with a long stretch of rapid notes, always be methodical when hitting the drum pads. Tapping as fast as you can is never the answer.
• Loose grip (drums): The enemy of any good drummer is tension. Stay relaxed in mindset, and in how you grip the drum sticks as well. Hold them too tight and you won't get any bounce off the pads, requiring you to keep rhythm more with your arms than with your hands and wrists. Keep a nice loose grip a couple of inches from the bottom of the sticks and you'll be fine.

Synchronize!

• Hold the low notes (guitar): Trying to finger each note individually on the guitar is a recipe for disaster. Unless you're dealing with chords, try holding the frets above the note you're playing at all times. For example, if you're playing a blue note, you should also be holding down the green, red, and yellow buttons. This makes for much, much easier transitions.
• Solo buttons (guitar): While the smaller solo buttons on the guitar near the strum bar may take a while to get used to, they really do pay off down the road. Strumming each note during a solo on Hard or Expert is terribly difficult, so take the time when first starting out to really experiment with the solo buttons. It's worth your time.
• Up and down (guitar): Many people only ever strum down on the strum bar when playing the guitar, but strumming up works just as well. It's important to get used to both motions as faster songs on Hard or Expert mode make strumming down exclusively nearly impossible.
• Trust the tone (vocals): When you've been singing along to songs your whole life it's easy to fall in love with your own intonation, which can be especially troublesome when lending your vocal stylings to songs in Rock Band. Try to forget how you sang a song before, and just trust the tone in which the game is asking you to sing.
• Octave choice (vocals): While you always need to sing on rhythm and in tone to score points, you don't have to sing in the same octave. If you don't think you can manage the screaming high notes during a particular song, try dropping down an octave.
• Freelance humming (vocals): If you find yourself a bit shy of the microphone when it comes time to freelance (use your Overdrive energy), try humming along to the song instead of making up words. It's both less embarrassing and less distracting to your fellow band members. Both winning traits.

Get your drum fill on.

Calibration Insurance
It would be a terrible tragedy for any would-be Rock Band players to fall victim to an audio/video calibration error, making the visual on-screen notes seem out of synch with the music itself. If you feel that the audio and video are even remotely off-point, make sure to visit the Calibrate System selection in the Options Menu. It's absolutely critical for Rock Band to be calibrated correctly, lest any pesky quirks in timing cause you and your bandmates untold frustration.

Pick a Spot
The most common misstep for a Rock Star amateur is bumbling along after a missed note or two, frantically trying to get back on track. Take a breath after a blunder, focus on a section a few notes down the road, and start again from there. Otherwise, you're likely to keep missing notes, become even more frantic and play without any rhythm or feel for the song. Just relax.

Energy Use
It's always a great feeling to engage Overdrive and rip through a section of a song with an 8x multiplier, but when playing with friends there is no individual score. It's all about the band, so make sure to glance at the green performance bar to the far left of the screen before triggering Overdrive. If a bandmate is close to failing, hold off until they've either failed or gained some momentum and righted themselves.

Take a bow.

If a bandmate does fail, make sure to save them with Overdrive if you can, but also let your fellow band members know what you're doing. This way, other players can make an informed decision about whether to enter Overdrive or hold off, if, for example, a second band member is in danger of failing.

Synchronize
Speaking of good band communication, massive multipliers are earned by engaging in Overdrive mode simultaneously with other bandmates. Because both lead and bass guitar can trigger this mode whenever they want (provided they have enough Energy), either the drummer (at the end of a drum fill) or vocalist (when freestyling) should call for synchronized Overdrive.

Better yet, assign one guitarist to either the drummer or lead singer and the other guitarist to the remaining player. This way, you can synch up with one another knowing full well who should enter Overdrive with whom.

Use the bump on the yellow button as a guide for your fingers.

Just Listen
Take this tip to heart: listen to the song as you play it. Don't just time the notes as they stream down the screen, but study the rhythm of the song and learn to recognize the feel of every drum beat and guitar riff. It's this elusive, indefinable approach to playing that will eventually allow you to tackle Hard and Expert mode with confidence. Playing with feel is even more important than possessing good twitch reflexes. In short, trust your instincts.

A Medium Start
It would hardly be advisable to hand a novice player the guitar and dive right into songs on Hard, but if you want to learn quickly, try skipping Easy altogether and embrace Medium difficulty right from the start. The Easy setting is great for folks who only plan to play periodically, but Medium does a better job of making you feel more involved in the song, and in laying the foundation for switching to Hard or Expert modes.

One, Two, Three, Four.

Download Awareness
It's worth noting that whatever songs you download via Xbox LIVE® Marketplace will be slotted into the mystery set lists during Band World Tour. Unless you're a Rock Band prodigy or you don't mind losing a few thousand fans, make sure to really familiarize yourself with the new songs, especially since the downloadable tracks really challenge your Rock Band skills.

Instrument Only
It may seem odd at first, but you can go a long way towards improving your skill with the drums or guitar by simply practicing with the instrument completely on your own, without the game turned on. For example, if you're just sitting down watching TV, grab the guitar and practice transitioning from different chords as well as sliding down the frets so that you can seamlessly shift from green to brown and everywhere in between. Likewise, practice the faster, more complicated drum beats until they flow naturally. You can always improve, even when not actively playing.

Rock Band belongs to that rare category of game that can never truly be mastered, yet still offers an opportunity for tangible improvement with every song played. The preceding tips should get you started on the fast track and with a healthy understanding of how best to approach this unique and masterful rock-based rhythm game. Good luck, and rock on!

Article by Ryan Treit