New Guitar Hero Drumset Showcased

Kotaku is just one of many to have captured a recent showcase of Guitar Hero World Tour by Activision's CEO, Bobby Kotick. They have a nice video highlighting gameplay on the fancy new drumset. Looks like Guitar Hero is really turning up the heat in the ongoing war with Rock Band for dominance.

Re:Drumming...

[1729]

I'm an experienced drummer, and I was completely baffled by Rock Band's drum kit. None of the patterns felt like "real" drumming (both in terms of the kit layout and the rhythmic feel), and the small sticks and plastic pads made it difficult to use proper sticking techniques. I didn't try expert mode, though, which some people claim is actually easier for real drummers.

Re:Drumming...

[joggle]

You should consider buying a real pedal modified for the game (see here [rockbandpedal.net] for more info). You can also try the sock mod [scorehero.com] to make the drums more sensitive.

but seriously Re:I'm actually

[Essron]

I would be happy to hate Travis from Blink 182 for you. Seriously.

But seriously, this interface has far more potential to work like a real instrument than the silly guitar doohickey. Could have a lot of value for training a real drummer without the noise and with fewer lessons.

Even more seriously, since it appears to track velocity, it probably has a midi output, which means someone will hack it to be a synth controller, which would be really cool and make me, a musician who loves to mock guitar hero, have to stop mocking guitar hero, if the hero is playing drums, thru a synth.

One final for serious: You could set a learning workstation like that up right now with midi drums, a sequencer and a giant screen but the cost and level of knowledge required make it untenable for a student, but I'm sure some wealthy folks have this set up so that they don't have to hear how bad of a drummer their spoiled kid is. Seriously.

Re:another drum set?

[hardburn]

I was thinking about that problem the other day. The Rock Band set is a normal USB HID device, and I wrote a program a while back to play sounds on a normal computer when the pads are hit (link for the interested [perlmonks.org]). Presumably, the GH kit will also be a USB HID device, so if they're not compatible, then it should be possible to easily create an adapter using an AVR USB device that translates codes between the games. For that matter, it should be possible to do the same for guitars.

Re:Drumming...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so it's the opposite of real life.

I play both drums and guitar. I really cant say one's easier than the other.... they're just different instruments to me. Imho, the competition between them is just in the heads of some musicians, especially those who get special satisfaction out of "being a drummer", "being a guitarist", instead of what it should be: "Making Music".

think in terms like "drummers" it's necessary to be better than the other band members.

What i do know though, is that i gotta jump around and make it a performance act to get sweating with my guitar. I *can* just sit back and play it lazylike.

Drumming usually is a tougher experience for me, physically. You can play drums lazylike, just not as lazy as guitar. Also, drumming can feel like a sports game by itself. Guitar does not. You'd have to be jumping *while* playing guitar.