Problem with strumming fast

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

I bought Rock Band: The Beatles a few weeks ago and absolutely love it, so as a result I yesterday bought the normal Rock Band Game. Noticing a bit of a problem with it though, there are a lot of songs on it that require the same notes hit repeatedly quite a lot over a short space of time, like Blitzkreig Bop by the Ramones or When We Were Young by the Killers. This doesent seem to be such a feature of the Beatles game, so I am not very used to it. Problem is I find it really hard to hit all the notes as there there are so many of them and my strum isn’t fast enough. Does anyone have a way around this? Like is there a better way to attack these rather than just strumming down furiously? Should you be strumming up/down/up/down in order to hit everything? Its becoming annoying because for solos etc I am fine but for what should be the easier parts of songs I lose a lot of points due to missed notes.

That_Guy

If the many notes you're supposed to be hitting are say orange then just hold down orange and strum up and down. Don't try and strum down constantly.
It's tiring and your hand will hurt.

AidySevenfold

just keep practising it :P

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

That_Guy wrote: »

If the many notes you're supposed to be hitting are say orange then just hold down orange and strum up and down. Don't try and strum down constantly.
It's tiring and your hand will hurt.

Ah yeah I am not constanlty pressing the note I just hold that down but its the strumming that seems to be off. I always seem to miss a few in a big batch of the same notes that need to be hit quite a lot.

ongarite

I can't alt strum at all but I can strum nearly every song with long continous notes perfectly.
It'll take practice as mentioned but ABSOLUTELY crucial is your AV calibration, especially the audio calibration as its needed to help you get the timing for these long continous set of notes.

Tilt Gone

Some of the notes .ie three quick notes in succession dont all need to be strummed. If you strum the first note and then just change to the next two with your fingers they'll play as if strummed. Doesn't work all the time but very useful to know.

Try it out and see. I'm on expert on guitar hero metallica and without this litle gem of info I would be screwed.

calex71

What difficulty setting are you on OP?????

Learning to alt strum (up and down) is crucial for success. The way I did it was to play bass and whack it up to expert, usually will only have single notes , not chords flying at you so it's easier to deal with until you get used to that and move on to chords.

Usually long sections of many notes have a pattern, tap you foot along with the song and count in time in you head 12341234, or if using a guitar hero guitar the click of the strum bar to stay in time

It just takes a bit of patience and practice.

The zig zag hammer-on patterns in solos etc are the ones that kill me :mad:

Edit, It should be said though that there are many cases were it's more practical and more accurate to only strum down. Again with practice you'll get to realise which to do.

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

calex71 wrote: »

What difficulty setting are you on OP?????

Learning to alt strum (up and down) is crucial for success. The way I did it was to play bass and whack it up to expert, usually will only have single notes , not chords flying at you so it's easier to deal with until you get used to that and move on to chords.

Usually long sections of many notes have a pattern, tap you foot along with the song and count in time in you head 12341234, or if using a guitar hero guitar the click of the strum bar to stay in time

It just takes a bit of patience and practice.

The zig zag hammer-on patterns in solos etc are the ones that kill me :mad:

Edit, It should be said though that there are many cases were it's more practical and more accurate to only strum down. Again with practice you'll get to realise which to do.

Playing on hard, I am pretty up to speed with riffs and all that, its just the real fast repetitive chords that are doing my nut in!!

D4RK ONION

The way I learned how to alt. strum is pretty indicative of the guitar I learned to play on. The GH2 Red SG. I always break alt strum sections into small sections in my head.

In my head I break every alt section into 4 note pieces. That's down up down up. On the old guitar, you'd hear a click every time, so that would produce an almost metronome like timer to keep you going. Now with the RB guitar, it's stupid and silent, so in my head I'd be saying "1 up down up 2 up down up 3 up down up 4 up down up" and on the "numbered" down strums, I put a bit of extra push into it to sort of help me keep my time.

If I'm going down the wrong road here, tell me now.
1. Can you move your fingers between chords during an alt strum? (see verse of "Give it all")
2. Can you stop an alt strum and go straight back into it again? (see chorus of "Give it all")

ongarite wrote:

It'll take practice as mentioned but ABSOLUTELY crucial is your AV calibration, especially the audio calibration as its needed to help you get the timing for these long continous set of notes.

This is imperative. If you're playing on a system with lag, there is nothing we can do for you til you sort that out. See here for tips on what it is and getting rid of it.

calex71

You just used that Vid to taunt me, im still trying to get 5gs on it / shakes fist

Thats pretty much the same way I keep myself on track , some things that cause me to miss sometimes though are fingers slipping off the strum bar on really fast bits and worse forgetting to reset my strum after a gap eg: one section finishes on a down and after a gap i start on an up strum , which I find makes you feel off even if your hitting notes and can cause me to miss sometimes too.

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

D4RK ONION wrote: »

The way I learned how to alt. strum is pretty indicative of the guitar I learned to play on. The GH2 Red SG. I always break alt strum sections into small sections in my head.

In my head I break every alt section into 4 note pieces. That's down up down up. On the old guitar, you'd hear a click every time, so that would produce an almost metronome like timer to keep you going. Now with the RB guitar, it's stupid and silent, so in my head I'd be saying "1 up down up 2 up down up 3 up down up 4 up down up" and on the "numbered" down strums, I put a bit of extra push into it to sort of help me keep my time.

If I'm going down the wrong road here, tell me now.
1. Can you move your fingers between chords during an alt strum? (see verse of "Give it all")
2. Can you stop an alt strum and go straight back into it again? (see chorus of "Give it all")

This is imperative. If you're playing on a system with lag, there is nothing we can do for you til you sort that out. See here for tips on what it is and getting rid of it.

Hey man, yeah I can do both of the above, its just hitting every chord in say a same 40 chord sequence or something like that, I seem to miss quite a few. It must just be not pressing down on the strummer fast enough..the calibaration is definitley right I checked it earlier.

AidySevenfold

do ya mean kinda like tremolo picking on a real guitar? :P

D4RK ONION

You mean more like this? That's just stamina and practice man. But listen to that glorious click!

calex71

D4RK ONION wrote: »

You mean more like this? That's just stamina and practice man. But listen to that glorious click!

Impossible on a RB guitar lol, click ????????? sounds like drums on that vid

Banjo

Upstrumming on a Ramones track violates articles 2 and 5 of the Interational Rock Convention.

I find on *really* long stretches of fast repeating notes or chords the odd one will drop here or there. You know, the ones where there's too many notes to count how many strums to do and it comes out of nowhere so you have no basis for judging the rhythm of the strumming. Difficulty levels may have something to do with it - Knights of Cydonia in GH3 had a lot of sections, on hard at least, where you had to strum really fast but not quite as fast as the music. The Aaaaah-aaaaaah-aaaaaaaah! Aaaaaa-eeeeyaaaaaah-aaaaaah! bit just before the tremelo slide into the galloping verse is a good example. Messes with my head....

D4RK ONION

Sometimes you need to ignore what's on screen and listen to the actual song. I can keep up KoC's (ha cock) ridiculous alt strumming for a while actually. Misorlou was much tougher.