Going from GH drums to real drums? Does it help?

**sorgenskammer** · Joined: 13 May 2008 Posts: 66 Location: New Jersey

So I'm close to beating the WT drum career on expert. I've never really played RB drums before WT so it seems like I've progressed pretty well.
A friend of mine is buying a thousand dollar drum set and trying to sell me his old set for $200, so I'm wondering how well my skills in GH will translate. And it's a pretty good drum set for $200.
I know a lot of the best RB and WT drummers are real drummers so I'm wondering if anyone thinks it's a good idea? Or has advice.
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**FourSpades** · Joined: 31 Jul 2008 Posts: 275

First off, you need to now if you're getting a good deal with the $200 set. Make sure all the drums have heads, you have a kick pedal, you have all the hardware, and you have the cymbals. A common misconception with new buyers is that they assume the get all the extra stuff. You know those $1,500 DW drum sets? All you get are the drums. No hardware, cymbals, or pedals included.

To answer your question, limb independence makes up the core of drums. So, I guess the answer is that all the basic skills you learned playing GH will carry over the to the real drumset.

Now, a real drumset is much more complex, in that you can incorporate your left foot on a variety of pedals, from cowbells to the double bass pedals to the hi hat. I recommend you start with only a hi hat stand and build up from there. You have to learn to crawl before you can run, ya know.

If there are any other questions you have feel free to PM me, as I probably won't check back here anytime soon.
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**TheRaw** · Joined: 05 Dec 2007 Posts: 779 Location: On my throne.

In my experience, you can use your skills from RockBand/WorldTour to play a real kit. I was always into tapping and beating with pencils on desks or whatever, so my mom offered to buy me a cheap kit. For a while I chould only do simple stuff and pretty much nothing with the bass pedal.
Than I got RockBand and moved up to Expert. Now I can 5* Won't Get Fooled Again and 4* Run to the Hills. Sometime in between my starting on Rockband and getting up to where I am, I went back to playing on my real kit and found I could do much more. Now I play my real kit more than RockBand and can seriously get a jam going. I've never taken one lesson for drums and I'm better than all of the percussionists at my school.
So if you actually enjoy drumming and think you'll use it often, then go for it.
Like that dude above me said, you will have to learn how to switch up beats using the hi-hat pedal and if you invest in a double bass pedal (which costs as much as your whole kit), it'll take time to get good at it. And if you can find a good deal on a double bass pedal, PM me, I want one sooo bad.
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**Whitt333** · Joined: 03 Dec 2007 Posts: 1535 Location: Minnesota

My uncle who was a pretty good drummer in a band said that the Guitar Hero version of drums is similar to playing a real drumset, just more condensed. (Pads are much closer together) Playing on the GHWT drumset definitely helps with coordination, so with practice I would bet you could become a drummer.
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**eagle777** · Joined: 20 Mar 2008 Posts: 21

After playing rock band and ghwt I can play drums pretty well. Most of the time real drumming is just simple patterns with the snare and hi-hat that are easy to learn.

**quade92** · Joined: 22 Mar 2008 Posts: 13

I play the real drums and have for a loooooong time, I was pretty good, then RB1 came out in the UK which i thought would be a nice change from a real kit, after months of playing on RB1 I found I had vastly improved on my real kit, I also, have never had a lesson in my life but people in my school consider me to be the best in my school

What I'm saying is that with the drums it's all about co-ordination, so if you were to play a song for example Run to the Hills on RB and on a real kit, if you can play it on a real kit you can play it on RB and vice versa as your only change WHAT you hit and not WHEN you hit it.

So if you really feel like you have become a decent drummer on WT then you should definatly invest in a real kit, because the drums are so awesome!

But as somebody else said, make sure the kit has what you need and the correct equipment for you to get to a decent skill level before having to improve and extend your kit.

- Wow I have blabbered on

**PhatTrumpet** · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 1565 Location: Maine

People are saying that drums is all about coordination and limb independence, but equally important is having good time and rhythmic precision. Rhythm games do not teach you either of these things; they only teach you to roughly match someone else's time and rhythms ("roughly" because of the timing window). The only way I know of to improve your time and rhythmic precision is to practice with a metronome... a lot.
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**Wikey** · Joined: 19 Dec 2008 Posts: 5

**massi4h** · Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 536 Location: New Zealand

I feel that I have good time and rhythmic precision. Guess it came from my guitar playing before guitar hero. After playing a bit of RB drums at a gaming cafe (went through about 4 tiers out of the 2 or 3 times I went there in a span of a couple months), I thought I'd mes around on the drums at school. Simple rock beat (which I knew how it went) I did fine with quite a few fills and I even started playing around with the bass drum and open hi-hat. People actually thought I played the drums and was gonna actually do a group performance with me drumming lol.

So I guess it does help lots, but I did know all the real musical side first.

**rkuo** · Joined: 17 Mar 2008 Posts: 152

Playing rhythm games does improve your rhythm. You need to be mostly centered on time if you want to score well. Just because the timing windows aren't super strict doesn't mean you don't get something from it. It's not the whole enchilada but it does help.

**jpindustrie** · Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 1

I think it's all about understanding what you're doing while playing Rock Band.

I don't think RB/GH drums will teach you drums, but I highly recommend it to any drummer as a great toy and practice tool, regardless of skill.

The truth is, you're simply playing Simon with a drum shaped controller. However if you recognize the drumming basics while playing, it will certainly provide some of the basic rudiments needed to transition to a real set.

Things such as equating the red pad to the snare, the green to the floor tom/crash cymbal, or things such as realizing you're playing a 4/4 beat while trying to hit the proper 'colors', these are the type of 'milestones' you reach when first learning drums and are practically priceless while trying to learn at first. The fact that the game presents these rudiments in a fun, engaging, and above all unique fashion, makes this game indispensable to the beginning or practicing drummer.

**ABee1010** · Joined: 18 Nov 2008 Posts: 133

I agree with the previous poster that it's all about how you go about practicing. I'd like to add to that, in my opinion, playing WT drums with the WT kit is more accurate to real drumming than RB drums. In WT, each pad represents a piece on the real drum kit. The only doubling is that the orange can be either ride or crash and yellow can be either HH or crash. This is not that much of a stretch and at least it is different variations of a cymbal. In RB, the fact that any pad can be any drum piece at any time takes away from the correlation to a real kit quite badly.

For those that make the comparison between simon says and video drumming, I am willing to bet that most of you are making that claim based on RB not GHWT. If I play a RB song that I have never heard for the first time and I am about to hit Blue, I have no idea what sound it is going to make. I just hit it cuz the game said so. With WT I know that Blue is going to be a Tom every time, just like real drums, so I can anticipate better for songs that I am familiar.

Playing the game is actually very similar to reading drum music, the main difference beeing that the notes are scrolling and in real like the music is stationary and you have to move your eyes and play along to a metrognome. I would like to see a drum game that scrolls real drum sheet music horizontally rather than vertically and works with a E-kit. I think you could become a phenomenal real drummer through playing a game like that...

**Trogdon** · Joined: 19 Feb 2008 Posts: 948 Location: On the computer

**oneeyedlittleman** · Joined: 14 Mar 2008 Posts: 108

**Fernwilter** · Joined: 05 Jan 2009 Posts: 432 Location: Sweden

It helps a lot.
If you're good you've learned all the basics.
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