[Fou du Village]

First of all, sorry if this topic already exists : I have no idea how to describe what I’m looking for in the search bar.

 

 

So I encounterd a few songs that include a pattern/beat/drum sequence (I don’t know how to call that) that looks like this :

 

hi-hat | hi-hat | hi-hat | hi-hat | hi-hat | … | hi-hat | hi-hat | HI-HAT + SNARE |

 

… With a speed already forcing me to hit the hi-hat with both of my drumsticks (otherwise that wouldn’t be an issue).

 

So how do you achieve that? Are there any tricks to do this effectively? I have no problem doing this if I only have to hit the snare at the end of the sequence, but both the snare and the hit-hat… There’s something I don’t understand. Are there different techniques depending on the parity of the number of hi-hat hits before the hit-hat+snare hit?

 

Bonus : There’s also a variant where the hi-hat notes keep going at the same speed after the HI-HAT + SNARE note (One Avenged Sevenfold song has something like this I think). So…

 

 

Overall drum level : I’m not a real-life drummer, I only play Rock Band 3 with an eDrums with MIDI pro adapter. I always play Pro Drums Expert. I have a few songs with “Gold Stars” at level 4. I only have one song with “Gold Stars” at level 5 (Get Clean – Anarchy Club). And I have a few songs with “Five Regular Stars” at “demon” level, but no gold stars.

[FujiSkunk]

In the case of finishing up a string of hi-hats with the hi-hat plus snare, simply play the hi-hat twice with the same hand. If you have a decent drum kit with good rebound, you should be able to flick the stick in a way that playing two notes in rapid succession with a single hand is not that hard. Obviously this requires knowing how to hold your sticks the “right” way, where you’re using mostly your fingers and wrist to make the hit and not your entire arm.

 

For songs where the hi-hats and snares keep going, this is something akin to the “disco beat”, so named because it appears in a lot of disco songs. Typically the disco beat is a string of 16th-note hi-hats broken up the occasional snare, usually on beats 2 and 4 but sometimes in other spots for flavor. Most of the time you play the disco beat by alternating hands on the hi-hat and then playing the snare without a hi-hat when it’s time for a snare. But as you’ve seen, some charts aren’t nice enough to let you play disco beats this way.

 

There could be several reasons for this. The obvious one is, the original drummer was simply that good and able to play all those hi-hats as-is, either one-handed or via some other trickery (more on that later). Another possibility is a drum machine that was programmed with snare/hi-hat combos, in which case the chart author should have been nice enough to make the chart playable by a human, but may have decided to keep it as-is for “authenticity”. And still another possibility is simply the charter mistakenly charted hi-hats where there weren’t any in the original song.

 

Assuming the chart is actually supposed to be played that way, one trick you can do is to learn a playing style based on the “paradiddle”. In drumming land, a paradiddle is where you play two notes with one hand to get your hands on alternate beats. Drummers who have been playing since elementary school will remember the endless “right-left-right-right left-right-left-left” exercises designed to drill the paradiddle ability into their heads. The more you practiced, the faster you got, until (hopefully) paradiddles became second nature and let you play more complex patterns and fills. Then, when someone really wanted to be fancy, they mastered the ability to paradiddle with both hands at the same time. For most drummers, this is much easier said than done, but it’s one trick to playing disco beats with all those hi-hats. Observe:

1  -  &  -  2  -  &  -  3  -  &  -  4  -  &  -

rh lh rh lh lh rh lh lh rh lh rh lh lh rh lh lh    (repeat)

rs                      rs

h = hi-hat, s = snare, l = left hand, r = right hand (reverse the l’s and r’s if you’re a lefty like me)

 

You may find some variants of this easier than others, but this is the general idea.

 

If two-handed paradiddles seem a little too daunting, you can try hitting the hi-hat three times with one hand. This one’s likely easier to master, but depending on the speed, it can wear you out faster as well:

1  -  &  -  2  -  &  -  3  -  &  -  4  -  &  -

rh lh rh lh lh lh rh lh rh lh rh lh lh lh rh lh    (repeat)

rs                      rs

Other drummers may have other tricks up their sleeves that I’m not aware of. Whichever one you decide to pursue, good luck!

[Shroud]

Great post FujiSkunk!

 

In my opinion, the most common case is simply an author’s charting error: hearing hihats is not always easy, hearing whether there really is a hihat on top of a snare hit is almost impossible.

 

Indeed there are some drummers who play very fast hihats with a single hand, but (again in my opinion) this is a less common case compared to the author just mishearing the drums or assuming too much about how they are played.

 

I think for a custom author is always a good habit to check videos of the original band playing the song, to see better what the drummer is playing.

[Fou du Village]

Thank you for your answers! I really appreciate. I’ll give a try at paradiddle. Even if I end up not using it, I think it’s always good to have more tools to help you! More possibilities! I think I totally missed the Paradiddle Tutorial included in Rock Band 3, so that’s gonna be a good start.

 

And yeah, I understand the dilemma between realism and playability for charters. I charted only one song and it took me like 30 hours (and I didn’t even programmed the animations). So big respect for charters! But as my GF loves to play Pop/dance/electro songs, I think I understand better why I face this kind of problem more often then needed.

[Author]

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