Guitar and Drum Communities Comparison

**sedron**

Note: For all intents and purposes, Bass will be counted as guitar, as many players of guitar/bass also play the other instrument. The only significant difference between the two is open notes (which only exists in GHWT,) and the 5x/6x multipliers of Rock Band.

Another Note: Sorry, vocalists, I'm not trying to ignore you. You guys just aren't very prevalent, especially in GHWT if XBL is any indication. It's not fair to compare the vocalist community, which isn't growing at the same rate as other instruments on the GH side of SH.

Obviously, the guitar community has been around for the longest time, and has shown real progress since the first GH game came out. There are crazy plastic guitar players now who FC things that would have people in disbelief had they seen it a few years ago. The skill level of the community on SH, as well as the number of people in all, has grown massively over the past couple of years.

The drum community is young compared to the guitar community, but I feel like it is progressing faster that the guitar community did. The first community FC of a game including drums happened quickly in comparison to the guitar community's first game FC. Seemingly impossible songs for drum players are getting FC's quicker now. The only on-disc songs left un-FC'd in RB2 are Battery and Visions, both of which are close. Top-players aren't popping out of the blue quite as often as they do in the guitar community, but there's a nice number of very, very skilled drummers out there.

My question is this: Is the drum community growing faster or slower than the guitar community, and why? I'm just curious, and am not biased torwards either side. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

**hydrapower** · Joined: 28 May 2006 Posts: 1708 Location: Rochester, MN

I think it depends on the game. On Rock Band it seems like the ratio of guitarists to drummers is something like 2:1 whereas on GHWT it's more like 10:1. I wish I could remember what it was like when RB first came out, i.e. whether the ratio was much larger and has grown smaller over time, or if GHWT drums are just destined to be mostly ignored.

Is the guitar community progressing faster or slower? To me it seems like the guitar community is desperately trying to find something to do. What do they have left, the Megadeth songs? (serious question, I haven't paid as close attention)

I think the drum community might have started off ahead of the guitar community at the beginning due to real-life drummers playing (aside: it's amusing now to look at the beginning of someguy's accomplishment thread.

) and then there's a few savants like ES942 who are now just as good as all those guys. I think more non-drummers are getting good at Rock Band, but will still be lucky to have even a half-game FC. Same on GHWT - tons of people have 50-60 FC's on guitar, but when's anyone going to reach that on drums? (EffectZ has 55 on his RB kit) Who's going to FC Purple Haze, Vicarious, Anything, Hot For Teacher?
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**CaesarsSalad** · Joined: 18 Sep 2007 Posts: 25

I agree to hydrapowers last point. The plastar is like a whole new instrument, completely unlike the realtar. The drums are pretty much like their real counterpart. So real drummers can benefit from their experience.

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

I see getting an FC on drums as much harder than getting an FC on guitar.

**Steebeh** · Joined: 17 May 2006 Posts: 1551 Location: Glasgow, Scotland

I thought Vicarious got FC'd? And Hot For Teacher?

edit: On drums.

**IWillKickU** · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 2830 Location: In the Undertow

I think that the drum community is growing faster than the guitar community did, but it's because GH and RB have increased the size of the rhythm game community exponentially. There are more new drummers right now than there were new guitarists when GH1 and GH2 came out.

That being said, I think that a drum FC will always be harder than a guitar FC, because of the limb independance issue. To FC a song, even a hard one, on guitar, all you have to do is master finger patterns on one hand and strumming patterns on the other. With drums, you have to have full limb independance with both arms and your right leg (left too once GH:M comes out with the double bass pedal). Playing plastic drums is just more complicated than playing plastic guitar.

If RB keeps making new titles that get new people into drumming (sorry, but a constant wave of DLC doesn't get people to go out and try the game for the first time the way a new title does), and if GH keeps including drums in all of its' new titles, we'll eventually see amazing drummers pop out of the woodwork like we see now with guitar. I don't think that we'll see a complete unknown show up and announce that he's FCd Everlong or Won't get Fooled Again, or somthing like that, but we will see unknowns pushing the envelope the way we did with guitar. We're already seeing some unknowns shoot to the top of the WT drums leaderboards (did anyone know of ElementOfZero or OMGChezmix before WT?), but as time goes on we'll see more and more of these type of players. I don't think that a Run to the Hills FC will ever be as common as a Jordan FC is now, but we will see people hit stuff like that more and more routinely.

I know that you left vox out of the OP, but I think that the progression of Vox shows just how tough drums really are. There are tons of Vox FCs in Rock Band. Way more than drum FCs. I think that with WT's new vox system, if all the singers don't get scared away, we'll see people's plastic microphone skills increase dramatically as well.

**hydrapower** · Joined: 28 May 2006 Posts: 1708 Location: Rochester, MN

**TheThirdDay** · Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 4357 Location: Toms River, NJ

**Mogwai** · Joined: 30 Jun 2007 Posts: 1219 Location: Bowling Green, KY

It certainly is progressing faster..

And you know.. I think the guitar aspect of the game is partly to thank for that. Had I never played a rhythm game prior to using drums, I'd have spent a lot longer times on Medium/Hard... But I progressed up to expert in nearly no time. I think it's partly because I've become so familiar with rhythm games it was easier to pick up on.

And it makes sense. A lot of the great GH players back in the day were very good at other rhythm games, too. And I somewhat think it's still the case.. For example, Iamchrisforlife(did I misspell it? I dunno, haven't payed much attention lately) is also one of the best DDR players in the world, if I remember correctly... ( I haven't looked this up on my own, just heard about it from a friend)
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**dore** · Joined: 26 Jun 2007 Posts: 1244 Location: Boone, NC

The majority of people played guitar first, whether they were around from GH1 or if GH3 was their first rhythm game or whatever. The drumming community benefited because most people who took on drumming had played GH/RB before and had reading skill. People who have rhythm game experience are going to do better because they have that specific hand-eye coordination that is required to succeed in drumming.

Because of this, the drumming community progressed faster. Most drummers had previous rhythm game experience while a higher percentage of guitarists did not.

EDIT AFTER NINJA: Chris isn't really a top DDR/ITG player although he probably would be if he played as much super-hard stuff as the top players do... but he still is damn good and that skill would certainly help here.
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**ElementOfZero** · Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:04 am Post subject:

**omgChezMix** · Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:19 pm Post subject:

honestly, I was rather surprised at how small the drum community for World Tour was at launch. I was expecting all of the top Rock Band drummers to migrate over and dominate the leaderboards. It seems like Someguy and Centerstrain played through the setlist once and then lost interest? I haven't actually talked to them in a while so I'm not exactly sure what happened.

As for drum FCs, I agree they tend to be a lot harder than the guitar tracks. Especially since a lot of the upper tier songs have ridiculous bass sections that were really meant for a double bass pedal.

**toymachine** · Joined: 30 Oct 2006 Posts: 9629 Location: Toronto

I just want to say the vocal community was a lot stronger in RB1

once RB2 came out and the talkies were "gimmies" besides 2 songs it was pretty much like "what's the optimal path- cool, bai"

WT vocals are "wtf how did corey440 do that WTF AHHHHHH"

XD

hopefully they fix the whole "100%" thing- it seems to really discourage people from playing WT Vox and also the whole not having visual feedback when doing vocals- which seems to be fixed in GH:M from the clip we've seen.

Re: Drums

Battery was FCd on PS3 >_>
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**sedron** · Posted: Thu Jan 15, 2009 7:54 pm Post subject:

Thanks everyone for the feedback! It's interesting to hear what everyone has to say on the topic. I definitely agree that drum FC's are harder than guitar FC's. I play both instruments on Expert (though I am not nearly aas good at drums as I am at guitar...) and found that getting an FC on drums at all was difficult (I ended up 100%ing Nine In The Afternoon with a double hit on my bass pedal. I blame said pedal.

). I feel like all of the RB2 songs (on-disc,) will be FC'd on Expert drums soon, especially considering Battery has been FC'd on PS3 (I checked through the 360 top scores when finding my info,) and that Visions is close.
On the topic of vocals, I agree with pretty much everything Toymachine has said. I remember seeing Scorehero's front page with news of BillTvShow's Next To You FC and seeing a lot of people congratulating him. With the easiness of vocal talkies on RB2, even I can "sing," now. Strangely enough, though, it was the easiness of talkies that got me more into vocals. GHWT's vocals system discourages me from sining at all, even though I love songs like Santeria and Hot For Teacher.
Off-topic, I think I overuse parentheses...

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