Even on expert there was a disconnect from what you're hearing and what the gems are telling you to do.
I've gotten to the point where I've got Superior Drummer and a midi kit running, and I've figured out how to remap the drums so that I can play open hat on the kit and have SD treat it as open hat, and the game treat it as ride/blue cymbal. (two presets, one where hat is always yellow, one where open is blue) And then I set the "instrument" audio in the game to 0, but leave the "background music" at 100%, and then pipe them together through the speakers.
As a result, I hear what I'm *actually* playing on my drums, and the game registers what I'm playing to the "correct" notes. (It's a little wonky when you have a green ride or blue crash. Blue crash is easy to fix, though, I just need to add a 4th cymbal. Green ride, or worse green HIGH HAT -- eff you Don't Stop Believing -- is a bit more of a pain)
What's hilarious is when the drums I'm playing don't sound ANYTHING like the synth set that some of the songs use. So you'll get like Freezepop or La Roux doing their synth thing, but with what sounds like an acoustic kit playing the drums. Also, red/yellow charting for snare flams sounds weird. (And you have to turn off drum fills or you'll get the drum sounds from the game as well as from the midi)
I imagine you could do a similar thing with the keys, or with the guitar.
Oh, the
really hilarious bit is when I play something like Through The Fire And Flames on Hard instead of Expert, since the game doesn't fill in the notes you're not playing, you get to hear what "Hard" actually sounds like.
It sounds a lot like I CAN DRUMMING!
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But, it's also helped me figure out when I'm playing just a BIT off, and get my timing better. Since you only hear what you ACTUALLY play, the game may give you credit for hitting the note correctly, but you can hear if you played it too early, or too late, or if you're not doing a swing bit correctly, or if you're putting swing on something that doesn't use it, etc. I beat some of my high scores pretty quickly after trying this way.
It's kind of a pain to set up, though. It's
really satisfying to play a song and actually be the one doing all the work.
Next stop, not relying on reading the chart so dang much.
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If you're on Xbox, there's a vibrant customs scene out there pulling in tracks from guitar hero or just the damn ether. We had a party the other day, and we played Paradise City, Beat It, a bunch of Muse, and a ton of other tracks that aren't FOR REALS. Seems like they've even got all of the beatles charted for customs as well. (Might even be some with Keys)
Then there's the Rock Band Harmonies Project.
Customs require no later than title update 4 (you can revert, if you know how) but the Harmonies project doesn't have any limitations, it just requires some fiddling with the song cache. Playing Boston songs with Harmonies was pretty awesome. They've even fixed the pro drum charting on some songs like Homecoming by Green Day. (Long snare roll ended up charted to yellow cymbal)
So, far from dead, as long as you know where to look.