YouTube's Rock Band drum masters

IBitePrettyHard is one of the best drummers around. I mean video game drummers. But check out this video of IBite playing the popular music simulation game Rock Band, which has taken Guitar Hero and added the option of playing drums and bass. Tell me the line that separates video drumming from the real thing isn't blurring out of existence:

You've just witnessed an "FC," or full combo, the Rock Band parlance for hitting every simulated note in perfect time, no errors. On the games' most difficult drum songs -- Rush's YYZ, for example -- that can mean thousands of stick movements and pedal kicks. 

The FC is the true currency of Rock Band and Guitar Hero mastery. Unless you can nail a song perfectly, you are not a true expert.

But it's drums, not guitar or bass, that are bridging the gap between fantasy video game versions of playing an instrument and the genuine article. The game's guitar is essentially a colorful game controller that operates nothing like its real-life counterpart. You can be the biggest Guitar Hero in the world, and still not be able to strum a "C." The complicated plucking, strumming and fretwork of playing guitar or bass is not well emulated by the five or six buttons boasted by the Rock Band guitar device.

But the Rock Band drum set is more or less a version of the kind of electronic drum kits that have been used by real drummers for years. Drumming is, in essence, banging sticks on surfaces, which is why real drummers are good at Rock Band and Rock Band drummers are, you know, real drummers.

IBite tells us in his YouTube profile that he's been playing real drums for 20 years, been in dozens of bands and played "around 1,000 gigs." A meter on his website shows that he has racked up 191 FCs on Rock Band's "Expert" level, at which the speed and number of notes are about the same as in the original songs.

You can see how illusory the real-fake division is in videos of DrumMania -- an arcade-style drum game from Asia in which players rip through songs at blazing speeds, following a video "note chart" that scrolls downward so fast it looks as though it exercises your eyes as much as it does your hands and feet.

— David Sarno

Comments

[Nate McCall (A_K1TTEN)]

OMG ITS LEEEEEEEEEE! Hes the boss...

[Lena]

OMG i cant beleive wat i just saw ur awsome lol

[henry(ilostmygunz)]

YEAHH LEE CONGRATS!! =D

[rockthelotus]

Lee? Lee! LEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

[vsTerminus]

Great to see Lee of all people pop up in an article like this. He's definitely the most interesting to watch

[FLPPNBEAST09]

Lee's getting famous!!! I wonder how many people actually see him and know who he is right away. It'd be interesting to find out.

[DonkeyDood15]

Lee, its you!!! Nice job :D

[TheProven]

Believe it or not, but the reason the video doesnt work is because Youtube's been taken over by companies who are ecsessively filtering videos for copyrighted music [which ANYONE can get ANY SONG AT ALL by using PvP, limewire, bearshare and stuff like that, and they have PERMANENTLY BANNED this man's account which he worked on for ages, and he also had about 40k of people sucscribed and following him.

Sorry people, but this legend is gone. Thank you youtube.