So the design was no trouble at all, but the material certainly gave me a headache. It wasn’t until this week that I got around to trying this out! GWM’s new ABS plastic was precisely machined, and thanks to some clever transforms in Illustrator, the twelve screw holes were easily made equidistant. The game’s drums had some hard rubber surfaces that weren’t great to hit, and despite the second iteration improving on these materials considerably, I still sought out some aftermarket alternatives.Ī plastic drum head frame sitting atop natural felt.Ī while back, I picked up some 8″ squares of thick natural felt, thinking that I should be able to cut some covers for those offensively loud plastic frames.

It also taught me the limb independence I just couldn’t figure out back when I was an impatient little kid. Sure, Rock Band was more than a drum game, but it was the drum portion of the game that elevated it beyond “great, another Guitar Hero” for me.

I’ve always been a big video game nut, so when some arcade games like MTV’s Drumscape and Konami’s DrumMania happened I was thrilled, but it wasn’t until Rock Band that I was really able to get into a drum game. I’d still sneak in from time to time and drum along to-I kid you not-F-Zero’s “Big Blue” and “Death Wind,” tracks I’d recorded onto cassette tapes. John helped me try to figure out the rudiments once upon a time, but I was so frustrated by making my legs and arms do what I wanted to at the same time that I never really went far with it.

I spent enough time just sitting in the room listening to his music to damage my ears. He would blast Rush tunes like Tom Sawyer and Red Barchetta and was so good at keeping up with the likes of Neill Peart that I was regularly awestruck. I spent a lot of the 90s listening to my brother John beat on the drums.

Rock band drum mods