The Rabid Paladin

We’ve been rocking out with Rock Band for over a year, now. It’s fun for the whole family, or at least, those of the family who manage to secure a fake plastic instrument. There are advantages to being the largest member of the family, and one of those advantages is that I can generally snag the drums.

Well, our drum kit has been showing its age. The pads are all scuffed and puffy in places and I’m afraid I’m going to do permanent damage eventually. Playing on expert means moving with enough speed that it’s kind of hard to tap lightly. You can see in the picture above that we’ve already modified the pedal with an after-market metal overlay to help it withstand the stompin’.

Anyway, I wanted a new drum kit for Christmas, but Santa refused to pony up. The jerk. So I waited. On my birthday last week, I asked for a new drum kit. I told myself no, but I just couldn’t resist that sad look I was using to persuade myself that I really need one now. And hey, it’s the big 4-0 so as midlife crises go, this one is… recoverable.

Isn’t it cute?!? We’ll get those unsightly wires tucked away shortly with the little plastic ties Ion included in the packaging. Long story short, my fake plastic rock is now just a smidge less fake now. Initial experimentation turned out well. It’s a ton quieter and the rebound action makes a bigger difference than I even thought it would. I’m still getting used to the changes in position. I’m trying to play the cymbal lines on the actual cymbals, but the game itself doesn’t detect the difference. And I can tell you right now that the optional third cymbal is going to be a rather urgent addition soon (hitting that blue rhythm cymbal line just feels unnatural on the pad, particularly when all the other lines have been cymbals, too).

Here’s an action shot for your enjoyment with Teleri and Aerin accompanying (Melissa is off camera singing). I assure you that we’re all smiling on the inside. Rhys served as photographer.

One of our Thanksgiving Traditions involves hanging out with friends and playing games. We play RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, console games like Tetris, and board or word games (this year it was Boggle). We hooked up Rock Band 2 briefly this year.

One of the interesting features of Rock Band is that they release new songs you can download every week (generally for a small fee, but sometimes free). Last week saw the release of some Yngwie Malmsteen songs, including the second song ever to be released without any vocal track at all. Our friend Jay is a fan of Yngwie, so he had the new songs and told us that one of them, Caprici di Diablo, was a real killer on guitar. Jay, being the kind of friend who likes to share the pain, invited us to check it out.

We nominated Teleri to give it a try—she thinks she's getting pretty good on the ole plastic guitar. I snuck into the back with the camera, but I'm afraid that the pictures turned out pretty fuzzy. At any rate, here's some of the better pictures (click for larger image) of Teleri discovering how very hard Yngwie can be.

Don't let her stance fool you, she's intense while she's playing.

That's a perfect score on the final solo of the song. I really wish this had been one of the clearer pictures.

Her final score. This is an awesome score for a first time play through on that song.

When she was done, Jay asked Teleri what she thought. Her response: "That was fun!"