Can Rock Band Really Teach You to Rock Out?

I've always wanted to be a drummer. I wanted it so bad that I managed to convince my parents to buy me one of those cheap-o drum sets for kids. A Kiss-themed one. (Well in my head they were Kiss-themed. In reality they sported Snoopy.) Thing is, I have no rhythm. Well I have some, but not nearly as much as I thought I did, back when I got that drum set. That discovery, coupled with my enthusiastic drumming, managed to destroy the Kiss drums in a mere month, with ever head punctured... on both sides. When Rock Band, the original Rock Band came out I was fascinated with the drums. More so when Harmonix told me that when played on expert the notes are one for one. One for one? Doesn't that mean if I was able to master Rock Band drums I could master real ones, I thought? So I started bugging Harmonix about helping me come up with some sort of lesson plan to let me use their game to teach myself drumming. And I was stalled, stalled until Rock Band 2 was announced and the guys told me it would include a drum trainer. Now it's time now to put theory to video and see if Rock Band 2's drum trainer can really teach me how to drum on real drums.Before launching on this little experiment I spoke with Harmonix front man John Drake about the trainer and my theory. Drake, a drummer himself, said the trainer was put together by the game's audio team with some help from some of the programmers who play drums. "Some of the rhythms (in drum trainer) were drawn from songs or iconic beats," he said. "A lot of them are really core vocabulary beats that you would find in songs." But can it make me a drummer? "I think its totally doable," Drake said, "It's the core of what Harmonix is about." So here's the deal. I currently suck at drumming, there's even video proof. My goal is to master expert on Rock Band 2 by the end of the month with the help of drum trainer . And we'll make another video to show you if it happens. In the meantime enjoy the video proof of my suckage and a quick tour of Rock Band 2's Drum Trainer.