Rock Band 3
62 Achievements
1,250
80-100h
Pro Keys Graduate
Completed the final Pro Keys trainers.
25
How to unlock the Pro Keys Graduate achievement in Rock Band 3 - Definitive Guide
To gain this achievement you must beat the Expert Lessons In Pro Keyboard ONLY!! Not alot of people know this thus making them do it all and that waste time.
Difficulty:
This is a very difficult achievement to achieve legitly
How to unlock achievement:
The way i got it was simple i got an idea that rock band has added as a new feature.. When you press start while playing a song and then unpause the highway or fretboard moves back words a little and the continues forward. What i recommend you to do is hit one note and immediately press start and configure your hand to the next note. This is extremely helpful when you are forced to switch finger positions quickly for different chord positions. It does Work i have done it myself.
Cons:
This is very time consuming and often gets boring when you mess up and you have to restart but its the only way to get it if you suck at keyboard and dont wanna bother wasting to much time and effort.
Update:If you're having problems with it going red, back up to the previous progress session, then move back to your current lesson. It seems like if you mess up once then the pause trick doesn't work, but doing it the "first time" on each lesson does. Hope that made sense.
Credited to simmias42
Sometimes I hit the guide button but that sometimes didn't help because that delays the game pausing and the next note is missed by then!
The first lesson of part 4 where you have the repeating red notes and various 2/3 note chords, I found it easier to try and keep rhythm with the red notes while rushing for the pause button because the timing there was tight and there were tons of notes in this lesson.
The last lesson in part 4 where you have the ascending and descending notes, I personally thought was evil. Because the 4 note chords at the end, the solo was ok but it took time to get through with constant pausing and unpausing. You could get someone to help you pause but I managed without.
I recommend this solution as I'm a horrible keyboard player. The only thing I struggled with was getting to the pause button quick enough. I managed to get this achievement in about 2 hours with a lot of determination and patience.
Great solution!
http://www.pianoworld.com/fun/vpc/piano_chords.htm
It shows you the keys you would need for each chord and scale, and most useful modes. The exercises in the game cover all of the major scales, about half of the minor ones, and the Dorian and Mixolydian modes, which is about all you will find in this music.
One suggestion for the large chord changes that occur quickly: memorize the first and 2nd chord of the change, and analyze the position that your hand needs to take for each. Then, analyze the transition. What fingers change from black to white? How far is each finger moving? Can I keep the same shape and just move sideways? What fingering is best for each chord, and what fits my hand best?
Comments with specific questions pertaining to these would be the best way for me to update my solution (i.e. what exercises were hard and how I would suggest solving the problems), since when I went through them it posed no real difficulty and thus I didn't really develop a 'strategy' for dealing with them.
Happy practicing!
IMPORTANT NOTE: Only the expert lessons are needed to garner this achievement. Thanks to nightwif for asking this crucial question. If you are using the MIDI controller and cannot bend pitch on your keyboard, there is at least one early exercise that you won't be able to do. :/
EDIT: Hitoshura gives some fantastic advice that I didn't think of! Use both hands! Some of those bigger, 4 note chords can be tough if you're not used to playing keyboard, and you can accommodate yourself by taking the bass note of the chord (or even the lower two notes) with the left hand.
EDIT: I just noticed something. The keyboard abides by the same rule as guitar, in that you can play notes above other notes that you have held down in a run, but you can't play something below what is held down. So, if you have three fast descending notes, you have to get each off of them before playing the next one. I was missing notes and wasn't sure why until I figured this out. This makes downward glissandi much harder to pull off than upward ones if you wanted to play them like scales (with one finger on each note, like I was doing). Pretty much forces you into the one-finger method the game prescribes. Maybe this mechanic is in place because you can use the guitar to play normal key tracks, but whatever the case, it shouldn't be there.
EDIT: Here are a couple of questions that EchIlIon Asked me, and I thought they were good enough to be posted here.
Q. I seem to look at my hands a lot, but I assume that will vanish with practice?
A. You could get used to using the black keys to orient yourself, rather than looking. If you feel yourself inclined to look, take a quick feel. You'll quickly notice that it's easy to find your place using the larger gaps between the sets of two and three black keys. This ties into your other question, about getting tired.
Q. My fingers or wrists seem to tire quickly. Any methods for increasing endurance or strength?
A.It's easier to find your place if you play flat-fingered. However, the keyboard uses a non-weighted lever system, similar to those used in (really) cheap, crappy keyboards. This means that, the closer you are to the fulcrum of the lever, the harder in the keys are to depress. I recommend playing on the ends of the keys to conserve energy, and once you've played a chord, try to let the weight of your arm hold the notes down, rather than continuing to push. This would be easier on a real piano or keyboard.
The best solution is to have a decent keyboard and MIDI controller, when it becomes available. It's super easy to miss notes on this junky little thing, because even barely grazing a key from the side results in an activation. You would find that the keys on a real, weighted keyboard are more forgiving, and slightly larger.
Just for kicks, I tried to hit the first 4-note chord in one of the last lessons... You've got to be kidding me, you're meant to do those with one hand? I'd struggle to do it if I had three!
The advice in Dingo's solution is great. I have a few tips of my own to add:
1. If you're used to reading musical notation, take the time to transcribe the Pro-Keys notation into notes on a staff for the lessons you're having trouble with. It allowed me to concentrate on the actual playing without being distracted by having to constantly translate the notes. It also helped me to see a couple of patterns I hadn't noticed while trying to read it off the screen.
2. Just like learning a very difficult piece on a real piano, don't expect to get all of these the first time around. Especially when something is really fast, it's muscle memory that will get you through it. Practice it a little bit every day or so until you don't really have to think about what your fingers are doing.
3. Play staccato when you can (staccato is when you just tap a key and take your finger off it right away). This isn't always possible when a sequence is really fast, but it works for most of them. Like Dingo mentioned in his solution, when playing a note that's lower than the previous one, you have to already be completely off that previous key or the lower key won't count. Plus, the RB3 keyboard is so damned sensitive, I found that removing my fingers from the keyboard ASAP reduced the number of times I accidentally bumped into random keys on my way to the right one (I got many 100%s that didn't count because I hit extraneous keys).
4. I often found that playing some of the more difficult rhythms was easier on the faster settings, because when there's less time between notes, there are fewer wrong times to hit the key. :-) It seems like RB3 has a smaller window for accepting a note than the previous Rock Bands did. If you know you're hitting the right notes but they're still not counting, trying upping the speed.
5. Lastly, I want to reiterate the suggesion of using two hands for playing the larger chord sequences. Especially for people with smaller hands, it will help to prevent your hitting extraneous keys while stretching to play the whole chord with one hand.
Hang in there. This one is frustrating, but just practice regularly and you'll get them.
You only need to do the final set of lessons (Expert Lessons) for this trophy and you have to do them on 100% speed.
If you try to do this "legit", it will be real difficult and you'll need a lot of practice to memorize the hardest parts.
If you don't mind "cheating" a little bit, there's an "alternate" easy way of doing it:
As soon as you see the first note/chord coming up, pause the game. Now you have time to put your fingers in the right place. Un-pause the game and right after you hit the note/chord, pause again. Now you can reposition your fingers to hit the next note. Unpause the game and you'll see that each time the game "rewinds" the note track, but the notes that you've already hit disappear.
Just make sure to use the "pause and un-pause trick" until you see the note disappear before going to the next note.
If you miss a note (the percentage of notes hit flashes red), you'll have to start the lesson again. Press or to choose another lesson then go back to the lesson you are trying, thus restarting the lesson.
You can do this trick to hit all the notes in each trainer and get 100% on them. You'll probably gonna need a friend to help you by pressing while you use your two hands on the keys, especially on those 4-note chords.
Here's a video explaining this method:
Like the Pro Drum Trainer these final lessons can be very tricky, and have even given trained piano players difficulty. Access them from the Goals menu (Pro Keyboard > Lessons and Trainer Goals > Advanced Scales) or the Training menu and pass every lesson at full speed to unlock this. You will need to hit every note without hitting extra notes to unlock this achievement.