RB3: "Through the Fire and Flames" Expert Keys FC (DLC)

Описание: This FC marks an important moment for a few reasons. Some of them were spoiled in my Discord server a bit early, but that was really my own fault in the end, so no harm done. With that in mind, I'll cut right to the chase: as of this run, I have reached the long-awaited 20,000 unique expert FC milestone across my progress within Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Fortnite Festival. I still have many thousands of charts left to weed through, but the 20,000 threshold is a target I've had in my sights for years as I have continued to chug along and work through the content libraries. To have broken that barrier definitely feels great, and I hope to see 30,000 someday -- perhaps I'll hit 30,000 by 2030 -- because it seems well within the realm of possibility assuming I keep this whole jig going.

Secondarily, purely on the instrument of keys specifically, this FC is very significant for a few reasons. I've held the keys FC record for years at this point, but I've stagnated heavily on increasing the count from a lack of feasible new achievements in recent times. I've been averaging only about one new keys FC a year for ages now. This one marks 1,120, which I can only assume will be the final round number I can realistically attain on the instrument. There are a handful of doable ones left with some concerted effort, but all the charts I have left come from Chaotrope, Amberian Dawn, and Andromeda (with the exception of Rusty Cooley's "The Duel," which is certainly a target now). Only 17 FCs remain from 12 unique charts, as the existences of a few double bass pedal versions unfortunately inflate the undone count a bit.

And as you could probably ascertain from the last paragraph, this FC also finally clears out the entire disc/DLC library on keys, with 499/499 HMX keys charts FC'd now. I suppose I dismissed "Through the Fire and Flames" for far too long as I've had 498 for like eight years by now and I've clearly improved quite a bit since. At the time, I couldn't work out the tapping bit at full speed, and I suppose I just always assumed it wasn't doable. Recently I revisited it and managed to make some good progress with a new method. And now I've done it. Here's the method, in case anyone's curious:    • RB3: "Through the Fire and Flames" Keys Me...  .

This song is obviously beyond infamous, but its keys chart really just boils down to one main section and one follow-up miss spot. Verse 1 (0:53) is where the money is. More specifically, the tapping at 1:00 is just utter nonsense. It doesn't help that HMX chose to put a unison bonus over the first chunk, adding to the visual clutter and adding more of a disconnect between practice mode and quickplay from a mental perspective. It's such an awful pattern and you just have to brute-force yourself into learning it. You aren't gonna get something like this by accident. Luckily, most of the song is really straight-forward apart from that. I would be remiss, however, to not highlight the only other remarkable section, the bridge (4:05). I totally screwed up the tapping on this run but somehow didn't actually miss, which I was pretty grateful for. That part isn't nearly as fast as verse 1, but it's almost as unintuitive to play. But yeah, once you clear the bridge, it's pretty much smooth sailing. The keyboard stays simple enough for the rest of the chart's duration. But hey, that's 499. That's 1,120. And that's 20,000. Good stuff. Let's keep rolling.