Trombone Champ tips - Five community tricks for the Steam rhythm game

Now finally out in the wild after a number of years in development, Trombone Champ tips are starting to spill into the game's various emerging online communities. Like any rhythm game to come before it, it takes some serious practice for the mechanics of the game to stick. So if you're struggling with classic songs like Hava Nagila, read on.

Trombone Champ does what other games in the genre do: send a song's notes careening toward a line at the other end of the screen, requiring you to tap (or doot) along as they speed by. And with a difficulty scale that isn't all that accurate according to players, we've got a few pointers that might help.

For more game guides, check out a few for other big releases this month. We have the FIFA 23 highest potential players listed out ahead of time, and a Genshin Impact Layla page set up to go over the upcoming character's lore, build, release date, and more.

Trombone Champ tips

Slow the scroll speed

Fast, consecutive notes the bane of anyone in Trombone Champ, but there's a way to lightly counteract them without much trouble. Like the old Hyperspeed settings in Guitar Hero, you can hop into the menu and tweek the scroll speed setting.

Change this in some increments between songs until you find one that works for you. A slower speed will have more notes appear on the screen at once, whereas a fast speed will have fewer.

If you lean on fast reactions more than scanning for notes and mentally preparing for the incoming pattern, you'll want to go for a faster setting. Just keep trialling each tweak until you find the right one.

Hold onto notes a little bit longer

Whether it's down to an animation delay or a sound delay, most players thing the main difficulty with the game comes down to its fast, consecutive hold notes.

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To get around losing your streak in these hectic moments, Steam user Choi Sooyoung suggests letting hold notes ring out just a little longer than the visuals would suggest. It'll take some getting used to, but it should counteract the noticeable delay until it's patched out.

Use two fingers!

To take on those small, fast notes with more precision, Steam used bbbblucas suggests using two fingers to rattle them off with speed. You can actually try it right now.

Just hover your index finger and its adjacent one over a single key on your keyboard and press down, alternating your fingers with each stroke. Now try it again with just a single finger.

You should find that mashing a key with two is a heck of a lot faster than relying on one. Apply this to rapid notes and you should be onto a winning strategy.

Use a Steam Deck?

Though it probably won't help you clear the hardest songs, Steam Deck designer Lawrance Yang recently tweeted out footage of him playing the game using the system's gyro controls. They "may not be the most accurate for Trombone Champ," he said, "but they're definitely the most fun."

The lesson there? If you're just playing casually and not looking to rack up toots, using playing Trombone Champ on Steam Deck might just be a way to add some more replay value to the cult classic.

That's about all the time we have right now, so we're going to go back to playing Trombone Champ. See you at the ball game. Check out some Splatoon 3 conch shell pointers on the way, though, please.