Qualified!

I've qualified with Play with Fire, finally, so I got to do a gig on the game.

The Muse track is still a challenging one to play, I don't think I would have qualified although I haven't played it for a few days now. If I was to learn to play this properly, I think I'd have to practice it frequently to keep the song playable for me.

I still like Jenny O's Well Ok Honey, and would have had enough points to qualify so I'm quite pleased with that. I did mess up a few times during the playing though.

Thinking about it, it might be worth the effort to play each song again two or three times to get the feeling for the song back before doing the gig, that might improve my RSP.

The new songlist is:
I Got Mine by The Black Keys qualify at 12,100.
Me and the Bean by Spool, qualify at 31,500.
When I'm with you by Best Coast qualift at 31,100.
Song 2 by Blur qualify at 50,600. I did notice something: the qualification score for this song has suddenly jumped!

I have two ideas about learning and playing these. One is to play in the order they give you until you qualify, the other was to play through them once, and then focus on the most difficult until you qualify and then do the next most difficult and so on.

I Got Mine

I scored 10,104 at the first attempt and the song introduced E7 and A. Second attempt at the song I got 14,578 so qualified nicely with that song. 

Me and the Bean

First attempt I got around 18,000 points which is a nice start. The game locked up after the third attempt at the song, and when the game was restarted I scored 35,319 which is nicely over the qualification level. I've played this one about half a dozen times.

When I'm With You

This song is more challenging, mainly with the shifts up and down the fretboard from 3rd to 12th fret. I earned 24,222 at my first attempt.

The E 'power' chord is introduced in the song.

I stopped playing after about an hour and a half on this session, mainly because my wrist was starting to ache and my shoulder was feeling uncomfortable. 

If anybody wants to donate an electric guitar, I'd appreciate it: I am playing on a Fender electro-acoustic guitar at the moment and the body is fairly wide compared to a pure electric guitar.

Well Ok, Honey

Well Ok Honey

This song is by Jenny O on her Home album.

This is a nice quirky song that I am enjoying trying to play. I like the lyrics and the light, bouncy feel to the song. I'd love to see her live, but she's LA based I think and it's a bit far to travel for a gig.

I've been trying to play this track for around 4 hours, and was within around 100 points of qualifying when my playing went to pieces. Probably not helped by a glass of red.

I'm enjoying the tune enough that I've spent a little time looking at her website http://jennyo.com and have subscribed to her twitter feed and liked her page on Facebook  When I get some spare money I think I'll probably buy her Home CD too.

I'm tempted to see if the guitarsmith will cope with me sticking my mixing desk between the guitar and the PS3, and taking a feed to record what I'm playing on the laptop. I have a suspicion that it won't sound anything like the guitar that I hear over the game though. I might be able to set it up so that Lynn can sing along and have that recorded alongside the lousy guitar playing ;-)  If that happens, keep an eye on Soundcloud as we might put our embarrassment for the world to see. That might persuade Angie that she doesn't really want us to get up at one of her open mic nights!

We did discover that the plugging a usb microphone into the PS will give the singer feedback on how well they are singing. Lynn got more compliments from the software than I got. You don't get extra points for having a vocalist when learning, and we couldn't find an option to have the game use the microphone on two player mode. I suppose it makes sense, as it is for helping to learn to play the guitar.

Perhaps another release (or an entirely new game) could be something along the lines of a full band version, accepting electronic drums as well as a vocalist to help with the guitar and bass that guitarsmith currently accepts. So learning to drum, play lead, rhythm, bass guitar and sing. Is a TV big enough to show all of the band parts at the same time?

My plan to start having sensible bedtimes hasn’t been successful, it's rapidly approaching midnight again.

How close am I to qualifiying? My best was about 24,500 points, but I'm getting between 20k and 22k at the moment. The qualifier is just under 25k points. So it's close, but no cigar. Perhaps I'll manage tomorrow – and then another song to try to learn something new.