570.2 A second mixed session

Song 2 Unlocked Master Mode

We Share the Same Skies and the second Islands were played on guitar, the other songs on bass.

I managed to play well enough to unlock Master mode on Song 2. The downside of that is I should now start playing in master mode: that is where you don't get shown the notes but still get scored on accuracy. I'm not quite ready for that yet though.

I have spent 570 hours 14 minutes playing on Guitar and Bass, mainly on the Rocksmith and Rocksmith 2014 games, in this session I played for 24 minutes.

I am learning 777 song arrangements through the game, with 367 on the bass, 89 on rhythm guitar, and 321 on lead guitar (some I'm learning across multiple systems).

Sadly it has been 193 days since I played all the song arrangements across all three systems I have Rocksmith installed on.

These are the songs I have practiced recently.

Tunings

In E standard Jules by Seth Chapla, Next Girl by The Black Keys, Islands by The xx, We Share the Same Skies by The Cribs, and Islands by The xx
In Eb Song 2 by Blur
In Drop D Ricochet by Brian Adam McCune

Local Support Act

I've just completed the next set of songs, and got my rating raised to "Local Support Act". I hope they mean that it is just for people in your living room though.

The songs in this set were
I Got Mine by The Black Keys, Me and the Bean by Spool, When I'm with you by Best Coast and Song 2 by Blur.
When I'm with you took a significant number of attempts to get my playing up to the target standard. I'm still refusing to accept dropping the qualification level. I kept gaining and losing levels as I was going through the songs, so consistency is something I need to work on.

Song 2

When it came to Song 2 I was expecting to spend weeks trying to get the 50,600 points needed to qualify. But I managed it first time through. Being totally honest, what I was playing sounded totally naff and not at all how I remember Blur playing it.
The only reason I can think of is there are long strings of repeated notes and I managed to get large parts of them accurately enough to gain the points required to qualify.

The Gig

This is my opportunity to wow the virtual audience. The first two songs, I Got Mine and Me and the Bean,  I totally bombed, I'm not sure if any of the avatars walked out, but I would have.

I did manage to wow the crowd with When I'm With You and Song 2. I didn't get Song 2 to sound much closer to the original, but did improve on playing a couple of the sections.

And now I'm a Local Support Act. I certainly don't feel like it, and suspect I have excessively high standards but that is probably the best way.

Tonight I'm hoping to get to the Ketton Ox in Yarm to catch an Acoustic Evening. The snow seems to be melting nicely, so fingers crossed.  The only downside is that I'll not get home until past midnight, and I have a 6am get up for work in the morning. Oh, and I've got an assessment in the morning. Perhaps going to the Ketton Ox isn't such a wise idea...

Mixing Desk

I've treated myself to a mixing desk as a combined Christmas and Birthday present to myself. The plan is that I will use it to record some of the songs I'm learning, both from the Guitar Smith program and from other sources I am (trying to) learn from.
There will be some singing involved too, mainly from me so be afraid, very afraid.
Lynn and I will be recording some songs under our Heron Hymn brand. The singing in that will be much better, but that's mainly because it will be Lynn singing and not so much me. As long as I am driving the desk, I can make sure of that (but don't tell Lynn!)

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.