Go With The Flow

Today was mainly aimed at having a practice at the songs already played.

Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones

I'm slowly getting better at this, I'm struggling a bit getting the main riff sounding right and playing it evenly. There are a couple of hammer on's added to make things interesting to the riff too (or are they pull off's? Not quite sure at the moment)
Played another twice with 50573 and 52703 points.

Next Girl by The Black Keys

Two more plays scoring 73635 and 80109 this time round.

Higher Ground by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Another two plays with 45967 and 49628 points.

Go With The Flow by Queens of the Stone Age

22794 and 65997 - a massive boost the second time round.
This song involved almost continuous strumming with some new chords that I haven't worked out what I am meant to be playing just yet - the notes are really coming out thick and fast in this song. "Manic" is a good description.

And an oops moment too: I didn't try Angela by Jarvis Cocker again. For tomorrow I'm going to make a note of the songs I want to play before picking the guitar up.

The first "performance"

My aim for today was to reach at least 40,000 in the Stones' Satisfaction, I'd left the game with a score of around 21,000 and to find out about the shifting technique. So after finishing off my left over pizza for breakfast this was my first plan.

I did pick up my guitar last night, after applying a temporary fix to my son's laptop, breaking my glasses (£200 to get them fixed) and watching Monsters University. I could still remember part of the main riff for Satisfaction, so I suppose that is progress of a sort.

I think I need to buy the songs I'm learning to play, and to see about getting tabs or the sheet music for them too; just so I can practice.

Shifting Technique

Shifting is getting your fingers in anchor zones so that you can quickly get your fingers down on the frets to play the notes in rapid sequence. I did ok with this technique challenge, scoring 23847 where the bronze target was 10,000.

Next Girl by The Black Keys

First time through I needed 9,100 to qualify and earned 26,394. The second attempt added hammer on's to the mix and earned 60417, as the next level was 70k I thought I'd have another go and scored 74,166 with a 54 note streak and 89% accuracy. I felt like I missed more than 11% of the notes though.

Although I was wanting to rehearse Satisfaction until I beat 40k points, I couldn't find the song in the play list so I thought I'd see how I did playing it cold.

I unlocked Sustains, Hammer On's and Pull Off's as well as getting Authentic Tones Stomp Box Blues, Modified Tremelo Filter pedal, the British Wah pedal, the Reverbs Baritone 4X10 cabinet - I may need to edit this as I couldn't quite read my notes! - and also got my first customisable gear unlocked too.

New Techniques

Hammer On and Pull Off Technique

These are ways of playing notes more rapidly without needing to strum. A Hammer On is fretting a string firmly enough to make the note ring out, and a Pull Off is removing your finger fast enough to also make the note ring. I'm not sure if it's the way that I've been doing them, but they sound slightly softer than plucking or picking a note.

On my first attempted I scored 7103, with Bronze at 10k (Silver 30k and Gold 66k). Second attempt I did better, but missed several hammer on and offs as I wasn't quick enough to process where my fingers were supposed to be moving to, and scored 1004. My final two attempts scored 13413 and 17959 points.

Sustain

A sustain is basically keeping the note ringing and ringing for as long as required. First attempt I got 64443 with Gold at 70k (Silver and Bronze were 40k and 10k respectively). I did hit gold on my second attempt, but hadn't noted the score I got!

Ducks

This is an arcade game where you try to shoot ducks by playing the correct note. I occasionally manage to miss, even though I thought I was fretting the right note. I'll need to have a think about what is going wrong with it I think.

The Performance

This was playing The Rolling Stones (I can't get no) Satisfaction and The Black Keys Next Girl. I scored 28616 and 76362 and got an encore to play Jarvis Cocker's Angela and scored 28,353 giving me a total of 133,325 RSP.

I unlocked The Mouse Hole venue as well as an Epiphone Limited Edition Wilshire guitar, and an Auto Filter.

I didn't hit the target I was aiming for with Satisfaction, but other than that was fairly happy with how I'm playing in the game. My left wrist was aching again at the end of this session (and being honest it was aching from about half way through as well) so it's a good point to stop.

My current RSP level is 335834 and I am making progress to the top of the Amateur section.

Coming Next

There are three songs in the next set list:

Higher Ground by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (1300 to qualify), Go With The Flow by the Queens of the Stone Age (1300) and In Bloom by Nirvana (4300 to qualify).

I think first, though, I will have another run through the first performance, if I can work out how to get back to it!

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.