New Act

As a result of the hours practice I've put in today I was promoted to "New Act" on Rocksmith. I think they might have missed out a middle word "Sad" might me more appropriate!

Apart from trying the Riff Repeater on the intro to Satisfaction all I did was play each of the songs through once that I've been playing in the past few days, and In Bloom by Nirvana twice.

Riff Repeater

This allows you to play a section of a track until you "master" the section. I tried using the Accelerator mode that lets you play through it once to see how you play it, then you get 30 attempts to get to full speed playing all the notes.

It only took me 22 attempts to get the intro close enough to correct, and when rehearsing the full song got so close to the 70k mark - I scored 67677.

I did remember to attempt Angela by Jarvis Cocker (65060) this time. The other songs attempted Next Girl (78224 - didn't beat my previous attempt), Go With The Flow 79374, Higher Ground 54271.

The new one for today was In Bloom by Nirvana, and I felt like I totally messed this up getting 13353 on my first attempt and 18391 on the second attempt.

Unlocks

I unlocked the Slides technique, and also gained an authentic tone "Cro-Magnon Drive".

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.

396,824 RSP Made my target with Satisfaction

I had another go at The Rolling Stones' (I can't get no) Satisfaction with the aim of hitting the 40k mark. I had three plays at it getting 29,958 43314 and 44170 with a best streak of 72 and 91% accuracy for the middle one.

At the moment if I drop in accuracy and streak I am stopping playing, using the theory that I'm getting tired.  My wrist is also aching, so I suspect I'm not holding the guitar right with my left hand. Achieved 361,085 RSP.

Although the break didn't last long!

Higher Ground Red Hot Chilli Peppers

I had three goes at this getting 2196 with a 50 note streak and 98% accuracy the first time round, but the notes were mainly open low E and G and A notes. Second run through got 9933 and a few more notes, and the final run 31225 with a streak of 66 at 84% accuracy and many more notes over many strings.

Unlocked palm muting and double stops.

Double Stops

This is playing two notes at the same time, I didn't do very well with this technique at all, and need to spend a lot of time practicing this technique. To achieve Bronze needs 5k points, Silver 15k and Gold 34k points. I scored 4514 and I will need to revisit this fairly soon.

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!

Decided to restart

After too many months of not really picking up my guitar, I have decided to restart my Rocksmith "career" and to keep a better record of how badly I am playing. The first rating you earn is "Amateur" and that is probably exactly where I will stop.

The first track to play is the Rolling Stones (I can't get no) Satisfaction. Today I've played it through four times, earning enough points to qualify the first play through and up to 21000 points.

I have decided to focus on each song until I can play it to a higher standard than just qualifying, with the aim of playing the majority of each song through unaided. I also intend to keep playing through the songs that I have learned to try and keep them current, so I suspect that my progress might be substantially slower than it was last time I was playing.

For qualifying with Satisfaction, I have unlocked the Shifting technique. This is something I need to look at next time I pick the guitar up, but at the moment I am thinking about heading out to try and enjoy the sun a little later. And I know that probably means that I'll end up in a coffee shop with either a book or the laptop. I'm also planning on heading to the cinema to catch Monsters University with Lynn this evening.

The first set list is going to be Satisfaction and Next Girl by Black Keys.

I am also considering seeing how to hook my mixing desk between the guitar and the PS3, so that I can record what I have been playing to torture and/or give people the opportunity to have a laugh at how I'm doing. That also means I could hook a microphone up and add my singing to the mix too, but I'm not too sure about that (although that also means that Lynn could sing along too).

Why do I make plans?

I didn't get the PS booted this weekend, but did have a very long talk with a friend online.

Apart from picking the guitar up for the usual finger picking tunes I have been trying to learn well enough for me and Lynn to sing along to, I have been having intermittent follow of guitar.about.com email newsletter.

Today's email was in part about learning barre chords, and the b-minor barre I can almost get the notes to ring out cleanly (details are here).

So all I need to do is cut my fingernails on my left had a little, as they are growing a little long again, and practice a little more and I just might mangage to get the chord sounding cleanly.

Then all I need to do is make sure I know all the notes running up the A string and that is a collection of minor chords learned. Dead easy.

But for now, I think I'm going to have an early night. Or I would if it wasn't rapidly approaching 11pm again.

Rebel Rubbish

I've done another set of songs on Guitar Smith, and (for a change) completed a full set of songs and did the associated gig.
Rebel Rebel by David Bowie was one I was really looking forward to doing. I earned enough points to qualify the first time around, which is both a bonus and a shame. The bonus was I only played it once, instead of dozens of times! When I came to play this in the gig, I really messed up the opening half of the song, and as you can't restart a gig performance, I didn't get much appreciation from the virtual audience.
Mean Bitch by Toddy Porter. I really struggled with this song, although I did manage to beat the qualifier with better than 5000 points over the target. I doubt this will be a favorite of mine to play!
I Miss You by Incubus. I did play it, but can't think of how I felt about playing it at all.
Do You Remember by the Horrors. This was another challenging song for me to play, and I felt almost totally inept while playing it, but the virtual audience seemed to appreciate it.
High and Dry by Radiohead. Yes, another challenging song. The least said about how I played it the better.

The next set

I didn't make a note of the next set of songs, and have done this blog entry from memory. I have been noting down for my previous blogs how I felt as I competed each song. I think that is probably the better way to do it, but means you will have more to plough through.
Instead of playing each song until I qualify, I played through in the order that Guitar Smith wanted. This gave more variety in what I was playing, and I suspect prevented me getting fed up with not making progress. At least until the two I was really struggling with!
Guitar Smith recommends that you use the practice the techniques involved in the songs, and I have been ignoring that up to now. I'm considering actually doing the practice work before rehearsing the songs to see if it will improve and reduce the time it is taking me to qualify.
I'm getting curious what will happen in the game once I get through all the songs at the qualification level. I am hoping that there will be a harder qualifier with the songs if that happens.
I have been focussing on doing coursework for a Coursera online course I have been following this week, and have only picked the guitar up to practice some very basic tunes from the book I have been following.
I have done something different though, tonight I had a go at playing a simplified tab of The House Of The Rising Sun, and have recorded and uploaded the guitar work to SoundCloud. If you're interested, you can find it here. If you're not interested the link to follow is this one.