Popular Post StrickenBiged Posted September 8, 2015 Popular Post Share Posted September 8, 2015 (edited) Hey PSNP, This thread is intended to be a chronicle of my experiences playing Rocksmith 2014. I'm hoping that: Other PSNP users will find it useful if they are thinking about purchasing the software to help them hone their guitar skills; Keeping a diary of my experience with Rocksmith 2014 will help keep me on track and motivate me to learn; and You guys might hold me accountable if I lapse, and offer encouragement to help keep me motivated! I will keep this OP updated with my progress through Rocksmith 2014, and post normally with general comments or requests for help. Please feel free to subscribe to the thread, or check the OP regularly to see my progress. I've been interested in Rocksmith 2014 for a while now because I've tried and failed to teach myself guitar twice already, but still aspire to learn an instrument "one day". While I wait for my copy of Rocksmith 2014 to turn up, I thought I'd start this thread to explain a bit about my guitar history, and thereafter try and update it as I practice. Ubisoft challenges aspiring guitar players to play for an hour a day for 60 days in order to see improvement with their guitar skills. Well, I'll put that to the test here. Please click on a spoiler button to open the individual sections below, and thanks for reading. History with guitar As I've alluded to, I have attempted to learn guitar twice already - in my teens and, separately, while I was a post-grad. My problem was that I found practicing boring. I enjoyed playing along to simpler rock songs once I'd learned the riffs but you'd never see me sitting down and learning scales or practicing the general skills with scales and chords that you need to do in order to progress. I played around with a bass guitar too, but ran into the same problems. I think my highest achievements were being able to roughly play along to Green Day's Warning, and just about learning the opening riff to Guns 'n' Roses' Sweet Child of Mine on the guitar, and being able to play along to The Peter Gunn Theme from the Blues Brothers Soundtrack on bass. I was digging around in my grandmother's attic the other day and found my old guitar, which I thought one of my cousins had sold years ago - I haven't seen this thing since 2004! I remembered hearing good things about Rocksmith 2014 and decided to take it home, clean it up, order Rocksmith, and have a 3rd whack at learning to play guitar. So I've ordered new strings (the ones on the guitar were rusted as heck), cleaned up the guitar, warned my wife that I may start wearing black again as I regress back to my teenage years and my copy of Rocksmith 2014 was delivered today, (2 days early... thanks Amazon!) - basically I'm all set! Really looking forward to getting home later and firing up the PS4. Any comments or helpful tips from experienced guitar players would be very much appreciated too! EDIT: 20 March 2017 - Now that I have achieved the I will no longer be maintaining this original post. I will keep updating the thread below though.Day 1: 8 Sept 2015 Wow... Am I ever rusty. Ok, so I spent most of my time today fiddling with the guitar and learning my way around the software. Firstly, the guitar needed more than just some new strings - it was in dire need, and still probably is in dire need, of some TLC. The first, and most obvious problem was that the jack socket was dirty as hell inside. After plugging in the jack, all I could hear was distortion. Got out a screwdriver, whipped out the jack socket, and immediately saw that the connections inside the jack socket were coated in some sort of grey powdery oxide of one type or another. Luckily, one of my wife's stainless steel nail files was able to get most of it off, but there's still a distortion-y sound to the notes I strum. I may have to get a new jack socket if I want a clean sound. Second major issue was that the neck alignment was way off, with the E string almost hanging over the edge of the neck at the higher end (i.e. closer to the body). Took a screwdriver to where the neck meets the body, straightened everything out a bit more, and jobs a good 'un. Finally, I was ready to rock. Booted up the software, got through calibration, and loaded up "learn a song", probably the game's main mode. As I had told the software I was a novice - one level up from beginner - it started me off with simple riffs playing, essentially, just the root notes of each bar and chord. Had a go on a few songs, but started to fail badly as soon as the software began to dynamically increase the difficulty. Moving up and down the neck feels completely foreign to me at the moment, and is something I am going to have to get used to again. I basically spent my time doing whatever the software told me to, and before long I was in the Guitarcade; the series of mini-games that turn training into fun. My best game was one where you have to shoot outlaws invading a western saloon by plucking the correct string as they attack in lanes. Mainly though, this was because this game doesn't fail you if you hit the wrong string - it only rewards correct inputs. Other games I tried failed you instantly if you screwed up. Overall, the package is good. There's a bit of lag between plucking the string and hearing the sound come out of your TV. I'm going to have to read the user manual to figure out if there's anything to be done there. Also, the software had difficulty recognising some chords played at the top end of the neck. Realigning the strings seems to have helped somewhat in that department, but my first few attempts to play anything above the 10th fret were frustrating. Hopefully I'll be able to figure these issues out tomorrow, but for now my fingers are sore, my hand is cramping, and it's late so I'm off to bed. Looking forward to tomorrow though. Day 2: 9 Sept 2015 Didn't spend long with the software today. Now that I have researched the latency, and how to fix it, it's all I can hear and it's incredibly distracting. I had another go on X-Kid by Green Day, then messed around with the Guitarcade games. The one where you shoot rabbits by playing the correct fret is going to be really helpful in getting me to move around the board. Hopefully my new soundbar will arrive soon, as I want to get back to enjoying the software. Day 3: 10 Sept 2015 More messing around in Guitarcade, but not a very long session this afternoon. The feeling still hasn't returned to my left hand index finger... The new soundbar should arrive tomorrow, and hopefully that will solve the sound-latency issue. Day 4: 11 Sept 2015 I'm getting quicker at moving up and down the neck of the guitar already, although I'm still looking to make sure my fingers are in the right place. I've achieved 76% mastery on one song already, Blitzkreig Bop... Although I still can't play it all that well to my ear. Quite an easy song, it's just moving between chords messes me up. Spent more time in the Guitarcade too. The game where you shoot ducks by playing the correct fret is really helping. The new speaker, which takes digital audio direct from the PS4 has eliminated all my latency with the sound, so the software is working as intended. Not to mention my other games sound better than they ever have before too! Day 5: 12 Sept 2015 Took the guitar into the local guitar shop and, apart from the loose knobs, it got a clean bill of health. Good news, and saves me money. The buzzing I'm hearing in Rocksmith 2014 must be a symptom of the amp emulators the game uses. Played some more Blitzkreig Bop, but am getting worse. Really need to practice those chord transitions. Also messed around in the Guitarcade. Played a game which gets you to practice pentatonic scales. It seemed to have problems detecting some of my notes, which was incredibly frustrating. I'm not sure if it was me, or the game. Hopefully I'll find some answers in the Ubisoft forums. Day 6: 14 Sept 2015 Getting better. I can do every section of Blitzkreig Bop, it's just the stringing those sections together without cocking up which is getting me. I'm honestly amazed at how quickly I am improving. I know it's a simple song and everything, but I'm very impressed with how quickly this game can teach you to improve. It makes you wonder how many other skills in life could be "gamified". So I spent some more time practising Blitzkreig Bop, then played X Kid by Green Day, and Every breath you take by The Police. Those were harder, but with some practice I'm sure I'll get them. And then I found an awesome mini-game in the Guitarcade that made me actually enjoy learning chords. I decided to press the Share button, add some commentary, and this is the result: Enjoy. Day 7: 17 Sept 2015 Put in an extra long session of practice today. Spent about a 45 mins practicing chords in Return to Castle Chordead, but couldn't get past progression 1, level 2. Switching between 3 chords, and I'm fine. Add 2 more, and there's a lot more brain required. I'll get there. Great mini-game though. The environment and zombie clothing have changed up, so it keeps things fresh. Managed to increase my "mastery" of Blitzkrieg Bop to 92%. It still doesn't sound great, but my playing is good enough for the game to pick up what I'm doing. Tried a few new songs, and did a lesson on palm muting which I found very difficult. I got the core concept, but putting it into practice... ho boy. It seemed to require a lot of co-ordination to switch fingers and what your right hand is doing at different times. Sounds cool though. Day 8: 19 Sept 2015 Well, I certainly didn't expect this to happen so quickly: I learned to play a song Achieve 100% Mastery on any song As you'll probably guess if you've read the above, the song I have "mastered" is Blitzkreig Bop by the Ramones. Now, it's a very easy song which only involves having to play 4 chords. Also, you don't have to play perfectly in order to obtain 100% mastery in Rocksmith 2014. I had plenty of notes that buzzed, etc, but the software gives it to you provided you're in the right place on the fretboard; it's pretty forgiving. Still, I'm immensely proud to have learned a real song so quickly. Also spent some time in the Guitarcade again today. Played Ducks ReDux which is the one where you have to shoot ducks by playing a note at the correct fret. Getting better at that game too; I more than quintupled my high score. Day 9: 24 Sept 2015 Decided to test the water to see if I will want to get a bass by switching my "path" to Bass in the game's settings, and turning on the bass emulator which basically drops your notes by an octave so that your normal guitar sounds like a bass. I played a few songs: Blitzkreig Bop, X Kid, We are the Champions, Every Breath you Take, and a few more I can't remember right now. Had a whale of a time, and I definitely prefer the deeper feel of bass notes over the regular guitar. Not that I don't love the regular guitar and how it sounds, I do, but I just get something else from bass that I don't feel with the regular guitar. I like the percussive aspects to the instrument too. After playing songs for about an hour, I switched to the Guitarcade. Obviously, on the bass path, you can't access the chord games, so I will have to switch between the two paths from time to time to keep working on my chord skills, assuming I do go out and buy a bass at some point. Anyway, I messed around with the Guitarcade for a bit, playing String Switch Saloon and Slide Ninja. Good to be back on the horse after a few days off. Day 10: 26 Sept 2015 Went out and bought myself an Epiphone Thunderbird IV. It's a lovely bass, and I love playing it. Spent most of my time today playing lots of songs with my new bass. I made, perhaps, a stupid mistake and started with Blitzkreig Bop, which I now know very well on guitar, and so after jumping straight to a score of >100% mastery after just a couple of runs through the song it immediately assumed I was some sort of rock savant and increased the difficulty of every other song I tried. Day 11: 27 Sept 2015 Had another quick go with learn a song mode, and smashed some stackable trophies when I got a platinum score on the score attack mode playing Blitzkreig Bop. I also played some Ducks ReDux in the guitarcade to practice moving around the fretboard on my new instrument. Days 12-13: 29 & 30 Sept 2015 On both these days I got interrupted by life, just as I was getting down to play. Essentially, I dabbled with a few songs - I think I might master either X-Kid or Every Breath you Take next. In other news, I switched my Bass for the "Pro" version, which has active pickups. This has greatly improved the gameplay experience - the game is much more able to detect my playing with this setting than it was before. If you are thinking of learning Bass using Rocksmith 2014, I seriously recommend you choose one with active pickups. Here's the new bass: Day 14: 1 Oct 2015 Had a good session today. Spent a bit of time messing around with X-Kid and Every Breath You Take before settling in with Everlong by the Foo Fighters. Played it through multiple times, spent a lot of time with the riff repeater (I still can't get the chorus exactly right - there's a bit that quickly switches between two strings that really messes me up). Generally, a good practice session. At the end, for fun, went back to Blitzkrieg Bop, and got a gold trophy for nailing the song on Master difficulty (i.e. completely from memory) in score attack mode. That felt good. Day 15: 3 Oct 2015 Didn't get the chance for a long session today - I haven't in a while, actually - but got in some practice on Everlong. I have got most of the song down, there's just this one bit in the verse that keeps screwing me up where I have to switch below the E and A strings quickly. Gotta work on that. Day 16: 6 Oct 2015 Had to go to a long-ass conference yesterday so couldn't get in a session then. This one was overdue and, again, real life kept me from being able to play a longer session. Put in some time with Everlong - I can now play that tough bit in the verse, although seemingly never when the song is actually playing. Need to spend more time in the Riff Repeater to practice it. I can get pretty much every other note in the song though, and my mastery score is now in excess of 99%. After starting to get worse at Everlong I decided to try a new song and played My Generation by The Who. Fun song to play - I may work on this one too. Day 17: 9 Oct 2015 Hmmm. Starting to go too long between practice sessions. I need to be practicing more consistently than this really. Anyway. I treated myself and splurged on some of the DLC song packs. Bought packs of songs for Rage Against the Machine, Disturbed, Green Day and one that cought my eye called Bachsmith where they've taken a few classical songs and given them a rock twist. As a result, most of today's session was spent messing around with those. My playing wasn't too bad, but I do need to settle down on another song to try and master if I want to continue to push myself and get to a point where I can actually play the songs rather than just get 70-80% of them. Messed around with the Guitarcade afterwards. I need to get better at hitting the two higher strings when I want to, so messed around in the game which practices this. Can't remember what it's called right now... Day 18: 13 Oct 2015 Another long break in between practice sessions. Goddamn IRL stuff. Anyway, got into Oh Love by Green Day last night. Another easy bass song, albeit one that is a bit more complicated than Blitzkrieg Bop, so is probably a good one to master next. Played through it 4 times and it already started hiding the notes from me in some parts, and I was like "nooo! I am not ready! I have not actually learned it yet!", so I had to turn "master mode" off. A fun one. I think I'll try it in score attack mode next time, as that's the real test of mastery. Also messed around with the Gone Whailin' mini-game, which teaches you to control your instrument's dynamic range (volume basically). Saw some improvement after a few quick sessions. Day 19: 14 Oct 2015 Played a lot more of Oh Love today. A really fun song to play and, because I know the words, I can sing along during the parts where I don't have to concentrate too hard. Almost memorised most of the longer repeating sections, but need to keep working at it. Played a couple of other songs too, but can't recall what they were (sorry, I'm posting a couple of days late). Also had a quick blast through Blitzkrieg Bop for old time's sake, and to make sure I don't forget it. That was pretty much it for today. I literally just spent an hour playing mostly one song. I'll have it nailed soon. Day 20: 18 Oct 2015 Had an epic session today. I wasn't timing it or anything, but I must've been playing for at least 2 hours - I can tell by how annoyed my wife was that the Sunday afternoon had passed us by! Anyway, spent most of my time in Learn a Song mode. A few more runs through Oh Love, before messing around with other songs. I never realised You Really Got Me was so easy to play! In my first attempt I shot up to 99% Mastery. Another song which I found is really enjoyable to play is Pour Some Sugar On Me by Def Leppard. Really enjoy the riffs in both of those. (I've learned how "Mastery" ratings work by the way. Your accuracy is the obvious component, but you cannot achieve 100% or higher unless you know the song well enough that the game starts to remove notes from the note highway, and you're playing from memory. Once that happens, you can achieve 100% mastery or higher.) I then decided to pop a couple of easy trophies and had a quick go in non-stop play mode. This mode basically lets you pick your favourite songs, then queues them up so that you go immediately from one to another (with re-tuning in between, as necessary). Good fun, but I found it hard to switch between all the songs sometimes. You get into a groove with one song that you've practiced a bit more, having to change so often was a little difficult. However, if you wanted to practice an entire set-list, it might be a good place to go. Day 21: 20 Oct 2015 Had about an hour with the game today. Spent some time in Learn a Song Mode, trying out new songs and practicing some old ones. Tried Black Magic by the Magic Wands for the first time... my god that song is easy! Definitely a candidate to help me clear 15 songs on Master difficulty and get me that gold trophy! Day 22: 21 Oct 2015 Spent some time in Session mode today, just trying to groove and knocking out a few quick trophies. If I'm going to "jam", I need to work on actually being able to play the notes I want, when I want. Still, managed to work out some riffs that didn't sound too bad, albeit they were incredibly simple first compositions. Then jumped back in to Learn a Song a spent some time practicing. Again, I tried some new songs, with mixed results. I have to say though, I think the song selection in the game is very good. They may not have chosen the very best songs in every sub-genre of rock music - although that'll always be a subjective opinion - but what they have chosen is a good mix of songs which are all quite fun to play, even if you may not have chosen to just listen to the song personally. Also cleared Black Magic on Master difficulty in Score Attack mode, so I'm one closer to the 15 I need for that gold trophy. Anyway, spent about an hour and a half with the game today. I'm itching to pick up my guitar again, and put the bass down for a little while. I might try and get a chromatic tuner first though - I suspect the intonation might be slightly off on some strings as I recall the game didn't like some of the notes at the high end... Days 23-24: 22 & 23 Oct 2015 Nothing really in the way of targeted practice over the last few days. Just messing around in Learn a Song Mode and the Guitarcade. Started playing Scale Racer, a fun technique game where you play scales up and down getting faster and faster. My only complaint is that when it gets really fast and you manage to crash the cop car that's pursuing you, it flies across your screen and makes you panic and lose. I'll keep plugging away at it, (Pentatonic minor A, obviously ). Plugged in the guitar on 22 Oct 2015 too. Actually, the intonation seems ok. Tried to play a few songs, but I've been too long away from chords while playing bass... I'll need to get some major practice in on that instrument. Also, the strings felt really really tiny after those monster bass strings. Just a few songs and I ripped up my fingertips. Day 25: 25 Oct 2015 Just some more messing around in Learn a Song. Quite a few songs above 100% "mastery" now, but to be honest I think I'm going to need to turn master mode off if I want to learn them well enough to go into Score Attack mode. Some of them I haven't played as religiously as others and, while I can play them with almost 100% accuracy when all the notes are shown, I just don't know them well enough to be able to play them from memory. Days 26-27: 26 & 27 Oct 2015 Just more song rehearsal in Learn a Song really. Gradually improving. Also played the Guitarcade game, Scale Warriors for a while. A fun way to learn new scales, even if the note detection can be a little janky when you're in the thick of battle and there are multiple enemies on the screen. Day 28: 1 Nov 2015 Just spending some time in Learn a Song. Practiced Every Breath You Take, X-Kid, Killing in the Name Of (DLC), and R U Mine?. Again, I need to settle on one and learn it by heart. Popped the trophy for spending 10 hours actively playing in Learn a Song mode. Not bad. Day 29: 3 Nov 2015 Almost half-way through the "60 day challenge". My playing has definitely improved a great deal. While I'm pleased with my progress though, it does feel like I am plateauing. Maybe that's just me trying faster and more complex songs, and not taking the time to really nail some of the one's I have been playing. Anyway, today I spent some time in Learn a Song mode just practicing a few songs. Made a little progress on X-Kid and Every Breath You Take, (I've still not unlocked the harder difficulty on EBYT - there's a riff in the middle that messes me up every time), and had another go on that Oasis song, Don't Look Back in Anger. Again, I need to settle on one and master it like I did with the (supremely easy songs) Blitzkrieg Bop and Black Magic. Then I switched to my guitar and went back to the lead path for a bit. Hit detection was all over the place, as was my fingering now that I'm used to the larger frets on bass. Still, it was annoying that the game wasn't picking it up when I was playing correctly. Need to get this guitar sorted out. After a couple of attempts at Black Magic and Basket Case (DLC), I played a game or two in the Guitarcade before putting it down in frustration. I think I'll just have to pop it into the guitar store for a complete set-up. Day 30: 7 Nov 2015 Spent a lot of time practicing string skipping in the Guitarcade with the game String Skip Saloon. Even managed to get 10,000,000 points and unlock the trophy. Nice. Anyway, trophies aside, it was quite useful and I do feel more confident at strumming the string I want, especially the D and G strings which were giving me trouble. Now I just need to be able to do that in songs! Spent a bit of time practicing a few songs, probably about 30 minutes. Still need to settle on a couple that I'd like to learn off by heart. Day 31: 8 Nov 2015 Had a good session today. First, I surprised myself when I got the trophy for getting 10,000,000 points in Ducks ReDux, especially given that I wasn't deliberately trying to go for it, and was trying to play without having to look at my fretboard (I may have done anyway, a little, sue me ). Went back into Learn a Song Mode, but wasn't feeling particularly inspired. So I went into the PSN store and downloaded the Blink 182 pack (ft. Dammit, What's My Age Again, and All the Small Things) and the Police pack (ft. Roxanne, Message in a Bottle, and Syncronicity II). All of these are fun to play and, given they're mostly relatively simple songs (on bass anyway), are definite material to help with the trophies. Then I realised I'd been playing for 2 hours and the movie I had tickets for was about to start and I got outta there fast. Day 32: 9 Nov 2015 Badda-bing, badda-boom! I Learned to Play 10 songs Achieve 100% Mastery on 10 Songs Well, that happened faster than I expected. So, the songs were all fairly easy ones, songs such as Blitzkrieg Bop, Oh Love! (DLC), Roxanne (DLC), Message in a Bottle (DLC), Everlong, All the Small Things (DLC), what have you. Still, quite pleased with myself. Next step is to get a platinum rating on all these songs in score attack mode. After I was done with Learn a Song Mode, I went into the Guitarcade and had a go on Ninja Slide'N. Had a few good games, managed to increase my score to 2.5M odd. Then I did some of the lessons. One on rhythm, and then the one on arpeggios. Good god holding those chord shapes with a bass is hard work - my hand still feels strained this morning. Ouch. Still, managed to get through the lesson, eventually. Will have to work on arpeggios because they sound beautiful. Just a pain in the hand to actually play. Day 33: 23 November 2015 I'm not even sure if I should count this, as it was such a quick session, but hey-ho. So I got to play a little yesterday, after a long hiatus. (Basically, I was being lazy last week.) Tried to learn a couple of Blink 182 songs: What's My Age Again? and Dammit. Most of my time was spent with WMAA?. I managed to improve my mastery score from around 60% to around 80%. Realised I need to work on playing with a pick and, in particular, using the down-up-down-up picking technique (as opposed to picking down every time). Once I can get that down, this song should be really easy. My session was interrupted after only about 30 minutes. Annoying. I aim to practice again tonight. Reinvigorated to play more again. Day 34: 28 November 2015 Goddamn. This lack of practice recently is making me suck. Again, spent most of my time today in Learn a Song mode. Mainly practiced What's My Age Again?, but got frustrated after I started getting worse and worse with repeated plays. Really need to work on picking between different strings in quick succession and, again, that down-up-down-up picking style. I can do it when I'm practicing in the riff repeater mode at a reduced speed but, as soon as a tough phrase come's along at full speed, I panic and fall to pieces. Then I played a few of my favourite songs to make myself feel better. Again, my lack of recent practice was painfully obvious. Decided to hit up the guitarcade after that. Played Temple of Bends but, again, probably due to lack of practice, my fingers were lacking the calluses necessary and it got physically painful after just a few runs. In frustration with myself, I thought I'd pick up my guitar and put down the bass, just to keep things fresh. Now, I've mentioned before how my guitar is a piece of garbage. Well, it seems completely incapable of holding its intonation. I got into a few of the lessons but quickly found that the game refused to register some notes played on certain frets, although it would register the note when played on the fret below. For example, my low-E string wouldn't recognise any notes played above the 8th fret unless I played on the fret below (e.g. to play the 9th fret, I'd actually have to play the 8th fret). I'd only just gotten the damn thing set-up again a few weeks ago! Very frustrating but, like I said, it's an old and cheap guitar that hasn't been well cared for. On a brighter note, it gives me an excuse to buy a new guitar and X-mas is around the corner... Day 35: 29 November 2015 Well, what a difference a day makes. Had a much happier time playing my bass today. Practiced a few songs, managed to increase my mastery score on a couple, then decided to play Score Attack mode for a bit. Got a platinum score on Roxanne, silvers on All the Small Things and My Generation, and a gold score on... dammit I can't remember the last song I played... I should really update this diary nearer the time, hey? Anyway, a good session today. Much happier than I was with my instrument than the day before. Still plenty of work to do. Day 36: 30 November 2015 Only a relatively quick session this evening as I got home late from work. Trying to work on playing with a plectrum rather than fingering as my picking leaves a lot to be desired. Played Self Trap by the Playground Kings on bass which is one of the game's unlockable songs. Managed to increase my mastery score a bit. Picking the E and A strings are fine. D and G are giving me issues. I also find that I just straight up miss the strings a lot, my pick just sails right past. So I thought I'd go back to the String Skip Saloon game in the Guitarcade and see how I could do with a pick. Managed a score of 7 million and change, which isn't too bad considering that my highest score with fingers is just over 10 million (which netted me the trophy by the way). Went back to Learn a Song but by then my wife had got home and was complaining that she wanted to spend time with me and could I please stop. So we compromised that I could play Renegades of Funk by Rage Against the Machine (DLC) once. While playing this song my little brother called on FaceTime. He couldn't believe that it was me playing the bassline to the song, which felt awesome. I've not really told my family about my attempts to learn bass, so it was nice to hear. I even manged to do a half decent performance, raising my mastery score to 98% dead. Might be another one for the "songs I will try to get a platinum score in score attack mode with". Broke off at this point so that we could chat to my brother and his g/f. And yes, I know that a proposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with. Day 37: 7 December 2015 Managed to get a reasonably good playing session in last night. First off, I practiced R U Mine? by the Arctic Monkeys. I spent a lot of time in the riff repeater mode learning the most technical part of the song. Made a lot of improvement there. Then I attempted to do one of the higher tiered lessons. Waay above my current skill level. Nope! So I went back to Learn a Song mode and played Renegades of Funk by Rage Against the Machine. Almost memorised this song now, so I think I'll try and go for a platinum score on Master Mode with it. Almost managed to do that on Hard difficulty, buy screwed up the second to last note in the song, after achieving 100% accuracy for the rest of it. Hopefully get another session in tonight. Day 38: 8 December 2015 Spent pretty much the entire session playing Renegades of Funk by Rage Against the Machine in score attack mode. First, I played it on Hard, so that the notes are still displayed and I could make sure that I had memorised it. Tried for, but could never quite reach, that Platinum rating. Each time I would mess up at just one or two notes and thereby miss getting a full set of perfect phrases. So, I thought I'd just jump straight into Master difficulty. Played the song about 5 times but kept having the same problem. I know the damn song, but I keep messing up one or two notes due to brain farts. Like, I'll acknowledge that this next riff goes like this then the next riff goes like that but when I actually get there my fingers do that when they should've done this, or vice versa. I'll catch myself and get back to what I should've been doing, but by then I've missed a note or two and it's too late. I did have a blast playing the song though. By the end, I wasn't even looking at the screen anymore. I was foot stompin', head boppin' to the beat, throwing a little flair into my fingers when I was strumming a sustained note. Great fun was had. I will try again tonight and I will get 100% on this song. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New. After that I went back to learn a song mode and played through a couple of songs just to get Renegades of Funk out of my head. Day 39: 11 Dec 2015 Hoo boy. A lot to write up today. First off, this: That's right. 100%, on Master mode. That basically means I know the arrangement by heart. That was a lot of fun to get, and is a great, funky song to play on bass. So getting that took me a few attempts, 3 or 4 I think. Afterwards, I jumped into the guitarcade and messed around on a few different games, then went and started learning Bulls on Parade in Learn a Song mode. Then I sorted out getting the Rocksmith 1 songs onto my PS4. See this post for more info on that. Day 40: 12 Dec 2015 So I went and bought a very decent guitar today. After trying out a number of different guitars, I eventually settled on the Epiphone Les Paul Ultra Pro. The thing that swung it for me is the satin finish on the neck of the guitar, which just lets your hand slide up and down it like it was buttered. So today's practice was all on the Lead path in the game. Goddamn do I ever need to get better at chords. Well, better at everything really. The bass is a really forgiving instrument compared to the guitar. In other words... I sucked. I can get my hands in the right place, but give me anything more complicated than a double stop and I immediately start to mess up. I'm going to have to practice a lot. Played for about 2 hours, mixing in lots of Learn a Song, Lessons (many of them remedial...) and time in the Guitarcade. Day 41: 13 Dec 2015 Played for about 3 hours today, across Learn a Song, Guitarcade and Lessons, playing on my new guitar. In Learn a Song, I started work on a very easy looking song from the RS1 track list called Gobbledigook by Sigur Ross. Despite the whole song being played on the low E string, I haven't managed to 100% it yet. This one will be a case of memorising the tune and getting better at moving up and down the fretboard without having to take my eyes off the TV. The actual technical difficulty of the song is almost non existent. Also started work learning Song 2 by Blur (also from RS1), and Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters. I found that chords were giving me trouble, so I did a couple of lessons on chords, then went and played Return to Castle Chordead in the Guitarcade. Played that for about an hour and eventually unlocked Return of the Strings Complete all 3 levels in a Progression in Return to Castle Chordead Some of those boss zombies cheat, I swear it. Afterwards, I went back to Learn a Song. It was amazing what a difference playing the Guitarcade made. When chords turned up in Learn to Fly, I was no longer phased. I would actually hit them every now and again! The system works! So yeah, a good day of practice. Now, if you excuse me, I might try and get a few more songs in before I take my wife out to dinner. _______________ I managed to get a bit more practice in before dinner, started work on Must Be Christmas by The Band of Merrymakers. A fun song with plenty of chord practice. Day 42: 14 Dec 2015 Not a bad session last night. Basically spent the whole session in Learn a Song mode. Practiced Must be Christmas by the Band of Merrymakers, Renegades of Funk on lead, and Learn to Fly. I need to get better at chords. I can get my fingers in the right places, but I always end up touching another string or two with the edges of my fingers and getting bum notes. Practice practice practice. I'll get there, but the guitar is so far proving to be a hell of a lot more difficult than the bass. Day 43: 15 Dec 2015 Spent all my time today in Learn a Song. Put in some more chord practice in Must be Christmas (if I can get this one learnt by Christmas it'd be a good one to show off to my family with! ) and then found a song I hadn't heard before called Next Girl by a band I've never heard of before called The Black Keys. (This is one of the RS1 tracks.) Quite a fun song to play, and the lead arrangement is very easy. Played it through once, had my Mastery shoot all the way up to 95%, and thought "well, this is a candidate for Score Attack Mode!". So off I went to score attack. Still playing the song on "Hard", so that it shows me 100% of the notes while I try and memorise the arrangement. Never managed to get to 100% accuracy, my best run missed one note! However, the exercise was very useful because it highlighted to me that I am pressing the strings waaaaay too hard on guitar. The game is actually more sensitive than I gave it credit for - if you press too hard and end up bending the string, it won't register. Once I realised this and started to apply a lighter touch, my score started to increase. A fun song. I think I'll play it again tomorrow and try for 100% on Hard and Master difficulties. Day 44: 16 Dec 2015 Went back into Score Attack Mode and managed to 100% Next Girl on Hard. Haven't managed to get 100% on Master yet, but the song is memorised. Now, I just need to execute on that. Soon. Afterwards, went into Learn a Song and tried (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. Seems easy enough. Once I get Next Girl mastered, I might turn to this one. Cut my session short as my headcold is back and back with a vengeance, and I just wanted to chill. I could barely concentrate as it was. Days 45 - ??: 18 Dec 2015 - 3 Jan 2016 (Christmas-New Year Break) So I got a number of sessions in over the Christmas & New Years break. Thinking of trophies, I identified a few songs from the RS1 set-list that are contenders for platinum scores on Master mode, such as Next Girl (Bass - I think I managed to get the Lead guitar master platinum over the break), Angela by Jarvis Cocker (Lead and Bass) and Song 2 by Blur (Lead and Bass - I just need to work on those chord transitions). Overall, I'm finding the guitar really difficult compared to bass. Much practice is needed. Many of my chords sound terrible (even if the game registers them), when chords show up in a song it usually throws me so completely that I panic. Need to spend more time in the riff repeater practicing the songs at a lower speed. I am improving though. Slowly. Day 52... ish?: 5 Jan 2016 No real point to counting the "Days" now that I've lost track, but hey ho. Had a bass session today. Managed to get a platinum master score on Angela. Relatively easy song. Just one tricky bit where the phrase throws in a pull off instead of a strum, then strums the next note twice. Still, that's one more in the bag. Still can't get a platinum score on Next Girl on bass. There's a few tricky bits to look out for, like a phrase where the pattern changes slightly to throw in an extra strum or two. There's also a bit where it doesn't exactly follow the lead guitar, and plays an F# when the lead guitar has already moved to an E. Now that I know they're there I'll get it soon. Other than that I spent my time dicking around in learn a song mode. Practiced a few songs. The bass arrangement on (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction is really fun, but a bit tricky and involves a few stretches of your fretting fingers which can be hard to pull off in a way that sounds good. The game picks them up, but they sound buzzy as hell. Then spent some time in the guitarcade, just levelling up in a few different games like Scale Racers, String Skip Saloon, Temple of Bends, etc. Day 53: 6 Jan 2016 Had a guitar session today. Gosh the guitar is hard. All these tiny strings, all bunched together. Maybe trying to learn both guitar and bass at once wasn't such a good idea... Anyway, after a few warm-up songs I got back into the groove. Progress is happening, but painfully slowly. One of my main issues is finding the correct strings, both with my fretting hand and my pick. In particular, the blue and orange strings (that's the D and G strings), seem to get lost in the middle somewhere whenever I try to find them. So, made a few attempts at Angela on lead on score attack master. I've got the main riff down, it's just the solo giving me issues. As I alluded to above, I'm having trouble finding the D string among all the others, and that's the one I need for the hammer-ons and the single notes. I spent some time messing around in the Guitarcade. I'm on the last level of the first series on Scale Warriors now on Guitar, but the final boss is giving me issues. I'm not so convinced that Scale Warriors is a good way of learning the scales. Sure, you get to see the whole scale shape on screen at once, but Scale Racers really seems to be better at teaching you the pattern as you race up and down each scale. Spent some time in Learn a Song too. Just played Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters a few times, and messed around with a few songs. Didn't dip into the Riff Repeater, which is something I'm going to have to start doing more if I ever want to get some of these harder songs licked. Overall, a good session. Fun was had. Day 54: 7 Jan 2015 Session got cut short today because I had to nip to the shops to get some dinner for the wife and I. Did a bit of switching between the guitar and bass. Tried out the Rhythm guitar path, playing the song Black Magic. Simple chord progression at first, just power chords going back and forth and up and down. I could get my head around that. Then went on to Blitzkrieg Bop. At first, it looked just like the lead guitar arrangement. "Easy!" I thought, stupidly. Once the difficulty increased to a certain point, the game started throwing in another note to be played with the middle finger. Oh holy hell. Amazing how just changing the power chord shape that I'm used to can royally f*** me up. Played through Learn to Fly once or twice on the Lead guitar path. I'm starting to see a couple of new chords in there that I need to learn the shapes for. Think I'll use the Riff Repeater on this one. Then decided to play the bass for a bit. Was just getting through Learn to Fly again, this time on bass, when the wife came home and announced that we needed some grub from the shops. Day 55: 9 Jan 2016 Had a good guitar session today. Played through my collection of Green Day DLC tracks over and over again, starting with Oh Love!, and something weird started to happen... chords started to make sense. Ok, so Green Day seem to use a lot of power chords and you're essentially just moving that shape around the fretboard, but they're starting to sound cleaner than I've ever managed to get them to sound before. Mastery ratings started to creep up, and I'm something like this: Oh Love! - 40% Basket Case - 25% American Idiot - 30% X-Kid - 30% (These are guesstimates, I don't have my PS4 in front of me.) So I spent about an hour playing through those over and over, and that was my session. Day 56: 10 Jan 2016 Only had time for a quick session today. Played through American Idiot and Oh Love! a couple of times each on guitar. Lots of fun, and I'm getting better at those power chords. Also downloaded the Bon Jovi Pack and had a couple of quick runs through It's My Life, which is a lot of fun to play too. Can't remember what my mastery score is looking like, but the Green Day practice really helped. New power chords showed up in this song, and I was able to hit them first try. Look forward to trying the other songs in this pack later. I've said it before, but, the system does seem to be working. A few weeks ago I was wondering if I'd made a huge and expensive mistake buying a new guitar and what have you, but now I'm feeling reinvigorated and enthusiastic again. Seeing you're mastery score creep up when you play really does motivate you to keep going, even if it is just a few % each time. And all this chord practice has given me some nice callouses on my other fretting fingers. Not something I got from the bass. Also, my sister-in-law's fiance is coming to stay this coming weekend. He's a very accomplished guitar player. Hopefully our respective Missuses will let us have a teaching session, because I'd like to pick his ear on a few techniques that I'm finding difficult. Day 57: 14 Jan 2016 Got in a couple of fairly quick sessions today. First off, jumped on the bass and played through the remaining RS2014 tracks for a trophy. The last ones I had to do were all a bit complicated, so it's unlikely they'll be Master Mode contenders... Then I switched to the guitar. Played through It's My Life a couple more times, but couldn't hit those chords consistently enough to increase my score by very much. Went back to Green Day, and improved my mastery in American Idiot to 55%, and Oh Love! to 60%. Both great fun to play. 3 days off between sessions really showed though. Had a hell of a time getting warmed up and back into those chords. Day 58: 16-17 Jan 2016 A number of, shorter, sessions this weekend owing to my sister in law and her fiance visiting us. (I'll just count them all together as 1 session as it was all kinda broken up.) Showed off the game, he had a go, but he found it really difficult because he is not a gamer so was completely flummoxed by the concept of the note highway. In the end, when we did play multiplayer with me on bass, he just played what he knew would sound good with the song and ignored the screen. Being able to just play along to any song with something that you know is going to sound passable... wow. Eventually managed to get a session going on Sunday night. Played through a few of the 30 Seconds to Mars songs that I downloaded. The ones I tried are relatively easy, for the lead arrangement at least. Not very many chords and relatively simple soloing. Managed to get over 75% mastery in Closer to the Edge. These songs are good fun, and beginner appropriate. Check them out if you're just starting and like the band. Day 59: 19 Jan 2016 Had a nice long session today, totally focussed on the guitar. First off, played Closer to the Edge by 30 Seconds to Mars. I spent a lot of time, maybe 40 minutes or so, in the riff repeater and got to the point where the guitar solos are playing at 100% difficulty. I managed to nail them a couple of times in the riff repeater, but haven't been able to do that in the song yet. I almost have the whole song at 100% difficulty now. After my riff repeater practice I played through it again and managed to get my mastery score up to 89%. I'm playing with Master Mode switched off at the moment, so that's slightly more than 90% accuracy. If I turned on Master Mode I'm sure it would be higher as the easier parts of the song I have down. It's a good song to practice the higher strings too. My fingers and pick seem to get a bit muddled up from the D string onwards, but those are the only strings used in this song so if you're having trouble with them I recommend it. I then played a couple more 30StM songs, before going back to Green Day for some power chord practice. Managed to increase my mastery score in Basket Case, but not American Idiot. Still, the power chords are sounding a lot cleaner, and registering with the game more frequently. After seeing that my skills with the power chords seemed to have improved, I started up the guitarcade game "Star Chords". Whaddaya know, I seem to be able to survive in that game now. Managed to get a score of 900,000 odd, which isn't too bad considering my multiplier level is still only level 2. That was pleasing. Then played some Ducks Redux and got a new high score of 19,000,000 and something before calling it a night. Day 60: 21 Jan 2016 Hmm. So, Day 60 came and went. I'm not going to review my progress just yet because, 1 - Not all my my sessions have been full, hour-long practice sessions as Ubisoft SF recommends (in fact, my progress on the Rocksmith website says that I've only had 16 qualifying sessions towards the 60 day challenge, as they do not count sessions where less than 1 hour is spent actually playing), and 2 - I can't really be arsed right now. Suffice it to say - I am a much better player than I used to be, but I still have a long way to go. Anyway, on with the show. I started this session on the guitar. I started out with Queen's We are the Champions as the game had given me a mission to increase my mastery score on that. Managed to get it up to about 28%, which wasn't too shabby. Had an abysmal couple of attempts at Closer to the Edge by 30 Seconds to Mars before moving on to Green Day. Managed to do well enough at the main chord riff in American Idiot that the game bumped me up to playing full, 3 note power chords... before it realised that I clearly wasn't quite ready for that and dropping me back down to 2 note power chords again. Oh well. I think I managed to increase the mastery score slightly, but not by a whole %. Had a run through of X-kid and Basket Case, then decided I felt like playing a little bass. Played a number of bass arrangements which I hadn't tried before, mostly from the easy end when the songs are arranged by "Difficulty". Nothing too memorable, but some fun ones to play. Then tried a few of the 30 Seconds to Mars songs' bass arrangements. They're quite easy, just a few tricky bits where the arrangement throws in a sudden octave note or what have you. If I want to play these in Mastery Mode, I'm going to have to spend some more time with them though, as the bassist changes the length of his notes in certain phrases. Played a couple of RAtM songs - Bulls on Parade and Killing in the Name Of. The latter is getting quite difficult on the main riff now. Lots of fast moving between strings, which is my bane. Need to riff repeater that one. Then went back to X-Kid and tried it in score attack mode. Haven't played this arrangement in a while, so I ended up with an appalling score. Still, it should be a fairly manageable song for a master mode clear, so I think I'll get back into playing that one until I've memorised it. Then jumped into the guitarcade and finished off by clearing the first scale set in Scale Warriors, earning me the trophy. I'll have to do the same on guitar now - no good learning a scale that stops two strings short! A good session overall. It's been a while since I've had that long to play the game uninterrupted. Day 61: 24 Jan 2016 Had a fun session today, despite it being quite brief. So I started out with Green Day. I'm really starting to get comfortable moving that power-chord shape around. Played a lot of Oh Love! and X-Kid, and managed to improve my mastery score on both. Oh Love! in particular is now at 89% mastery or something. Just need to riff repeat the solo a few times and I should be able to get that one. Then played a few random songs. One in particular, from RS1, Little Barry's Surf Hell is really fun to play. That tremolo slide though... going to have to work on that. Then tried a couple of songs from the Bon Jovi pack. You Give Love a Bad Name and Living on a Prayer are both good, fun songs to learn, I think I'll keep these in my repertoire for now. Managed to get You Give Love up to about 75% mastery after just 3 or 4 plays. I'm starting to realise that it's good to change songs based on what you want to and feel like doing at the time, rather than focussing on mastering one song at a time. These skills are transferrable (duh!), but it was amazing how much easier I'm finding the chords (even the non-power chords) in X-Kid because of my practice in other songs. Starting to feel really good about my progress again. I must've gone over one plateau back there recently,hopefully it will be a while until I find the next one. Day 62: 25 Jan 2016 Just a quick session today, on the bass. Mainly just took a few songs into Score Attack's Master difficulty. Wanted to start making progress to the 15 I need to clear for that trophy. I managed to clear Roxanne, Dammit, All the Small Things, Vasoline and Oh Love!. I'd play it each once on Hard to remind myself of how it goes, then muddle my way through Master. That's about it for today! Day 63: 2 Feb 2016 What a difference a week makes... Not in a good way either. So I took a week off from practice and it screwed me up. Kinda. Mostly from a memorisation-side of things - practicing a lot of the tracks they felt foreign and unintuitive. Managed to bluster my way through them. It didn't help that, at least at first, my fingers and pick just flailed all over the place. Anything below the D string was hard to get to with my pick, and my fretting hand was just guessing. Not good. Stuck with it though, and just ran through the songs I've been playing most recently, such as Oh Love!, American Idiot, a couple of the Bon Jovi tracks, etc. By the end of the session, I was achieving mastery scores that were almost back where they should have been. One or two might have even improved by a half a % point or so, but nothing special. Mostly this session was about getting my hands used to the instrument again. Still don't feel like I quite did that, but hopefully tonight will be better. Day 64: 3 Feb 2016 Only had time for a very quick session today. Downloaded the new Offspring Song Pack and played through Want You Bad 3 times. Good song, and great for beginners. It's practically all power chords, mostly played on the A string and up. The solo is made up of just 2 different harmonic notes too. Managed to get this song up to 20% or so mastery, then had to break off to have dinner. Day 65: 5 Feb 2016 Fab session today, mostly spent practicing the Offspring song pack. Managed to get Want You Bad to around 40%, You're Gonna Go Far Kid to 82% (which surprised me!), Pretty Fly (for a White Guy) to 25%, All I Want to about 30% and The Kids Aren't Alright to around 20%. This has got to be one of the best packs for beginners that I've tried, especially if you need practice at power chords. After doing Offspring songs over and over for about an hour, I popped into the Lessons mode and did a few of those. Got the trophy for playing 30 chords to pop during a lesson on palm-muting double-stops, so I guess the game counts them as chords? Meh. Good session. Feeling good about practice and the progress again. Day 66: 7 Feb 2016 More Offspring practice today. Managed to get You're Gonna Go Far Kid to 87% or so... the last bit to learn is the solo, which involves a lot of slides and shifts up and down the A and G strings (or, at least it does at this difficulty). In order to keep up, I'm either going to have to memorise it or get better at "knowing" where my hand is placed without having to look. Improved on all the other Offspring songs too, by roughly similar amounts. Want You Bad is now pretty much running at full difficulty for most of the song but, weirdly, there are sections where the game isn't registering my playing (even though it sounds right). May have to bounce into the Riff Repeater and bump it up manually to see if I'm missing something here. Sometimes this happens where a song introduces a new note somewhere but, because I need to look at my hand briefly at that point in the song, I never notice the new chord or note, and sorta get stuck on the difficulty below that. Anyway. After that guitar practice I got the bass out and played a few Offspring tracks on that. Good fun songs on the bass. Pretty Fly in particular was great fun. Day 67: 9 Feb 2016 Decided to have a bass session today. Played through the Offspring songs on bass. I have most of the licks down now, although some are surprisingly hard. Pretty Fly, for example, is quite tough. Again, the issue seems to be that I'm not good enough at shifting without looking at my hands, and there are a few slides in that song which mess me up as I keep missing the target fret. Might need to spend some time in the riff repeater on that one. Managed to get All I Want up to 98% though, so went into score attack mode and did the track on Hard and then Master difficulty. (Got me-self a trophy too; the one for clearing 20 songs on score attack, hard.) Then went back to some old RAtM favourites. Spent some time in the riff repeater with Killing in the Name Of and improved my accuracy with the main riff. I can get all the notes on 85% speed, but it all goes pear shaped once the game bumps me to 95% speed. Will keep working on it. Day 68: 11 Feb 2016 Had some fun on the guitar today. Started off with a couple of runs at a few Offspring songs. Didn't manage to make any notable improvement on my mastery scores. Decided to go and try out some RAtM songs, as I haven't played these on guitar very extensively. Boy have I been missing out. After down-tuning to Drop-D, I fired up Renegades of Funk. Ok, I have played this one before, and it's fairly easy. Blasted through it and started to be able to hit the 2 string hammer-on in the main riff a little more consistently than I have been able to on previous attempts, so that mastery score improved. Fired up Killing in the Name Of next, which I've not tried on guitar before, and it's great fun to play. Can't remember where I got my mastery to, but I played through it about 4 times. Will definitely continue to work on this one. Also played Wake Up, which is a RAtM song I am less familiar with, in between attempts at Killing in the Name Of. For some light relief, (and to get a Rocksmith mission out of the way), I went and played Next Girl by the Black Keys. Got 100% on my first try, and cleared the mission that required me to get a 150 note streak. Was just turning to some Foo Fighter's tracks when the doorbell rang, and ended my session. Day 69: 13 Feb 2016 Continued my progress with RAtM songs today. Renegades of Funk is now my easy "go to" RAtm song (should have a go at that on score attack, actually...) and the mastery is somewhere like 98%. Only hard part is getting the game to detect the double stop hammer-on in the main riff. Sounds fine on the guitar, but the game doesn't always give it to you. Which is weird because usually its the other way around - the game will give it to you even if what you've just played sounds like kak. Managed to get Killing in the Name Of completely unlocked, but need to keep working on it. Somewhere like 80% mastery right now. Bulls on Parade is coming along nicely too. Managed to get it completely unlocked and I'm also at something like 80% for that one. Need to spend some time on the main riff though because it's one of those "the game is giving it to me but it sounds like shit" situations. Mustn't allow myself to rely on the "game" if I want to improve. As I was in Eb tuning after Bulls, I jumped up the track list to Basket Case and ended up playing through that 3 or 4 times. All my practice with power chords on the Offspring songs has really paid off - I was able to get it fully unlocked and not sounding too bad! Again, something around 80-85% mastered. Day 70: 16 Feb 2016 A very fun and productive session today. Started off with Renegades of Funk. Gave it a play on Learn a Song Mode, then thought "yeah, I got this", so went to Score Attack. Nailed it on Hard before moving to Master Mode. Failed my first attempt (I just hadn't remembered when the arrangement shifts between phrases), but got it on my second attempt without a single strike. Think I got a silver pick overall. Then went back to Learn a Song and played through Bulls on Parade and Killing in the Name Of a few more times. I misspoke last time I updated here, neither of these are at 100% yet. There's just a few notes missing in each, apparently. Anyway, improved my overall mastery on both. Then hit a few Rocksmith missions that were in my list. These had me playing You Really Got Me to 33% mastery and then We Are the Champions on Score Attack Easy. Then had to do 2 Rocksmith Recommends items for Pretty Fly (for a White Guy), one was to look at the chord book, and another was to play a riff in riff repeater. Easy, done. Next mission was to get a song to 75% mastery, so I busted open my PSN wallet and bought my latest song pack, Linkin Park. Big fan of these guys' early work! Started off with In the End. Very easy song on lead. The whole thing is basically 4 harmonics in a repeating pattern, with a short riff of single fret double stops which repeats once before going back to the harmonic pattern. Hardest part of this song was the harmonics, from a technique perspective - it's harder to get them to really sing on the unwound G, B and e strings which require a lighter touch and a quicker retreat once you've picked the string than the wound strings - and getting the game to recognise the double stops in such a low tuning (the song is in EbDropDb). Anyway, played through it 3 or so times in Learn a Song to get the Rocksmith Mission done, then went to Score Attack and cleared it on Hard and Master difficulties. No strikes on either, but I did fluff a few harmonics here and there. Then had a quick play through Numb, before calling it a night. Day 71: 18 Feb 2016 Had a bit of a mixed session today. Spent most of my time on the guitar. Started work on a few more Linkin Park tracks. Some of them get quite complicated once the difficulty starts to rise. Made the most progress on Bleed It Out. A good song for me to practice because it has a long riffs of double stops played on the B and e strings, which I find harder to get to as a general rule. Played a couple of RAtM songs, but wasn't feeling it. Bailed halfway through Killing in the Name Of, once I got to the main riff I was rudely awakened to the fact that my fingers were being flappy sausages. Decided at this point that I'd like to play some bass tracks. Overall, not too bad a guitar session but, equally, not great. Didn't really push myself to progress today. I guess practice is practice. So, on bass I basically just played through the Linkin Park songs a few times. Some of them have some nice bass lines. Numb in particular stood out. Lots of nice sustains, and its interesting how the rhythm of the bassline sort of straddles syncing with the vocals and the beat. Might try to make this one another score attack master clear, if I can. Day 72: 20 Feb 2016 Had a purely bass session today. Played through the Linkin Park songs a few times. Managed to get Bleed It Out 100% cleared on Master Mode in score attack on my first attempt, so that was nice. Played through some other stuff too, mainly just doing whatever the Rocksmith missions told me to do. Finished up with some time spent on the guitarcade games, mainly Gone Walin and Temple of Bends (which is really hard on bass, boy do you need strong fingers there). Leveled up in Gone Walin but couldn't earn a single star in Temple of Bends. Overall, a pretty directionless session but practice is practice. Day 73: 3 Mar 2016 Just a quick session today as my wife was feeling unwell and was losing her patience with my miserable flailing at the strings. Got back into it after my holiday with play throughs of a few songs like Basket Case, You're Gonna Go Far Kid, All I Want, I Want You Bad and some 30 Seconds to Mars song which I can't remember the name of right now. My mastery scores were fairly close to the maximum I've achieved on each of these, so not too much was lost in my week off as far as the game is concerned. However, the actual sound I was producing did not sound good. No where near as clean as I have been able to play. Lots of muted sounds where there should be clear notes, and errant strings coming in where they should be muted. Very droll. Hopefully my next session I'll be a bit more back to normal. Day 74: 7 Mar 2016 Had a another session without any clear aim. Basically just played through a number of songs once each, just to get my fingers used to the instrument again, and clear a few Missions, many of which asked me to "Play X new songs". Didn't do too badly on I Want You Bad and Basket Case, in both of those I was able to increase my mastery scores by a couple of % points. Overall, I was playing for about 50 minutes. Day 75: 9 Mar 2016 Not even sure if I should bother to update you with this one! Basically, only had a really quick session today. Basically played through Learn to Fly once, improved my mastery and got the chorus to 100% difficulty, went into riff repeater to practice the verse, played it through again and improved my mastery by a bit more. And that's all folks... practice is practice, I guess! Day 76: 12 Mar 2016 Quite a decent session today. Decided I was going to play bass for a bit, so dusted off my T'Bird and jacked it in. So I started out by going and buying the latest "Women Who Rock" DLC pack after watching it on the dev's weekly stream on Thursday 10 March. Some seriously great tunes in there. Here's a trailer if you want to see them. So I played through each track once to get a feel for them and start levelling them up. Take It Off is probably the simplest (there's only 5 different notes to worry about!) and I'm So Sick is probably the most difficult on account of that stretch up to the 6th fret. Went in a practiced a few more songs too. A couple of RAtM tracks, that sort of thing. After I was done with playing songs I went into the guitarcade and played some Scale Racer. Managed to knock off a mission by levelling up, (eventually). Really annoying how sometimes the game will randomly decide that it isn't going to register your notes, especially when those scales start to get really fast. I have found that using a pick helps by giving your playing a bit more of an attack, but the detection still isn't perfect. Day 77: 13 Mar 2016 Bum ba da dum ba da dum! ... and It Wasn't a Fluke Clear 15 Songs on Score Attack Master I'd like to thank The Donnas for making this possible with their super easy bass-line. So yeah, had a bit of an epic bass session today; on account of my wife feeling unwell so our Sunday was going to be spent indoors anyway. Started off with the Women Who Rock pack and practiced Take It Off until I was pretty confident that I knew the arrangement. Played it through on Hard and got a 100% platinum pick score. Nice. Went on to Master and, despite a couple of cock ups, managed to get through it without any strikes at all. Then the trophy popped, which was a pleasant surprise. I knew I was close to 15 cleared tracks, but didn't realise I was this close. Went back into Learn A Song and practiced the other WWR songs a bit more before turning my attention back to the guitarcade. First thing on the agenda was levelling up String Skip Saloon to get another mission out of the way, which I managed relatively quickly. The next mission wanted me to level up Scale Racers again, but after spending some time with it yesterday I didn't really feel like it. So I went into Harmonic Heist instead and played a few rounds. Got a new high score and a few stars. Popped out to the supermarket to get some provisions for my wife, (and to get a little bit of fresh air - the weather was lovely yesterday), before returning to the guitarcade. Jumped into Scale Racers and got that mission out of the way by levelling up. Still having issues with the game deciding randomly that it doesn't like me and isn't going to detect my notes 100% of the time, but eventually managed to get enough stars to level it. The next mission wanted me to level Gone Whailin', so I dutifully complied. Really find this game difficult. I think the key, with the bass at least, is to ignore the E string. The game's detection of this string seems to be quite binary. Strum it and your whale will spout a full stream of water, but try to dampen the sound slightly to drop the guy by a little bit and it'll comply for a while before it just decides "nope, I can't hear you anymore" and drop him completely. Still, managed to earn enough stars to level up, eventually. Some ridiculously short runs in this session... it's so annoying that you can't skip the score count screens and what have you. My next mission wants me to start the next set of scales in Scale Warriors, but I didn't really feel like getting into a longer play mode so I went back to Learn a Song and thought I'd knock out some missions there. Played Learn a Song for about an hour just knocking some really easy missions out of the way. "Complete two Rocksmith Recommends Items" - check. "Earn a Great Performance" - check. "Play 3 new songs" - check, times 2. "Play 2 new songs" - check. etc etc. Basically just played to the missions until I got the dreaded "Earn 75% mastery in R U Mine?"... I am not a fan of this arrangement, so I usually ignore this mission until the game refreshes it. For some reason it is obsessed that I need to master this track... I suppose it does involve a lot of good shifting work but I just don't find the song, or playing it, all that interesting. I suppose I'll do it one day, but today was not that day. So yeah, a long session and now my back hurts from holding my fretting arm out for a solid 2-3 hours. Whuf. Still, it felt like progress was made this weekend, and I'm reinvigorated about my bass playing again. Day 78: 15 Mar 2016 A bit of a unplanned session today. I thought I'd only have a half hour or so before I had to be somewhere, so I decided I'd try and smash out as many Rocksmith missions as possible in that time. As it turned out, I didn't have to go anywhere, so I got quite a few done. Was playing on bass again today. Started with the Learn a Song missions, of which I had "Play 2 new songs" 3 times in a row. Played through a number of things I hadn't tried before, some of them quite difficult. First time playing The Spider and the Fly by the Rolling Stones. Cracking bass-line, really enjoyed playing it. Will have to give this one some more attention. Eventually got the dreaded "Achieve 75% accuracy in R U Mine?" so decided to switch to the guitarcade. First mission wanted me to achieve level 9 in String Skip Saloon. About 7 attempts and 3 stars later, mission achieved. Hot a new high score too, 17M and something. Nice. Then onto Ninja Slide N', where I had to achieve level 3, I think. Getting the hang of this one a bit more - learning to time my slides so that I hit more ghosts and get more bonus points. Only a couple of stars got me to the next level and completed the mission. Next, it was on to Ducks ReDux. Had a few good runs, shot some quackers, achieved a new high score or two, and leveled it to level 4. Back to String Skip Saloon which now wanted me to reach the maximum level, level 10. This went a bit quicker this time, just a few attempts got me all the stars I needed to level up. Not sure what missions involving this mini-game will do from now on... maybe they'll just ask me to beat a high score target or achieve a certain number of stars (which are still available after reaching max level, apparently.) Back to Ninja Slide N' again (damn this game's repeating itself a lot today) and got that up to level 4. Mission accomplished. The game then asked me to go back to Ducks ReDux. Unfortunately, I was getting a bit fed up of repeating myself by this point and had been playing for over an hour, so I switched it off. Wish I'd known I would have had longer to keep playing, I might have gone back to The Spider and the Fly and given that a few more plays. Day 79: 17 Mar 2016 Just a quick bass session today. Was a long day at work so decided to play some favourites that I knew well in order to de-stress. Hit up a few Green Day songs first of all, getting through Oh Love! and American Idiot. Then played a few RAtM songs, Bombtrack and Bulls on Parade. Played through the Rolling Stones' The Spider and the Fly again, and improved my mastery there. Fun track to play. Then my Missions updated and I had to complete 3 new songs, so I tried a few new ones. Wasn't paying attention to what they were, and they were by bands I don't know, and they were significantly harder than what I'm used to... For some reason Rocksmith seemed to think they were within my capabilities though, and all 3 were fully unlocked from the start... A flavour of how much more work needs to be done I guess. Carried on doing missions - get a great performance, play a new song - until I got back to "get 75% on R U Mine?" which, again, I didn't attempt. (Maybe I'll try to clear that this weekend, it's getting annoying.) Then closed things out by playing Renegades of Funk again. Good to know that I can still 100% that track without looking at the screen. Day 80: 19 Mar 2016 Another weekend, another pretty epic bass session. Although, unfortunately, another one that lacked much direction besides "chase those Rocksmith missions". So, as is usual, I began with Learn a Song mode. The first few missions switched between "get a great performance", "get a 150 note streak" and "play a new song". For the great performance and note streak ones I'd stick to and, usually, improve on my mastery of the song. New songs are a different beast, obviously, but there were one or two this session that seem like they'd be worth more dedicated practice as they use techniques and moves that I need to work on. Eventually I got the dreaded "75% accuracy in R U Mine?". Decided to take it on and managed to beat it on my first attempt. I don't want to sound boastful, but it really was much easier than I remember - it's not unlocked to 100% difficulty yet by the way - and shows that the practice is working, however slowly. Then the game asked me to improve my mastery of We are the Champions to 68.5%. This took two attempts, managing to just pip it by getting 68.8% on the second. It has a tonne of shifts in it, John Deacon really knows how to use the whole fretboard - there's none of that heavy metal "let's stick to the E string, and play it fast" going on here. I might give this one a more emphatic effort, as I do like a good bit o'Queen. (In fact, I might go buy the Queen song pack as a little treat...) Moved on to guitarcade. Played a number of rounds of Harmonic Heist in order to get myself to level 6 and complete another mission. Having issues with the game not recognising harmonics played on the E string's 5th or 7th fret. Might get myself to the official forums and find out what's up with that. Then played Hurtlin' Hurdles for a number of rounds to get myself to level 4. Quite a grind as a number of the star challenges were longer, cumulative ones like "hump 50 hurdles" and "spend 30s leaping in the air". One of the challenges is to cause 2 robots to be crushed at the same time, which is really difficult to pull off, apparently. Couldn't figure out what the game wanted of me, I had plenty of runs where two robots were killed almost simultaneously, so I gave up on that one. Those two missions out of the way, I went back to learn a song mode and played 3 new songs to clear one more mission. I then took myself out and bought 2 leather straps from my guitar store. The one for my bass has a wider strap with a napped suede finish on the inside which prevents it from slipping and will make things easier. The guitar one has a padded strap. Looking forward to trying both out properly in the next few sessions. Days 81-82: 26 & 27 Mar 2016 Should have updated you earlier - I've almost completely forgotten what I got up to... So I bought another couple of packs during this weekend. I went for Hit Singles 3 and the Sum 41 Song Pack. Hit Singles 3 Sum 41 Song Pack Still playing on bass these days. Need to pick the guitar up again really... Anyway, I played through these songs during this weekend. Closing Time is a really fun one to play on bass. Not too complicated, a nice riff, and a great one to sing along too. Play that Funky Music is also awesome fun. Sum 41's bass lines are way more complicated than I had anticipated, and many are down tuned which means my fingering has got to be a lot better. Saved a few of these for later - i.e. whenever the game decides to give me a "Play X new song(s)" mission. Other than that, not much else I can remember about that weekend. I probably spent some time doing missions in the guitarcade too though. Day 83: 6 Apr 2016 Been over a week since my last practice. The wife and I have joined a gym lately and that's eating into my evening practice sessions. Still, managed to get 40 or so minutes today. While I planned to pick up the guitar again on my next session, with only a few minutes available to me I went for the bass and decided to just knock a few missions out. First two asked me to get some 150 note streaks. Got the first mission done on Closing Time, but getting a second 150 note streak proved harder than I anticipated. Couldn't do it on American Idiot, or the next 3 or 4 songs I attempted - I even got a 149 note streak on one song... grrrr. Eventually managed to get it by going back to Blitzkrieg Bop. Don't laugh. Then was asked to get 75% accuracy on We are the Champions, which I managed, just about (86%). Then had to improve my mastery of Self Tap to 72%. Played through it and managed to get it up to 75%, so got that one out the way. Had to shoot off to dinner and a movie after that. Day 84: 24 Apr 2016 Managed to get an hour with my bass today. Played through the songs in the Disturbed Song Pack. Frigging love this band. Low tuning is causing me issues. It's so much harder to play when the strings are all floppy and loose - if money wasn't a thing, I might go out and get a second bass just to have it set up for low tunings. Unfortunately, I'll just have to deal with it. Oh yeah, they're all in D drop C tuning, so a whole step below E standard and then another whole step for the lowest string, making it floppier than... no, I'm not going there. Floppy, anyway. And Disturbed love that C string... Anyway, these songs seem harder to play on a first run through than the other Disturbed songs released so far. Will have to give them more attention to get them fully unlocked. Playing these songs got a mission (play 3 new songs) to pop, which also popped Mission 214. So, just about 43% of the way through the mission grind... after only about 8 months... Boy this is a long plat! After playing through Disturbed, I jumped into the guitarcade for a bit. Levelled up Ninja Slide 'N to level 5 for a mission, and obtained a new high score of 6M and change. This is the easiest this game has ever felt. I'm getting much faster at recognising where on the fretboard I need to be, and being able to stop my slides there. Maybe another level or two and I should be able to get the 10M trophy in this game. Went back to Learn a Song and played through Woman by Wolfmother, We are the Champions by Queen, Losing My Religion by REM and capped it off with Closing Time by Semisonic. After such a long break from bass, my back, shoulder and fingers were feeling the strain of playing. I'd only been at it an hour! Anyway, decided to call it a day there. Day 85: 30 April 2016 Just a quick session on the bass today, approximately 40 mins or so. Essentially just wanted to get my fingers and hands limbered up and re-accustomed to the instrument. Spent the time in Learn a Song mode, knocking off a few missions. I still need to look at the fretboard to check my shifts, but I am finding that occasionally, just very occasionally, my hand knows where it's going without me having to look. Improvement! Day 86: 2 May 2016 Just got back from a wedding the day before. Hungover as ****, but having seen a live band at the wedding party I was feeling inspired and decided to practice for a bit. Hit a few missions in Learn a Song mode. Then a mission came up that asked me to increase my mastery on We are the Champions to 75%. Played through it a couple of times, got the mission, and remembered that I had intended to buy the other Queen songs to learn. A short foray into the PSN store and I had added a nice selection of 7 Queen tracks to my playlist. Tried my hand at Fat Bottomed Girls, which was very difficult. Lots of slides up and down the E string throwing me off - I find it hard to slide, watch the screen to know where I need to be next, and look at the fretboard to stop the slide in the right place, all at once. Will want to practice this one thought because its one of my favourite Queen tracks. Another One Bites the Dust was much easier though. Played it a couple of times and I'm already close to 100% mastery. Bloody great, simple-but-effective bassline, loads of fun to play. Made sure to practice choking off the notes to get those nice, distinct "DuM, DuM, DuM" notes. Was going to try out Bohemian Rhapsody but my wife had woken up from her alcohol induced "powernap" and wanted to use the TV. Still need to figure out the best time in the regular workday to practice, but feeling more motivated again. Days 87 and 88: Thurs 5 May and Sun 8 May 2016 So, two relatively short sessions on these days. On the Thursday, I spent some more time in Learn a Song smashing out missions. Had to play a new song (chose a Queen one) and reach 75% accuracy on Woman. Only got about 40 mins with the bass today. On the Sunday, there was a bit more in the way of structured practice. After a few easier missions (get a 150 note streak, stuff like that) I got a mission to increase my mastery of 2 more songs above 75%. Managed to do the first one no problem but the second, Heaven Knows by the Pretty Reckless, took me a few attempts. The final mission, which I wasn't able to hit, asked me to improve my mastery of Woman to 75.8%. Now, the long section of riff in the middle of this song isn't hard, but my clumsy fingers just can't seem to get around the pattern and I always fluff it at normal speed. So I jumped into Riff Repeater for the first time in a while and slowed it right down. Just like it promises, I was suddenly able to do this sequence. I've started increasing the speed and hope to improve my mastery of Woman next time this mission shows up in the rotation. On the day though, we suddenly realised we were late to the movies, and I had to shoot off. Day 89: 14 May 2016 Got about an hour with the bass today. I bought the Rise Against song packs. (I'd not heard of these guys before Rocksmith, but I'm happy to have found them!) Good fodder for the "play a new song" missions. The bass parts do some interesting things with the phrasing - while the shifting and riffs themselves are relatively straightforward, Again, I spent most of my time in "learn a song" letting the missions guide me. Of note were the missions which asked me to improve my mastery in particular songs: I got We are the Champions (Queen), Self Trap (Playground Kings), and Bombtrack (Rage Against the Machine) each above 85%, with some requiring more practice than others. Bombtrack was a hell of a lot of fun - I started to throw my whole body into playing that one, - and as more notes are revealed in We are the Champions, I find I'm having more and more fun playing that one too. Had another go on Woman, (I had to get 75% accuracy for a mission), and managed to fumble my way through the riff that's giving me difficulty. At full speed, it's still quite hard, but the game has decided that I'm good enough for another note or two to be thrown into the mix. Going to need to slow this one down again. Ended the session with some time in Session mode. A mission asked that I spend 10 minutes practicing in 3 different keys. Had a little jam with the pentatonic minor scale in D, F and E. Then quickly bashed out a mission that wanted me to try out the pentatonic major scale. Good stuff. Day 90: 15 May 2016 Roughly another hour spent in the game, today entirely in Learn a Song. Had a lot more "play X new songs" missions today, which let me get through the Rise Against song packs. Lots of fast strumming in these, my arm got very tired indeed. I played through them too quickly, and the songs are too new to me, to remember what any of them are called really. I think my highest "one play mastery" was on Paper Wings, which was >90%. Most of the others were between 70% and 90% after one play. This is the sort of pack that exposes one of the weaknesses of Rocksmith 2014. It doesn't penalise you for playing notes when you shouldn't, provided that you still hit the notes that you should. So when you see a section where the phrasing goes like this ("_" = one beat note, "____" = a sustained note): _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ ____ You could play this: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and Rocksmith will not penalise you provided that you're playing the correct note. Basically, I'm going to need to slow them down in Riff Repeater to get my head around some of the beats, rests and sustains in these lines if I want to play them properly. When things got a little panicked I just started shredding to get through. After getting through the remaining Rise Against songs, I went back to some favourites for a bit. Improved my mastery on Closing Time, which is a fun bassline, and went back to Bombtrack for a bit of fun, managing to edge up the score by a few tenths of a %. Need to just work on that intro some more. Day 91: 18 May 2016 Another fun session today, even though all I did was more missions in learn a song mode. Started out with Closing Time by Semisonic, a favourite to get me warmed up. Spent about an hour with the game overall. For the easier missions (get a "great performance" or a 150 note streak) I'd fall back on old favourites. Tried a few new songs (when the missions called for them). I particularly liked Swing Life Away by Rise Against, which I 100%-ed on my first go (so immediately went into Score Attack Mode and 100%-ed it again - I gotta remember that I need to clear 50 songs in SAM for the trophies there...). I also really enjoyed playing Good Enough by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which had a really very fun bassline to play. I was able to get about 95% mastery on my first go! It's a long, 6-minute-and-something track, so quite tiring, but I think I'll give this one more attention in the future. Another fun one I hadn't tried before was Me and the Bean by Spoon. Enjoyed playing this one too, but I don't think my final score was as high as the Tom Petty track. Another one to do some more work on though. There was one more song of some note, but I can't remember what it was called now! (I'll try and remember to edit if I figure it out.) Anyway, it was noteworthy because I remember it being a song that I found difficult, but that I managed to improve my mastery from 75% to above 85% on my first go, when a mission asked me to do so. What was that song... Days 92 & 93: Sat 21 & Sun 22 May 2016 I'm going to lump these two sessions together because, again, they were so similar. Also, neither one was a "full session" as we had guests over for the weekend so I was sneaking in songs here and there when time allowed. Essentially, I was just noodling around in Learn a Song mode, hitting missions. Played a few new songs, got a few "great performances", improved my mastery to >75% on a number of tracks. I also jumped into Session Mode with my new brother-in-law on the Sunday. He's an accomplished guitarist. We noodled around in E pentatonic minor for about 15 minutes. The session mode is quite good really. The screen highlighted which notes would work best with the rest of the band, and my playing didn't sound too bad with the virtual band. My brother-in-law, of course, was kinda doing his own thing because he understands all this music theory stuff, so he was soloing and riffing like a trooper. I was just trying to sync up with the drum track rhythmically, and stick to the highlighted notes. I did get a little adventurous by moving between playing on the 12th fret and with open strings. Other than that, not too much to report. I need to get back into the other parts of the game again really. Some guitarcade work would do me good. Days 94 - 98: Sometime between 28 May and 5 June 2016 Was on holiday between these dates, so my practice was irregular, and I wasn't really keeping track. And now enough time has passed that I have sort of forgotten most of it... I'll jot down what I can remember for posterity. It was probably about the equivalent of around 4 sessions, so I'm counting that as 4 days. Guitar - I picked up the guitar and had a pop at the rhythm path for a change. Boy do I ever suck at chords all over again... Still, I had some fun with Bombtrack on rhythm, which is essentially exactly the same as the bass arrangement. Managed to get it to 70 odd percent, the opening riff is still giving me trouble. Also had a crack at Star Chords. Managed to level up, but my scores are still woefully short of a million, let alone the 10M I'll need for the trophy... Bass - Lots and lots of missions, in Learn a Song, Session Mode, and Guitarcade. Basically did whatever the game told me to. Got a bit better at Ode to Joy, played all the Rise Against tracks, noodled around all over the place really. Also spent a session playing songs I'm good at on hard mode in Score Attack, working towards the "Beat X songs on X Difficulty trophies". Got another 15 or so to go on at least easy difficulty, and I think these should be wrapped up. Overall, a bit disjointed, but there we are. Days 99 - 100: 10 & 12 June 2016 You may be able to sense a pattern forming.... Spent most of my time on these two days playing around in Learn a Song. Mostly hitting missions, but I did get through the new Good Charlotte DLC. Were they a "cool" band to listen to even in the early noughties? Probably not, but they're a guilty pleasure. I can't deny that I had a lot of fun remembering and playing these songs on bass. Simple bass lines for the most part. Girls & Boys is a particularly fun one, as is I Just Wanna Live. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous will require a bit more work. I need to fret more softly on the string tuned all the way down to Drop Db to play it right and get the game to recognise what I'm doing. The game's new obsession, as far as the missions go, is the song Brand New Kind of Blue by Gold Motel. "Improve your mastery" it tells me. "Get a new high score in SAM" it berrates me. It's a hard song, alright game. I'm working on it... Grrr. Other than that, played a few songs just for fun. Another One Bites the Dust is still immense fun to play. Also jumped into session mode again to knock out a couple of missions. Finished up a "play for 20 minutes" session, then learned about spacing, then had to apply spacing in a 10 minute session. Also learned a couple of new scale patterns, Ionian and Aeolian. Didn't get into the Guitarcade this weekend. Still need to get back onto that. Day 101: 16 June 2016 Had a pretty long session last night. More of the same really, jumping in and out of songs in Learn a Song, doing whatever mission the game was trying to throw at me. It is still obsessed with Brand New Kind of Blue, which I'm finding quite tough really. Lots of shifting and development of the riff as the song goes on. Must practice it some more. Other than that, I had the opportunity to play some of my favourites as and when I'd get a mission like "Get a great performance" or what have you. Jumped into Session Mode's missions after that. Played around with a couple of new scales, the game got me to start sliding up and down the neck to play scales in a different octave, stuff like that. It can go by so quickly that I'm not sure it's all going in... . Finally I did some guitarcade. Got my level up and new high scores in Scale Racer, Gone Whailin' and Temple of Bends. Overall, I think I played for about 2 hours. Was good fun, and definitely helped relieve a hard day at work. With a few songs, I need to start making sure I'm not gaming the system. I found that while playing Walk this Way I could get the game to detect all the notes, but they sounded like shit IRL. Might play a couple of songs with the rest of the band muted to see what I sound like on my own... I bet it won't be good! Day 102: 18 June 2016 Had a decent session today. Not too long, but not too short, probably about an hour. Bass, still. Started in LaS to get warmed up. Hit a few easy missions along the way, like get a 150 note streak or a "great performance", etc. Got 2 missions for increasing my mastery in Brand New Kind of Blue (I think I've managed to get that riff where it shifts a lot better ingrained into my head) and Walk this Way respectively. Also improved my mastery in Ode to Joy, which netted me another mission. Moved on to the Guitarcade. Managed to level up and earn new high scores in Gone Whalein' and Scale Racer, earning missions for both. Didn't manage to break 10m for the trophies though. Also played some new scales on the second set on Scale Warriors. Completing level 1 earned me a mission there. Most of my time during this session was spent doing these. Went back to LaS and played Stricken by Disturbed, just for fun. Really like that song - it's not where my PSN name came from though, if you were wondering - and I'm starting to get better at the "light touch" required for playing at lower tunings. Then decided to get a new high score on SAM, medium, on Walk this Way. But the game crashed halfway through the song and I took that as a sign... Day 103: 21 June 2016 Had a reasonable session today, about one hour with the game. Still bass. Spent some time in LaS. Got a mission for doing a 150 note streak, even though it took me 3 songs to nab it. Then the game asked me to play Walk this Way, which is a little above my abilities right now. Need to spend some time in riff repeater on that one before I'll be comfortable with it. I can cheat it by flailing my fingers around, but that's not good if I want to improve. Switched over to Guitarcade. Did another level of Scale Warriors for a mission. Next mission was to level up in Temple of Bends, which I suck at - seriously, I'm already level 5 and my highest score isn't even 1M. I just can't seem to figure this one out. Didn't manage to level up in the end. Felt like indulging in some angst (been feeling a little stressed out at work) so went back to LaS and down tuned to DdropC. Played Stricken, Ten Thousand Fists and Indestructible by Disturbed, and then played Toxicity and Aerials by System of a Down. Managed to get 100% accuracy on my first go of Aerials (this was my second PT of the song, so it was already mostly unlocked) so decided to jump over to SAM and play through it on Hard. Missed one note... Still, enjoyed playing some "angry" stuff, it helped. Day 104: 22 June 2016 A very quick 25 minute session. Kept the bass in a low tuning and played through some Disturbed and System of a Down tracks. Not much to shout about, so not really counting this as a dedicated session, just wanted to blow off some steam. Days 105 - 106: 6 and 7 Aug 2016 (Sat/Sun) Well, that was a long break. Decided to pick up the guitar for a change. Went with the rhythm path because 1, my chords suck, and 2, I just wanted to strum out some tunes, can't be arsed with failing miserably on solos. Noodled around with a few songs on these two days, mostly stuff that uses power chords because they're easy. Good Charlotte, some Green Day, a bit of Offspring, that sort of thing. Managed to get to almost 80% on Bulls on Parade with just a couple of plays. Really fun song on rhythm. Spent the most time on American Pie by Don McLean. Some funny little chords in there, but on the roughly 18% mastery that I managed to get up to after 5 or so plays, it looks like I've got a lot more work to do. At the difficulty that it's currently unlocked for me, I'm mostly having to play double stops up on the B and high e strings. I'm sure that the orange, G string will get involved later, I've seen it pop up every now and again. This is a song I'd love to be able to play, one of my all time favourites. Good to be back on the fretboard. I missed this. Day 107: Sun 14 Aug 2016 A quick session (I'm redecorating my new house at the moment, so spare time is at a premium). Jumped on the guitar, played some rhythm. Played through American Pie again. Yup, the G string is coming into play now. Slowly getting up towards full open chords. Need lots more practice. Then just noodled about with a few songs. Played Bulls on Parade again, hit a couple of other RAtM songs, had a go on Closing Time (which has a strange variation on the power chord shape, which threw me for a bit). Played through Black Magic again for a mission. Had to complete it on master mode, which I was able to do after a couple of plays to remind myself how it goes on the Rhythm path. Easy peasy. That was about all I had time for. Day 108: Sat 3 Sep 2016 Jeez, I need to get back to regular practice again. A relatively quick session, as our house-guests turned up earlier than expected. Still dipping my toes into the rhythm path on guitar. Hung out in Eb tuning, playing songs by Good Charlotte and Rise Against. Probably played 5 tracks in total, with around 9 PTs all together. Good to get the fingers warmed up, but I would like to have done a longer session. Update: 10 Oct 2016 I have more or less completely lost track of how many sessions I have done now, so let's just switch to providing updates. In the last few weeks, I have mostly been playing bass with a little rhythm guitar thrown in. Again, most of the time I am hitting missions in Learn a Song mode, which remains my favourite mode to mess around in. Highlights of recent weeks have been the Anniversary Song Pack, which has some excellent and great fun bass lines. The Jackson 5's I Want You Back is tremendous fun to play, if a little more technically difficult. I'm up to about 57% mastery after 5 or so play throughs. Tremendous fun to bop along to though. Bob Marley & the Wailers' 3 Little Birds is good fun too. Reggae timing can be a little weird to get used to at first. Presley's Suspicious Minds is a fun one too. I've never really listened to his music (a travesty?) but there are a few songs I know from just general listening. This is one of them. I think I'm at something like 75% mastery here, just a couple of the licks are eluding my slow fingers. A lot of shifting in this song that I'm going to need to spend some time in Riff Repeater to get my head around. Train's Drops of Jupiter isn't that hard to play, I'm almost at 100% here. Good fun, and a good one to sing along too. Another band I haven't really listened to, but I song that everyone knows so a good crowd pleaser (well, my wife sang along when I played it...). FUN's Some Nights is the only dud in the pack from a bassline perspective. It's very easy, 100% on my first try. Still, a good one to sing along to, and no concentration required, on bass at least. Outkast's Hey Ya! is one of the most fun songs in the pack. This song hit while I was in my early teens, so is one of those that made up the soundtrack to my formative years even if it wasn't in my preferred genre of music. The bassline is good fun, but all the shifting is holding me back from getting above (i think) 80% mastery at the moment. Had a noodle on this one on rhythm guitar too - all open chords, which I suck at... Generally, I am getting better at shifting around the neck without looking, but still lots of room for improvement. If I lose my place, I need to look at my hands to find where I am again, and there's no way I can do a slide without looking at the moment. Other than that pack, I have also been playing lots of Disturbed (at the behest of the Rocksmith Missions). I've also bought the My Chemical Romance, Papa Roach and Iron Maiden song packs (Jesus Christ... Steve Harris... how do you move your fingers so damn fast?!). Still working my way through these packs as and when the missions ask me to "Play X new song(s)". Update: 24 October 2016 Didn't play for a couple of weeks due to an insanely busy period of work where I was pulling 10-12 hour days and working parts of the weekends. That should be behind me now. Picked up the bass on Saturday 22 Oct for an hour or so. Played a few new songs from the Iron Maiden song pack. Steve Harris' galloping triplets really wore out my strumming fingers. How the hell does he manage to keep that up for sustained periods... yikes. The good thing is that the stuff your fretting hand has to get up to isn't all that hard. So far, these songs seem like a challenge of endurance and timing rather than technical difficulty. To give my fingers a chance to recover, I also hit some more of the My Chemical Romance song pack. Good fun, easy riffs. I was hitting missions throughout, still grinding up to 500 for the trophy. All I know for sure is that I'm somewhere above 214 missions so far. My guess would be around 300... Update: 16 January 2017 Spoiler Since my last update, I've done maybe 10 sessions in total. Not good progress. As alluded to above, I've been trying to lose some weight (another long term goal with slow progress!) and much of the time I would previously have spent with the guitar or bass has been taken over by gym time. I've been practicing on both instruments, but mainly the bass. I'm still getting better, albeit the pace of progress has slowed considerably. Most of the time I'll play a song and see the Mastery score go up by 1% or less. It's rare that it stays the same, but the big leaps in competence seem to be behind me. I think I need to replace my bass strings - they're sounding kinda dull... I've been returning my attention to the Guitarcade games. Managed to get 10M on Gone Wailin' for Blowhole Surfers, and a few of the other's are at a multiplier level where 10M points should be achievable with a bit of luck. The hardest one is going to be Star Chords, because I still suck at chords if they're more complicated than a basic power chord. I might have found a convenient time to play, though. I tried playing bass with the TV volume turned low the other night, and the wife said it didn't bother her. Late night practice sessions, on the bass at least because it's quieter, might be the way to go! Aiming to put myself in a position where this can be my 100th platinum, so would like to pop everything apart from an easy one in the meantime while I work on the intervening 8 platinums. Update: 31 Jan 2017 Spoiler Practice sessions are becoming more regular now. Still just hitting missions and progressing nicely, mostly on bass. Every second mission is now to improve my score in Score Attack on the songs I play regularly or, sometimes, irregularly. For instance, had to play Knocking on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan on Master difficulty the other day. I don't know the song very well and, despite trying, failed 10 times for that trophy. It's not that the song is difficult - I can almost 100% it on Hard - it's just that I haven't committed it to memory and the bassline does funny things, never quite repeating in the chorus or verse. There's always an extra note thrown in as a flourish. Changed my bass strings for the first time last night. I've swapped from roundwound to flatwound, and gone up a gauge in thickness. Played on them for about 90 mins after the wife went to bed. I really like the tone, but I'm thinking the action might be a little high, and I might need to adjust the truss rod ever so slightly because the action around the 12th fret is feeling a little too high. Still, great strings, very smooth under the fingers, much less fret buzz, and a deeper, warmer sound coming off the bass now, which I like. Managed to finally clear 10 million points on Harmonic Heist last night. This is one of the mini-games that I had to get all the way to multiplier level 10, though I did get really close with one run while on level 9. The trick is definitely to build up a multiplier on the regular treasures, then abuse the hell out of the treasure masks when they come up. I was getting upwards of 100k points per treasure towards the end, and the treasure masks would easily give me the chance at 1-1.5M points when they turned up. The road to platinum continues. My aim is to make this one my 100th plat. Update: 13 Feb 2017 Spoiler Practice has been on-and-off again. Basically, epic sessions of 2+ hours on the weekends, not a lot during the week. Bought and played the two latest DLC packs. The Evanescence one is quite fun. Not too challenging on bass, I'm just getting into it on guitar, where one track is already at 80% but the other two are down in the 20%s or thereabouts. Also got the 80's Mix Pack II, which has some real classics like Footloose (really hard on bass once it starts shifting around), I Wanna Rock (Twisted Sister, easy peasey on bass) and Don't You (Forget About Me) (from the Breakfast Club OST, easy peasey on bass). Haven't tried these on guitar yet. Other than that, still just hitting missions and going for a few trophies. Managed to get the Temple of Bends one out of the way with @Hemiak's trick last night. I need to spend some more time cleaning up the other trophies now, then get some more games out of the way so that I can tee this game up to be my 100th plat. I checked and I'm currently on 482/500 missions completed for the really grindey trophy, so I need to leave something in the bag to pop the platinum with once I've completed another 4 games. Update: 20 Feb 2017 Spoiler So, that's that, the is finally mine. So, to start off with, on Saturday 18 Feb I started going for the Star Chords trophy. What a complete PITA this Guitarcade game is. It's buggy as hell. First of all, I was trying to level it up but my 3 star-missions were all glitched. "Destroy 12 mini-ships in a single run / Destroy 14 normal enemy ships in a single run / Destroy 4 ships in a single run" etc. Now, I have no idea what the game counts as a "ship" at all. On the game over screen I'd often have "16 ships destroyed", but yet these star-missions would not pop. There seems to be no logical difference between the ships at all. Really annoying. In the end, after about an hour of play, the game glitched out and just started giving me the same chord to play for every ship, F#m. An easy barre chord that the game would detect regularly. Built up a massive combo then with no effort. The chord required would only change when I reached the bigger freighter gun-ship things, then the last chord faced on the gunship would be the new glitched chord. Ended up with some ridiculous score in the many 10s of millions. Still, I was kinda glad that it glitched and the trophy popped because I was getting really frustrated with this game. IMO, Return to Castle Chorded is the better guitarcade game for learning your chords. I'll stick with that for future practice. You're All Clear, Kid! I then switched to doing some prep work for Scale Racer, levelling up the guitarcade game to level 4. (I'd already gotten this game to level 7 on bass, but the game was having detection issues with my bass so I knew I was going to have to do this one on guitar.) Saturday evening, with the end in sight, I started going for the 60 minute session mode trophy. Easy peasy, just boring. I set it to the Blues rock band, E key, and lay on the sofa listening to some podcasts while mindlessly strumming the E string on my bass. 60 minutes later, the trophy popped without any issues. Epic Session I then hit a few easy missions in Session Mode, most of which were just "try this scale" type of things. Popped many missions in quick succession, leaving just 3 remaining to pop the 500 missions trophy. Went to bed and resolved to pop the plat on Sunday morning, if I could. Sunday morning and next up was the trophy for Scale Racer, which I had done some prep on Saturday. I bumped the game up to level 5 on guitar, and was planning on getting it to level 6 when, suddenly, I popped it. Wasn't really worrying about my score and, hey, look, I've crashed my car with a score of 10.5 million. I'll take that! I had been playing the blues scale in A, because it's basically the pentatonic minor scale with a couple of extra notes thrown in, but it still doubles your multiplier. I think I took 3 exits and made no mistakes during this run. Pacific Coast Noteway Awesome. Now all I had to do was hit 3 missions. Switched back to bass and refreshed the game to cycle the missions. (I wasn't about to do "Get a new high score on Master difficulty for Oh Love". I'm out of practice with that song.) Luckily, I got a run of 3 very easy Learn a Song missions. First was "Get a 150 note streak", then I had "Get a great performance on any song" twice in a row. Fired up Black Magic for the 150 note streak, and Blitzkrieg Bop for the first great performance. For the song that was going to get me the plat, I decided to go with one of my favourite songs of all time and played American Idiot. Not only did I complete my 500th mission, but I also improved my mastery score. 500 missions done, platinum popped. Hitting .500 I Can Play Guitar Sunday afternoon I fired up the game again and just played what I wanted. It was liberating not having to worry about trophies and, in many ways, I think my guitar and bass practice will get a bit of a re-start here. Without having to worry about whether I am clearing missions in particular, I can see myself practicing some of my favourite and more challenging tracks until I have really mastered them. I'm looking forward to continuing with the game, and guitar and bass playing. I think I'll start by learning the notes on the fretboard so that, when I'm playing, I might start to understand the connections and patterns in songs better. Really pleased to finally get this plat, after 1 year, 5 months and 1 week. A great game for getting into music, real music, not just clacking around with plastic instruments. I'm still on a self satisfied high to have gotten this plat! There were points where I doubted whether I'd ever get it! Spoiler Does anyone know how to get rid of this orphaned spoiler box since the site update? Edited March 20, 2017 by StrickenBiged Closing the OP. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 8, 2015 Author Share Posted September 8, 2015 (edited) [Reserved] Edited September 8, 2015 by StrickenBiged Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 8, 2015 Author Share Posted September 8, 2015 Topic now open, if you'd like to comment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon-Archon Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 Finally I can post, so here goes: dude, what the hell!!! You can't just call it an Epic Quest. You're not even certified epic . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 8, 2015 Author Share Posted September 8, 2015 (edited) Finally I can post, so here goes: dude, what the hell!!! You can't just call it an Epic Quest. You're not even certified epic . Lol. It's all relative. The challenge of obtaining this plat (and learning guitar in the process) will be "epic" for me. But seeing as how only 147 out of 17,623 players have this plat, I'd say it's an epic challenge either way. Edit: Those numbers are combined PS3+PS4 by the way. Edited September 8, 2015 by StrickenBiged Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon-Archon Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 Lol. It's all relative. The challenge of obtaining this plat (and learning guitar in the process) will be "epic" for me. But seeing as how only 147 out of 17,623 players have this plat, I'd say it's an epic challenge either way. Edit: Those numbers are combined PS3+PS4 by the way. At least the Star Ocean quest has the "epic" seal of approval . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 8, 2015 Author Share Posted September 8, 2015 At least the Star Ocean quest has the "epic" seal of approval . Who do I need to see to get this seal then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon-Archon Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 (edited) Who do I need to see to get this seal then? Submit a request at the uhm. Epic Rating Agency ....eh... of Epicness? Yeah, that's right, do that and they will decide whether your thread is worthy to be called 'epic' . Edited September 8, 2015 by Dragon-Archon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJROE95 Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 Good luck Stricken! You can do it, I look forward to reading about how you progress on your musical journey Once you get over that initial 1st hurdle you will find practicing becomes so much fun and it doesn't even feel like you have to try! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 8, 2015 Author Share Posted September 8, 2015 Good luck Stricken! You can do it, I look forward to reading about how you progress on your musical journey Once you get over that initial 1st hurdle you will find practicing becomes so much fun and it doesn't even feel like you have to try! Thanks dude. I'm really excited to try again using this method. I've watched a tonne of the "60 day challenge" videos on YT and, while I appreciate that Ubisoft has shared these to advertise the game, the players do seem to have improved markedly during their time with the software. Hopefully the mini-games, adaptive learning curve and song choices will keep me engaged! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 9, 2015 Author Share Posted September 9, 2015 OK, so to address my latency issues from Day 1, I'm apparently going to have to go for a setup something like this: OPTIMAL SETUP: THE FOLLOWING DIVERTS AUDIO OUTPUT SEPARATELY, NOT THROUGH THE HDTV. HDMI CABLE + OPTICAL AUDIO TO EXTERNAL AUDIO An HDMI cable alongside an optical audio cable: the optical audio carries audio to an external audio system (sound system receiver, headphones, computer speakers, etc.) separately while the HDMI cable carries video directly to the HDTV. It’s important to avoid running the audio signal through the HDTV. WARNING: Use optical audio to connect PlayStation®4 system directly to a separate sound system. Using an optical audio connection from your HDTV to an external audio system may still result in audio latency as the audio signal is sent through the HDTV. Anyone got a set-up like this at home that they can recommend? I'm happy to use my headphones if someone can recommend a good optical to analogue converter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crespelio-X12 Posted September 9, 2015 Share Posted September 9, 2015 Good luck man! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 9, 2015 Author Share Posted September 9, 2015 Good luck man! Thanks mate. It's going to be a long journey to the Plat. And I really need to develop some finger callouses. My left index finger has no feeling in the tip this morning... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 OK, so to address my latency issues from Day 1, I'm apparently going to have to go for a setup something like this: Anyone got a set-up like this at home that they can recommend? I'm happy to use my headphones if someone can recommend a good optical to analogue converter. Went into the electronics store for some speakers I could hook up to my TV. Unfortunately, they had none in stock of the one that I decided on after hearing some in action, so I ordered it off Amazon last night. I hope it fixes the lag. Even if it doesn't eliminate it entirely, it's got to be better than the .5s or so lag that I'm getting at the moment. And my TV needs decent speakers anyway - I've been making do with the in-built TV speakers for years now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 24, 2015 Author Share Posted September 24, 2015 Sorry for the lack of updates the last few days. Have been off work with a patch of flu, and picking up the guitar didn't seem so high on my list of priorities. Just got paid, and am very tempted to head out and buy a bass guitar too, so I can learn both... I have my eye on this beautiful Epiphone T-bird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemiak Posted September 24, 2015 Share Posted September 24, 2015 Awesome work so far man. I'm hoping to pick this up at some point. I'm in the same boat as you, got a guitar (acoustic) for Christmas in 2002 and have tried a couple ones to learn it. I find the videos and books incredibly annoying, but I love playing games (obviously ) so I think this could work. I'll definitely keep following your updates and good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 25, 2015 Author Share Posted September 25, 2015 Awesome work so far man. I'm hoping to pick this up at some point. I'm in the same boat as you, got a guitar (acoustic) for Christmas in 2002 and have tried a couple ones to learn it. I find the videos and books incredibly annoying, but I love playing games (obviously ) so I think this could work. I'll definitely keep following your updates and good luck. Thanks mate. Sounds like you're in the same situation as me - interested, but lazy when it comes to practice. So far, Rocksmith has been great for that. The feeling when you see your mastery score increase after playing a song, and knowing that you're now just a bit better than you were before, is awesome and really motivating. If there are any bass players out there, the other basses I'm considering, besides the Epiphone Thunderbird above, is the Ibanez SR300, the Epiphone EB-3 and the Peavey Milestone (below, in that order). If anyone has any experience with these instruments and can maybe let me know whether they like these models or point out some pros and cons, I'd be really grateful to hear from you. Ibanez SR300 Epiphone EB-3 Peavey Milestone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 28, 2015 Author Share Posted September 28, 2015 Just got paid, and am very tempted to head out and buy a bass guitar too, so I can learn both... I have my eye on this beautiful Epiphone T-bird. I ended up buying a Thunderbird. It's fantastic to play, and I love the feeling of having these fat strings underneath my fingers again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edunstar84 Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 Good luck! I've been thinking about getting this because I'm really interested in learning to play. The thing is I have access to a few electric guitars to learn, but finding it really hard to find the game....a bit odd. But oh well. I don't think I'm prepared to do it now in any case. Hope you make it to 90 days. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted September 29, 2015 Author Share Posted September 29, 2015 Good luck! I've been thinking about getting this because I'm really interested in learning to play. The thing is I have access to a few electric guitars to learn, but finding it really hard to find the game....a bit odd. But oh well. I don't think I'm prepared to do it now in any case. Hope you make it to 90 days. Thanks! Having fun so far, which will certainly help to keep me playing, practicing and learning. I highly recommend it if you can find it. Try Amazon. If not, you could always go digital, but bear in mind that you need to go on Amazon anyway to find the USB to Guitar Jack cable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted October 16, 2015 Author Share Posted October 16, 2015 Watched this the other day. If anyone is in the mood for a nice little documentary about a man who quits his day job to start a small business making something he loves, then this is for you. It helps if you're into basses too. He makes some really nice pieces. If I ever get super rich, and keep up with playing my bass, I know what I want. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edunstar84 Posted October 16, 2015 Share Posted October 16, 2015 Will try to watch it some time tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted October 19, 2015 Author Share Posted October 19, 2015 Will try to watch it some time tomorrow. Did you? What did you think? It made me wish that I had developed a handy (as in, done-with-your-hands) skill while I was younger, and I admired his stones for quitting and going into business for himself. Kudos to him. His creations are beautiful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemiak Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 I keep meaning to ask and forgetting. When you are working the guitar, are you focusing on the rhythm or lead path? Just curious. I'm relatively certain I'll be getting this for Christmas and looking forward to starting my journey. I have to remember to check this every couple days since your ninja edits don't throw a notification. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrickenBiged Posted November 4, 2015 Author Share Posted November 4, 2015 I keep meaning to ask and forgetting. When you are working the guitar, are you focusing on the rhythm or lead path? Just curious. I'm relatively certain I'll be getting this for Christmas and looking forward to starting my journey. I have to remember to check this every couple days since your ninja edits don't throw a notification. At the moment, I'm mainly following the Bass path. I just love the feel of those fat strings and the growly hummmmm of the bass. I still pick up my guitar every now and again to keep things fresh, but it's a janky cheap guitar which I think needs to be intonated properly as I have issues with it picking up some of the notes I play. I'd like to get a better guitar, but finances won't allow for that in the next few months. I'd like to improve with both instruments, ideally. Will you be playing on PS4 or PS3 come Christmas? You may want to start giving some thought to your set-up as you will need to take the audio directly from the console to the speakers. Ubisoft's advice on this is here. If you don't already have separate speakers which can take the audio from your console directly, you'll need to add those to Santa's list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now