StrickenBiged's Epic Quest for another Platinum and Rock-Godhood

[skateak]

No, I've been really shit at playing. Been mentally busy at work, especially the last week, and that has cut into my free time.

 

I just sorta fell out of the habit I guess. I need to get back on it. 

 

 

Same here! Though now I have more free time I've fallen out of the habit so it's a bit difficult to get back in.

 

 

I wasn't able to play at all this month due to family vacation and the event I was running. Now that it's over I'll get back to it. My poor fingers...

We can do this together guys! Just 30-60 minutes a day and we will see such an improvement. I bought a finger nail file to keep my caliues hard from when I take weekly breaks but I need to get out of the habit of saying "oh I will practice tomorrow." Then I won't need to file on them anymore. I myself have seen a huge difference in how I played when I first bought the game compared to how I play now and I know you guys would too.I don't even practice as much as I should but that is all going to change.

 

@StrickenBiged I am not sure if I ever got to see a pic of that Epiphone you bought. Need to put that to use man! I keep kicking myself because I didn't spend $500 on something just to watch it collect dust. I am really going to go all in with my guitar playing this Winter.

[StrickenBiged]

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.

[StrickenBiged]

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.

[StrickenBiged]

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.

[StrickenBiged]

Days 109 - 111: Three sessions between 4 - 17 September 2016

 

I have been playing, just no where near as frequently as I'd like and not posting. Work has been a little heavy the last three weeks or so and I've had less free time to play.

 

Been doing more of the same really, hitting missions on the Rhythm guitar and bass paths.

 

Still having fun, just wish I had a bit more time right now.

[StrickenBiged]

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)".

 

Still at it. 

[Edunstar84]

Glad you're still at it. I'll get back to it eventually...

[Hemiak]

Good stuff man.  I've had a bunch of stuff going on, after we move at the end of this month things should settle and hopefully I'll get back to it. 

[StrickenBiged]

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...

[Hemiak]

Any recent progress? I've been playing again the last two weeks or so and I'm hoping I can keep it going a little longer this time. 

[StrickenBiged]

6 minutes ago, Hemiak said:

Any recent progress? I've been playing again the last two weeks or so and I'm hoping I can keep it going a little longer this time. 

 

Progress is really slow at the moment. I've been playing, but far less regularly - one session on the weekends only. 

 

Work has been busy and I've been on a bit of a health kick recently; I need to shed a few kgs. What was my guitar practice time is now gym time, and I'm finding it hard to slot practice in elsewhere. 

 

But I've been very aware that I haven't updated this thread in a while. Reason being the sessions have been so spread out that I haven't really made progress, just stayed at the same level. 

 

Still intending to get this plat (and keep practicing beyond that) though!

[StrickenBiged]

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.  

 

[Edunstar84]

@StrickenBiged, Keep up the good work! Still haven't found the time or enough motivation to start playing since last year.

[Kent10201]

I've felt a really sting urge to learn guitar the last couple of months and I've finally made a decision to do it with Rocksmith. Unfortunately, I probably won't end up starting until the summer because if a lack of time . 

 

@StrickenBiged I really look forward to reading about you're experience with the game, but would you mind giving me a synopsis about how helpful the game has been in teaching guitar. It would be greatly appreciated .

 

By the way, good luck with the weight loss .

[StrickenBiged]

2 minutes ago, Kent10201 said:

 

@StrickenBiged I really look forward to reading about you're experience with the game, but would you mind giving me a synopsis about how helpful the game has been in teaching guitar. It would be greatly appreciated .

 

 

Well, considering how I went from virtually no ability to being able to play (albeit, not "perfectly") some of my favourite songs from some of my favourite bands, be that on Bass or Rhythm guitar, it's been incredibly helpful. 

 

It makes learning fun, basically. Rather than sitting there and playing the same chord progression over and over, you've got real songs to learn in a way which is automatically tailored to you and your skills by the dynamic difficulty. 

 

I get the sense that my skills could be enhanced by combining Rocksmith with a tutor or some other learning method too. Rocksmith is really good at teaching the technique and the mechanical skills involved in playing, but very weak on the music theory. I don't understand why it makes sense, musically, to go from this chord to this other chord, but why it would be wrong to go to a third chord. For that sort of thing I might need to pick up a music theory book or DVD series or something. 

 

I'd recommend you read through my original post, where I've archived my journey and updates, for a sense of how I'm getting on with the game. There are plenty of people online and on YT who have spent a lot more time with the game and are now really accomplished musicians. For example, this girl is really good. I understand that Rocksmith has been her primary learning tool, and she was recently invited to Ubisoft San Francisco where they had a concert performed by Rocksmith fans. I can't find a clip of it now, but she f*cking slayed it. 

21 minutes ago, Kent10201 said:

By the way, good luck with the weight loss .

 

Thanks! It's nothing too major, as I'm a moderately muscly guy. I'd just like to get back to being able to see my abs and to being able to do more than 5 pull-ups in a row! I only need to lose around 5kg/11lbs I think, but it's quite slow going as I do love to eat!

[Kent10201]

6 minutes ago, StrickenBiged said:

 

Well, considering how I went from virtually no ability to being able to play (albeit, not "perfectly") some of my favourite songs from some of my favourite bands, be that on Bass or Rhythm guitar, it's been incredibly helpful. 

 

It makes learning fun, basically. Rather than sitting there and playing the same chord progression over and over, you've got real songs to learn in a way which is automatically tailored to you and your skills by the dynamic difficulty. 

 

I get the sense that my skills could be enhanced by combining Rocksmith with a tutor or some other learning method too. Rocksmith is really good at teaching the technique and the mechanical skills involved in playing, but very weak on the music theory. I don't understand why it makes sense, musically, to go from this chord to this other chord, but why it would be wrong to go to a third chord. For that sort of thing I might need to pick up a music theory book or DVD series or something. 

 

I'd recommend you read through my original post, where I've archived my journey and updates, for a sense of how I'm getting on with the game. There are plenty of people online and on YT who have spent a lot more time with the game and are now really accomplished musicians. For example, this girl is really good. I understand that Rocksmith has been her primary learning tool, and she was recently invited to Ubisoft San Francisco where they had a concert performed by Rocksmith fans. I can't find a clip of it now, but she f*cking slayed it. 

 

Thanks! It's nothing too major, as I'm a moderately muscly guy. I'd just like to get back to being able to see my abs and to being able to do more than 5 pull-ups in a row! I only need to lose around 5kg/11lbs I think, but it's quite slow going as I do love to eat!

Ok, thanks a lot. I'll definitely read through the OP in the next couple of days ! Rocksmith seems like it would be perfect for me because I've been studying music theory for five years now but I never got around to playing the guitar. (I currently play the clarinet, flute, trumpet, as well as bass, tenor and alto saxophones). I'm really looking forward to starting in the next couple of months!

Edited January 16, 2017 by Kent10201

[StrickenBiged]

3 minutes ago, Kent10201 said:

Ok, thanks a lot. I'll definitely read through the OP in the next couple of days ! Rocksmith seems like it would be perfect for me because I've been studying music theory for five years now but I never got around to playing the guitar. (I currently play the clarinet, flute, trumpet, as well as bass, tenor and alto saxophones). I'm really looking forward to starting in the next couple of months!

 

In that case, I think you'll get on with it really well! Maybe start a record here because it'd be really interesting to see how someone who already has musical knowledge gets on with the game! 

 

Do read through my posts, and I'd say you should also pay attention to the posts around setting up your TV audio, as you do not want to experience the audio lag that comes if you send the audio via HDMI. I did a more detailed write up on set-up in my guide for the game, which should explain everything to do with this. 

[Hemiak]

Glad you're getting back to it man. I've been playing semi regularly the last 3 weeks or so and made some decent progress. Knocked out two or three guitarcade games, and I've got Scale Warriors on the last set, just waiting for a mission to finish it off. 

 

Also got several more songs in the 95% range so I'm going to start playing them on SAM. I posted in my thread the other day but nobody was following anymore, not even me /confused. I guess the system removes your follow if you go too long without posting or something, kinda wierd. Anyway, look forward to hearing about your progress now that you've got a time that seems to work. 

 

@Kent10201Rocksmith is really fun and I've definitely made progress when I've bothered to practice regularly. 

Edited January 31, 2017 by Hemiak

[StrickenBiged]

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.

 

[Hemiak]

Very nice man. Been working on a few songs lately and making some progress here and there. 

 

Finally cleared Temple of bends today. Got 9.5m 3 times before shooting to almost 16m. 

Edited January 31, 2017 by Hemiak

[StrickenBiged]

15 hours ago, Hemiak said:

Finally cleared Temple of bends today. Got 9.5m 3 times before shooting to almost 16m. 

 

Good for you dude. There's something about ToB that I'm just not getting. I'm on level 8 already, and my highest score is still only 400k or so. Maybe I'll try this one on guitar, rather than bass, where the strings will be much easier to bend. 

[Hemiak]

5 hours ago, StrickenBiged said:

 

Good for you dude. There's something about ToB that I'm just not getting. I'm on level 8 already, and my highest score is still only 400k or so. Maybe I'll try this one on guitar, rather than bass, where the strings will be much easier to bend. 

I have to admit I kind of cheated.

 

Was getting in the 2-3mil range regularly, but sometimes it just wouldn't register properly for the life of me. I read a tip where you slide instead of bending and oh man is it easier.

 

For the normal bends just slide down one fret quickly. For the bigger gaps slide down two frets. As long as you're correctly tuned it should read those as perfect half and full step bends. Got it with a x7 multiplier. 

 

[StrickenBiged]

On 2/1/2017 at 3:13 PM, Hemiak said:

I have to admit I kind of cheated.

 

 

No... @Hemiak, not you, you couldn't have... 

 

But seriously, thanks for the tip. I might have to do this too. I'm at the point where I mostly want to get the last few trophies out of the way, because they're actually distracting me from playing the game in the way that I enjoy the most and which I find gives me the best results. I want to get on to just using it as a learning tool, and not having to worry about trophies anymore.

[soniq]

After thinking about it for maybe 2 years I finally decided to jump into Rocksmith and bought myself a new Epiphone Les Paul Studio Deluxe. Now all that I need to do is wait for the Real Tone cable to arrive and start playing.

 

After checking the guide I have one last question though: What about getting audio through a headset?

I have connected my PS4 with a Toslink cable to my home theater system, as suggested in the guide, but I wonder if the Sony Wireless Stereo/Gold headset is ok or if audio will lag behind similarly to using HDMI?

[Hemiak]

38 minutes ago, soniq said:

After checking the guide I have one last question though: What about getting audio through a headset?

I have connected my PS4 with a Toslink cable to my home theater system, as suggested in the guide, but I wonder if the Sony Wireless Stereo/Gold headset is ok or if audio will lag behind similarly to using HDMI?

Glad another person is getting into this.

 

The audio headset should be better than straight HDMI->TV. As long as it's coming directly from the Playstation to your ears you'll have less lag.