Bentron

Could someone reupload the Tokyo Jihen track? 

Thanks in advance

v0.1

v0.2

I haven't touched these files in almost 5 years now, so I have no clue what state I left them in.  Unfortunately I don't have time to work on it these days, but if you or anyone else wants to pick it up and complete it, feel free.  The link to the chart I was working from appears to be dead, but I have a few different gp5 files saved locally.  I'm not sure how accurate they are, but I can upload them somewhere if they'd be helpful to anyone.

More progress: 

http://i.imgur.com/WTj2dCh.jpg

There are still a lot of places where I'm not really playing it cleanly (mostly just not playing fast enough), but the game is super forgiving when the song is as fast and note-dense as this.  I think I have a little more room for improvement without actually slowing down and working on the couple difficult spots, but not too much more.  I may break down tomorrow and really focus, but there's probably not enough time to really get it down solidly before the week is over, having kind of slacked off so far.  

Difficulty-wise, I don't know that this is quite a 9.  Most of the song isn't that hard beyond just plucking speed.  That six note pattern toward the middle is really difficult (for me aat least), but with the rest of the song in mind, I'd say probably only an 8 overall, maybe even a 7.

Slight improvement today:

http://i.imgur.com/YVilcLy.jpg

MC Bass: 

http://i.imgur.com/BjZcIc4.jpg

This was after a run through LAS (first run was around 85% I think) and some time in RR to figure out the more difficult parts yesterday.  I'm still nowhere near playing that one section toward the middle cleanly at full speed, but I guess it's close enough to not get strikes.  It definitely didn't feel like it when I was playing though.  I feel like this song would be worlds easier with a pick too.  It's not played fingered originally is it?

Unfortunately there's not much here I find particularly interesting to play, so motivation to break it all down in RR for focused practice is kind of low.  The one riff at the end is pretty fun though.  I'll probably just grind out score attack runs and figure out more comfortable hand positions this week.  

Once I'm more familiar with it, I might be able to hit 96-ish%, but I probably won't put in enough real practice time to offer any serious competition for the top spots this week.

Well, I managed to get tuned down to B Standard, and everything seemed to be going well.  I got my cold run through in LAS and was looking forward to digging in:

http://i.imgur.com/GdT0zNc.jpg

I spent 15-20min in RR to figure out the more difficult bits before going through score attack and all seemed fine.  Then I took a break to start laundry going, and I guess in that time, the neck had straightened out quite a bit.  Now anything between the first and fourth or fifth frets is basically unplayable (strings get dampened by the fretboard with the lightest touch) :(

I don't really want to mess with the truss rod or string height, especially just for one song, so I guess this is my final score for this week.  @@Anderi suggested a pitch shifter, which would solve my problem I'm sure, but there's not really room in the budget to buy new gear unfortunately.  Not for this week anyway.

Over all, the track did seem pretty easy for MC (compared to last week anyway).  Playing it on a 5-string I think would only make it easier too.  

I'm fairly certain tuning down to B Standard is impossible with the strings I have.  I seem to recall trying to tune down to C for some thing a while back (might've been D drop C for chop suey actually), and even that was so loose as to be unplayable.  I'll give it a shot later, but I may need to take a pass for this week.

Today's progress:

http://i.imgur.com/7CLiA6V.jpg

Every run after this one has gotten progressively worse, so I think I'm spent for today.  It's always a little annoying when I have playthroughs that feel really solid, with longer streaks and higher scores, only to see at the score screen that the accuracy isn't actually better too.  I'll probably give it some more time tomorrow, but I have no expectations of catching up to @@fiddlesticks or @@albatross213 this week.

Very minor improvement (still sounds like a mess), but at least I broke into the 90% range.

http://i.imgur.com/XGyc3hi.jpg

I did end up going with the 3-6 position for the long, easy section, which helped immensely with left hand fatigue.  And the GFDGFD bit I'm playing hD-G-pF-hD-G-pF-hD etc.  It's still not quite there, but I feel like I'll be able to get it up to speed eventually.  Mostly the song is just exhausting to play though.

@@Bentron - as I somewhat alluded to above, this song wreaks havoc on my fretting forearm. Definitely by that point in the song it wants a rest, and it almost looks like there is one, but I have to stretch a bit for that one (or use my pinky, which is also tiring). Might try switching between 1-3 and 3-6 position or something and seeing if that helps. Or maybe even try to just reposition my whole hand each time to spare my forearm a bit.

That one I did try earlier today actually, but it didn't feel significantly better/easier.  The riff as written is good practice for accurate and consistent shifting anyway, which I do need to work on, especially in that part of the neck.

Ugly is the only word I can use to describe it, but I finally managed to get a score attack run without any strikes.  I did end with a x5 multiplier though...

http://i.imgur.com/lnA0rPm.jpg

And it turns out, in a full play through, the G-Bb-G-Bb-etc section is actually causing the most trouble.  It's easily the simplest part of the song, but my hand feels like a clump of wet noodles after getting through it for some reason.  So I end up botching everything that comes after pretty badly.

On the plus side, the main groove from the start feels pretty manageable at full speed now.  Still a lot of misses though, mostly on the shifting and when transitioning between some sections.  The GFDGFD riff is actually giving me some trouble too, now that I've got it up to full speed.  Might need to resort to pulling off to the F after all, or maybe hammering on the D.  I'll have to see what feels better.

I'll be shooting for the 90s by the end of the week, but still a lot of work to go.  It's not feeling completely insurmountable anymore at least :)

Well, I guess it's reassuring that this isn't an easy week for MC at least.  I definitely feels like a bigger jump in difficulty than between intermediate and advanced though.

I think I agree about he chord sections.  They don't feel super challenging technically or anything.  It's more that I just never use those muscles, so my hand gets fatigued really quickly.

The thing that really gives me trouble is the DGFDGF... riff. I'm not particularly good at raking, but I've gotten it to the point where I can hit it with a comfortable plucking pattern using raking at 100% speed. Just not consistently, and usually not when in score attack. It might also be worth thinking about playing this riff elsewhere. Perhaps in the 12-15 position with your pinky fretting the F (perhaps a bit easier on the fretting hand, but still hard on the plucking hand). Another idea would be to use that same position and fret it all on one string (17-15-12-17-15-12..., which I think should be within reach), or if not, then moving way up and doing it on the A string where you can reach everything on one string in the 17-22 position (way easier on the plucking hand, different kind of difficulty for the fretting hand). By moving around you might also invite more misses as you transition back to the main riff.

That riff definitely seem like a nightmare at first.  But once I started thinking about it as GFDGFD with the first D as a pickup note, it just sort of clicked for me.  The plucking pattern made way more sense after that for some reason.  I don't remember if I've tried it at full speed yet, but out of the whole song, that riff is probably the one I'm least worried about at the moment.

Transposing to a different string could work, but I know it goes directly into the main groove again in at least one place.  Making that shift back in time might be a bit tough, especially from the 15/17/22 range.

So, it turns out masterclass is hard.  My first run through in LAS was somewhere in the low 60% range (didn't screenshot for obvious reasons), which was actually surprising given how horribly I played it.  Where does Rags and Bones (just for bass) rank on the MC difficulty spectrum?

I haven't done a full run through the song since, but I've more or less gotten everything up to 80-85% speed in RR, with a handful of misses here and there.  Getting the main groove up to speed is going to take a lot of of work though.  And even then, I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to hit 80% overall accuracy with the power chord sections killing my fretting hand as much as they do.  Hopefully I can build up some endurance for that/stop fretting so hard by the end of the week though.

Figured I may as well join the 100% club this week too.

http://i.imgur.com/f1Cxxe6.jpg

I still felt a little sloppy in a couple places, but I don't think I'll go back and try again at this point.  My right index finger's pretty sore now and starting to form a blister, so I'll probably go easy for a day or two.

Advanced Bassist - Cholly, how will you rate it's difficulty? Will you save @@koffein? Or will you let him fall into the abyss of MasterClass?

Can I vote to save myself too?

http://i.imgur.com/HiE4P7D.jpg

I was really kicking myself when my finger slipped on the one note right at the end.  I do think it's on the easy side for advanced, but at this point I don't think I qualify as an impartial judge.  MC is a scary place :)

Some improvement on Cholly today:

http://i.imgur.com/0YQk21u.jpg

Finally back home and a little bummed I missed Tricot last week.  It's probably going to take a bit to knock the rust off after not playing at all the last couple weeks.  A couple runs through Cholly and a quick pass through RR at 80% to get the rhythm down:

http://i.imgur.com/xkc62XG.jpg

Still needs work, but the the bass line is pretty fun to play.  Tab and tones look and sound good to me as well.  I am inclined to agree with @@NoonyDeloony though.  It seems a tad easy for advanced, but the tempo might make it a little tough for intermediate.

Some improvement today:

http://i.imgur.com/TQX9WR8.jpg

Fatigue is sadly starting to take hold, and my playing has been getting progressively sloppier after this one.  I'll give it another shot later maybe.

http://i.imgur.com/npibmkq.jpg

This is one of my favorite songs in or out of Rocksmith.  I've had it downloaded for ages, but the best I could manage before this week was around 72%, and I haven't tried in ages (since before starting the championship I think).  My initial run this week was around 91% though, so I'd say I've made some pretty solid improvements over the past two or three months.

I spent the last few days working in RR when I had time, mostly on that one section toward the end.  I can play it in isolation perfectly at 90% fairly consistently, 95% occasionally perfect or usually missing 1-4 notes, but at full speed it's still kind of a mess, especially in a full playthrough.  The rest of the song I have pretty well under my fingers at full speed, but consistency in a score attack run obviously isn't quite there yet.

And I actually hit exactly 95.87% on three runs in a row just now, with different scores/multipliers/streaks each time (this one is the most recent and highest streak), so I think I've probably plateaued for the evening.  I plan on working on it more tomorrow, but just in case I don't get around to it (or don't manage to secure a better score before the early cutoff), I wanted to get my screenshot uploaded now.

I'm not sure what exactly is planned for the big 100, but it'll have to be a short week for me regardless.  I'll be out of town from Friday until the beginning of October, and I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play between packing and getting other stuff done before I leave.  That also means I'll be out for the entirety of Week 101 unfortunately.  

So just in case I'm completely MIA for the next two weeks: Congratulations on keeping this going for almost two full years now, and thanks for all the work everyone puts in each week  :D  I've had a lot of fun participating and have definitely been exposed to a ton of songs I probably never would have even listened to if not for this competition, much less tried to play myself.

http://i.imgur.com/MhB4w1M.jpg

Sort of phoning it in again this week unfortunately.  Not playing since last Friday has left me a bit rusty, but this is definitely more of an intermediate song as far as difficulty.  Nothing jumped out as wrong or off at all, but the section at the very beginning (and again later on) feels like it really wants to be played with ho/po's.  I have no idea if that's actually what's going on in the original song though, so feel free to disregard.

I had almost no time to play this week unfortunately.  I think this was my blind run through from Sunday since it's the only screenshot I have, and I know I didn't get a chance to run through score attack.  I did go through a few sections in RR afterward, but nothing during the week.  I might try to get some time in tomorrow morning, but it's probably more likely that I just sleep in.  

From what I remember, it was a lot more interesting to practice in RR after this screenshot than it was to play through in full.  I really like the song, but the bass line was just not much fun to play.  I might still go back to it at some point though, as it seemed like good practice for playing faster and maintaining a groove (not to mention endurance at almost 7 minutes long).

http://i.imgur.com/zXUYe5Z.jpg

Submission for this week:

http://i.imgur.com/SpOsMx8.jpg

I feel like I was missing some easy notes in this run, so I could probably do better... But I don't really like the song that much, and the bass part isn't all that interesting to play (to me anyway).  If I'm feeling particularly motivated/competitive tomorrow morning or later tonight, I might give it another shot though :)

As far as the custom itself, the sections seem kind of awkward and/or inconsistent in places, which stood out a lot working through RR.  There are a couple places where the tab didn't sound quite right either, but it was close enough to not make it distracting or unplayable.  I didn't check for sync issues at all, so can't really comment there.

There's also some room for improvement as far as how things are a played as well.  There are a few random notes here and there (an A7 and A12 stand out in my mind) that should really be played up a string or two respectively to fit with the rest of their sections, played from the 2nd fret.  I felt there were also places where hand position could be improved too, but that may just be my preference.

I also found that the couple bars after the A2-A0-A3-A0-A4 run (or however it goes), playing open strings instead of 5th fret made it a lot more comfortable.  There were a few other places where open strings felt more natural as well, but it was mostly just that one part repeated throughout the song.

Last one, I swear (probably):

http://i.imgur.com/GDIMGnc.jpg

Is this one too late? 

http://i.imgur.com/DB3niwd.jpg

And a new best again: 

http://i.imgur.com/3icJTvj.jpg

Still working on it, but here's where I'm at for now.  I'm pretty ok with this even if it ends up being my best for the week, considering my first run was something like 67%.

http://i.imgur.com/Xccn3Df.jpg

I'm not sure I'll be able to break into the top 3 before the cutoff, but I'll keep at it :)