Gamut

I just wanted to thank all the participants and organizers for making the Championships a thing. I've seen huge improvement in the month I've been here, even faster than previously, which is saying something considering how far I've come in the 3 years I've been playing Rocksmith. This is a really good week!! More awesome Canadian metal in Devin Townsend, and Maiden. Hell yeah. And the MC... For the Love of God is one of my favourite songs ever. I am super stoked for these songs. :D That said, scores! I got a good night's rest and I got white girl wasted on tea. Then I played some of the songs. I can play with madness! That high chorus riff made me scratch my head for a bit but then I caught on later. http://i.imgur.com/IkuEiuQ.jpg Steve Vai, you son of a bitch... http://i.imgur.com/AtH1M6i.jpg

I'm worried about having the time tomorrow to submit any more, and I knew I could solo better, so I did one more go. Not quite enough to beat Joey, but good enough to call it a week! Maybe if I wake up at a decent hour, I'll try to place harder at this and MC. Perhaps even... actually learn the solos!! :o http://i.imgur.com/QlWJlfR.jpg

Welcome, Neil! Nice chops there~ Okay, I lied: I kept playing Moneytalks. :P I agree that Advanced is way too much for it, but I also feel that the solo is challenging enough that 3 seems a bit low. I'd peg it at a 4, myself. Here's an SA run: http://i.imgur.com/wMW3phx.jpg I tried to do Walk This Way in SA, too, but... I can't pass it. ;_; Serious case of too many sections in the solo!

My routine is mostly comprised of playing Learn a Song. I usually warm up with some simple stuff, and then work my way up (and tune my way down) to the metal! My song selection is much like a radio station's - I play a little of my old faithfuls, but for the most part I play a lot of whatever is new and interesting to me at the time. Because my interests are always changing, I never 100% anything. =P But I try not to hole myself up in LAS too hard. I spend a lot of time in the main menu, since Amp Mode isn't a thing anymore, just rocking out and working on my tone. I poke into Session Mode every now and then so I can pretend that I have friends who play drums and bass (all of my friends are guitarists, vocalists, and guitar/vocalists). And sometimes I'll even look up tabs for a song not on CF and learn it the old fashioned way! I also spend a lot of time on the acoustic, since every minute I spend on it makes me feel more agile on electric.

I love this song and could play it forever, so I'm going to go hard on Priestess this week. And if you want to defeat me, I'm going to make you go hard too. :D http://i.imgur.com/4cNYwmY.jpg Also, here's a second AC/DC run! The two main riffs in this song are pretty simple, but those solo bends are killing me. http://i.imgur.com/x88BalD.jpg My fingers are tired, perhaps more after a night's rest!

After not even tying myself twice, I finally stopped in RR to wrap my head around that chuggy verse riff in Aerosmurth. Once I figured out how to anchor and stretch, I could reliably hit all the notes, instead of moving my hand everywhere and dropping half of them! Barred the tenth fret, did some quick pinkie work for 12 and 13, and suddenly it's a breeze. http://i.imgur.com/ZrCgRHC.jpg

Here's an AC/DC sightread. I don't like AC/DC in general, but I especially don't like this song, so I'm probably not going to work too hard at improving on this. Solo looks like it'll take some work. http://i.imgur.com/StYbFgr.jpg

It's not nothing, though! It's a subtlety, but it's there. :) All those small intricacies add up to the way the artist is playing it. Different strings sound different and playing the right note is only part of the equation. Different strings sound different, even for the same notes. I try to match the tone of the guitar track close as I can when I'm playing, though I will sometimes add extra flairs and vibrato just for fun! No more scores to share, ended up spending most my Rocksmith hours tonight in D standard. More scores later!

I'm in the zone tonight! http://i.imgur.com/ftzyEjy.jpg I wish that was SA. Oh well, 94.9% LAS! Gonna go shred some more and report in later!

Drums are my main and first instrument, and getting good at drums made me appreciate bass so much more. I love how you can physically feel the sub waves, and how bass is just as percussive as it is melodic. Rock Band 3's Pro Drums is basically for drums what Rocksmith is for guitar. If you're ever interested in picking up the art of slapping skins, RB3 is a really great way to learn.

@@Gnobiwan , don't feel bad! I would expect official charts to be correct too. Chords especially have a lot of equivalent shapes that make the same note, I'm sure the notes aren't wrong even if the shapes aren't exactly what they play. I have yet to touch AC/DC this week but I'll throw my opinion on the file in when I have time. Maybe after Korean karaoke!

A couple scores! Int lead: I just have to reiterate how much I love this band, I once opened for/partied with them and they're awesome guys. Their music is pretty good, too! This is tricky for an intermediate song. The string skipping in the main riff is going to take me some work to get down pat. But damn, does the solo feel good to land! I didn't quite get to where I have in past plays on this song, but close enough. http://i.imgur.com/i5EJkLg.jpg MC lead: This is default Rocksmith... and I've never played it. Here goes! Oh god, what? I really suck at that verse chugging bit, I feel like I'm going to need to stretch my hand to hit all of those. Didn't quite manage to figure it out midsong! http://i.imgur.com/vrvorxq.jpg

I missed the end of week again?! Blast! I got a song I wanted picked without even having to be the guy that picked it?! Sweet! If you guys have ever played GH3 you'll recognize it. Great band, great tune, super fun to play on guitar. Gotta rep my Canadian brethren!

Adv lead.I barely managed to pass it in SA, but I did get to flesh out that score a little bit. http://i.imgur.com/AZLmFxy.jpg And I tried to go for the 100% for IM Lead but missed it. Whoops! One less miss to the goal though. http://i.imgur.com/EuF8qMQ.jpg

I don't mean any offense to the chord-challenged concerning Night Fever. Every guitarist has their strengths and weaknesses. Chords were my biggest weakness for my first year of Rocksmith - it takes a long time to build up the strength necessary to bar well on the fly. But in terms of guitar concepts and difficulty to execute, Night Fever is just not very complex. There's a huge library of chords out there to learn, but the chords every guitarist starts with are major and minor barres. That's all you need in this song! The only exceptions to this rule are the chords that remove one finger from a major or minor barre, which, once you wrap your head around it, is even easier - or at least, takes less energy to do. If Night Fever is difficult for you at the moment, I would suggest practicing it a lot, because if chords are a weakness of yours, this song is fantastic for working on them. As mentioned, the slow BPM and long rests give you a lot of time to switch your hand position. There's only three riffs, and they repeat with no variation. It's very learning friendly. @@punchyrumble : I'm really surprised to hear you find it intermediate. Didn't you get a higher score in fewer attempts on Night Fever than The Beautiful People?

I didn't find it hard to get these chords to sing true. Almost every chord in the song has a half note rest minimum before it, which gives you tons of time to orient your hands. Most of the chords are just your basic major barres, and while a 7 isn't a beginner chord, it's definitely not advanced, either. Opinions! Calling Night Fever a 4 means it's in the top 60% of difficulties, and I strongly feel this isn't the case. I consider myself an intermediate player, but I'm still really confident that I'll probably 100% it if I play it again. And I'm anything but a disco guitarist, so I can't chalk it up to genre advantage like with Little Monster! :P I don't think I earned graduation with this song, I'd like to aspire to getting 97+ for another two weeks before I'd feel okay with it.

http://i.imgur.com/smviWUO.jpg?1 Screwed up the 7s the first time around, but got them the second, so I 100%ed in spirit. Feels really easy for an Intermediate song. Even though the 7 chords are a little advanced for beginners, there's only one weird chord shape in the whole thing. Would go with 2 or 3 for difficulty. @@Blazikiller : Damn dude, killer scores! How long you been playing for?

@@Kaijin : Ouch dude, ER's not a fun place to be. Hope you're feeling good soon.

http://i.imgur.com/yCLvZHc.jpg Do you think I'm sugoi, senpai?

New strings!! Time to throw myself into new songs! I don't have wire cutters so I bent my guitar string ends back and now my guitar looks really metal. I'm ready! http://i.imgur.com/BLC01JK.jpg Rocksmith Championship: Sponsored by Metallica! I like Metallica well enough, but I found this song to be one of my least favourite Metallica songs. (Sorry whoever picked it!) I did okay. http://i.imgur.com/5Omq5wY.jpg I know this song too well because of my parents. Chordfest? No problem. Time to tune down for Babymetal! I got a heavier gauge so I'm ready for some C#.

Oh damn, new week? I finally got new strings, too. Oh well! I guess I'll just placate myself with Babymetal.

Cool bands I've seen and/or opened to off the top of my head: - Muse - Nine Inch Nails - Dream Theatre - blink-182 - Coheed and Cambria - Tokyo Police Club - My Chemical Romance - Behemoth - City and Colour - Jane's Addiction - The Flashbulb - Edguy - Priestess - Silversun Pickups - Watain - Placebo - Angels and Airwaves - Mindless Self Indulgence - Finntroll - Fall Out Boy - Gob - Ubiquitous Synergy Seekers - LIGHTS - The Sheepdogs - A lot of obscure metal and indie bands you've probably never heard of Not bad for eight years!

Bad tones are an even worse custom sin than bad charts. Inaccurate charting you can ignore and play what's correct, but there's no making a bad tone sound good! Still haven't been able to pick up strings, so I toiled away on Little Monster some more. Got really close to Motive but not past him. I absolutely love the song, though, so playing it over and over doesn't even feel like work~

So I broke my high E the other night and I haven't been able to play really. But then I watched the Royal Blood playthrough video and saw there's no high E string in it! I also noticed that the riff sounded a lot like Red Fang, which is a style I'm pretty good at playing. So then this happened. http://i.imgur.com/XbRb69R.jpg New strings tomorrow, hopefully. Do you know how many songs don't use high E? Not many! Transposing to B on the fly is way harder than I thought, too.