Rodman

gettin better

 

 

 

@Wi11 - cannot regret that decision! Let us hear some of that stuff please!

10 hours ago, diceslinger said:

@Rodman Again, I apologize for taking so long on this song.  It has been a stressful couple of months and my time has not been my own.

For my version of 99 Red Balloons I stuck to the Goldfinger version in Rocksmith.  The tempo changes were troublesome, so I eventually just played it to the song.  I did the lead and rhythm guitar parts, panning two different rhythm takes to left and right.  My daughter sang most of it in English of course. 

For the one German verse in the Goldfinger version I had a special guest star.  My wife's niece has been living with us because her college was all virtual last year.  She was supposed to study abroad in Germany, but obviously Covid cancelled that, so she chose to study in a different state instead and came to stay with us.  She kindly lent her voice and German to our efforts.

For the bass part, I finally talked my son into playing on one of my recordings!  He wasn't comfortable playing it full speed, so I had him play it in riff repeater at 80%, then sped it up in Reaper.  The parts aren't all as tight as I would like, but having my son join in was worth it!

The picture is from my son's 2nd birthday party.  We blow up a whole lot of balloons, and got them charged with static electricity and stuck them to the ceiling.  We probably had 99 balloons!

It´s so great to have you back there!
What a family project (!). Your daughter is getting confident on that vocal parts. So cool you got your son on bass - a bit wild but that meets the spirit of the song and even more the GF version.

my time has not been my own - hah - never read anything deeper, so true, i myself have also a million and 3 things i stumble through right now... i am tempted to say summer just is the bad time of the year, which is most untrue, i love summer, so much timeconsuming fun stuff like laketime, bbq and Euro2020. My vacation is coming up with 2 weeks in Italy and also lots to prepare for that, ah just stop thinking! I was about to say let´s pause over summer and start again in september, but that´s exactly what we are not going to do. I remember sitting there in my vacation with the acoustic doing that Sweet Child o Mine version, having a blast. Working on that songs does add so much to our playing. I say when time is a beast let´s go for simple versions down if needed to 1 acoustic guitar track with no vocals. And let´s stick to not too complex songs. But let´s keep up like one in a good week. Whatcha say?

 

such a classic, 6

 

 

 

8, good one

 

 

 

2nd try is worth platinum, yeah!

 

 

 

pure fun 6.5

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh what a phenomenal selection @Mikson, and i haven´t even touched MC and GOG

 

thats 6

 

Heissa, a 7!

 

i played badly

 

a 5er, not a easy one i might add

 

 

 

nice on, exactly 3, great to learn within 1 week

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Mikson said:

So the question of matching songs for beginner and intermediate classes seems to be solved. So @Rodman  you can continue your rest haha!

No Rest till Brooklyn!

7 hours ago, Mikson said:

It's just that everyone has their own predispositions and preferences, so something that seems easy to me, may for others seems more difficult than the difficulty rating indicates. 

For the My Chemical Romance song, I got 98% on the first try and 99% on the second try, so I found it clear 3. For Joan Jett's song, my highest score on the two tries is 93%. Perhaps it's not a 5, but I think it's 4 minimum, and still Intermediate. 

Of course I can make a swap, but needs more votes. @Rodman - can you check these two songs and help with rating? Of course, everyone's feedback is also welcome 

Of course! Will do this eve!

8 hours ago, Mikson said:

@Rodman You obliged me to make a few more attempts. So this is the last improvement, I could have been better, but I still miss too many notes on the acoustic part near the end due to recognition problems.

Dammit aka Congrats!

Off to work and right after that i'll be hitting the lake with my family, not returning before week's end, so most probably unable to fight back.

Well done! Will make sure to serve you a battle next week again.

and a few notes better

 

 

 

that´s more like it

 

 

 

coming 4 ya @Mikson

 

close

 

 

Now let´s do irreversible things!

 

starting to carve that neck-body transition...

of course it must enable a good access to the high frets, so the lower part must be carved more extensively

works but thats ugly so far

getting a bit better

at least its a smooth connection

optically i don´t like it so far, i feel there is a lot more to be removed and probably concave carving to be applied, but extreme caution (not in my vocabulary and agenda) should be applied because that joint defines the stability for the whole thing... i am positive that it will be absolutely enough to have the greater part of the neckbase only from the 16th fret up - if so i can carve on the next 5cm as much as i want, but i will have a look at my guitars for reference before killing it all.

The "hold it like you should" test surprisingly yields excellent access to all frets already, so modification is an optical only thing, and that final cave i will do when finalising the neckback.

 

here you can see my marking of the 16th fret.

Memo to myself and anyone: Do everything once! Meaning... try to plan all the steps one after another because going back will double the time of the process. In practice - i am experimenting here and enjoying every minute so i absolutely do not mind but - carve the body completely - do the pocket - carve the neck in one process - do the carving connection will save a lot of time.

Let´s bring that neck-pocket to sleep!

 

a lil more filing to enable the end to sit down tight

ahh.... so much better already, rising about 1 slim mm from Fretboardend to Bridge

getting rid of that with leveling beam that time

6mill in the FB side

6.9 on the bridge

after another cycle of sanding - we are dead straigt .... 
 

.... and it looks like all is good, strings are likely to come at 4mm above the fretboard (1.4 frets + 2-3mm (depending on string) of action) and that seems to hit the middle of my adjustability range now. Yay

Wow @diceslinger that does sound so tempting
I hope i find time!!!!!

 

Did a TagTeam move on the Tellicats yd

What a good way to spend an hour

 

 

Been watching those brave men from Swizerland playing the game of their lives and kicking the Frenchmen home, so 120mins of neckpocket work with few fotos as game was running on my cellphonescreen.

 

been measuring again and to get 5mm space from the FB to the strings that blue line should be it

as that wood is (luckywise) soooo damn hard that sanding does hardly have any impact i chose file, a coarse one....

that still takes a lot lot of time, but was getting closer

close to the finish switching to sanding to get a plane and nice surface for glueing

let´s see

i decided to round the edges, as that might be potential highspots inside the pocket for reachability at sanding there

and sanding down the fretboardend to open up the gap so the base can fit the pocket

i ended up with a slight slight angle of the neck falling away from the body which leads to the strings hitting the bridge a tad higher - and as the fixed bridge is so limited in adjustability i did start to get back to 0° with sanding the front of the neckend marking the surface before each sanding run to see how much is done and be sure that material is more taken away at the front

 

 

i´m close to be there... next time hopefully final joint result with pics

Neck pocket time....
I must say deciding to use that slim bridge - hard egg.... the saddles have like 2.5-3mm adjustability, and like 1.5 is already used for the (middle) strings match the radius... so so so - i gotta create the height of the fb on the body and the angle perfect in a way that my remaining 1.0 - 1.5 mm adjustability grants me a perfect action. pffffffffff

 

Neeeew arrivals

Far better to handle dust extraction, thats good

Yeah, sometimes size does matter - those guys will be needed soon, hopefully

looks like a wooden guitar... that magnet bar, usually for kitchen knifes is also a new arrival - will hold my scrapers and chisels nicely

So... for the dangerous part - bringing the neckend to size... didn´t dare to plane, as that will be problematic on that small area in terms of keeping it perfectly straight and flat.. so sanding is tried

like that

man.... that wood is soooo hard  - 10 mins of good sanding does not remove more than 0.1 mm (!!!!)

not far apart... if i was to use a Gibson style bridge - all would be perfect already for there would be 8mm+ ad adj. space

might work out nicely that back

still there was that hole on the spot i drilled too deep, would of course be hidden inside the joint and well filled with glue, but no, lets close that

sawdust

superglue .... cough cough.... hmm... there was a strange chem reaction with smoke coming up from there, that was unexpected but unimportant also. Opening the window a bit before next layer ... and putting on a FFP3 mask, good thing those are everywhere those days

that will reach the desired height

a bit of sanding

yes, that´s good. I think 1mm of too much material left on the neck, and i´ll have to measure so precise ... though i don´t think this ever can be submillimeter science within the building process as we have dynamic material for some extend... the action is the most important thing for playability though........ so in the back of my head i have worked out the escape plan just in case....
if i was ending too low - not a problem cause sanding down a lil the bridge position will always be possible, still unwanted for it is straight and good already.
If i was going to end up too high still i can augment the bridge a mill or 2 with a couple of washers in the matching colors which i tried and gives a fancy elevated bridge look... so here we will survive the storm.

7 hours ago, Milo said:

I'm in MC, my meelo -> milo name change hasn't been updated to the forums

That has been corrected now!

NEW WEEK IS OPEN ..... IT´s ALL OVER!!!!..... but is it?

We have so many great songs here - have a peek at other classes and try to kick some more out of the one you already played.

Rock!!!