MilkmanDan

Two *tough* songs this week for advanced and MC bass. I selected Get Lucky assuming it would be MC, but Flea / Red Hot Chili Peppers is enough harder to push it down to advanced. :) I'll see how hard I can fail at the RHCP song for MC (I suck at slap/pop) to at least get a score and keep up the diehard streak and concentrate on Get Lucky. Very fun and funky song (if I do say so myself as the person who nominated it), so I'm looking forward to this week being an opportunity to get better at it!

Do Holy Wars again tomorrow also -- I don't want to be the only entry in MC Bass! ^_^ I'm taking my PC, Bass, and Rocksmith to the High School I teach at tomorrow for a fun break for my students before they take semester final tests next week (schedule is a bit different in Thailand). Maybe I'll load up Holy Wars to play for some class and see if "performance anxiety" from playing in front of actual people pushes me to play more accurately, or if I go deer in the headlights. I'm thinking option 2 is more likely...

And a Score Attack on the advanced song (bass): I was sure I had the 100% on that until I got to the end and it said 99.87%. Must have missed one that I didn't see. I'll probably try for the 100% a couple more times this week if I need a break from Holy Wars!

Couldn't resist a try 2 in Score Attack before buckling down and doing Riff Repeater to try to get the fast bits figured out properly: Like I said before, this one just "flows" better so it feels easier to me even though it is doing more technical fills and accents throughout the song. Tons of fun even though it is a tough challenge! --EDIT-- Oops, I linked to the same screenshot as before. Fixed!

Tried @@Nacholede 's version of Holy Wars: It feels much more accurate to me. Technically harder, but the accuracy made it "flow" better for me than the other version, so I got a much higher score on 1st run in this version than in either of my other 2 attempts on the other version. I should play both versions on Riff Repeater with some heavy slowdown, but I really feel like the accents and fills of this one by Nacholede are great/correct and quite fun to play. One negative thing that I noticed was that my game crashed if I tried to keep both files in my DLC directory (old version and new) and then selected the song. Maybe a song ID conflict? I had to remove them both and then put ONLY the one that I want to play in to get it to work.

Busy start of the week, but I got around to trying the songs. Here's my thoughts on bass difficulty and first try scores: Biblical - Biffy Clyro: Beginner Bass Nice song. I wasn't as bad as the score would indicate, I just didn't give my bass enough time to settle in to Eb Drop Db and the detection was horrendous. Difficulty: 2 -- Pretty straightforward throughout. Slides and a bit more shifting stuff make it harder than Black Magic, but solidly fits in the Beginner bracket. Dig Up Her Bones - The Misfits: Intermediate Bass Another 1st try 100%, although if it had been score attack it would show that I definitely could use a few more runs to improve timing. Difficulty: 3-4 -- Limited shifting and string skipping, all confined to a standard small range. I think this one could be a higher-level Beginner song, or a low-level Intermediate. The toughest part of it is the sheer number of notes; nothing really fast or really technical. But, another fun and nice sounding song. Walking in the Shadow of the Blues - Whitesnake: Advanced Bass I should have had the 100%, got butterfingers. I'll try again in Score Attack when I get the chance! Difficulty: 4-5 -- Relatively straightforward throughout; nothing too technical or fast. Fretboard shifting and string skipping all in the 5th and octave type jumps that should be learned pretty early on. I think this would best fit as an Intermediate song on Bass, but in the selections this week I agree with pegging it as the 2nd hardest and therefore Advanced. Holy Wars... The Punishment Due - Megadeth: MC Bass This was my 2nd playthrough of the song, 1st was a couple weeks ago. Guess I was off my game compared to then. Difficulty: 10 -- This song is out of my league. Mainly due to the sheer speed plus fast string skipping and precisely spaced fretboard shifts requiring lightning quick reflexes and jumps. HOWEVER, if you ignore the intro and outro, the middle of the song is actually significantly easier. Not *easy*, but easier. So, if you load up the song and give up in the first few bars ... try again! Should be fun to see who can pull off the win this week. It won't be me -- I'll be quite pleased if I can just break the 95% accuracy barrier! :P

I dunno about the lead and rhythm parts, but I think I can relate somewhat on the bass part also. Rocksmith's detection for bass is overall pretty good, but detection of correct timing of fast-tempo notes is a pretty big weak spot. For long sections of the rapid-fire quarter, eighth, or sixteenth notes in a fast tempo song, I find that the game is a bit overly forgiving with timing. I'll usually get credit for hitting the notes unless I'm WAY out of sync. So, in those cases I guess we definitely have to rely on our ears to tell us just how much stock we should put in the game telling us that we've got 99% accuracy, or whatever. Comparing score attack scores with the other players here in the championship can be good also. Abusing the forgiving detection on fast songs like that definitely can build some bad habits, but as long as we put more stock into how we think we sound rather than just going by accuracy rating (at least in terms of our own personal evaluation) I think that there is still skill to be gained/improved by working on the songs that are mainly challenging just from the speed/tempo. But I'd agree that more *technically* challenging songs (like "More than a Feeling" that I mentioned before) are better for improving overall skills for sure.

Holy Wars by Megadeth for Bass MC -- I tried that one earlier and it puts the M in MC for sure... In my trial run on it (some number of weeks ago), I got a very sloppy/lucky 93% accuracy. Definitely didn't sound 93% as good as the recording though. :) Will be a fun challenge to see if I can eke out some improvement there even though realistically I'm not in that league yet. But, I've noticed that for me at least, playing easy songs all day long does result in noticeable improvement in skill ... but slowly. On the other hand, bearing down and fighting my way through a couple of hours of riff repeater on something HARD feels like it develops my skills much faster. Maybe not fast enough to make that HARD song seem easy (or even easier than it was), but it seems like everything else gets easier. In championship class terms, I probably would have been in the beginner-intermediate range a year ago when I picked up Rocksmith. Looking back, I'd say that spending about a week grinding away at "More Than a Feeling" by Boston was a major milestone for me that I think I owe a lot of my improvement (self-evaluated) to. Maybe in the future I'll look back on a week of Holy Wars as another milestone! B) I'll try out all the songs and post back with difficulty ratings when I get some free time today (although I've got about 6 hours of teaching / tutoring ahead of me before I can get to it).

Oops -- wrong thread.

I got another 99.57% on End of the Line, with a lower score... Gonna play until my arms to jelly, see if I can push that up a bit more. :) Bigtime /grovel to your 99.76 @ -- that's awesome! I think you might be safely out of my reach, but I'll see what I can muster in response. :lol:

First try today: So close, but you've still *just* got the lead where it counts the most -- accuracy! B) Playthrough video: I played it cold, first song of the day with no warmup. So my timing suffered a bit (I'm a bit loose / floaty), but Rocksmith was generous and gave me the benefit of the doubt on some pretty iffy stretches. I'll see if I can tighten it up and push into the lead -- quite the fun competition we've got going this week!

I finally broke down and practiced the bit that I was having trouble with in the riff repeater: G:--------- D:--------- A:-----5-7- E:-5h7--6-- I was missing at least one note in those bits ^^^ over half of the time until I RR'ed the last section on slowdown to 75% and worked my way up to 100%. Now I hit it correctly (most of the time). I think I had to play it on slowdown to realize that I should play the 5th/6th/7th frets with pointer/middle/ring respectively in spite of the string jump from A to E in the middle there. That got me a new personal accuracy best: I think that puts me in a tie for 2nd place currently with you, @ -- lets see if we can give @@Num14 a run for his money. :D

I've done a couple of tries on the MC Bass song (End of the Line) in Score Attack and have yet to match my accuracy in the my first playthrough of it this week (99% on Learn a Song). So today after being disappointed there I decided to give the Int song (Last Dance with Mary Jane) another go to try for 100%, which worked out better: :) And a playthrough video: I'm happy enough with that, but didn't manage to beat your score @ ! :)

Here's first tries (or almost firsts) on all the songs (bass). I think the class sorting feels right to me, but I'll include my difficulty rating for all just to be longwinded as usual. Beg: One of those elusive 1st try 100%'ers. Difficulty: 2-3 -- Mostly static frethand position, not many different notes in the song, plenty of sustains makes timing forgiving. However, it isn't as easy as "Black Magic" because the strum pattern isn't quite THAT simple (there's a mix of half and quarter notes instead of all quarters), and the total number of notes played is pretty high which makes it a bit tougher for beginner level. Good fit for beginner for sure, but a sorta high-end beginner. Int: I had played this one once before the contest, with >99% accuracy. So, tried it on SA straight away. Missed 2 notes on try 2 and 1 (late) on try 3. 100% should be doable, but I'll probably concentrate on MC this week. Difficulty: 4-5 -- Lots of easy techniques like slides and HOPOs make this a good song for a beginner wanting to practice and break into the intermediate range. Relatively set frethand position except for the slides. Slow tempo and pretty straightforward beat patterns -- easier than the Beginner song in both of those respects. But, the prevalence of those techniques and a much wider note selection make it a harder song overall. Good fit for Int, although fairly easy Int. Adv: Fun song. My first run was a 94% (!), not great. But I followed my advice to Motive above in my 2nd run (hammer-on instead of bend), and between that and being more prepared I managed the much better score above. Difficulty: 7 -- Most of the song is highish intermediate level, but the quick bends (that I admit to 'cheating' on by HO instead) and the bits where you jump up a couple strings and quickly play scale notes down to the root again are probably enough to bump it into Adv. MC: I like this song. The bass part is fairly fast but not TOO technical. I think I'll concentrate on this one this week, and shoot for the best SA I can get (seriously doubt a 100% accuracy, but I'll get closeish). Difficulty: 8 -- Harder than the Wolfmother song only because of the fast tempo, note distribution, and length. I'd class it as being a better fit in the Advanced level more than MC, but it is close and definitely serves as the toughest of the 4 this week. One of those songs that is relatively easy to get 99%+ accuracy in given a little practice, but quite hard to nail a 100%er. Diverse and fun selection of songs this week, and again I approve of the tier sorting for the bass. Should be a fun week!

Just tried that one myself. Rocksmith is very picky about bends, I had trouble getting it to hit reliably also. It is supposed to be a half-step bend, so instead of playing it as a bend on the 10th fret, play it as a hammer-on from 10th to 11th. Once I started doing that, Rocksmith registered it correctly every time. Give that a try and see if it helps!

I was going to edit in a photo of a final go on the Jet song above, but that doesn't seem to take... So I'll put it here instead: MC Bass Sultans of Swing was more fun, but this one isn't actually half bad -- pretty fun also. I think a 100% would be doable, but probably can't manage within the next 12 hours or whatever.

Had to give Sultans of Swing one more try... SO CLOSE! Anyway, I'm happy with my improvement on the song through the week and /grovel to @@NoonyDeloony in envy of the 100%: (For the record, 99.89% and score 2,488,506, Sultans of Swing Adv. Bass)

Haven't had much play time this week, but @@NoonyDeloony 's video got me inspired to try again! Very fun song to play on bass, but not sure I'll get enough tries/practice to have a shot at the 100%. But glad I got another couple tries in any case, and I'll see what I have time for to finish out the week!

Mortalo should confirm, but I think that as a new participant you can declare what level you think you belong in, and whatever level you say will be the one where your score actually counts. You are welcome to play songs below and/or above your level, but your accuracy / score for the song connected to your level will be what is considered. Then, for next week and on into the future, your class/level will automatically be adjusted if you hit certain thresholds. From the rules: So basically, since this is your first week (right?), I think you can just decide your class, and then in upcoming weeks you'll get auto-sorted based on your scores. The songs are a bit easier on bass this week than sometimes, though, so you may want to keep that in mind when choosing for now. Welcome aboard and have fun! :)

First tries (basically) for all the songs: BEG (Bass): I demand a recount, I think I hit those few notes but Rocksmith note detection said otherwise. :) Oh well, don't really like the song enough to try again. INT (Bass): I had a 99.6% on this in 2 tries before it was selected as a Championship song. First try since then got me the 100%. ADV (Bass): Counter says 2, but I actually played this one 3 times, sorta. The first time, I got 3/4 of the way through the song before I noticed that I hadn't leveled the whole thing up to 100%. Doh! So, I fixed that and went to "restart song". Then, after playing through the entire song, for some reason it had decided to level down 1 section in the beginning. Pretty sure I didn't miss it, and I have "level up" turned off which I read should also disable auto-leveling down, but I don't think I missed any notes in that section anyway so I can't figure it out. Anyway, I leveled up the entire song AGAIN, exited and played it all over one more time to get a valid score. This is a fun one, I think I might stay technically in MC but actually concentrate more on this song this week. MC (Bass): Not a bad song, but I like the Advanced better. I don't know why my accuracy was 97% with mastery score showing as 96.6... I played only 1 time and didn't pause / riff repeat / restart or anything. I believe everything is/was leveled up to max. So, I will do this one at least one more time this week to get a fully legit accuracy / score so I can stay in MC as a diehard... But I think I'll actually be focusing more on Sultans of Swing even though I accept that my scores there will be ineligible as a declared MC player.

For the first 6 months or so that I had Rocksmith, I had my bass but no electric guitar. I mainly stick to bass, but when I first got into actually making customs I wanted to test the guitar parts before releasing. I did some web searching and read about people playing the game with an acoustic guitar and a normal microphone. The caveat was that they were using a no-cable crack generally used by people who have pirated the game and don't have a realtone cable. I use the realtone cable with my bass, but I figured I'd try the no-cable crack and see if I could get the game to recognize my acoustic guitar. Using that, I took a standard old desktop computer mic (set as the default recording device in Windows) and just taped the small mic inside the sound hole of my guitar. I ran the (small) cable out of the hole and into a pink mic input on my PC. Fired up Rocksmith 2014, and switched to lead and loaded up a song. It tuned up just fine. The note detection in songs was a bit iffy compared to using my actual realtone cable in my actual electric guitar now (which I have since brought here to Thailand from the US), but it did work more than acceptably for my testing purposes. Using the no-cable crack is definitely a gray area. In my opinion, if you bought the game AND have an actual realtone cable, there is no need to feel guilty about using the crack because either A) you want to plug in something like a mic'd acoustic guitar or even play a woodwind or brass instrument through a mic (for session mode, say), or B ) your realtone cable got broken or damaged (say because you went through an amp first, or pedals or whatever) and don't feel like buying a replacement. With a decent mic, I think that input method would work fine even for pretty accurate note detection. The mic I used when I was testing it was a complete piece of junk, and it still worked at least OK. But for the record, I did legitimately buy the game + cable, and even bought an extra cable for multiplay opportunities, so I haven't used the no-cable crack for quite a while (since I got my electric guitar here). BUT, considering how well things worked with a cheap mic plus the no-cable crack, I wonder about the possibility of using a proper mic and a 1/4" barrel double-female connector to couple the male lead of a mic with the male lead of the realtone cable. I don't have that kind of barrel converter to test it, but it seems like that might work fine.

Nice playthrough! I've been trying to contend with the 99.x% crowd, but my scores are going down instead of up... My best in Score Attack has been a 98.87%, can't even match the 99% I got in my first-ever play. I might have time for a rest and another try, but doubtful that I'll give you leaders a run for your money this week... /salute!

Awesome collection BoojiBoy -- especially cool to see after seeing your frequent bass playthrough videos! Only question is ... all that hardware and no 5 string? I've got an Epi Thunderbird Pro V, and I like it a lot except for improper grounding buzz. Does your Pro 4 do that?

I'm terrible with chords on guitar. On bass (my main instrument by a LONG ways) I can handle power chords OK, but they still make a song a few notches more difficult than a song without in my opinion. I rated the Blink 182 song a 3 for difficulty, based on a scale of 1 = Black Magic (4 notes in the entire song) to 10 = something crazy like high-end Rush. Most Linkin Park songs (bass parts anyway) would be a 1 on my scale -- few notes, mostly on 1 or 2 strings, often with long sustains or very straightforward beat / strum pattern. The Blink 182 song this week matches that for most of the song, but the fast sequential powerchord sections, plus fast progressing through those powerchords in several different locations on the fretboard + switching strings is enough to knock it up to a 3 in my opinion. That's all subjective though. ...And it fits in the beginner category whether we rate it as 1 (like Motive), 2 (like you @Rodman), or 3 (like me). So, good enough I figure. :)

A friend of mine bought an electric guitar when we were about 16 or so. He was having fun with it, so I went the cheap route and borrowed a battered old acoustic guitar from my aunt, a music teacher. Many people in my family have music talent, a lot of singers and various instrument players also -- but I had never really had much interest. Anyway, I took that acoustic over to my friend's house. Pretty sure "Smoke on the Water" was the first riff he taught me, and the first time I had that "whoa, this is so cool" moment. Some months later, I got my own electric (Epiphone Korina Explorer) as a birthday present. That is still my only electric guitar. I never got very good, but I had fun. Never took lessons, just taught myself and compared notes with friends. "Enter Sandman" was the first song I learned relatively completely, from a tab book. But, in college I probably only played a few times per year; just as a minor hobby. BUT, I remained interested enough that I bought my first bass (Ibanez GSR200) sometime in there. Immediately clicked more with bass than I ever had with guitar. I don't remember exactly what the first song I tried on bass was, or what song made me think that bass would be a fun thing to try. Possibly "Orion" by Metallica -- mastering that song remains a long-term stretch goal for me. But, I can definitely remember that the first song that I really got into on bass was "Like a Stone" by Audioslave. I think that was the first song for either instrument that I felt I could actually play along with solidly all the way through the song, and therefore convinced me that I was actually a bass dude instead of a guitar player.