MilkmanDan

Few / no sections is a common "lack of polish" problem on lots of customs, especially first versions. I've been guilty of it myself. One quick solution would be to run the song through DDC; it automatically divides it up into sections. The divisions aren't as intelligent as a person with a human brain going through and actually marking out sections/phrases, but at least you get something usable.

@ -- That sounds like a good idea, limit suggestions or at least give more weight to DieHard list members. Changes to the chart look perfect to me!

That sounds good to me -- maybe put a ??? in the field for an arrangement we aren't sure about and something in the comment field saying suggestions are welcome? Then volunteers can check and help out where needed, or if nobody helps out the person who selected the song can just make their best guess shortly before the next week's songs are chosen. /approve

I put an example in the "Future SCL" tab of the list, and also put suggested difficulties into the older list, like: Too much text to fit in the column, but if anyone wants to read they can just click on the cell. I tried to give a class, rating from 1-10, justification for my subjective rating, and a tag to let people know it was from me (-MMD). If there was an additional column for that in the new tab, people could leave suggestions that the person who selected the song could either adapt or ignore at their discretion. If anyone else had a different opinion, they could just append it on to the end of what anyone had already written, like: Or if all that sounds too messy or whatever, I can adapt to the system as presented and just do my best to assign difficulties for all arrangements myself for any songs I select. Not trying to make more work for anyone or to be a pain in the ass -- I just think that I would personally feel bad about drastically mis-classing suggested songs in terms of their lead/rhythm difficulty... Hope that makes sense, and I'm not trying to step on any toes or anything. Sorry if this comes across as bossy/whiny/whatever, I really don't mean it that way! :)

I checked the new spreadsheet addition (Future SCL) -- I like the format although I am concerned about one part: I don't really feel qualified to assign a difficulty to lead / rhythm parts ... I can check and make sure that songs I select at least *have* a lead part (and ideally rhythm also), but any difficulty rating I assign to them is probably going to be way off. Also, I wouldn't expect the guitar-only participants to be very accurate in their difficulty ratings of bass parts. Requiring me to enter *something* for the difficulty in order to have my song considered would probably just encourage me to guess, which probably wouldn't produce very good results. Maybe you could add another (wide) column after comments, and allow volunteers to suggest possible ratings for some arrangements of a song IF the person that added the song leaves a column blank. I'd be happy to help give suggestions for about bass difficulty ratings if someone isn't sure, and I know I would appreciate the same king of assistance from guitar players if I select a song.

I agree -- I like all of the songs this week, all very different and all quite fun! :) The difficulty ratings are going to be pretty subjective, so it is good to hear your thoughts also. How would you rank the three songs on a 1-10 scale? This is just a guess, but I wonder if the difference in neck scale between a guitar and bass might in part be why the Dream Theater song feels tougher for you. Since you are more used to the shorter neck of a guitar, the far-ranging shifting in the song would be a challenge. Whereas the elements that make the White Zombie song seem more difficult to me (fast tempo and riff patterns in a relatively constant position on the neck) would be things that are emphasized in playing lead guitar and therefore translate better to a guitar player. If so, maybe the Dream Theater song and stuff like that will feel easier for you as the neck scale on a bass gets more intuitive for you. Or maybe I'm just talking out of my backside... :)

I like the sound/tone that fingers generate more than a pick on most songs, but there are some songs where I do think that the pick produces a better tone -- so I also really admire bass players that have mastered both! I can reverse-empathize with your trouble with a pick, I have the same problems when I try to use fingers... Anything beyond a (pretty low) tempo/speed and I go into deer-in-the-headlights mode. The most frustrating thing for me is that whenever I try to play with fingers, my *frethand* actually slips into clumsy-mode also. I know that it should be able to handle the song, because if I break down and play with a pick I can handle it just fine -- but the extra brainpower spent on trying to control the fingers throws off my other hand also. I should follow your method and play songs in riff repeater with the speed cranked down to practice. Also need to build up the calluses on that hand -- I am so poor about practicing with them that even just 1 slow/easy song pretty much kills the ol' fingertips. :)

Ahh, interesting. I very rarely feel frethand fatigue unless a song require me to contort the hand into shapes that feel uncomfortable, like trying to do chord shapes properly. My pinkie finger is real close to useless for fretting, feels so clumsy, so I end up doing a lot of stuff that "should" be played with pointer / pinkie as pointer / ring instead with a quick shift up the fretboard thrown in. That works OK enough for me most of the time, but not so much for most chord shapes, even very simple root + fifth stuff. I should force myself to get better at using the pinkie correctly, but it is frustrating when a song that should be easy using my "workaround" becomes very hard and I sound like crap when trying to do it the right way. But that is my excuse for playing with a pick all the time also... I should stop being lazy and grab the bull by the horns. :) Tried Bass INT (Dream Theater) and BEG (Blink 182) today. A cut on my finger is holding me back a bit, but anyway here's a 2nd try score on INT: Beginner song by Blink 182 was once again my lowest score, 96 something because I had a brain fart and didn't move a chord section from D+G string to A+D string. Didn't take a screenshot and probably won't go back to it again -- I'll focus on MC this week. Just as a preview of how I'd subjectively rate these three songs in terms of bassline difficulty: (score from 1-10, 1 being "Black Magic" and 10 being "YYZ" by Rush or "Hysteria" by Muse, + justification) After Midnight - Blink 182 Bass difficulty: 3 -- Easy enough, but relatively fast tempo plus chord sections keeps it from being TOO easy The Spirit Carries On - Dream Theater Bass difficulty: 4 -- Most of the song is quite easy, but short sections of shifting and string switching make it just a bit tougher. If this makes any sense, I think it would be easier to get 100% accuracy in this song than the Blink 182 song, but it would be easier to get 99%+ in that song than this one. Black Sunshine - White Zombie Bass difficulty: 7 -- Fast riffs repeated quickly, with some shifting and string variations. BUT, you can keep a pretty static frethand position for most of the song, and most (all?) of the song is played on the E and A strings, which mitigates the difficulty some. I'd say that I'd class anything from difficulty 1-3 as beginner, 4-7 as int, and 7-10 as MC. So, maybe I'd say that the Blink 182 song is a slightly tough but solid fit for beginner, Dream Theater is an easyish int song, and Black Sunshine is an alright fit for MC although it could be a HARD int song if a really tough song had also been chosen. Long story short(ish), I solidly agree with the how the 3 songs were re-classified for the bass portion of the challenge. And I'm excited to see how that will free things up and make the selection process easier and more even for guitar AND bass in the future. /salute to Mortalo and Motive for making that happen!

@@NoonyDeloony @ - Nice scores on White Zombie both! And you both mentioned sore arm / fighting stamina issues with the song. This is going to sound crazy, but try the custom for Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce: http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/through-the-fire-and-flames-r2097 Guitar parts are pretty insane I assume, but the bass is actually pretty easy except for the pure speed and sections of doubletime strumming. And that speed keeps you busy for the whole length of the song, over 7 minutes of alternate picking or developing lightning finger speed (I can't do fingers, gotta use pick for this fast). But it is a fun 7+ minutes, and after a couple of weeks of playing it quite regularly I noticed that it massively improved my pick-hand stamina for fast songs. Black Sunshine is much more difficult from a frethand perspective, but my right/pick hand hardly breaks a sweat after having used Through the Fire and Flames as sort of a go-to warmup song for a while. :)

Will try all of the songs this week (and try to work on testing the bass on other stuff from the selection list also so that will be ready ahead of time), but I went for the White Zombie song first: MC (Bass) 1st try: Pretty sloppy while I was figuring it out, so it didn't sound like 99%. But, I think I can build from there in Score Attack.

I think this change will help out with making the bass side of things a bit more consistent. However, it will probably make for more work for you and the other organizers, especially if any don't play bass much. ...I know I feel completely out of my element trying to assess what the difficulty of a guitar part is, which has made me reluctant to add any songs to the selection list in the past. Whenever I get free time, I will try to help out with testing and suggesting b/i/m class ranges for the bass parts of songs in the list. But, I assume that the actual selection process to choose 3 songs for the championship will remain linked to the difficulty of the guitar parts only. So it might be that a beginner, intermediate, and MC song are selected for their guitar parts, but maybe they would all fall into the range of intermediate for their bass parts, for example (or all beginner, all MC, or whatever). So I think that along with or in addition to saying if a song is b/i/m level, I will try to give it a 1-10 rating with 1 being easiest and 10 being hardest. That might help with tie-breaking if more than one of the songs has a bass part that falls into the same class range.

That's quite a persuasive post, @@natasftw . Even though I personally like the depth that a 2-week challenge would allow for, the breadth and variety is probably going to be better with 1-week durations... And that is probably more in line with the spirit and focus of the competition. I find myself agreeing with you even though I just got my first win (MC Bass) on the strength of having 2 weeks to spend working on a song that was/is up my alley. :) The other issue of adding a 4th level I could still go either way on. The new change I am seeing for this week where 3 songs have been selected for lead/rhythm/bass, but their assigned levels are different for lead/rhythm vs bass puts a whole new spin on that, I think. I'll have to consider how that difference will change things.

I agree with cabalistic that it would be nice to have different song selections for each track, but I can also see how that would be way too much work to deal with. I think that adding a 4th tier (advanced) is a good compromise move that would hopefully be much easier to manage. However, I think that it will be tough to consistently make a list of 4 songs that people agree are correctly sorted into tiers of beginner -> intermediate -> advanced -> master. Especially across each of the 3 different paths of lead, rhythm, and bass. For example, the lead guitar part of "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce might be very very high end Master Class, but on bass the song is actually pretty easy if you can handle the tempo; not technically challenging at all. On the other hand, "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk is much more technically challenging on bass, but probably not terribly difficult in the guitar parts. That is already a concern now with just three classes / tiers. I know that I always feel reluctant to add songs to the selection list since all I can really judge are the bass parts -- I can look at guitar parts but don't trust myself to accurately assign them a difficulty. I do quite like the idea of having the challenge songs rotate every 2 weeks -- I have a busy schedule and having the extra time would help me actually devote some more time to the song(s) I want to focus on, instead of frequently just getting a first playthrough on each song and then not getting any time to actually develop beyond that... So, I guess overall I'm slightly in favor but basically ambivalent about adding a 4th tier (advanced), but 100% in favor of challenges lasting 2 weeks.

Been busy so I haven't had much play/practice time this week. BUT, I decided to give Jump in the Fire another go. On learn a song, I managed a run with only 2 notes missed, so I decided to fire up score attack for one more round and was in the zone: Very disappointed that I didn't have my playthrough video recording stuff running, but I really wasn't expecting that after jumping right in after a few days with no practice... Oh well, quite happy with the result anyway!

My advice would be to read the comment threads for each song and see if there is any positive feedback that would tend to confirm that the custom is up to par. That won't guarantee anything, but the "approved" system at SA was quite fallible as well. As someone who has made a few customs myself, I'd also advise you to leave feedback yourself if you find that a tone doesn't sound the way you think it should or if the chart seems inaccurate. Specific suggestions are the most helpful ("would sound better if you copy the lead guitar tone from XXX", or "change the note here to YYY"), but even vague/general feedback along the lines of "the tone doesn't sound quite right to me but I can't say exactly why", or "the chart feels out of sync in the second half of the song" can be quite helpful as well.

:) Gotta be comfortable!

Two weeks on Metallica's Jump in the Fire ... based on try #2, I must just have to set a personal goal of 100% before the 2 weeks are up: --EDIT-- Sorry to clutter, but I felt the need to do a playthrough video. Bit out of sync at the beginning (started before I was expecting) and I need some practice at the outro, but I'm pretty pleased with how I'm getting along after just a few plays: (99.79% Acc, 1,875,102 Score) OK, any more updates will be in screenshot form unless I manage a 100% run. :)

First try: Well, I'm bass-ackwards this week. On first tries, MC Scorpions = 98%. MC (next week) Metallica = 97%. Beginner Royal Republic = *92%*... True enough it would be easier to improve that 92% up to a very high accuracy than it will be to hit near-perfect on the MC songs, but at least in sight-reading terms the harder songs came easier to me. That being said, I'm not too into Royal Republic (although the other song of theirs in the championship a few weeks ago was quite fun) so I think I'll be sticking to MC only this week. --EDIT-- And just for fun, INT: My trend continues, better first-run accuracy in the harder songs all around. I like this song, but still think I'll stick to MC only as my focus for this week.

Not gonna have much time this week, but I got around to trying MC bass anyway: No RR or slowdown, and getting used to Red = B string on a 5 throws me off a bit. That being said, in spite of the low score I like the song quite a bit, so I will have to put in some time to improving. Hope with some RR time and slowdown I'll get a more respectable accuracy -- and it is nice to have a good song that makes full use of my 5-string even if I don't get time to really work on it much this week. --EDIT-- And BEG and INT Bass: I should try @ 's edit. Brain fart made me miss the 100%. I had a semi-recent profile crash that corrupted all my save data. Learned my lesson and am now backing it up. Anyway, on the old profile I had a 100% on this but after 3 tries on my 4 string with 1 or 2 missed notes due to poor detection, I tried on my 5 and got the above. Score/timing could be better, but got the 100% accuracy that I was looking for anyway.

MC Bass in B Standard will be tough for those without a 5 string, or a 4 with some downtuning string gauges. Song sounds nice and I can use my 5 for it, but in the interest of accessibility for all it might be best to avoid songs tuned that low *most* of the time. Then again, maybe most of the MC bass players have a 5-string or 4 set up well enough for BEAD?

Official songs and DLC follow this ^^^ convention. First name, then Surname when sorting by artist -- so J for Joe Satriani, not S. Band names including a "The" drop it when sorting, so "The Offspring" should be in the O's, not the T's. I agree that customs should ideally follow the same conventions, even though I find the convention of sorting by FIRST name to be rather strange myself...

Happy to see you got it all working! Was it just a case of Open Broadcast Software working better on the newer PC like you were thinking? Great job on the song, and I especially like your knowing smile there at the end when you were sure you got the 100%. :D

And just for fun, I thought I'd do one bass playthrough each of Beginner (Arctic Monkeys): And Int (Blondie): One of those rare 100% on the first try songs; I'd say that on bass this one is easier than the Beginner song and I kinda fell into a natural groove.

I like the MC GoT song for this week: Not a bad accuracy for a first runthrough, but I sound like crap. I need some more practice to get in the groove properly with regards to the rhythm -- at this point I'm faking my way through most of the song. Not sure I'll have enough time to devote to it, but I'll see what I can muster...

Took a day's rest after my 1st try on Ride the Lightning and came back to it tonight. Early on in my second go, I figured out the rhythm on the part with the open E's followed by open A's with quick hammer-ons to 1st fret -- I was missing pretty close to every single one of those my first try and now I've got a much better handle on them. SO, pretty big accuracy boost from 1st to 2nd attempts: Still haven't broken down and done any RR + slowdown yet. I think if I want another 2+% boost, I'm gonna have to do that so I can get the part stepping down from the 7th fret on A and alternating in a couple frets up on E. I'm just kinda faking my way through that at the moment.