MilkmanDan

Couldn't get into the songs last week, and didn't have much spare time even if I had... But I'm a big Metallica fan so I HAVE to at least try MC on bass this week: Better than I was kinda expecting for my 1st try on it. We'll see if I get a bit more time this week to improve on that starting point!

I actually love Riff Repeater plus slowdown. When I first got Rocksmith, I hadn't played very seriously in quite a while and was very rusty (plus I had never been much good to begin with). I found the normal "easymode" bass songs like Pour Some Sugar on Me and Black Magic, and knocked the rust off with those. Then I wanted to try to do something more challenging, and RS actually gave me a mission to try More than A Feeling by Boston. I tried it and even with sections on lower difficulty it was very hard for me to make any progress at it, but I was enjoying the challenge of it. Some parts I just wasn't getting AT ALL, so I tried out the slowdown feature. I ended up RR'ing may way through the entire song over the course of about 3 days with many hours of practice each day, first going from 65% speed and low difficulty, then getting up to full difficulty on each section, and then finally doing each section at full difficulty with accelerate on to speed it up until I could play each section at least once all the way through at 100% speed and difficulty. I put a whole lot of time into that song, but it has become one of my favorites now; kind of personal evidence of how well Rocksmith works and how far I've come. I still don't think I've ever played it with perfect 100% accuracy all the way through, but I've come really close and even on a very casual playthrough now I'll almost always get better than 98%. Never would have gotten there without slowing it down and getting my fingers used to the song, then slowly accelerating it up to full speed. That same system has become my standard way to figure out any new song that really throws me for a loop; although these days I usually max any DD if the song has it straight away and just RR from slow speed with accelerate.

*ahem* :P Good to know -- any chance you are a programmer or computer science type? The elegance and simplicity yet "outside the box" thinking of that workaround strikes me as something that would most likely come from a programmer or symbolic logic type of thinker. :) Meant as a complement, I just find that solution very inventive and interesting.

Did a few more attempts on INT bass, and finally broke the 98% barrier (barely) after switching to Score Attack: My stretch goal is 99%, I'll be pretty pleased if I can manage that!

I tried the bass to the Evanescence song today also... Did it seem strange to you? Sounded quite weird to me, and I didn't feel like I could hear things as charted in the actual recording. Maybe just me, and I only tried a single playthrough. I'll have to check it out again. --EDIT-- Trying the intro again, and I think a lot of the chart there is just an interpretation / arrangement of some piano notes for bass. But it feels to me like they aren't even really the chord notes that would dovetail with the song the best... Really really weird.

Update on INT bass: Bit more RR time and I'll be ready to try it in Score Attack. I think a 100% would be a stretch, but seems like getting closeish might be realistic. Biggest source of misses in the above ^^^ was chords failing to register, which seems twitchy.

I stick almost exclusively to bass, so I don't have a horse in this race -- but I found this interesting. Probably getting off topic, but interesting. I always assumed that Ubi's official songs and DLC would separate the parts by their guitarists as @@Shiroo suggests, rather than separating individual sections based on whether they fall under the umbrella of "lead" or "rhythm". I always do it Shiroo's way when authoring customs myself, also. For example, if I was going to do a Metallica song, I'd always put James' part as rhythm and Kirk's as lead, even if it is one of the songs where James does a solo. Not that I don't believe you, but it would be interesting to see some examples of Ubi official tracks that are split up in the manner you are noting. No disrespect or sarcasm intended -- I'm genuinely interested!

@ -- that's an awesome score on Blitzkrieg Bop in score attack! I went in cold and was pretty shaky on the timing, but I recorded a video "entry" anyway so I might as well post it... 100% accuracy but score of 1,370,176 -- good for the lowest score so far (like I said, my timing was pretty bad!). I'm MC but BabyMetal is not at all my thing... So, I'll probably stick to ineligible entries for the Metallica and Evanescence this week. And maybe try for a less embarrassing score on Blitzkrieg Bop. :) --EDIT-- Had The Unforgiven already, but only had 1 playthrough some time ages ago. So here's my 1st try in a long time on it:

I think DD is a good idea that helps make Rocksmith more accessible to true novices. BUT, for me personally, I wish that there was an option to always load up songs with DD maxed out unless the profile has intentionally turned down the difficulty in RR. Although I understand the attraction of DD for some, in general I feel like RR with slowdown + accelerate is almost always a much more effective way for me personally to learn a tough song. It annoys me that I have to pause, select all, and crank up the difficulty to max on new songs with DD. It annoys me MORE when I haven't played a song for a while (few weeks or more) but I have a personal best in the 99-100% mastery range, and Rocksmith apparently "forgets" that I can clearly manage the song and drops down the DD so I have to crank it up again. A checkbox for "always use max difficulty" would be much more convenient. I'd imagine that will be a pretty common request to Ubisoft, so it will probably make it into either a patch for RS2014 (like the "never use Master Mode" godsend they added a while back) or the next version of RS. Fingers crossed.

Basically, with custom DLC, 5-6 string bass guitars work fine. They just require some weird workaround settings: First, Ubisoft originally said that their note detection system didn't work very well for very low notes. If you mess around with a 5-string bass (or a normal 4 just tuned very low), you'll notice that the in-game tuner(s) don't register a low B correctly. Tune a 5-string guitar into standard BEADG outside of the game, then plug it into the game, and play an open B. The tuner will bounce around like it knows that it is hearing *something*, but it refuses to register as a B0 as it should. This is because Ubisoft programmed in a hard cap exactly at B0 -- anything at or lower than that won't register. That sounds like a game-breaker for a 5-string, or a 4 in BEAD, or anything with a string tuned to B or lower. And it was for quite a while, until somebody (whoever it was deserves a BIG pat on the back!) figured out that you can work around that hard cap by (ab)using the setting that allows for songs in a tuning off of standard A440. Ubisoft didn't sanity-check the input there, so it is possible to tell the game that the song is "slightly" flat of A440, at A220. That results in the game being "slightly" flat to the tune of an entire octave. Then, a custom is set up with the tuning an octave off. The two octave shifts cancel each other out, and result in the game thinking that the B0 in your 5-string is actually a B1, which is above the hard cap in the game so it registers fine. Quite a few customs now make use of this workaround, and in my experience the note detection on the B string is just fine... Dunno why Ubisoft decided to set the hard cap there that necessitated the weird workaround, but it doesn't really matter because it works OK. BUT, the problem of a bass arrangement only allowing for 4 strings is still an issue. If a song only makes use of the BEAD strings on a 5, it can be kept in the bass path and you just ignore the unused G string. If you want a custom that uses all 5 strings (or 6 on a BEADGC / other tuned 6-string bass) the only way to do it is to use the tuning workaround AND put it into a lead or rhythm guitar arrangement, tuned correctly with the octave shift weirdness of the workaround. Then to play that, you have to switch paths to lead or rhythm to access it in-game. So, with those workarounds, you can get songs for a 5 or 6 string bass to work in RS2014. Kind of clunky and weird to both set up and access, but it does work. Another downside is getting used to the string color-coding (red = E, yellow = A, blue = D, orange = G), and then having that switch around for customs that are set up for a 5-string (red = B, yellow = E, etc.). I hope that Ubisoft adds proper support for 5 and 6 string basses (and 7-string guitars) in the next version (or a patch for RS2014, but I think that it quite unlikely), with a different color for B strings in those setups. Maybe a dark blue or something. Songs for a 4 could still just show 4 strings with the same colors, but if a song is flagged as requiring a 5-string, go ahead and display the 5th. OR, allow the player to tick a checkbox saying that they are using a 5-string bass (or 6, or 7 guitar), and the extra strings would show up all the time when playing whether any notes occur on them or not. I'm sure that if/when Ubi adds official support for these instruments, the interface will be polished appropriately to accommodate them. But for now, at least we can get them to function using the workarounds.

Yeah, Linkin Park songs are often quite easy on bass, and tuning down to Eb Drop Db (most common Linkin Park tuning) is easier on your average bass than your average guitar.

Sweet! /grovel

I haven't been able to put in as much time on these as I want to for the past couple weeks... Not looking like I'll have a lot more free time this week, but I at least had a chance to try the Iron Maiden MC song tonight: Nice song -- I hope I get more time to practice up on it!

Added mine -- I think I have the distinction of being the furthest away from any other member... (just me in Thailand / Asia)

Thanks, I'll give that a try! The reset offset to zero thing was making me wonder also, so I'll try to keep an eye on that and try to get everything back into an early state after doing the beatmap but before importing arrangements. I was originally wondering if there was some way to import the beatmap from a previous save or an EOF-generated .xml file or something, similar to importing it from Sonic Visualizer, which is why I settled on asking in this thread. I know that is sort of a stretch to this topic, but thought it was close enough to keep it here rather than starting a new topic. Maybe. :) Again, thanks.

@@Alex360 -- I have a question that is related to this, but a bit different. I have a custom which I have already set up a beatmap for and synced by hand, multiple times. I keep on making updates in a source Guitar Pro tab and wanting to incorporate those into the custom, but whenever I try to re-import an updated guitar or bass track from the same source tab (same number of measures, time signature, etc., just changing the chart in places), the newly imported part is out of sync with the rest of the arrangements. If I then try to sync up that track, EOF seems to move the beatmap around in all of the other arrangements, which screws them up. So, every time I do this, I start from scratch and have to import all of the tracks and then redo the beatmap / sync so it applies to them all correctly. The specific song I am working on is Zombie by the Cranberries, and the BPM wanders all over the place during the song so it is a pretty major production to have to re-sync every single time. I am probably missing something obvious or doing something really stupid, but all of my attempts to work around this end up with arrangements not matching up with each other. The only idea that I have is that whenever I save in EOF after starting a new custom, it pops up with a warning saying that the beatmap doesn't start at the beginning of the audio track. It says that this might cause the custom to not play correctly, so I allow it to insert evenly spaced beats at the beginning of the track. Maybe when I am importing updated arrangements, they snap to the "first beat" that was added in to the dead space at the beginning, instead of where the song actually starts like the parts I added before saving? If that is the problem, it is safe to say NO to that warning when I save, and just leave the beats out of the beginning of the song? Thanks for any help you (or anyone) can provide -- I am sure that I am missing something easy here!

@@Alex360 -- Tried updating today, and chrome is giving me "eof hotfix (r1341).zip is malicious, and chrome has blocked it". Dunno how it came to that conclusion, but there doesn't seem to be any other information or an option to ignore. Beats me. --EDIT-- I had a file "Unconfirmed_________.crdownload" where I told Chrome to download to. Filesize was right, so I renamed it to "eofhotfix.zip" and checked it out. Virus scan came up clean as I expected, so I went ahead and put it into my EOF directory. Seems to be working fine... I wonder if Chrome suddenly has a problem with Mediafire or something? Very weird.

I think that if you go through the video manager and acknowledge all the 3rd party content notices, you'll be fine. Sometimes a particular band/label tells YouTube to block their content everywhere. When I run into one of those, I just delete that video. The only other option is to remove the audio entirely, which makes the video pretty much pointless. However, as long as you go through the process of acknowledging the content and then checking to see if that content gets blocked anywhere, I don't think you will get any strikes against your YouTube account for uploading copyrighted material. You make good playthrough videos, I know people enjoy them and can use them to help learn/practice a song even if they don't have Rocksmith or are away from their computer/console. So I say keep up the good work and just follow YouTube's content acknowledging system, and it works out for everybody. It is a shame when a label/band gets strict about blocking their content worldwide, but those cases are pretty few and far between in my experience so far.

Muse - Supremacy is going to be tough to tune into for guitar dudes ... AADGBE. That's like a 7-string in Drop A, and then leaving out the low E. For a normal 6-string guitar, I doubt you can get a string gauge meant for E to tune down to A before it gets really floppy... Looks like standard tuning for bass though, so that'll work OK. Downloading all the songs and will try them out soon! Only one I know is War Pigs, but all sound good. Just a guess, but I'm thinking that War Pigs will be a lot easier for bass MC this week than the last couple have been. Which isn't a complaint, the songs have been kicking my butt recently... :) Maybe I'm underestimating it also. Guess I'll find out shortly! ---EDIT--- This one was pretty forgiving. I honestly think I missed a few notes, but if Rocksmith wants to give me the 100% I guess I won't argue. Nice song, but I'll probably concentrate on improving my accuracy on the INT and MC songs this week. Had a few detection issues in D standard, but still managed a pretty decent accuracy for a 1st try. I think that if I can stabilize out the tuning and detection, a 100% accuracy is well within the range of possibility. Yeah, I forgot about the non-easy parts of War Pigs. Gonna be another stretch of capabilities for me, but I'll get better than this first trial run anyway. :)

I have quite a few playthrough videos posted. I don't monetize, but I block ads in all of my personal browsing so I have never seen if YT adds in ad content to my videos anyway -- if they do I have never seen it. I think that pretty much every single one of my videos has recognized the content and asked me to acknowledge. I always do so. Occasionally, it will tell me that the video is blocked in some country. Maybe 10-15% are blocked in Germany. Then 1 in 20-25 or so is blocked *everywhere*, at which point I just delete it. The one experience that I found quite annoying was when I uploaded a (bass) playthrough of Canon Rock by JerryC. My opinion is that Canon Rock is a cover / interpretation / arrangement for guitar / derivative work of Canon in D by Pachelbel. That original work is now public domain. I suppose that a performance of a public domain work can still be copyrighted; New York Philharmonic Orchestra or whoever might copyright a recording where they perform the piece. But, if anyone was going to make that claim for the song that the custom was based on, it should be JerryC, who both A) arranged the song for guitar AND B) performed his own arrangement, recorded that, and submitted it to video sharing sites (I think it was out there before YouTube even existed). Instead, I got the standard "your content is owned by" notice, but it said that the owner was something like "FunTwo music". I disagree with that -- FunTwo simply performed another cover of the arrangement by JerryC of the song by Pachelbel... And the background music in the custom I was performing was JerryC's performance NOT FunTwo's. That's like claiming that Korn should own the rights to my performance of Pink Floyd's original "Another Brick in the Wall", just because Korn also covered the song. So, I decided that for once I actually wanted to dispute the copyright claim. I clicked on that button, and YouTube presented me with a list of possible justifications for disputing the claim ... none of which actually covered the reality of the situation. One option was making the claim on the basis of calling it fair use; which is close to what I wanted but not exactly right. I ended up just giving up and "acknowledging" the (in my opinion) FALSE ownership claim, but I was rather annoyed about it. Really needed to be an option in there for "I dispute that the copyright claim is invalid because it is issued by an entity that doesn't actually have anything to do with the content I included."

I was very busy this week and then got sick a couple days ago, still recovering. So unfortunately, I didn't get around to trying the MC class song on bass, except for about a 1/3rd of playthrough which pretty much verified that it is well out of my league... So, I guess I'll just stick with my first and only submitted score for the Intermediate song (Pour Some Sugar on Me), even though I'm in the MC level. I also submitted a video for the experimental bass multitrack challenge in the other thread, and can maybe continue to improve on it since that is probably going to be a multi-week thing. I hope I'll have more time for this next week!

I foresee a lot of 100% scores for Pour Some Sugar on Me on bass... Was the first song I played and got 100% on back when I first got Rocksmith 2014 with no DLC, customs, etc. Never tried it in score attack before, so here is my first go at that (and the song in general) in a long time: I think the MC song by Symphony X is gonna kick my butt on bass, but I'll see what I can manage -- never hurts to push one's limits. The Beginner song also sounds great, never heard of them before but its got a kinda Joe Satriani vibe going on. So with these three songs and the one in the new experimental multitrack thread for bass, a lot of fun stuff this week! --EDIT-- Oh, I might even have to plug in my guitar and see how badly I can screw up the beginner and int songs. Lotta rust to knock off...

So many great scores on the bass side this week, MC and Intermediate! I've had an extremely busy week so I haven't been able to play much at all. I did manage to improve on Crazy Train up to 97% (97.4, but I'll have to do that in a score attack to enter it). {--edited image out into an update below--} Not gonna be enough to challenge the leaders, but I'm pleased with my improvement considering my starting accuracy on it. I'll see if I can get to 98%, and then may try to improve on Space Machine in intermediate which was actually more difficult for me. --EDIT-- On my next try after posting the above, I was really feeling it and *almost* broke on through to 99% -- hit 98.9, but again I'll have to do that in Score Attack if I want the decimal point considered: Hit my goal, but if I end up doing OK on score attack I might just see how far I can take it.

I take playthrough videos and put them on my android phone. Then I can play along away from the PC, although the note detection obviously is lost in that process. BUT, good for a Rocksmith fix when I'm not at home.

Tried Crazy Train again with your tone update @ -- huge improvement to the bass tone for me, thanks! Seems to have helped my accuracy, too. I think I may have a 99% in me on this one -- that'll be my goal for the week! I also see you are right about the interval being the same in Crazy Train and Space Machine (octaves, so skip a string and up 2 frets). I had somehow convinced myself that Crazy Train was just a 5th, so no string skip -- but you are totally right. That part will definitely hold me back in this song too... But at least it is just a short section that happens what, 2 times in the song?