MilkmanDan

Tried all the songs on bass: Beginner: In My Head (screenshot missed, doesn't matter) Easiest of the lot, but tough for the class. I'd give it a 4 or so. Intermediate: Crackerman I had this song before, with 1 playthrough already. This was first for Championship. Sort of tricky to get the hang of, but once you do it isn't too hard. First playthrough is likely to be rough for actual Int participants, but hang in there and you'll get it. I'd give it a mid-to-high difficulty for int, 5-6 or so. Advanced: Hotel California (screen'd already) Like I said before, a lot of shifting and notes on all strings with some string skipping. But, predictable pattern of roots/fifths/octaves so a little practice should overcome first-play high learning curve. So, I'd go for 7-7.5. MC: Party at Ground Zero There ... I "played" it. I got about halfway through and couldn't take it anymore, so I muted my sound and let it play out. Fingernails on the chalkboard to me, man. ...Guess I'll see what I can do with Hotel California this week. :)

I can confirm that running Hotel California through DD Remover fixes the Mastery weirdness: The 100% on top is from Rocksmith's records from the default/bugged version of the song (not through DD Remover). It would also be possible to fix that by changing the song ID in the toolkit. At that point, it would act like a completely new song, we'd have to play it again, but the Mastery issue would be fixed. Couple more things to note: I *think* that putting the song through DDR added a few more notes / measures to the end of the song. The bass plays through the song fading out, and on my setup the chart and my bass audio remained for a measure or two after the song volume faded down to being pretty much inaudible. I don't remember it acting that way in the default version of the custom, but maybe I'm just brain farting. BUT, that could also possibly explain the Mastery weirdness. I can't speak to the difficulty/fun of the song on guitar, but I think it is fun and challenging on bass. Good fit for advanced, in my opinion (personally I'd rate the song as a 7 on diff). LOT of shifting, played on all strings with a good bit of string skipping, but the frethand stays in a powerchord root/fifth/octave shape pretty much throughout, which is a very good thing to develop for a bass player. Whole lotta basslines can be played by shifting around to various roots/fifths/octaves. @@Mortalo - Personally, I think that scores on the default/original version of the custom (linked in the first page) are valid in terms of accuracy, and can be "counted" in terms of the Championship. BUT, it would probably be a good idea to post a "preferred version" link like you sometimes do to one that has been run through DD Remover or DD Creator. I can whip those up in a second and host IF you agree and would like me to.

There is some bug with the "Mastery" rating of this particular custom. Accuracy seems to be calculated correctly, but Mastery gives an easy straight 100%, with no bonus from Master Mode or anything. My guess is that something is set up weird with the song section tags, or maybe the "end of guitar" flag is set really early in the song or something, so it doesn't count most of the sections when determining Mastery. For weirdness and bugs with sections (or songs with NO sections), I find that running the song through DDC and/or DD Remover can fix things. DDC isn't perfect about putting section breaks in the most musically correct spots, but it makes up for it by being fully automatic. So, I'll run the song through DD Remover and see if that helps with this bug. BUT anyway, for the Championship we only really look at Accuracy, so the bug with Mastery doesn't necessarily matter as long as the Accuracy is counted properly -- which I *think* it is. Here's my playthrough today to show the same issue you had:

And to balance out the Debbie-Downerism of that last post, I retried Eat The Rich: Maybe it is just the contrast with the Maiden song kicking my ass while simultaneously being not my cup of tea at all, but this one was actually a lot of fun the 2nd time around. Might actually have to give it a few more tries, I think that ^^^ was only 3-4 misses away from being a 100%er.

I've got this: ...And this, to describe how I feel about the process of getting that screenshot up there ^^^: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls5t0vdLCA1qjxylyo1_500.jpg

Just did a reinstall and switched to free Avira instead of free Avast. I downloaded the Toolkit installers fresh, and Avast popped back with "RocksmithToolkitUpdater.exe" reported as having "TR/Dropper.Gen2" virus. "TR" means that they classify it as a trojan. Just to be clear, I believe that this is a false positive, but it did give me a bit of pause when it came back with a specific "virus" name instead of thinking that it was "Unclassified Malware" or something. Free Avast used to come back with some low-frequency stuff as "Unclassified Malware", and I knew to interpret that as "we haven't seen this before, so as CYA insurance we'll say that it is bad". Avira reporting it as a supposedly "known" trojan seems ... weird. May have to switch back to Avast. --EDIT-- A little bit of reading up on that specific code/name: TR means they classify it as "acting like a trojan" Dropper means that it "drops potentially dangerous/unwanted files" Gen2 means "generic", at least the "gen" part -- dunno about the 2 I uploaded the file (the updater) to virustotal and got a more thorough report. It says 10/57 scanners report it as a "virus". Almost all of those have "generic" in the description so they pretty clearly just don't know what it is. I guess that I'm going to start being very tempted to assume that anything with a "gen" or "generic" virus report in it is likely to be a false positive, just like Avast's (in my opinion better named) "unclassified" group.

Finals week at the school where I teach, but I actually don't have all that much on my schedule. Been doing Windows rebuilds in my PCs though, so between all of that I'm late to start. Just tried bass on all songs except beginner (can't be asked to tune to Eb). Beatles is OK but not a favorite of mine. Aerosmith I got a passable first try (98%) but not really digging the song. For me, Iron Maiden songs are pretty polarizing -- either great or hate it ... this week's is a hate it for me. I got a solid 80% in first playthrough, but some leveled down sections so I'm going to need to redo it with a DD Removed version. I probably should devote some actual practice to it, because it would be good for me to develop some skill in using the pinkie of my frethand (I have pretty big hands so I usually get by with a small shift and using the ring finger instead). BUT ... I think I'm probably going to end up getting one pathetic (but valid) score after running through DD Remover to maintain diehard status and then wait for next week. So, I'll join you in the "taking a break" lounge, @!

Blocked here in Thailand -- may be elsewhere also. :(

Big thanks! I looked in the manual, but didn't find that feature. Should be exactly what the doctor ordered. I just converted Deftones Change in the House of Flies to B Standard, and there were 3 specific notes on the B that I needed to transcribe up to the A string, plus a few other straggler things that needed shifting -- took me about 30 minutes of zipping through the whole song to find all the instances. I think with this the same thing could have been done in less than 5... But now I know for next time! :D

Recently I've been doing a lot of using EOF and the toolkit to transcribe bass arrangements in exotic tunings (Drop C, Eb Drop Db, C# Standard, etc.) into B Standard for use on a 5 string bass. This generally works well. Open up the audio in EOF, import the Rocksmith arrangement, change the tuning, and EOF gives the option to automatically transcribe notes. That works great for many songs, but it always tries to keep notes on the same string. Sometimes, that makes chords/double stops impossible (without tapping I guess) due to the gap between frets getting too large, or can make sequential notes where you play an open string followed by something high up the fretboard difficult, because, say, an open C requires first fret when the tuning is changed to B. So, something like 0 0 12 0 0 12 on the low C in Drop C turn into 1 1 13 1 1 13, which can be hard to shift in a quick tempo song. But if that 13 on C was transcribed to the 3rd fret of A, it would be easy again. So, what I'm wondering is if there is any way to select all notes of a given pitch, or all notes on a specific fret number on a specific string. Using the example above, lets say that I want to turn every note on fret 13 of B into fret 3 on A. Right now, I'm scrolling through the whole song and control-clicking every instance of notes at the 13th fret, then using the Note window to change them up. That works, but it would be a lot faster if I could automatically select ALL the notes at that position (and/or pitch). Is there a way to do that that I am missing? If not, would it be possible to add the feature? ...One more semi-related thing I've noticed is that the EOF options for "transcribe up" and "transcribe down" don't actually keep the pitch of the note the same -- they just move it to the same fret on a higher or lower string. It would be nice if a variant of that actually transcribed the note while maintaining pitch. It could warn you if it was impossible to keep that pitch on the string you are trying to transpose to.

Didn't know that, will have to check it out! Specifically www.tooltabs.net. If one is going to test a feature, they might as well push it to the limit, and I figure Tool will be a solid test with all the variations in time signatures and other weirdness...

Unfortunately, in the few cases where I have put up a Rocksmith playthrough video and it gets a worldwide block like that ... I think pretty much the only thing to do is give up (at least as far as that single video on YouTube is concerned). I don't monetize YouTube videos. The very idea of that disgusts me, actually. I personally feel like Rocksmith playthrough videos are / should be fair use, for several different reasons. Not for profit, educational, etc. Not to mention that they basically serve as free advertising for the artists / albums /songs in question. But, I don't have time, money, or lawyers to debate these things. Record companies do. So, YouTube (unfortunately in my opinion) pretty much HAS to err on the side of caution to avoid legal / financial repercussions. In the meantime, if you really want to fight the good fight and keep up videos that YouTube blocks on DMCA grounds, I think pretty much the only viable option is to take them to a competing host that is more lax about enforcing that nonsense. LiveLeak seems to be a popular alternative for hosting clips of TV shows that YouTube pulls (Daily Show, etc.), so maybe it would work for this purpose also. In my case, I generally don't care enough to bother... Although perhaps I should.

Tried beginner lead: First try was invalid because I leveled down some sections, because ... chords! /shakes fist But actually, that was really good for me, because I actually struggled through and tried to do the chords properly. Well, at least the two in the song that aren't barre chords expanding on power chord shapes. Those I just played as the basic power chords, and Rocksmith takes pity on my patheticness and gives me credit for them anyway. Mostly. But at least trying to do some basic chords is probably a good thing for me. If nothing else, it helps remind me that I should primarily stick to bass, where I vaguely know what I'm doing. :)

So much for my early prediction that this week would NOT be a "highest score attack wins!"... Nicely done!

BIG +1 to this ^^^ Why does it take me 5 different posts, each somewhere around the length of War and Peace, to even approach that level of clarity? :D

Ah, that wasn't my intention (comparing Left Hand's Free to Octavarium), but I didn't clarify enough (in spite of rambling on forever). What I wanted to suggest about both songs is that they both have some mitigating factor that might be important to consider when assigning them a difficulty rating, NOT that they are in the same league difficulty wise. Left Hand's Free has (in my opinion) a tough riff... BUT, it is also effectively the only riff, so maybe that structural simplicity could/should be taken into account with regards to the difficulty. Octavarium has sections that are extremely hard to play... BUT, they are brief compared to the total duration of the song, and a represent a low(ish) percent of the total notes in the song (10-15%?). And the remaining portions of the song are realistically playable by players under MC-level skill, so even someone who can't/doesn't do the hard parts at all will still get a semi-respectable overall accuracy. I figure that is another factor that could/should be taken into account with regards to difficulty also. Or not, these are pretty open ended questions. With that clarification to what I meant, I agree with / take interest in the rest of your post. I think I only played the Amy Winehouse song once, to get a feel for the difficulty. That 1st and only try was in the mid 99's for me, so I generally wouldn't think of it and Left Hand being similar in difficulty terms, but that's all very subjective. I should look at / play it again and see if I can understand where you're coming from better. And hand crampedness is a big part of the challenge for me on Left Hand also -- I was wondering about the feasibility of transcribing it up a string and down into the fret 6-8 range instead of 11-13. That high note on G would be a challenge, but maybe a fast shift could do it? That or a 6 string bass with a high C.

A few tries on SA:

Update on Advanced Bass: That's after my first playthrough, 84% accuracy. Second play, I Riff Repeated the first section (majority of the song is 1 riff, which is all contained in the 1st section) at 85% speed until I played it with 0 misses, then increased speed by 5% until I could play it right at 100% speed, at which point I played the song on out. Altogether, that 2nd try with RR, repeating, and accelerating took me about 10 minutes. This was 3rd try just after that, full speed but still in LAS. I'm still a bit clumsy on the riff, so I had a few misses -- but that is a big jump between 1st and 3rd tries, just like I was sorta anticipating. ...However, it kinda brings up a need to readjust my difficulty rating on the song. I rated it as an 8 before, a "high end advanced" song. I still think it is a good fit for advanced, but considering the fact that 95% of the song is 1 riff, it really does bring into play a progression where with a little practice a skilled enough player is going to get that 1 riff down and rapidly increase their total accuracy on the song. By the way I usually think about difficulty ratings, I think that 1 riff is an Advanced riff. You're playing notes on all the strings, with some quick shifting and string skipping. In a semi-unusual rhythm pattern. Up on the "meedly meedly" frets. No use of techniques like slides, HOPOs, etc., but I feel like the structure of that 1 riff is legitimately a bigger challenge than most stuff in songs that I would peg as Intermediate level. Factoring all that in, I'd adjust my difficulty rating to 6-7. My gut still tells me it is a legit advanced, but considering the structural simplicity, a very solid argument can be made for high-end intermediate. @@NoonyDeloony already has a 100% accuracy on it (congrats!), and I think that will probably prove to be doable by more Advanced participants. Considering that, pegging the official difficulty at 6 seems prudent, but that's just my take on it. I'm sure more feedback from Advanced participants will help clear that up, so I'll hereby shut up about it (at least, this song in particular) and let you guys take over! Keep in mind: So, I suppose that an honest assessment of how you'd rate the difficulty would help @@Mortalo the most, and speaking for myself will help me figure out how to peg songs that seem like an "edge case" right on the line between two classes, like this one. Should structural simplicity and lots of repeats be taken into consideration with difficulty? If so, how much in relation to the difficulty of those repeated bits? What about songs like Octavarium, with 17-18 minutes of the 20 minute duration being beginner to intermediate difficulty, along with a few spots of melt-your-face, "what the hell just happened" difficulty?

I've gone from sheet music notation to Guitar Pro a few times, which seems much better than tab to GP. Mainly because sheet music shows note durations and rests, so it tends to overcome that Guitar Pro weakness in rhythm that Firekorn mentioned. If you really understand music theory well you can probably guess at those things correctly from a tab ... but I am definitely lacking there so it takes a lot of trial and (mostly) error to attempt to get that stuff right with only tab notation to work from.

I think that will be best. Mortalo does a good job with the song selection -- in general we try to not have weird tunings that restrict many people from playing most of the time, but they aren't completely off limits for the championship. Normal strings are usually OK for stuff from Standard E down to, say, Eb Drop Db as long as you don't mind a little floppiness. But beyond that, it is getting to the point where one almost needs heavy or hybrid gauge strings to handle the tuning well at all. Open C definitely counts there, so a song like that will only be selected once in a while, and Mortalo tries even harder to avoid having a song like that selected for the same tier/class two times in a row (like the intermediate song two weeks in a row, etc.). So, might have to just grin and bear it for this week -- and next week will almost certainly be back to a more normal tuning. ...Sorry for longwindedness (get used to expecting that from me), but one other thing that can possibly help is giving your bass some adjustment time after tuning down. My 4 string bass gets really bad note detection if I tune straight from E Standard into something like Eb Drop Db or D Standard and try to play straight away. But if I tune down, take a break and come back at least a few hours later and check the tuning again (it will likely be up to 25 cents or so off after settling), it works and feels a lot better. I think that is due to the neck tension being radically different, which takes some time for the wood to adjust to. So, you could try putting your bass into Open C last thing before going to bed and then trying it again in the morning (make sure you re-check the tuning though) -- might help make it a bit better. Although it is hard to really overcome spaghetti stringitis from very low tunings. Worth a shot though.

It is definitely tough, but it is pretty much that 1 main riff through most of the song, so once we get that nailed down our overall accuracy should shoot up fast. In my first playthrough, I kept playing the one note on the G string on D by mistake. I figured that out near the end of the song, and correcting that single problem shot my accuracy up by almost 10% for my 2nd playthrough. ...And geez, I'm impressed and jealous of your dedication to Master Mode! I can still rationalize my choice to avoid it to myself, but eventually I'm going to need to work on that with some songs. ...Eventually. :P

Devin Townsend - Life transcribed to B Standard for 5 String bass available here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrSOVFWSmRYakJqZkU/edit I've tested it on my 5 string. Works great IF you've got a 5 to play on.

My 4 string bass doesn't get along with anything that low either. As @@Mortalo and @@Nacholede have mentioned for guitar, you can get hybrid bass strings that put on heavier gauge stuff for the E and A so they can drop into stuff like D standard, Drop C, or Eb Drop Db, but keep the D and G roughly the same since they can already tune down a full step or so without too much issue. However, I've had the same (and original) set of strings on my 4-string bass since I bought it ... something like 15 years ago. Granted it didn't see a whole lot of action in long spans during that time (I only got really active after Rocksmith 2014, to the point where I play at least a little bit nearly every day now) but still, it is much more possible for a bass to go a LONG time without changing strings than a guitar. Some bass players (most, even) prefer the sound of a fresh set of strings, especially for recording. But there are some notable exceptions that say the "funk is in the funk" and keep strings on pretty much forever. I'm one of those guys, partially because I'm too cheap to buy new strings all the time and partially because I really do like the duller, less bright sound of old strings. If you happen to have a 5-string bass, it is quite easy to convert/transcribe songs in low tunings like this (Open C) into BEAD(G) for a 5 string in B Standard. Sometimes the transcribed version is just as easy to play, sometimes it throws a curveball. I've already done the transcription so I can try the song on my 5 -- I'll post the file here shortly so anyone with a 5 can try it and avoid putting their 4 into Open C. Basically, if the tuning isn't working for you, I'd recommend posting a single score with it as best as you can manage with the floppy strings and then switching to the Beginner or Advanced songs for fun in Standard Tuning. Technique wise there isn't really anything to be done short of changing to hybrid strings or playing on a 5 string, both of which are somewhat cost prohibitive. Hybrid strings might be worth the expense if you play a significant number of songs in Drop D or lower, though.

First tries on all (but Townshend, I'm done converting it to BEAD but got a tutoring class in 20 minutes so I will save trying it for later): --EDIT-- to include all songs Beg: More shifting and playing on multiple strings than your average beginner song. Still fits, but on the high end. My Difficulty Rating: 3 Int: Just like last time I converted a funky-tuned song to B Standard, this worked great. Frethand positioning works out great on my 5 in BEADG; doesn't introduce any weirdness at all. Easy and fun to play. But if I tried to play it on my 4 string actually in Open C, it would suck my will to live, attempting to deal with spaghetti string low C... I'll probably record a playthrough video on a 5 in BEAD just to show how well it works with that adjustment. My Difficulty Rating: 3-4 (for my transcription in B Standard, but I think the original would be the same on a bass that can handle the tuning) Just a bit harder than the Beginner song due to a little bit more and shifting, with bigger range. On the other hand, this is all on 2 strings where that is on 3. I think this one fits in either tough Beginner OR Easy Intermediate. Adv: Here's my legit 1st try screenshot. No shame in having a rough first try! By the end of the song, I could tell that I had a better grasp of the riff, so I played it a 2nd time and got in 93% range. I think that with practice, this won't be TOO tough -- learning curve reminds me of More Than A Feeling by Boston, where I got my ass kicked the first time I tried it, but with some RR and practice it got MUCH easier. Good choice for legit Advanced in my opinion. My Difficulty Rating: 8 -- toughest Advanced song in a while! MC: Trust me when I say that was a rough sounding 95%... A lot of the song isn't spectacularly hard in the same way that other songs we've played are hard. It just requires you to be a human metronome, and play quickly in sync with the song -- which I suppose is a really good thing for bass players to practice. The speed is fairly fast but not insane throughout, and the length of it challenges endurance -- particularly the effects of fatigue on precision. Good choice for MC. Even though I got a higher first-try accuracy on this than the Advanced song, I think that this one would remain challenging even after many plays, whereas the Advanced song I see getting a lot easier once you get the main riff down and into muscle memory. That's just a gut-level prediction though, because I'm not there on either song yet. My Difficulty Rating: 8-9 8 because it isn't as hard in conventional ways (it isn't too hard to have your frethand in the right position, fret the right notes, get on the correct string, etc.) as some songs we've done before. 9 because it makes up for that in other kinds of difficulty. Legit MC song in my opinion -- I think first place will be a challenge for >99.5%, NOT a "who can get the highest SA score at 100%" week. :) I could be proven wrong though.

I know only 1 of these songs beforehand, 10,000 Days by Tool. Totally pumped to play it (I think I saw the first version released before it had bass added, so I didn't download it then, and didn't notice the update) -- great choice @@then3verend! And should be fun to check out 3 entirely new-to-me songs also. Especially if I can easily convert Open C into BEAD to play on my 5, which looks likely from the 1 screenshot I saw in the thread for that song... If that works out I'll post a link again (although I may be the only regular here with a 5?). Let the fretstivities commence!