MilkmanDan

Updates: Int First to 100, I think? Not that it counts since I'm not in the class. MC Nice solid improvement from 1st to 2nd try, so I think I've got a reasonable ceiling here. But today I really noticed some sync issues -- if this comes down to Master Mode I forsee some problems arising from that. Looks like it was synced with the "sync the notes" technique rather than making a beatmap, which will make it a bit of a pain in the ass to fix, too. ...Less successful on Beginner -- I keep missing a note or two in the part where you're actually doing something right after a quick up/down slide. Should be able to get a handle on that though. And I have yet to try Juular again. I think I might go straight to opening it up with the editor and check feasibility of converting it to BEAD.

I think it's a tossup, depends on what skills one is more developed on. For a bass player that transitioned from (lead) guitar, the speed and alternate picking won't be a problem. But for someone who just started out on bass, used to playing with fingers (and hadn't played guitar before) I think most would find the song harder than Juular. I was pretty much the same, brain farted to a mistake in the middle of the song, then aced to the end. 100% should be doable -- but I think it should be doable in Juular also with a properly tuned setup. :) I'm probably also biasing my answer a bit to try to avoid the Open B song being the choice for the busier, more critical Advanced Bass group. I honestly tried to remove that from consideration, but it probably colors my opinion some anyway. And I do like the song ... just a pretty out there tuning. So the best thing would probably be to get more feedback from the players in Advanced and Int, see what they want to do instead of listening to me. Keeping as-is for now is fine, especially with that option being open to more feedback.

Although none of the songs were previous favorites of mine (hadn't even heard any other than Space Truckin' before...), I'm kinda digging them all, actually. Fun week! Beginner: Forgot to screenshot my first try, I'll get around to it eventually. I like the song though, so I'll probably shoot for a 100% (almost got that on the first run, just butterfinger'ed a bit). Intermediate (Advanced?) Pretty close to as fun as Through the Fire and the Flames, which has become a favorite custom song of mine. I've got a 100% before on that one, I think this is a bit easier so should be doable here too. Always fun to see a streak in the 1000+ range... :) Advanced (Int?) I took a screenshot, but I won't post it because I didn't actually tune to the song properly, so it makes the song look harder than I think it is because I was goofing around trying to adjust the chart on the fly. I may get around to doing in properly... OR, I may edit the tuning to B standard and redo the chart -- I think it only has notes on the lowest 2 strings if I remember right, so it would probably be fairly easy to transcribe that to B and A strings in BEAD(G). MC Quite fun, and I was already hitting the main riff much better by the end of the song than when I started, so with some RR and practice I think I can get pretty solid on this one. Just as an aside, if you like this one make sure to get Smoke on the Water from the official Deep Purple DLC. Bass part is really really fun, and more challenging than it seems like it should be ... especially since the main guitar riff is probably one of the most common first things an aspiring lead guitar player learns.

I've tried all the songs on bass - here are prelim. difficulty thoughts: Beginner Bass: Good Charlotte - Like It's Her Birthday Nice middle of the road easy song for beginner. Not too fast, not too much shifting, relatively few total different notes (not as few as Black Magic, but not lots). Still, it is a good practice song for beginner level because of the variations in strum patterns and note durations -- although Rocksmith tends to be very forgiving about those kinds of things, so you can screw it up and still get a 100% accuracy. Your ear will tell you when you are doing it right, though. My preliminary difficulty rating: 2 (perfect fit for Beginner level, practices a specific aspect of playing that beginners may need to develop) Intermediate Bass: Dragonforce - Soldiers of the Wasteland If the speed was lower and the note durations constant, this would almost be a Beginner song. However, it is quite fast in spots, and does have some speed variations that bump up the rating a bit. It is fast enough for long enough that it requires a good amount of endurance to pull it off. Another thing to consider is that the speed and regularity at the very least favor (if not almost require) using a pick and alternate picking, which some bass players aren't practiced at. Considering that, I think I'd rate this as a midrange Intermediate song. And actually, with some caveats I'd personally rate it as harder than the advanced song, so if anyone chimes in agreeing, maybe we should switching these 2 around from Int to Advanced and vice versa. My preliminary difficulty rating: 5 (average Intermediate level) Advanced Bass: Devin Townsend Project - Juular I kinda like the song, but I think this isn't a great choice for the championship because of the tuning (open B is pretty out there, a high percentage of 4 string basses won't really be playable tuned down to B without heavy gauge strings). That's just my 2 cents though. Full disclosure, I only "played" the song on my 5 string by keeping the low B, skipping the E, and then fretting the A D G strings just to get past the tuning stage. Then I still got a first try accuracy in the mid 90s by playing the stuff on the B string (90%+ of the song) and trying to adjust the fretting to stuff on other strings in my brain on the fly. If one assumes that a player has successfully tuned their bass for the song, the chart is quite easy. Like, arguably beginner easy. Harder than the Good Charlotte song, but at least in my opinion easier than the Dragonforce one. So, again I think I'd personally recommend switching these 2 middle songs (or providing an alternate if people have as many difficulties with the tuning as I think they might)... My preliminary difficulty rating: 4 (3.5 with an extra half point for the hassle of tuning to Open B) MC Bass: Deep Purple - Space Truckin' Definitely toughest of the lot, but I think 100%s are well within the reach of the MC pros. The sync felt a little off in places to me, but maybe that was just my timing. Beyond that, it's got a good amount of shifting, notes on all strings, and some fancy fretwork required. I'd say not as hard as Smoke on the Water, because there aren't as many variations and intricate riffs. I'd call this one a middle of the road Advanced. My preliminary difficulty rating: 7.5 (I'd recommend this one to players in Advanced that want to push their skills a bit more than the 2 middle songs, although the Dragonforce song is good practice for alternate picking and endurance building) ...More personal thoughts and first try scores to follow soon, and I'll do a followup later in the week with adjusted ratings again also!

Updated/revised difficulty ratings for bass, taking near final scores into account: (these are not official in any way, just me trying to help contribute to difficulty ratings consistency) Beginner Bass: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here No actual counted entries IN this rank -- just plays by participants in higher levels. So, not really much evidence to suggest that my preliminary rating needs to be changed... And it won't really effect anything anyway since there aren't any entries by actual Beginner players. My preliminary difficulty rating: 4 (equivalent to easy Intermediate level) Final difficulty rating: 4 (enough 100%s to prove it isn't HARD, but I still think it is actually pretty tough for a true beginner) Intermediate Bass: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss Again, only 1 participant/entry actually in this class. Two 100% runs by high-tier folks, and then several in the low to mid 90's. That might make my preliminary rating of 5 seem a bit low, but since there aren't any entries done by people really working hard at the song with 10+ tries or anything, I'll probably keep it there. My preliminary difficulty rating: 5 (average Intermediate level) Final difficulty rating: 5 (good enough) Advanced Bass: Coheed and Cambria - Mother May I This is the class that requires very careful evaluation. But, we've got a lot of interesting results that help with that! As I'm writing, there are 4 valid-class entries here, with accuracies ranging from around 95% up to an even 99%. So far, nobody over the 99.5% promotion threshold. And that includes the scores of MC-level players that tried the song also -- none higher than 99.25%, although nobody with a whole load of attempts. Still, the lack of extremely high accuracy entries tends to suggest that the song is legitimately reasonably tough. My preliminary difficulty rating: 7 (legit Advanced, but closer to Int than MC) Final difficulty rating: 7 (I think it is indeed a legit Advanced song. Rating it as easier to prevent anyone that happens to get a 99.5% from leveling up would feel like a bit of an artificial stretch -- particularly compared to past songs that people have leveled up to MC on) MC Bass: Dance Gavin Dance - Carl Barker Seven entries here, with one 100%. Still, all are over 98%, so it isn't a painfully HARD MC song. Actually, accuracy scores are higher here than in the Advanced song, but I think that probably comes from competition and motivation of more participants in the class and more tries pushing for higher scores. I still think it is just a bit harder than the Advanced song, but pretty close really. My preliminary difficulty rating: 7.5 (just harder than above, enough to make it closer to MC than Int) Final difficulty rating: 7.5 (scores justify my initial evaluation, I think) ...So, as it turned out I think I'm happy with all of my preliminary difficulty ratings, but I expect it will be worth doing this 2-round evaluation system in the future. You may now return to your regularly scheduled Championship!

Never too late -- jump in and try out the songs! You can decide which path(s) and levels you want to do, but basically just give things a shot. Welcome aboard!

Good point, and that includes me also. I think I had somewhere around 25 plays or so on my original profile, which got corrupted a while back -- so I'd be somewhere in the 30s-40s total.

Since I mentioned working on giving Bass song difficulty ratings, here's some early thoughts. I'll try to keep my comments in these posts limited to difficulty and justifications ONLY, not my enjoyment level of the song or anything as I've done in the past. I'm sure I'll continue ramble about that other stuff too, I'll just try to keep it in separate posts from now on... (Small print: These are my subjective opinions as always, and now WITH a conscious top-end adjustment so that difficulty 9-10 is "pretty hard even for a quite skilled player like Blazi or n3ver", rather than "hard for me". Subject to adjustment later in the week as scores progress!) Beginner Bass: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here I think this one is actually pretty tough for a beginner song. It isn't too fast or anything, but it has notes on all strings, various durations requiring reasonable skill with muting, hammer-ons, frethand position is not entirely static, etc. Most importantly, the song requires pretty quick and accurate skipping from string to string, which is a skill that bass players develop slower than guitar players, I think. All that being said, it isn't a HARD song, it is just pretty tough compared to what I think of as a Beginner song. My preliminary difficulty rating: 4 (equivalent to easy Intermediate level) Intermediate Bass: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss Medium-toughish intermediate song. Some speed but not too much. Lots of frethand shifting, including slides. Majority of the song is played on 1-2 strings, but some notes require some string skipping. But, almost all of that is progressing up the strings rather than skipping from E to D or G. By RHCP standards, pretty easy -- no slap/pop or solo-like scale progressions or extensive techniques. My preliminary difficulty rating: 5 (average Intermediate level) Advanced Bass: Coheed and Cambria - Mother May I I'm trying to bias on the low side for this song because of the Advanced to MC transition difficulties. So, it would be nice to rate this as a 6 or lower so it wouldn't count for progression to MC with >= 99.5% accuracy. ...But, I think this is legitimately a pretty tough one. Fairly fast, good amount of fancy frethand fingerwork required, plenty of shifting, some string skipping and techniques. I think it is a legit Advanced song. My preliminary difficulty rating: 7 (legit Advanced, but closer to Int than MC -- note that this one in particular should be subject to further consideration at the end of the week) MC Bass: Dance Gavin Dance - Carl Barker Toughest of the lot, but I got over a 99% on first attempt, without ever even hearing the song before (no RR or slowdown). A bit trickier frethand skills required, and more shifting than the Advanced song, but otherwise pretty similar. Still, we've had plenty of harder songs at the MC level before, so I think I'd class this as a tough Advanced. My preliminary difficulty rating: 7.5 (just harder than above, enough to make it closer to MC than Int, but I think best fit is to call it Advanced) I'll try to continue that format in the future, and I will copy this post and update it with justification for any changes in the last day or so of the week.

@@Mortalo -- I think that is the most straightforward solution, wouldn't require any rule changes or special cases at all (although I think that scrapping the 3x 98% rule like you mentioned might be best). BUT, it would require us to be quite careful about how we rate difficulty levels. I'm glad you found my ratings helpful sometimes, although that just confirms for me that I need to be extra careful and consistent about that... And more diligent about trying songs out and posting my thoughts early in the week, if not in advance while songs are still on the selection list! Although, I think it might be helpful to reserve final judgement on difficulty until near the end of a week, because then we basically know that rating a song as 7+ difficulty (a "legit" Advanced) would result in X people (with 99.5% or whatever threshold) being bumped up to MC. If X is a large list, that is an indicator that maybe the song should should have a difficulty rating under 7, because 1) it must not be TOO hard if a lot of people are going to level up on it, and 2) that would give them the option of not leveling up. Take week 61, with Judas Priest Judas Rising (3 players, 2 of them adv. class at that point with >99.5) or week 53 Offspring Pretty Fly (7 players, 4 of them adv. class with >99.5). Both would be a flag that the song should probably be rated with a difficulty <7 (seems like Pretty Fly was, can't remember about Judas). So, I'll try to be more active in difficulty rating all the songs early in the week, if not being proactive and trying stuff on the selection list... But I definitely think that it will be good to have a chance to reconsider those ratings at the end of the week they are selected in. Combine all that with another round of mulligans allowed for current MC Bass players that want out, and I think it might end up being a fair, longterm fix (if we get the difficulty ratings right).

Just sitting at my breakfast... Minutes it is, then. ;)

Here's a more related to the task at hand post: (MC Bass) Which is good for the current lead... I expect to hold it for a few solid minutes of glory! ...Maybe hours if everyone outside of Thailand time is sleeping. :P

(this is a long post even by my standards, skip ahead if you want) I am not completely opposed to the idea, I was/am just a bit unclear on how it would all pan out. I've been thinking it over some more, and I've got some thoughts. So, lets say we settle on 6 MC slots. From your description, I guess that 4 would be selected week-by-week based on the top 4 of the previous week's MC song results. Whoever came in 5th and 6th in MC get "relegated" to Advanced for the following week (they can still play the MC song, but their results don't "count"), and #1 and 2 in Advanced get promoted for a shot at the big leagues? My first thought is that a good aspect of that is that it really would enhance the competitive aspect of the "Championship". It would make it feel much more like a Championship. In spite of the fact that I tend to play for fun rather than for the competitive aspect here, I think that would be a good thing... Although not everyone would agree, I think. However, I do see potential problems, but maybe they could be mitigated. Like you said, quite a few participants don't want to be in MC. Players like that would actually be discouraged from doing well in Advanced, because if they do, they get bumped into MC for a week. Maybe to help deal with that, we could say the promoted players still get valid scores in both Advanced and MC classes for the week they are promoted. Ie., top 4 in MC scores are valid in MC only (they can play the Advanced song, but there score doesn't count in leaderboard terms, just like now). If you are one of the players promoted from Advanced to MC, your scores for the week that you are promoted count in BOTH the Advanced and MC songs (assuming you play both). If you manage to beat out one of the top 4, you would be locked in to MC for the next week, and the player you dethroned would have to get #1 or #2 in Advanced to have a shot at getting back in the firm MC list. So, using last week's leaderboard again: Blazikiller, then3verend, w4rl3x, and frippchen would be the locked-in MC Bass players this week. Kaijin and genobadass had the top 2 Advanced Bass scores last week (although if the system was different like you suggest I'm sure there would have been more jockeying for score there). So, they would be promoted to "probationary MC" this week, and their scores on BOTH Mother May I (adv) AND Carl Barker (MC) would count for leaderboard scores in their classes. If they have no interest in MC, they can just opt out of playing that song entirely. Their score for Advanced still counts, so if they get #1 or #2 there again, they would be "probationary MC" again, and could either opt out again or try it out if the song is more to their liking. If they want to shoot for glory, they can play the MC song and try to get in the top 4, which would lock them in to MC for at least a week (and invalidate any score on the Advanced song for the week). Is that pretty close to how you see it working, @@then3verend? I think I'd be OK with that. I wouldn't want to make things too complicated for Mortalo, so that should be considered. And most important is what the advanced/MC players that would really be involved with any of these ideas think. I'm kinda in that group, but I can see good points to either voluntary advancement to MC or your idea of limited MC slots (which could be applied to lead and rhythm also if desired).

How about this: Advanced to MC (or back) is a player-initiated transition. In order to move from Advanced to MC, you have to: 1) meet the current level-up requirements AND 2) say that you *want* to be leveled up. There is some potential for an MC-level player to just stick in Advanced because they can dominate, which would probably require there to be some option to force a level-up to MC. Maybe a vote conducted by PM to all the other active Advanced participants, or something. BUT, I don't see that being required often if ever, because we're a good community and it would be a pretty dick move to actually force it to come to that. Moving down from MC to Advanced would be handled by the player saying they wanted out, and maybe another PM vote by participants in Advanced. OR via the current rules of getting less than x% (is is 70%?) or just not participating for 3 (I think it is 3?) weeks in a row, which would not require a vote. That second option might again have potential for abuse, but I don't see it happening often. Still, the same option to force a level-up could be used in those cases if they ever happened also. And if anything was changed like this again, current MC players should be allowed a one-time mulligan to drop to Advanced if they want, like last time (which seemingly didn't go far enough). I would *consider* dropping down myself, but I think I'd stay in MC. I can usually get a respectable 3rd or 4th, and I don't feel completely out of my depth with the songs chosen for MC (I'm not in the same league as top the MC guys, but I'm usually comfortable with the challenge level of the songs). Hey, that was a short post for me!

I'm kinda mixed on the idea of limiting the number of MC bass spots... Some aspects would be good but some feel kinda off also. Just by looking at the leaderboard from last week: Player Acc% Strk Score Blazikiller 100.00 1301 2,469,231 then3verend 100.00 1301 2,467,211 w4rl3x 100.00 1301 1,848,718 frippchen 100.00 1301 1,847,720 MilkmanDan 99.92 1231 Kaijin 99.07 306 genobadass 98.15 349 Mortalo 98.00 288 Joey 96.23 275 NoonyDeloony 93.77 239Blazikiller and then3verend are the elites with MM scores. w4rl3x and frippchen both hit 100% with very solid scores on hard. Kaijin and I both hit 99%+, genobadass and Mortalo with 98%+, and Joey and Noony both with solid accuracies in the mid 90s. So just by looking at the scores of that single week, one could get a pretty good grip on where to set the bar depending on how many spots we wanted to set for MC Bass. 2 seems too small, but there is a clear line in the chart at that point because of the difference between Master Mode and Hard scoring. If you set it at 3 spots, w4rl3x and frippchen would be under lots of pressure to fight for the best score with 100% accuracy on hard, and then one of the two would get screwed. Bump up to 4 spots, and the pressure shifts to me to try to pull out a 100% and beat one of those guys scores. I think I played the song somewhere around 6 times during the week, and one of the first times when I missed ONE note and got the 99.9 was my best. I think with enough tries I could have lucked into a 100% run, but I don't have any confidence that my timing/score would have beat the guys above me even then. And I wouldn't really have enjoyed it. ...And with more spots (5+), the pressure just keeps moving down the list to either A) try to avoid being "relegated" to Advanced, or B ) try NOT to get into the top spots so that one could go back to Advanced where they want to be anyway. I don't think that is really an ideal solution. A small number of MC spots will make the line feel arbitrary... I think that ranking based on score in the event of a tie (like a tie at 100%) is the best method available, but it isn't great because I don't really 100% trust Rocksmith's scoring system given potential differences in input lag/latency, random hiccups in system performance, etc. etc. A small number of spots puts a lot of faith in that scoring system, which I think is ... not great. A bigger number of spots limits the positive effects of the idea -- the pressure to really push for your best isn't on the elites like Blazi and never-never, who pretty much know that they are going to make the cut. Instead, it goes down to the first tier of also-rans... Since I'm sorta in that group, I'll just say that I don't think that pressure would motivate me -- rather the opposite. I play/participate here for fun, that sounds a bit too much like work. I dunno. Maybe I'm missing the nuances of how it would work, but I think that I personally would prefer some other system of solving the Advanced -> MC transition issue. I just don't know what.

No RR is pretty easy to fix. Can even be done automagically with DDC/DD Remover, although that route is generally less smart about where the real section breaks are than doing it by hand. I'll check out the song -- thanks for the suggestion!

I had trouble with that chord also. Another poster (maybe the author?) speculated that it might be because two of the strings in the chord are playing the same note (DADG 0507, so both middle strings are the same D, the root is an octave lower, and the G string is an octave higher). Maybe something screwy about the detection with that? If that is the issue, perhaps it could be charted as 05x7 to see if that resolves the problem. ...But still, 95% on a sight read with probably most of the misses coming as a result of the bad detection on that chord... Maybe the difficulty there just won't cut it in terms of the "11" that I am (we are) looking for! :lol: Schism is another possibility by Tool. Can't remember how well-synced that one is. Lateralus is awesome, but not really insane-o HARD, and the sync is ... rough. I also thought of Anesthesia, Cliff Burton's bass solo from Metallica's Kill 'Em All album. ...But, bass solo, no guitar, won't work. Orion is another Cliff Burton special, sort of my personal "holy grail" song. But after a good practice session on a good day, I can pull off 96-97% on that one, so I tend to think that you bass gods might end up in a 100% fight on it again. Maybe Geddy Lee/Rush, but all the songs I really know by them (and know are the kind of HARD we want) are official DLC. Or some Geezer Butler from Sabbath, but a lot of those are in C# which I consider less than ideal for Championship (but might work as a 1-off HARDMODE song with the right selection I guess). Those are what jump to mind from my personal sphere of music that I listen to/play (or attempt to play) much. I guess googling "hardest bass songs" should have come to mind earlier, but here's a result of that search: http://www.thetoptens.com/hardest-bass-riffs/ OK, I'll stop spamming about this only-loosely-related-to-the-task-at-hand stuff. Sorry for going off on a tangent...

For possible hard MC Bass, maybe some Tool? A lot of the Tool customs are iffy on sync due to the really weird time signatures, changes, etc. Even the people that really know their way around EOF and making customs can have a lot of trouble... But, the custom for 46 & 2 seems pretty solid in that regard, and the chart looks good to my less-than-master eye: http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/46-2-r1766 I managed an 85% on a first try with some riff repeater, and 87% on a full-speed 2nd attempt. Seems like it might be hard enough to make the big guns break a sweat? --EDIT-- Or Edgar Winter Group's Frankenstein? http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/frankenstein-r5798

I only read the first few paragraphs, as always, of this. It was far too much to go further. if I missed something I apologize.....Damn Bourbon. I ramble... It's "my thing". :D

First tries on MC and Advanced Bass: Advanced: Mother May I - Coheed and Cambria I've heard of the band, but couldn't name any of their songs and didn't know this one. But it's nice -- felt tougher to me personally than the MC song in places, but I think that overall the class sorting is correct. I'll think more about difficulty ratings, particularly given my post above. I think the "old me" would have rated this as a 7, but I will consider that more carefully and follow up once I've tried all of the songs. MC: Carl Barker - Dance Gavin Dance Another song I don't know, and this one I don't think I've ever even heard of the artist... BUT, I liked it quite a bit! Fun to play. To me, the average difficulty throughout the song felt lower than the Advanced song, but the trickiest parts here are harder than they are in that one. So I think this is the best fit of the two for MC. And again, I'll have to consider difficulty ratings carefully. But, "old me" would have said a 7.5-8, I think. Should be a fun week, all new stuff for me as opposed to last week being mostly old favorite songs/bands. Wheeeee!

I'm pumped about my win! ...(in beginner lead)... I might actually have to enter in that category a bit more often in addition to giving the MC Bass the ol' college try. As one of the MC Bass "also ran"s, I thought I'd chime in and say that I don't mind @@then3verend and@@Blazikiller dominating the class. I'm happier to come in 4th-5th in the category after seeing what the really good players can do, as opposed to coming in 1st or 2nd mainly due to low participation (as it was for a while when I first started participating). Things are heating up, we're getting more players, and nobody can claim that wins in those hot classes (like MC Bass) are "by default" -- very impressive levels of effort put in by the big contenders! That being said, with the level of competition in the MC Bass class in particular (or maybe I'm just most aware of it there since I'm somewhere in the mid-bottom of the mosh pit) I think it would maybe be nice to see a few really tough songs selected. Not necessarily every week, but a few songs that go further to really define what a 10 on the difficulty scale is. I think that would have a couple of good outcomes: 1) On the hardest stuff, the winner will probably be decided by Score Attack accuracy down to hundredths of a percent. As opposed to multiple people with 100% accuracy decided by score, or even 100% accuracy decided by Master Mode score ('cuz hard score just won't cut it). That being "better" is subjective, but I think I would prefer it that way most of the time, and I'd imagine that the elite guys might prefer an accuracy shootout over a memorization/MM exhausting challenge like they had last week. Although I don't want to put words in their mouths for them, so maybe they could comment? 2) If we establish a higher average difficulty level for MC level songs (difficulty 9-10), we could similarly adjust what defines Advanced (difficulty 7-8). That might tend to push down the assigned difficulty of some of the Advanced songs into the range of 4-6, so that they would technically be "Intermediate" difficulty and therefore not force a level up to MC on 100% runs. I think that would help clarify the progression from Advanced to MC, and help with the issue that in the bass path people still tend to get bumped up from Advanced to MC before they are really ready for it / want to. Looking at the leaderboard, there were 10 participants in MC Bass last week, 4 in Advanced, and 2 in Intermediate. I think that tends to suggest that progression through the classes happens a bit faster than would be ideal. I know some things have been done to try to put the brakes on that before, but it seems like a bit more might be good. I think you do a great job with the organizing @@Mortalo, so don't take any of that as digs at you. It is on us participants to put a lot of diversity in the song selection list, as well as to be as consistent as possible with our difficulty ranking suggestions. So, to "do my part", I'm going to think about what customs I've played that are good and fun but particularly difficult, and try to pick some to add to the selection list. I'm also going to readjust my difficulty rating scale, so that only those really hard songs get a 9-10 (MC). And, by extending that down, some of the songs that I would have pegged as Advanced before (7-8) would drop down to Intermediate, which would allow them to be "no/optional level up songs" for the Advanced tier. I don't mean to suggest that things be like the bass equivalent of "MC Lead = Joe Satriani every week" or anything, but I think that those two small shifts (difficulty ratings on a scale of "will @@Blazikiller and @@then3verend find this hard" instead of "do I find this hard" and a few more songs that crank the difficulty up to 11) might have a pretty big and good impact. Don't mean to rock the boat, and again I'm actually quite happy with where I'm at and how things are going -- but I think some further tweaks to adjust the rate of class progression (especially for bass) might help out a lot of participants.

Doh! I came pretty close to that in the Championship here also. I was trying for a 100% on Como Me Pongo (I think, might have been another song a while back), and the first time that I was almost to get it (like 2 measures away from the end or something) Windows auto alt-tabbed me back to the desktop with "Windows has finished downloading and installing updates. Would you like to restart"? I changed my settings over to MANUAL UPDATES ONLY as a result of that near miss of an aneurism...

Noony you are getting too good .. I think you should start playing guitar and really challenge your mettle I used to play guitar but after 20+ years I never improved and sold my Les Paul copy to a blind guy a few years ago. I did get a guitar for Christmas, it was really bad quality so I sent it back. I will get a new guitar one day but that'll have to be when I get my old job back... Which doesn't seem likely as it seems my old boss thinks maternity leave was my resignation :angry: I'm glad that I still have the my first electric guitar, from before I ended up being a bass convert. ...BUT, that being said, I am 100% a bass person now; I personally don't get even the barest fraction of enjoyment out of playing the guitar that I do the bass. There's always some segment of the stringed-instrument population that thinks that bass is just for people who don't have the talent to hack it at guitar (NOT that Kasnitch or anyone else here is/was suggesting that, but I see that opinion expressed relatively frequently). I say F that, I play bass because I like bass. Learning guitar in addition would be a "challenge", but getting as good as I can on the bass is also a "challenge", and one that I find more worthy AND entertaining personally. Trying a song on lead or rhythm guitar can be a fun diversion sometimes, but I'm happy and comfortable with a bass in my hands 99.9% of the time. I really respect the skills of great guitar players, AND great bass players, AND great players of any instrument. AND people who are great at multiple instruments or song paths (take @@then3verend for example, ripping up the leaderboard here in lead and bass, or @, high up in all 3 paths). That's awesome -- very worthy of admiration (and a bit of jealousy too!). But still, it's all about what we enjoy and click with the most. If that's guitar, sweet. Bass, groovy. Both, awesome. Put on the best Jamaican accent and say "it's all good, all the time, mon". :)

My setup now: The guitar is an Epiphone Korina Explorer, but it doesn't see a whole lot of action. The basses are an Ibanez GSR200 (my steady workhorse) and Epiphone Thunderbird Pro V (love it but needs an electronics overhaul).

Difficulty 5-6? Easy 100%? /I'll just be over here: http://rs2img.memecdn.com/_c_135996.jpg

I tried editing the custom, to: A ) add 3 seconds of leading silence since the bass part starts at about 500 milliseconds in otherwise, and B ) removed the slides from the double stops, because I thought that might be the source of the screwy recognition. Item A helps a lot; I couldn't move my hand from the keyboard to the bass fast enough to get anything other than "Late!" on that first sustain. Now I've got time to prepare and switch tones etc. if necessary. Item B didn't pan out real well. I still get terrible detection, even without the game trying to judge the slide also. To clarify, I hear the slide in the song, and think it is charted correctly/accurately in the original, I just thought that removing it might fix the really low rate of proper detection... But it didn't, in my setup. It seems like part of my issue might be really noisy electrical wiring here in Thailand. My 5-string bass has always been pretty noisy (I think I need to have a luthier completely rewire it, maybe even put in all new pickups), but today I noticed that when I re-activated the in game tuner, it wouldn't let me successfully tune the G string up. It passes the first check, saying it is spot on or hovering around 1-2 cents sharp or flat, but then when it wants me to play the string again to finalize it does that cycle where it "thinks" for a while and then decides that it is far enough off to go back to the first check. ...Which thinks the tuning is fine. I think that might be an issue with the electronic buzz/hum interfering with detection of that pure note. I can't play my 5 string in Rocksmith without turning the tone knob all the way down (to gate out some of the high frequency hum), and usually I need to tone switch to a custom one I've made with a high frequency gate also. My 4 string is usually better, I can play most songs with a clean bass tone with my tone knob turned all the way up (if I want to, I usually prefer it set low anyway), but anything with distortion or much gain requires me to turn the tone knob all the way down on it also. Wiring is pretty notoriously craptacular here in Thailand, so I think that might be making the issue worse. Anyway, I may do another edited version of the custom to keep the added leading silence but leave the slides in and just restart multiple times to try to get lucky hits on the detection. Or maybe it would help to transcribe them up to 19/17 on A/D, or something. If anyone wants the leading silence version, and/or has any ideas about the double stops, let me know and I'll post a link.