MilkmanDan

I keep getting a few bad detection misses, along with plenty of honest-to-goodness screwups. If I could put together an average run (for me) with zero detection fails, I'd clear the 99% mark, but so far that hasn't happened: Still fun to play though -- I'll see if I can improve a bit more in the next couple days.

Nice sight read! With regards to the length, all I can say is that you're lucky we've already done Octavarium by Dream Theater, so it can't be chosen again... (20 minutes of heaven ... or hell, depending on who you ask)

I always thought fiddling with intonation would be a pretty hard thing to do, but after doing a little YouTube research I found several good videos walking through the process. Ended up being MUCH easier than I was expecting it to be, and I've now fixed up my 1 guitar (Epi Korina Explorer) and later 2 basses (Epi TBird Pro 5 and Ibanez 4). Both Epi's needed truss rod tweaks also, which was a bit tougher but still doable. So, I'd encourage you to get a screwdriver (my Epi guitar used a flathead, both basses wanted a Phillips) and/or small Allen wrench set (I hear some go this route instead, especially Floyd-Rose maybe?), look up a YouTube video, and try it yourself. Whole process took me, as someone who had never tried it before, about 20 minutes the first time. And the guitar especially went from approaching a half step off at 12th fret (like yours) on 2 strings to within 1-5 cents of perfect on all 6. Massive improvement, not difficult at all, and low risk of causing any damage or ending up making things worse -- which is a bit more of a real concern in something like truss rod adjustments. I think pretty much the worst thing that could happen would be breaking a string if you don't back off the tension before adjusting, and that is easily managed by taking your time. Give it a shot!

Nice song selection (and nice custom by @frippchen) for MC Bass this week. Here's my first try: Two more tries immediately following it were actually *worse*, mainly because my 4-string bass started having re-tuning detection issues and then I tried on my 5-string and had more trouble than usual dealing with different string spacing. But, I should be able to do better tomorrow after my 4 stabilizes back in to Standard E.

Oh crap, I had an updated score that week after my first run with screenshot posted but not all sections at 100%, and forgot to post it. Too late now, my bad! :)

You said playing Killing in the Name Of would still count as far as diehard status was concerned, right? I think I should still be in the list. --EDIT-- Found it: Mortalo, on 10 Dec 2014 - 04:39 AM, said: Anyone who scored on RATM does not have to score on Muse to have this week checked.

Argh.... First of all i think its extremely important to support Ubisoft for everyone here, i buy lots of odlcs myself. This is the first time, i´m not an expert either, but imho the off version is way inferior on lead guitar too. While the "main riff" is charted a bit more clearly and playable... Nonsense discussion... The cdlc was a very very good piece of work, thx for the effort to all charters here! I think the way @@Mortalo handled this is heartbreaking, but the only clear way. Might be that this should go in a separate thread, but I don't think it is too much of a nonsense discussion. I 100% agree that Ubisoft deserves lots of support -- in one year of playing Rocksmith I've progressed in skill orders of magnitude more than 15-20 years of me just fiddling around with tabs and trying to teach myself. Plus, Rocksmith / Ubi does get the charts right / better / more polished in the vast majority of other songs where I've downloaded a custom first and later the same song comes out as official DLC (not to take anything away from the great work done by makers of customs here). ...BUT, in this particular instance, for this particular song, I think it is kind of an exception to that rule. While listening to that YouTube video of the RiffRepeater guy playing the bass part of the new official DLC for Killing in the Name Of, one of the recommended/related videos that popped up on the sidebar for me was an isolated recording of just the bass part of the song which somebody stripped out of a Guitar Hero file. Listening to it let me confirm and revise some of my initial problems with the official DLC (bass part anyway): The tone switches that are in Ubi's version are technically correct (I can hear them in the isolated bass), but at least in my setup the effects are quite a bit overdone. So, even though the custom version doesn't tone switch at all, I think it is actually overall a better match to the recording. Which is unusual, because tones are one place where official DLC usually has an edge over customs.The dead notes / mutes that I noted as being absent from the official DLC are audible in the isolated bass track most of the time, so I think the custom version is legitimately more accurate there.The official DLC has the bass playing a G on the 5th fret of the D string (higher D, not the low dropped D), sustained with tremolo picking, through a long stretch in the finale/outro. The custom version starts that off as the same G (charted as rapid fire 16th notes instead of tremolo picking), but then moves the pitch up through a few steps in the scale on up to a solid octave. It really sounds right, in the recording you can hear that pitch going up at the steps indicated in the custom. ...BUT, listening to the isolated bass, the official DLC is actually correct -- the bass just hammers on that root while it must be the guitar alone that does the shifting up. Still, I think it is fun to shift up with the guitar like in the custom version.The official DLC charts some notes as being played with a quick shift up the fretboard to high frets on the D (blue) string. The custom charts the same notes onto the G string (orange). They both play the same notes, so I can't really say that either version is "right" or "wrong", and I don't know how the RATM bassist plays them. BUT, for me, playing them as charted in the custom is a LOT easier -- frethand position stays the same instead of having to make quick and precise jumps/shifts.This is subjective, but the use of the radio edit version of the song in the official DLC bothers me. I know Ubi has to be careful about lyrics to avoid offending ratings boards, advertisers, parents, etc. etc. BUT, it would be nice if there was a checkbox in the game options somewhere and then song files could encode BOTH a radio-friendly audio track AND the profanity-laced one in songs where necessary. Hit that checkbox and you get the uncensored version, otherwise you get the default radio-friendly. I think that would keep the censorship-interested parties AND potty mouths like me all happy.

One further thing on RATM: BEFORE buying the new official pack, check out Ubi's versions of the songs in playthrough videos from that riffrepeater site (http://www.theriffrepeater.com/rocksmith-2014-dlc-129-rage-against-the-machine/) Here's the bass video from there for Killing in the Name Of: The chart is way different from the old, now unavailable custom that was selected for this week originally. I'm not a expert, but it seems inferior to me; less throaty and missing some of the dead/muted notes that I think sound correct and are very helpful to figuring out the groove of the song. Also, it has a bass tone switch that makes no sense to me; goes from a pretty close match to "uhhh, what?" On top of that, the official DLC uses a radio profanity edited version of the song. Which is really stupid, because the entire last half of the song gets rendered as "....you, I won't do what you tell me!" culminating in "mother...", which makes no sense. ...Basically, caveat emptor. And I know that CustomsForge policy dictates (rightly) that the download options for those old customs that now have official DLC versions have to be pulled from the site. I understand that and agree with the need for it. ...But, if anyone reading this missed the download window on the UNofficial custom version and thinks that the official DLC version is, uh, "lacking" for the reasons I mentioned above or any other, that is really quite unfortunate. I'd recommend that any such person PM me so we can share our frustrations about the situation. Hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge.

I'm disappointed, but that's probably the best way to handle it ... just really bad luck on the timing of the official DLC being released this week! To all of the players of the unofficial Killing in the Name of, especially you awesome dudes with 100% and/or 100% in Master Mode ... I hereby use the powers vested in me by no-one in particular to grant you: http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h35/Riddle_thorn/plus1internets.jpg as partial recompense for being unlucky-screwed out of having your scores "count" in the more meaningful way this week. Sorry, and know that all of your "earned the awe/respect/jealousy of MilkmanDan" points are still 100% intact...

I have a very musically talented family. My father sings and plays trombone, my mom plays piano and organ, and several of my aunts / uncles / cousins are music teachers or professional musicians (Opera singer). ...But that skipped me for quite a while. I never had any interest in learning an instrument until a friend got an electric guitar when I was 16-17 or so (I'm double that age now). Then I played his (strat clone) and liked it, so I requested one for a birthday present. My parents wanted me to try something similar to make sure I was going to actually work at it, so my music teacher aunt loaned me a ukelele. I didn't really like that anywhere near as much as the guitar, but I guess I put in enough effort to get the go-ahead because my folks and grandmother bought me an Epiphone Korina Explorer (Metallica fan so I like the explorer body style, and that was the cheapest one available at the time). I got decent-ish for being entirely self-taught. No lessons, just tabs and sharing notes with 2 other guitar playing friends. I never got any good at chords other than power chords, but I got almost ok at single-note riffs and solo stuff. But, I gradually lost interest since I never got any skill with chords and therefore couldn't really play many whole songs that I was interested in in their entirety. Went to college and played only very sporadically (2-3 times a year), but I think somewhere around age 21 or so I decided I should try bass so I bought a cheap Ibanez. I immediately clicked with that much much better than I ever had with guitar, even learning some songs all the way through which I never really had with guitar. Like a Stone by Audioslave was my first "I can play that whole song" moment. However, even though I enjoyed bass quite a bit, I didn't put much consistent practice into it. More than I had done with guitar, but still only played maybe 2-3 hours a month. That lasted 5 years or so, and then I decided to come to Thailand "for a year" to teach English since I wasn't finding the kind of employment that I was looking for with my degree in Computer Science post dot com bubble. I enjoyed it here, so one year turned into 8+ so far, with a wife, kid, and house here in Thailand now. I bought a very cheap acoustic guitar my first year here so I wouldn't be completely without, but only played it a few times a year. Then after 4 years here I took a trip back home to the US, and brought my Ibanez bass back here with me. Still played it some but not a great deal. ...Until I discovered Rocksmith 2014 about a year ago. Got me completely reinvigorated and hooked on playing again. I just play for my own pleasure -- I don't have any aspirations to be in a band or play in front of people really, so I don't mind that Rocksmith seems to be less naturally helpful at actually memorizing a song the whole way through than learning from tabs. I'm happy to use Rocksmith as a sight-reading tool, and in that way it is actually far superior to tabs at least in my estimation. Before Rocksmith, I'd look for tabs for songs and 9 out of 10 times I would think "meh, that looks too hard" and give up without even really trying to work at it for more than a few minutes. Now, with Rocksmith, I have a huge list of songs that I can sight-read and play to 98-99%+ accuracy, which is great fun for me. I'm nowhere near as good as some of the upper ranks of MC-level bass players here in the championship, but I'm already way better than I was just a year ago, and way better than I ever expected I would get period before I discovered Rocksmith. Before, playing bass or guitar was an amusing diversion for me once in a while. Now, I'm actually enjoying it much more and motivated to play for 30 minutes on up to 3-4 hours plus pretty close to every day. So, I think I owe a big debt of gratitude to Rocksmith (and the Championship here of course) for lighting that fire under my ass and getting me back into playing bass/guitar as a hobby in a big big way!

Hmm. Largely solved my detection and sharp attack issue by playing on my 5-string instead of my 4. I'm a bit butterfingers with the different string spacing, but I'll "glass half full" that and say this provides good motivation to overcome that... Anyway, I can't blame detection on any of the misses here: May be my personal best, I can't remember exactly what I had on my old profile. But I think I can take it a bit further!

Glad to see people are enjoying my selection of Killing in the Name Of on both guitar and bass -- I think it is a good song to listen to and even more fun to play. And I'm in awe of your skills @@Blazikiller -- big salute for 100% on MasterMode!!! Didn't end up getting much time to play last week, and I've been sick the past couple days but I will definitely put in some more time this week. I don't think I've got a 100% in me (definitely not in MM) but I'm hoping I can improve on my personal best of 99.5ish on my old profile. Here's my first time on the song since it being selected: Detection wasn't great, I think I should have had a bit over 99% but my bass always takes some time to settle down after tuning out of E Standard. Also, I've noticed that in anything Drop D or lower tuned, I get issues with notes being well sharp (up to 20-25 cents or so) at the moment of attack for a quarter second or so and then leveling out to in tune. If I tune the string to that quarter second of sharp, I get better detection for most short duration notes (but still not perfectly reliable because the amount the note is sharp is pretty dependent on how hard I pick / finger the note) but sustains go flat. If I tune so that the sustained pitch is on target, detection on quarter and eighth notes is quite bad. Anyone know if that is a fixable hardware problem, or if I need heavier gauge strings or something? It definitely gets more solid if I tune down and then let the bass sit for a few hours and tweak/try again, but the issue persists somewhat even after that especially in Drop tunings. Eb Standard seems to be immune, and D Standard isn't as susceptible as Drop D or Drop C. Pretty weird. --EDIT-- Oh, my thoughts on difficulty: I think 7-8 is a good difficulty rating for Killing in the Name Of, for the bass part. Too easy to be a true MC with 9-10 difficulty, but average or slightly harder than average Advanced difficulty, so I think I'd personally lean towards 8. If more people think it is 7 (or lower), I think that works too. Not sure I'll get healthy enough and time enough to try all the other songs this week, and definitely going to concentrate on this one.

I'm back from a week in the Andaman Sea in Southern Thailand, and ready for bass action! Here's first tries back in the saddle: Beginner Bass: Yep. Boring on bass. Both guitar gods, but Satriani tends to have a bit more fun bass stuff to go along with the lead madness. Int Bass: Still very easy, much more fun on the bass side. Adv Bass: Don't know the song (or band), didn't want to tune down. I'll get around to it at some point. MC Bass: Not a valid score because that solo section jumped up and caught me unawares, and leveled down that first section. I'll play again and get a proper (but probably not great) score. Good to be back!

Here's my MC Bass entry for the week to maintain diehard status before I go on vacation: Quite a fun song. This was on my 3rd play today. First was a LAS refresher, with 92% accuracy. Then I did LAS again and got 97.5%, but that screenshot doesn't show the .x% so would only count for 97% even. Tried one more time in SA and got this -- fatigue set in a bit so I didn't match the 97.5. I may try a couple more times tonight and see if I can bust 98 before I have to head out!

Sorry I haven't been very active for a couple days, and that's going to continue this week -- my family is visiting from the US and we're going to take a trip down to southern Thailand (beach with the mushroom rock formations etc.) so I'll be away for about a full week. I'll make sure I get a play or two of Walk this Way in on bass before I go though! B)

Had a couple of really bad rounds with "The Thing That Should Not Be". Sounded much better than my first playthrough and I felt more in the groove, but the detection was terrible, so I ended up getting lower accuracy ratings. Tried tweaking the tuning, etc. -- no joy. I'll try again tomorrow with my 5 string -- just it back from a shop to lock in intonation, truss rod, and action to a better spec than I could manage myself. Feels really nice now, although I think the main thing was raising the action which was only a problem because I couldn't find any imperial-measure allen wrenches here in Thailand and my metrics weren't cutting it...

I started off playing guitar instead of bass, and I never got any good at chords other than simple power chords -- after 2-3 years of self-teaching with tabs and books. However, I did get quasi-decent at single note riff stuff, solos, and transitioning between those and power chords "rhythm". ...Then I transitioned over to bass and most of my (below-par even at their peak) guitar skills have atrophied quite a bit. To me, the "beginner" level of difficulty should be pretty close to true beginner. Probably been playing less than a year, but enough time that they know the true basics like shifting around the fretboard, fretting single notes clearly, tuning, and some very basic techniques like hammer ons and slides and stuff. I'd have still fit in my definition of "beginner" class for lead guitar after my first 2-3 years of teaching myself guitar (almost 20 years ago, so well pre-Rocksmith). Anyway that's just background so you know where I'm coming from. My perspective on this is as follows: I think a true "beginner" level song in a lead guitar path shouldn't have anything more complicated than power chords. Especially since we've got 4 difficulty classes to work with now. A "beginner" song in the rhythm path might actually have some chords, but in my opinion as soon as you hit barre chords it should be an Intermediate+, even for rhythm path. My opinion is, don't drop out of the championship. If this week's song isn't fun for you (I chose Night Fever, so I'm partly to blame -- I didn't put any thought into how it would be classified for guitar parts, I only knew that the bass part was good, easy-intermedate fun) take a week off and check back next time. Hopefully the next selection will be more fun and a better fit for the degree that you want to challenge your skills. To me, the Championship here is much more about having fun than it is about competition -- although that is going to be different for everybody. The competition aspect of it is fun for me, but if I enjoy a "beginner" or "intermediate" level song more than my designated MC song, I'll play those instead and I am really not fussed about not being eligible to actually "win" on those songs. This week is a pretty good example of that ... I hate Babymetal (no offense to fans, to each his/her own!), but I like the bass parts of "Night Fever" and "The Thing" so I'm fully happy to just stick with those even though I'm ineligible to "win". So -- game the system and do whatever you can to have fun. If that means playing a different song that isn't in your difficulty class, go for it. If that means taking a week off, that works too. But I'd encourage you not to drop out entirely! More the merrier. :)

Got lots of free time today, so I finally got around to 1st tries on all the songs for bass: Beginner: Not a big fan of the song, and the tone is pretty bad. The chart seems to leave a lot out of the bass part also... Anyway, I think once was enough. Intermediate: My selection! Hope nobody goes too berserk from disco exposure... I'm not really into the genre, and I think the song is merely OK to listen to. But, I find it very fun to play the bass part. Hope others agree on bass, or guitar also! Video - First try after having it selected this week, and beat my personal high score. Can't complain about that! Advanced: Not a bad 1st try, I'll see what I can muster with more practice. Master Class: Was really tempted to pass on this song, but decided I'd better do it once to maintain diehard status. Almost gave up again when I saw the tuning. Then I loaded it up, and ... I think I made it almost a minute into the song before I turned off my speakers and just played deaf. Babymetal and MilkmanDan don't mix.

Hammer-on two frets away was the first method I tried when I was first having trouble with those bends. That worked sometimes but not reliably for me -- maybe I wasn't feathering it fast enough or long enough or something. Then after reading Motive say that slides worked (even though that was regarding the lead arrangement as it turns out), I started doing it that way. Now, if I do it carefully but quickly as slides, I usually hit all of those bends in the outro section. The video doesn't show that really well ... I think I missed 2 of them there, but on most playthroughs I do now I get credit for all of them. However, the trick for me seems to be sliding very quickly, well past the extent of where the bend "should" go if converted to a slide. I slide all the way up to the 9th fret or so, when it seems like 7th is where it should go. Any time I get lazy and slide up less than that, it seems that I will frequently end up with the game registering a miss, or more accurately it usually says "miss" and "late" very quickly. So, I'd try going to riff repeater and just doing the last section at 80% speed or so. Turn on accelerate and do them all as slides up to 9th fret, and I bet you'll quickly hit the whole section and get built up to where you can handle it at 100% speed -- that's the procedure that worked for me. Of course, now I'm usually fumbling a bit in the solo section (like I did in the video), but at least I've 90% solved those devil-bends. :D

Been a while since I posted any videos on my YouTube channel, so I thought I'd put one up of the MC Bass song since it has been a real fun challenge this week: That isn't better than my current best accuracy, and it is in LAS rather than SA (better for casual viewers on YouTube), but I thought I'd post it here anyway. I'll still try to break the 99% barrier, but I don't think I'm going to give @@then3verend @ or @@Blazikiller a challenge for the lead... I /bow to your skills! :lol:

Hmm, almost wanted to give up for the day, but decided to play through the whole song in RR at 80% speed and then try SA again. Boy was that worth doing: I think that accuracy is with either zero or maybe only 1 of the final bends being missed, so now I'll have to continue working on the solo part to improve. Thanks @ for mentioning that you played those as slides -- that works soooo much better than trying to do a lightning fast bend there for me. Gotta slide up from fret 5 to as far as *9* or so and then quickly jump back down to 5 again, but it works!

Getting a bit better at MC Bass: ...But I've got a ways to go before giving much challenge to the current leaders @@then3verend and @ (nice work both!). Having a bit better luck with those bends in the outro by just treating it like a quick slide up the neck (well beyond a 2 fret full-step bend). Beyond that I just need some work on the solo-type part in the middle; I keep playing a bit of it on the wrong string.

I'm much more of a bass dude now, but here's a lesson that I learned the hard way back when I was playing mostly guitar: If you put on heavy-gauge strings for low tunings, be very very careful if you ever tune back up to E Standard. I got a set of strings designed for Drop C or lower and then tuned back up to E Standard and let my guitar sit a while. When I came back to it, the tension had cracked and destroyed the 3 lowest tuning heads ... granted, they were crappy pot-metal ones that came with my Epiphone Korina Explorer, so better ones might handle the strain better. But, probably best not to push your luck. The good news was that I learned how to change out the tuners and put better quality ones in. Live and learn...

Keeping my 4 in Drop C, but used the 5-string for Adv Bass in Standard E: String spacing difference between my 5 and 4 is screwing me up in the spots with quick skips between E A D strings. so once I adjust to that I should be able to improve on that accuracy/score a good bit. 100% would be tough, but high 99.x could be doable. Good song and fun to play, but the bass tone is horrendo-bad. I think I'll open up in the toolkit and replace with something a little more throaty and a LOT less distorted...

My 4 string is settling into Drop C for the MC song nicely, much better detection after letting it sit for a while and then re-tuning: Still having trouble getting the bends in the outro to register. Are they really fast bend and return, or pre-bends, or what? Can't figure out what I'm supposed to be trying for at full speed, maybe I should RR that section on slowdown and see if I can figure it out. --EDIT-- From Riff Repeater, it seems like it is charted as a very fast full-step bend, quickly followed by playing the root note (5th fret of low C string). Even at 50% speed I can only get it to register about 1 out of every 5-6 attempts, and that is with cheating the bend as a hammer-on. Seems to me like it might register better if that bend plus follow up note could be charted as a single bend-sustain-release... But maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Anybody else have trouble there?