MilkmanDan

Blocks being sections? I played through several more times with your first release, and I like all of the changes from the original file. Playing through riff repeater at slow speed I did find a few places with semi-off sync, with the main one being the beginning just after the slide -- but I bet your revision has taken care of all of those. The outro/interlude part is MUCH better than the original file, very hoppin' now and the notes all sound to be charted and synced perfectly to me. The variations on the main riff are fun, although I don't trust my ear enough to confirm/deny that they are all exactly true to the bass in the recording. I'm sure your ear is better than mine so I trust your judgement there, and I can definitely say that all of the variations are sensible improvisations on the basic riff and nothing jumps out at me as sounding wrong. So, it is probably all good! Looking forward to trying after the re-sync and when you get the blocks/sections issue resolved -- thanks much for handling the revisions, it is much appreciated! I'm sure me and @ and all others will enjoy challenging on your altered version! :D

@ -- New update threw me for a loop briefly. Try 1 I got a 96% or something, so 2nd try I did RR of the whole song at 85% and re-learned it. The "interlude" part is definitely better/correct, as is the opening slide. There's a note that I'm consistently missing just after that opening slide though -- it seems like you have it charted late but it could be that I'm just jumping the gun because I'm used to the other version. I'll try to figure that out. The part that I'd call the main riff is hard for me to tell whether all the variations you have are 100% correct, but I can tell that there are at least SOME variations there that are all just charted as an identical riff in the other version. Feels like it makes the song slightly harder, but that could just be me trying to overcome muscle memory. Here's my scores for 3rd and 4th try: I think I've got a 100% in me still, on try 4 I think it was just 1 miss there in the opening section where the timing is weird for me.

http://www.memegenerator.es/imagenes/memes/full/13/41/13412935.jpg I'll see your Stark and raise you a classic Boromir: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/143/1150341449762.jpg

There is no "right" answer, all of our ratings are always going to be subjective. But in general, I think of it like this: Difficulty 1-3: Beginner To me, something that belongs in this category is not just easy for me, but would be something easy enough to be playable to a high accuracy (90%+ for guitar parts, 95%+ for bass) for true beginner players that have been playing their instrument for a few months or less. The sample song that I always give is "Black Magic" for bass from the default Rocksmith 2014 song list -- 4 notes in the entire song, regular pattern of transitions, all eighth notes, completely static frethand position. I think it doesn't get much easier than that, so I think of that as being a "1". "Blitzkrieg Bop" is another good example for lead/rhythm/bass; even though it uses chords in the guitar parts they are all power chords in a very straightforward transition pattern. Difficulty 4-6: Intermediate I think of songs in this category as being like beginner, but with some techniques, sheer speed, or other issues that would make it hard for a true beginner to be capable of playing the song to a high accuracy. Even relatively easy techniques like slides and hammer-ons and pull-offs might knock a song into this range in my opinion. Lots of movement in the frethand, or jumping to different strings outside of the usual root/fifth/octave kinds of patterns can push a song here also. Or for guitar parts, any chords other than power chords -- especially if they require transitions between chords that need to be even slightly quick under pressure. Difficulty 7-8: Advanced Songs in this category may require relatively complete proficiency in all usual/normal playing techniques, along with fast and accurate frethand positioning, string skipping, etc. I think these songs would often be challenging to a player who has been playing for less than 1-2 years, especially without a good amount of practice. Someone who has been playing for many years and is quite skilled might be able to get a very high accuracy on these songs on their first try, but they should probably be technical or fast enough to keep even that kind of player on their toes even if they are getting high accuracy. Difficulty 9-10: Master Class Songs that use the more advanced techniques (tapping, sweep picking, lots of hard chords, precise harmonics, possibly slap/pop for bass, etc.) or an abundance of more regular techniques combined with speed, lots of shifting up/down the fretboard and over many strings, and/or very unusual beat patterns/skips etc. are what qualifies a song for the MC range to me. From the default Rocksmith library maybe some of the Rush songs would fit for bass (or Hysteria by Muse), Joe Satriani for lead, and I dunno what for rhythm (I suck at chords). Even for very skilled players, these are probably too hard/fast/technical to get extremely high accuracy (97% guitar or 99% bass) without at least a little practice -- no sight reading your way to 100% most likely. So that's kind of the guidelines I use, but there is no reason that system is any better/worse than any other. The only other thing to keep in mind is that now that the bass and rhythm difficulty has been separated from the lead difficulty, I think the basic goal is to have 1 each of Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced / Master Class songs per week in the primary arrangement, which is lead guitar. Each of those songs must have a bass arrangement also, but they might not fit into the same class as their lead parts, and they might not really fit into the same range of 1 being Beg/Int/Adv/MC; for bass there might be 2 Beg, 1 Int, and 1 Adv, or 3 Int and 1 MC, or whatever. So for bass, I think we usually classify them based on what the community here thinks of as their difficulty rank compared to the other 3 songs. So the easiest of the 4 will be "Beginner" even if it really is a better fit for a higher difficulty, and the hardest will be "MC" even if it is really only an Int or Adv. And hopefully most of the songs have a rhythm guitar arrangement, but that isn't strictly required... So that works kind of like bass arrangements except there might be some difficulty levels that don't have a rhythm part at all. Anyway, it is good to have your ratings for bass and guitar parts, because they are all subjective so it is best to get lots of opinions on them so they can be sorted/ranked well!

@ -- I heard a few chart / sync errors in Como Me Pongo also, most in intro and outro. Maybe us Magna Charters should unpack and try to fix that up? For me the very first couple notes stood out the most, I think I could do an easy fix there. @@NoonyDeloony -- Even as someone who is more of a "Jason Newsted" than a "Cliff Burton" (ie. I'm a pick guy -- not suggesting my skills are even close to being in the league of either!) I would rate the song's difficulty pretty high also. It is pretty straightforward frethand position-wise, but even if the tempo was much lower it has enough technical stuff to avoid being *dead* easy (ie., even at half tempo it wouldn't be "Black Magic" from the default Rocksmith song list). With the speed considered, it will require a fingerstyle player to be pretty fast with 2-3 fingers, or a pick player to be fully competent in alternate picking. Neither of those is something that I'd peg at "beginner" level for sure. I don't know that I'd personally put it up in advanced, but mid-range int sounds about right to me -- maybe a 5. I'm still working at improving my fingers playing skill. I started off only being able to work with my pointer, but I'm getting a bit better at using pointer/middle. Creeping Death would have been Burton originally, so he'd have played it with fingers (or same for Rob Trujillo today), but I'm not even close to being able to do that kind of speed with fingers. I'd need LOTS of practice to get there -- I don't even have good calluses on that hand, so I get pain in those fingers after short rounds of practice even on really easy beginner-level songs! :)

I think you're going to outclass me in score... I improved on my last score also, but only by 4,000 points: I /salute your groove @ -- gonna be tough for me to give you a run for your money score wise, but I'll see what I can do!

Hey, that went better than expected: Never played the song before today. First try was fun but rough. Second try, small improvement. Third try, 99.5ish. Fourth try was in Riff Repeater with the whole song at 90% speed, which let me figure out the proper beat pattern, then fifth try was that ^^^. Now we can spend the week jockeying for best SA score! B)

Challenge accepted! ...although 100% could be a stretch for me, I find the song pretty challenging. And so far I am cheating by playing straight eighth notes instead of doing the rests as charted in some sections -- that rhythm pattern is throwing me off. BUT, I've made good improvements in 3 plays so far. 96 -> 97 -> 99: So, maybe I'll make it! And I'll try to do the rests properly. :) --EDIT-- Ahh, I figured out the beat pattern by playing the whole song at 90% speed. I think I can do it the right way at full speed now.

Hmm. My previous best accuracy (before this week) on the Offspring song was 99.5% (by Mastery, which should be equal to accuracy for me since I turn off Master Mode). I thought "well, no way that I'll get 100% in that one without some refresher practice", so I decided to play it again in Learn A Song instead of Score Attack: Oops. Should have done SA for the score, although it probably wouldn't have been great -- I was flailing a bit, but I'll take the 100 anyway!

I had Creeping Death and Pretty Fly in my DLC folder already, with some number of plays on each that got lost last time my profile died. But, not surprisingly, my best scores are on those songs: Beg Bass: I like this one. I'd say it is fast for a beginner song, but the changeups and fretwork are the simplest of the 4 songs so it probably fits there for this week. I'll consider things fully and post my difficulty ratings on all later though. Int Bass: Never heard of this song (or band) before, but the mix of reggae and ska is quite fun! Kinda like Voodoo Glow Skulls, although they are more punk/ska. Not gonna have a lot of time this week, but might spend most of my time on this song. Adv Bass: Fun song with a bit more finger dexterity required than your average Offspring song; kinda jumps around quite a bit and has a good amount of moving up and down the strings. Good fit for advanced. MC Bass: I'm on a bad run of disliking the MC songs, and it will continue this week. I think once through was enough on this one... Since I won't play it again, I'll give a gut-difficulty rating of 9, because it clearly isn't as hard as the tapping-fest Dream Theater song last week. But, all of the string skipping makes it quite tough.

And Beg Bass: I keep fumbling a note or two in the very last section. Maybe some RR is called for! Also a fun song... Between this and Alestorm, we've got a pretty solid pirate vibe this week!

Having fun with Adv Bass: Nice and fun(ky)! 100% would be tough, but maybe in the realm of possibility?

Happy birthday to @@Mortalo and @@Joey -- must have been some guitar god vibes in the air on October 21st to land the birthday of 2 championship organizers! \m/ :lol: \m/

Just to be my usual longwinded self, here's my subjective difficulty ratings for all bass parts this week: The One Piece Puzzle - Skyclad: Beg Bass I think this is actually pretty tough for a truly "beginner" song. Frethand moves around a fair bit, and quite a bit of string skipping, so I'd actually class it as a fairly easy Int song. But that's just me, and it fits OK in the category here because it is the easiest bass part of the 4 songs this week. Difficulty: 4 Drink - Alestorm: Int Bass Frethand position, chord/root progression, and string skipping wise, this is easier than The One Piece Puzzle. But it is close, and the speed plus slightly nonstandard strum/beat pattern makes this a bit more difficult overall. Right in the middle of Int in my opinion. Difficulty: 5 Zebra - John Butler Trio: Adv Bass Lots of jumping around combined with an abundance of relatively easy tech stuff like slides and hammer ons that get tougher since they are in rapid and diverse succession. Great fit for advanced, I'd say on the harder side of the Advanced spectrum (8) rather than easy (7), but somewhere in there. Difficulty: 8 Metropolis Pt. 1 - Dream Theater: MC Bass Like some of the other Dream Theater songs, there are stretches of not-too-hard followed by "wtf?!". This time, the wtf moments are represented with sections of tapping. Tapping is above my pay grade, sorta like slap/pop (which I suck at). So, any song with tapping (or slap/pop) is pretty much a 10 in difficulty to me... But this time, I think that the song is legitimately quite hard; not just hard-for-me, but plain old objectively hard. So: Difficulty: 10

Score for Int Bass: Fun song, but much easier to tune my 5 string up a half step than tune my 4 down that far. Tone is a bit overly distorted/hot for my taste, but that would be fairly easily remedied with a tone switch. However, there isn't much leading silence, so that it a bit harder to manage because the song tone kicks in JUST before the action starts, so you gotta be fast. After doing this, I edited the file in EOF and set it up for BEAD tuning (with low tuning fix) on my 5 string. Works OK, but there's some rapid octave jumps that go from open C to 7th fret of E# in the C standard tuning. Those don't work so well as 1st fret of B to 8th fret of E... I will probably adjust the chart so they go to 3rd fret of A (and occasionally down to 1st fret of A also) and include that in my own .psarc file as an alternate bass track. BUT, it is really quite easy to tune up a half step and just play in C standard.

Running the song through DD Remover fixed it for me. Here's a link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrSSE1xbG9sMDZGUkk/view?usp=sharing

I will work on that! Try to repack it with the toolkit, if the problem still there, i will redo the bass arrangement I can't tell if anyone else has the same issue, or just me. Nooney said so earlier, but I thought maybe a redownload fixed hers? Anyway, my couple of repack tries didn't work. --EDIT-- I see that Kaijin has posted a score on it, so it must be working for some. Although maybe he ran through DD remover. I'll try that.

I tried a quick repack and then a more full option with import, change DLCName, re-generate. No luck with any of my tries. Pretty thoroughly checked my DLC folder for other songs with the same/similar filename (collision between DLC name in the toolkit could be possible, but my 2nd regenerate should have fixed any collision there). So ... I'm confused! :)

@@Nacholede -- I still can't get Drink to load up on Bass. Hangs after tuning. I deleted my original download and got it again from the DB page linked on page 1 here. Should I just try a quick rebuild with the toolkit? ...And also, I forgot that B to C is a half-step transition, so it is just a half step sharp of BEAD(G) on a 5. Depending on how it plays in C standard I may try to change it to B standard (I think EOF can handle an easy tuning change like that?) with the low tuning fix.

Depending on the strength of the bend, you can fake it with a quick slide or hammer-on. The detection in Rocksmith just works on pitch, so it won't know whether you got there by bending or just normal fretting... Most bends I've seen in Rocksmith songs aren't stronger than a full step, so depending on your frethand position it is usually possible to hammer-on to one or two frets away without getting unrecoverably out of position -- depending on tempo etc. of course. Give that a try, might save the strain on your strings. :)

First tries on Beg/Adv/MC Bass (I'll tune down to C Standard for Int later): Beg: Adv: MC: I got interrupted after finishing the song the first time and missed the screenshot window. Which sucks, because I really hated the song and had to play it a second time to get a valid accuracy screenshot to keep up my diehard status. The sections of tapping definitely make it a 10 on difficulty, so it is a good MC-level challenge, but I'm finding that personally I just really don't like Dream Theater. So, I guess I'll focus on Adv. or Int. (liked the sound of Drink when previewing on the download page, so as long as my detection on it in C is decent I might play out the week on that one).

And since I hit that milestone on Adv Bass, I might spend a bit of time trying to get less sucktacular on the MC Bass song. Here's a good improvement over my initial entry: Not gonna have enough time to make that really respectable, but that's OK.

So, this is a bit nuts, but ... I tried ONE MORE TIME after posting above: Finally! Still well under your score (nice work!), but I can bow out a little more happily having achieved the 100%. And I think I'd go berserk if I played that song even 1 more time, so you don't have to worry about me trying to one-up your high score in the last 24 hours or so here! :lol:

Frustration setting in for me... About an hour and a half grinding away on the Adv. Bass song last night convinced me that I have detection and/or intonation problems. Good news is that that prompted me to realize that I can adjust my intonation with a simple philips screwdriver rather than allen wrenches, as I have mistakenly thought for the past 15 or so years of owning the bass... D'oh! But undoubtedly a good thing to get that figured out (better 15 years late than never), and I got my E (14 cents off between open and octave) and D (23! cents off between open and octave) strings into much better shape. That improved my hour of grinding today to be a bit more consistent, but now I'm tending to bomb out on a little slide and quick followup note 749-750 notes into the song. Tried riff repeater to practice just that part, and I can hit it correctly about 75% of the time ... but get me into a "game time" situation and that has dropped to 0 so far. I think I might have to admit defeat! Here's screenshot evidence of how consistent I am, particularly at failing at the same (or almost the same) point in the song: That 2nd one is my personal best accuracy/streak/score. I may wave the white flag of surrender at this point to preserve my sanity / blood pressure... <_<

Thought that sleeping on it and coming back might help. It did, but I still missed one at the end! I hope a 100% on this doesn't become my White Whale... I can get 99.87% (1 miss) enough that it seems like I *have* to be able to manage the 100% eventually, even if it is just through a lucky run! I keep on trying to slightly adjust my tuning to improve detection, but I still get an occasional miss that I think I hit. That was driving me nuts yesterday, so I started trying everything to hear better. I ended up turning down the song volume to 15% and tone switching to something quite hot and bright with some distortion (I used 2 Minutes to Midnight) with my tone knob all the way up to make sure I could hear myself over the song and confirm by ear that I was hitting things right. The good news is that that seems to have improved my timing on the song, especially for the brief accent bits where it goes double-time to 16th(maybe) triplets instead of straight eighth notes. ...Gonna keep on trying even though this is making me neglect the MC song. That's OK, I like this one better. :)