Rocksmith, week 8 check in

I'm calling this week eight, cause it's only 8 weeks play time... and I'm weak, and haven't been practicing during the holidays and all that. And to be honest, I got even more into Dark Souls after we completed it. Strangely enough, so I've been playing that.

Regardless. I feel I maxed out on Nirvana In Bloom as much as I could at my current skill level. So I moved on to other songs in hopes to get my collective skill higher to one day go back and master the solo section. I've been able to get almost 100% on the song "Angela" but yet again, I'm having issues with the solo (a.k.a. "man-determiner" section) :/

I then decided to take a song I like a lot, Franz Ferdinanz "Take Me Out" and see how I could do. This song doesn't have much of a solo in the middle like all the other songs, it's more of a solo throughout the entire song. Or at least if feels that way :/ But I like it, so I'm giving it a go to use it to help me get better overall at fast strumming, and finger placement around different frets and strings. So, here's 2 vids of me getting DESTROYED by it. Trust me, you think these two videos are long, you should hear what it's like to listen to me play the whole song :/ My poor wife.

then it gets worse...

Rocksmith, week 7 check in

Haven't practiced a whole lot, been working a ton and hanging out with family during the holidays. However, I was able to increase the difficulty on the solo to 85% up from 80%. Which is definitely more difficult, yet accomplishable, so I'm feeling good there. Check the vid for the fast finger action. Hopefully I'll master it soon, so I can complete the whole song at 100%

Merry Christmas!

I might be skippin next week due to the holidays ;)

Rocksmith, week 6 check in

So, I'm starting to think that the way I'm going about this whole "tracking my progress" thing is all wrong. It's tricky, because in order to progress in the game you need to keep playing more and different songs. [the bad part here is you only have to play them "good enough"]. However, this isn't really a great way for (me) to get better at guitar. Usually every time I get better at a song, it's because I have 'used' the riff repeater (bared with it, rather) or practiced with the game off just running through the notes I've been able to memorize thus far. (still the coolest part of this whole 'game' experience). So, I can play for about 5 hours in a week, and not even play the song I'm tracking, because the 'gamer' in me wants to get further in the game, cause it thinks THAT will result in being a better guitarist. I need to remember that they didn't make the game this way!

Regardless, this makes it feel like I haven't gotten any better, because I haven't played, so duh, I'm not better. I'm also torn, because I can cruise through the majority of the songs that are presented in the (loose) story mode the game has.... ugg, anyway.

So, in short. I'm forgoing the games 'recommendations', and just learning songs that I think are cool. One at a time. As I run out of songs that I think are cool enough to learn, I'll jump back on the progression train the game wants me to, and hopefully stumble onto some more songs that I thought WOULD be lame, but are now cooler... or new downloadable content.

Here's my progress on Nirvana's In Bloom... (I only played it 3 more times since the last vid, so no major leaps forward here I'm afraid) :o/

I also realize that watching pretty much the exact same video every week is pretty boring, and you're more likely to try and figure out what that thing is to my right up against the radiator... It's a baby chair. Now for more of the same ;)

Rocksmith, week 5 check in

Yo everyone! So I'm putting week 5 in because I really didn't get time to play much last week since it was Thanksgiving and I was in Ohio with my fam. Regardless, the coolest thing about the game is that I was able to take my wife's baby acoustic guitar with us and play around a little bit from what I remembered from the game. you know... so I wouldn't lose my sweet calluses...

Anyway, I've been playing through a bunch of songs just trying to "level-up" through the game, but the ironic thing is, this isn't really a good way to get better at playing the guitar. Sure it's more playing in general, but it's not really like it's as focused as it should be to actually commit a song to muscle memory. Either way, so i spent a little more time with Nirvana's In Bloom, practicing the solo. I'm only at 80% difficulty on the solo, and 100% on the rest of the song. For some reason, i just can't pull it off just yet. oh well. Check the vid for my latest status on the solo.

Also even with all my complaining about this game, I was able to still get my friend to play it. It was of course after he played it with this family over the break and had a good time with it that he eventually plunked down the cash, but hey, I'll take a little credit ;)

Rocksmith, week 4 check in

K, not a whole lot of progress this week on my "tracker" song, In Bloom. Mainly because I was playing through more of the game where you continue with new songs, and qualify for events. Each of the events are now about 5 songs so playing them twice, then the event makes the hour go by quick. With this approach I don't really feel like I'm learning a whole lot, given I'm not really able to prefect any of them based on what the game is asking me to do, but I guess playing is playing. I did go back to Next Girl and tried to play it again without looking at my hands at all, and I could only hit about 80% of the notes. Which is not bad, but not as good as I had wished it would have been. So, here are some vids of In Bloom for tracking purposes.

that was probably the weakest solo in the history of Nirvana... i had to hit the first note a bunch of time to get it to keep registering.... yeah... it's suppose to be strummed ONCE ;)

I feel like over all, I played the song pretty bad, hence my reaction at the end. Any way, thanks for reading! ;)

Rocksmith, week 3 check in

K, week 3 complete, and about 20 hours total time.

I was able to master Blur: Song 2 shortly after The Black Keys: Next Girl, so that was pretty sweet. Granted they both hover around the first two strings, (aka my rocksmithing confort zone) but whatever. The biggest deal to me was finally qualifying for a song called "Well Ok Honey" by some lame girl rock group. OK, the song is cool, but since I sucked at it for so long i grew to hate it... maybe after I master it (read: ever play it again) I'll start to like it since the pain of holding up all my career progress in the game is no longer hanging in the balance. So, in short, I can move on and play more songs and gigs and continue to rack up rocksmith points.

The next song I'd like to track/master is Nirvana: In Bloom. Currently I have most of the sections at the 100% mastery level, minus the solo.... a big minus (check the second vid for ultimate finger stumblage :/ ) Also, apparently I am deathly afraid the strings are going to snap and either cut my face and/or hands off... Maybe I feel this way because I tightened the strap some, and now I can practically play with my nose...

I feel like I'm bending the strings SOOO much that they break, yet, I'm still not registering the notes enough to have the game consider my playing a success. Something to work on I guess.

The first vid is just a status check on me playing what the majority of the song is:

Here's my crap-tastic attempt at my first solo (in any song actually) extra points for strange faces when trying to pull of a bend?

Here's one more vid of me totally botching the ending...

Rocksmith, week 2 check in

K, here's my progress with 2 full weeks of playing. 14 hours. The coolest thing so far was "mastering" The Black Keys. "Next Girl" Which allows you to play it without any notes or fretboard freeway on screen. Essentially, playing the real song with the rest of the song being supplied by the game. Here are three incredibly borring vids. The first, unlocking the "master mode" then me goofing around seeing how much I had memorized... heh... enjoy my SMITHAGE. (scroll down to see the comparison from the first time I played the song.... ever)

Amazing how much more you concentrate when there's notes on screen ;)

Make no mistake, my stage presence and guitar skills are equalizing ;)

Come ON! That high kick is at least worth the the price of admission... which is currently $0 ;)

So, im gonna probably move on and track another song... I'll hopefully continue this trend until it's clear I no longer need to track progress. [read] Fire will shoot from my guitar.

Rocksmith, week 1 check in

K, here's my progress for one week, and about 7 hours with the game. About an hour a day.

The majority of my progress has been moving on to other strings besides to top two, and the occasional chord. Check out the vids for some "slight" progress... First time through this song.

I also apparently have a pretty ridiculous concentration face :/

Here's the same song as the first time I played, "Next Girl"

Rocksmith, midweek 0 thoughts 2

... still strumming away to the best of my ability. Currently the thing I feel I want to do most is control the difficulty and speed of a song. So far the "on the fly" difficulty is cooler in concept than in practice. I at least think they should have had easy/medium/hard/expert AND dynamic difficulty. The main reason is that there isn't really a sense of flow, nor consistency.

One of the toughest things in teaching is the concept of "flow", which when done correctly, makes us enjoy learning. Be it a game, or school. This is were we find the perfect amount of challenge to give the student without being too hard that it discourages them nor too easy that they become bored. With the dynamic difficulty, you would think that this would work out perfectly, but it actually ends up seeming like the system is fighting the player, rather than presenting a clear challenge that a player can work at, and eventually conquer, and feeling the accomplishment of completing a mini goal. What I mean by this is that as the game gets harder and easier, you find yourself settling in the same spot, doing well, then doing poorly, well, then poor, and we never can give the player gratification accurately. This gets the player stuck in a loop where they aren't able to master a section at a steady difficulty that they were once bad at, then move on to a harder one once they have trained themselves enough to beat it. You then need to repeat this structure throughout the game... thus the easy, medium, hard approach in games like guitar hero. Bottom line, as a teaching tool, and a game, each song seems to be missing a clear and consistant achievable goal.

My TWO quick suggestions to Ubisoft are to patch the game and add the following features:

1, Preset difficulties along with the dynamic one, as options, and chart the completion of each difficulty. The presets are already built into the game, it's just about getting an option to lock it down to a specific one! Where the first song is the easiest of the easy, and the last song is the most difficult of the easy, leaving way for the next logical step to the easiest of the medium difficulty, and so on.

2, A practice mode where you can set the speed % to your specificity, and allow you to practice a technique, section or whole song as many times in a row as you would like. (Currently you only get to practice so many times, and then you have to reset it up through the menues again. It's like the game is telling you you have practiced enough, and you have to keep saying, no I haven't)

K, enough reviewing, time to keep practicing!

Rocksmith, midweek 0 thoughts

Currently, Rocking through Rocksmith, is rocking the crap out of my fingers... geeze. I'm a total wuss! So the "technique challenges" seem to be helpful, although I feel like I'm learning skillz that I might not exactly be ready for, or qualified to play. I sorta feel like a 6th grader at a 9th grade dance... or some other metaphor that makes sense and is funny. Anyway, I mastered the shifting challenge, but it only dealt with moving back and forth on the top string... so, i can move around on that string pretty well, but still need to really memorize the position of the other strings, AND the frets. On "I can't get no satisfaction" I'm attempting to maintain "good technique" and press down the strings with the "correct" finger, so my ring and pinky finger are getting put to the test, and boy, are they failing me BIG TIME.

Anyway, I'd really like to get all my basics down, even before trying a song... mainly because I find myself constantly looking at my left hand, then my right hand, then the screen, and it's causing me to miss notes, and fall behind, and in more difficult sections of a song, i just completely blow it... lessing my overall smith-ness. Which is decidedly un-rock of me. Either way. Still rocking it out when I can, and I find going through the sections of the song by myself has actually helped get some muscle memory. While the game loads and whatnot.

Ideally, there would have been a scales technique, or the "ducks game" but with tips on how to move around... ehh, either way, I'm definitely better than I was 3 days ago ;)