Kent Hammer's Rocksmith journey- Day Four (Wed 17th Oct)

First topic message reminder :


Firstly a big thanks to the guys at Ubisoft for sending me my review copy of Rocksmith and the cable to plug my guitar in.
You have now set me off on a wonderful yet scary and daunting adventure to try and become an axeman!

Right, first things first I need to buy a cheap guitar!
I searched the net and found a cool blue epiphone guitar that took my fancy and ordered it from reddog music.

Here's a pic of her lying naked on my leather sofa, untouched and yet to be broken in-

the second image is of her flipped over, so you can check out her behind.

I am sure you will agree she is a looker and £99 well spent!

The next thing you have to do is stick the little numbers on your neck so that you know which fret is which when playing the game.
This system works well but you have to take only quick looks or you will start missing notes and boy how I missed notes!

I must mention at this point that I am not in my first flush of youth and I have never played guitar of the non plasticky fisher price variety before!
So this is a real stretch for me and will be a battle to hang on in there.

I loaded up the game and was immediately hit with the tuning screen, strum each string and then turn the knobs on the headstock to until you get a zero on the screen. Quite easy and simple and made me feel like I knew what I was doing(this feeling did not last long!)
Rinse and repeat for all 5 strings..........Cough... I mean all 6 strings, Peas or custard?

Now the first song you play is the peerless Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones!!!!
At this point I had abit of a semi on I cannot lie!

I had to play one note at a time with one finger on the matching fret and string, plus sometimes you had to just play an open string which means a strum without holding a fret (a joyful relief from the finger torture).

Here is a screenshot of what I could see-

So onward and upward and on my second playthru more notes were added and more switching was required at my end...engage panic mode!
This was tough for me and on reflection I should have used a different finger for each fret rather than only using my index finger(the pointy one) all the time.

After 45 mins this is how my finger looked-

I was determined to play one more song and make it to my daily target of an hour, so next up was The Black Keys- I got Mine.
Another great tune and I muddled through hitting 70% of all notes and showing an improvement.

At this point I decided to stop for health reasons as carrying on would have meant a plaster on my finger and no more practice tomorrow!

DAY TWO-

Right so today I attacked the task with renewed gusto and was determined to qualify to play my first gig!

You need to score 9,200 points on each song to unlock your first gig.

After a couple of attempts I nailed down satisfaction as it was mainly hitting two frets and two different strings in the right rhythm.

But The black keys song is twice as hard as it contains many sustains!

A sustain is where you hold your finger down on the fret after you have plucked the string for a sustained period of time (see what I did there)
Luckily there was a separate tutorial for those for me to follow first.

Then back to the song and I nailed it first time! Woo Hoo off to play my first gig with a set list of just those two songs.

You get some crowd noise and some people swaying and nodding their heads to the music while the gig takes place and some clapping and cheering at the end.
I zoned in and played both songs better than before and gained myself an encore and an two achievements popped!
One for completing my first gig and the other for gaining an encore.

The encore song was Angela by Jarvis cocker which I had never even heard before, But it was easy enough.

So tomorrow I move onto my next two songs that I need to learn to unlock another gig.

They are Higher Ground by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Go With The Flow by Queens of the Stoneage.

Another two stellar tunes, I am impressed with the set list so far.

Oh by the way I used 3 different fingers today to spread the load, but pointy still took the biggest hit. DOH

DAY THREE-

Today was the day when it dropped!
The penny that is, not my balls.

It was my most EPIC and challenging session yet.

As before I had to pass a certain score on the two songs chosen for me(Higher Ground by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Go With The Flow by Queens of the Stoneage)

But this time the numbers were alot higher. I failed my first attempt on Higher Ground as there were some odd looking notes that I did not recognise and I wrongly thought they were just open strums.
But they were actually palm mutes! This is when you place the edge of your strum hand lightly over all the strings then strum.
It gives a kinda percussion sound.

Now I have found that there is a specific technique section to practice given to me now. So I did the little test song for palm notes and bingo malingo I was nailing it as its easy! Well I only scored a bronze but not bad. I actually scored a silver on sustains!

I really feel like I am picking up some real rock guitar lingo and phrases now which helps you feel progress.

So back to the chili's song and I flipping passed it easy with my new skill!

Straight onto Go with the flow and I scored my highest ever score of 46,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was in the zone, channeling the spirit of Josh Homme thru my imaginary ginger god fingers.

At one point I was hitting 3 notes perfect in succession then it upped it to five or six notes and I still nailed it, then I was down to frets 14 and 16 and strings 5 and 6 for some solo action on my encore song!

At the end of my little gig I held my arms aloft and soaked up the cheers from the all female crowd

I knew they loved me, I knew they wanted more of my guitar goodness and I knew some of them were more than a little bit damp for me.



DAY FOUR-

What a difference a day makes!

If yesterday was awesome then today was awful 8-(

I absolutely stunk the place out, all my bubbles were truly burst!

Today the game cranked up the difficulty on me big time.

Hammer ons and hammer off’s and pulls off’s(get your mind out of the gutter!)
These are evil tricks used to play two notes in quick succession and they are UBER hard for me.
I truly felt out of my comfort zone and didn't even get a bronze, it all felt like too much too soon for me.

My view of the game changed drastically and it made me feel I have a whole range of mountains to scale now.

Unless you are truly dedicated you will not make a guitarist.

The songs I tried and failed to play were –

The Dead Weather – I can't hear you & Nirvana – In Bloom

I am signing off now as I have officially got the hump and feel deflated 8-(

Sorry guys had builders in today and was too busy to post next update.

I have good news about Day 3 tomorrow, I will post up Sundays session notes.

I have found a tiny bit of lag, you just need to hit the note the second before it hits the line, not on the line as it disappears.

Having a component connection removes this but I can't be arsed as it does not effect me at all.

My day three update is now on the first post.

My best day yet!

Off to play day 4 now

Just enjoyed reading your notes for day three. Sounds like this is leaving you all warm and happy inside,nice.

bahaha....I loved the last line from Day 3


Good work

I told you you would get there.Nice one mate ,keep at it.

What a stellar diary! Keep it up Kent! Good work!

This could be something I need in my life. I've been wanting to learn guitar for months, ever since my dad brought one of his 800quid Martins round. It's sat here looking at me, I have learnt some chords and transitions between them are getting faster but haven't touched it for ages. I can sort of play Polly by Nirvana which is pretty easy. Maybe this would help me give it the dedication learning requires! All my mates seem to be able to play really well. My mate has a Metallica tribute band and just makes me sick with his slickness!!

Keep plodding on dude! Look forward to the next lady moisture based update!

Interesting read lol. Should hopefully have this tomorrow

Updated with Day 4, the worst day yet!

KENT HAMMER wrote:Updated with Day 4, the worst day yet!

Remember Rocksmith is not some super wizardly guitar training tool, but a game that may help you stick with learning. So you've had 1 bad day out of 4, pick yourself up today and beat that sucker.

I would suggest maybe spending todays session practicing the bits you'e already done (you can only get better with practice), then try again at the Hammer ons/offs and pull offs tomorrow, you'll get there pal, just keep on going!

Maybe you could even support the Stones in their upcoming gigs...

Don't let it get you down because you're having problems with hammer on's and pull off's mate, it all comes down to practice, if you put in the effort you'll get there eventually. There's been loads of times over the years where I've had to sit playing the same thing for hours at a time, sometimes it can get annoying and tedious, but you have to try and not get discouraged because it's all worth it in the end. Remember how much fun you were having on day 3 because when you finally nail hammer on's and pull off's you'll be back there feeling good about yourself again.

I think Tricky's suggestion of spending today going over stuff you've already done is a good one, you'll probably have more fun with it but you'll still be improving your technique, so don't feel that it's a waste of time repeating stuff you've already done.

Good luck with everything mate, I hope you continue to stick with it.

I have been playing the game for a few days now and have to say that i don't think the playing songs part is very good at all for a beginner. i can already play guitar and what i found useful was the tutorials and mini games, much more than playing through a song.

Learning songs is the easy part, the hard part of playing is learning the techniques chords, barre chords, transitions, sliding, bending are all tools that you need to learn and master, but when you have learned these skills you can play any song you want.

so i wouldn't feel to bad if you are failing songs or struggling with it. I've been playing for nearly a year so am still a beginner but its a long road and this game can definitely help but its not the be all and end all.

How many hours do you think I've spent practicing, playing the same chords over and over, doing the same thing over and over and over until it was right. i couldn't even count how many. I've played until i physically couldn't play anymore, until my fingers were red raw but it all pays off in the end, now i don't feel any pain the tips of my fingers are hard now. just keep at it, you'll have bad days and good days. i always had something i could play well, so if i was struggling i would go back to play that song for fun to remind myself why i was learning.

Thanks guys, Taking a day off today to heal fingers and play forza horizon.

Your advice has really helped me and your input and support is awesome.

I won't give up, I am relentless!

Its the best thing and the worst thing about me.

The GSA band will happen

Quick question here mate.

With the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games you had a lot fewer notes to play on the lower difficulties, sometimes only playing actually having to strum once in every four notes, or once every 16 if it was Slayer

Does this game, even at the early and easy stages, ask you to strum all the notes within the proper song?

Hope you get what I'm asking.

Good question mate.

This game is so clever and you can read this on my day 3.

The more notes in a row you hit the more notes it throw at you.
So its ups the difficulty on the fly and if you miss a few it lowers it again.

Very clever stuff, so you need to start well to get a reasonable score or you won't be getting enough notes thrown at you.

Excellent. Cheers for clarifying that mate. This game is sooooooo tempting. Hope Santa is feeling generous this year

This sounds more and more remarkable as you play, the fact that it adjusts the difficulty constantly depending on how your doing is very clever and hopefully means you always feel rewarded for just getting that little bit better every day.

How accurate would you say the note tracking is? Does it feel like the game is picking up everything that you play accurately?

Ba5sett wrote:How accurate would you say the note tracking is? Does it feel like the game is picking up everything that you play accurately?

Seems spot on to me, I am using HDMI though so I do strum just before the note hits the end each time andnot spot on it.

You need to use component and audio cables to get zero lag.

Note tracking was only off once on higher ground as I needed to hit the left half of the fret weirdly.

all other songs have been good.

To pick holes in this game seems petty to me as its an amazing achievement really.

Congrats to your perseverance. I also like the fact the difficulty scales - at least non-guitar players get a chance but guitar players wouldn't get too bored.

Hammer ons were the hardest thing to get to grips with on Guitar Hero (and are the reason I scrape through expert and struggle to 5 star hard). PPull offs weren't too bad but I imagine it to be much harder on an actual guitar.

Cool thanks for the feedback mate I was a bit worried about the note tacking but sounds like it works well I am really interested in trying this out now

I have been playing this for the past 4 hours and my finger is pretty damn sore though. There ave been some pretty tricky moments so far but I have noticed improvement already. I am stuck on in bloom though after failing 3 times. Just need to practice the chord switching

Based on this game alone I've now learnt how to play my first song on guitar which is go with the flow by QOTSA. Finished it on master mode where it shows nothing on screen and managed to get 208,490 points on it

Are you still playing this Kent? How are you getting on?

Sadly I did not keep up with my practice.

Life got in the way and I moved onto the next shiny thing.

I am very disappointed in myself and full of guilt.