Running Dry on High and Dry Solo

I may need to take a night off. Or change strings again. Turn up the thermostat. Or something.

Last night, per my latest strategy, I picked High and Dry (Radiohead) to work on. At a score of 72,900, High and Dry is the weakest of the 4 songs on my setlist for Event 6. That's probably a lot to do with the fact that I've played through the song 4 times and that's it. I qualified it on my very first play through (51,375/25,200) but it needs work.

Things started out great. When I went into Riff Repeater, I only found 3 sections that weren't already maxed out. The first two sections went down fast, well under the 30 lives that RS gives us. Sort of made me wonder why I hadn't maxed these out while playing through the whole song. Probably a transition issue I'll need to deal with.

Then I got to the solo.

Solos seem to be my weak spot anyway, but this one - even though it's really simple - was killing me. I just can't get it. I burned through 30 lives on Leveler. I moved up from 73% to 81%. That was it. Then I burned through 30 lives on Accelerator and never reached full speed. So, I went to Free Speed. Played the 81% phrase level at 100% speed within 5 tries. WTH? Back to Leveler and -nothing. After about 10 tries to level up, I just forced it up to 90% with the settings. That didn't help!

Moving up from one phrase level to the next is often a matter of a couple of notes thrown into what you're already playing. Not on this one. The difference between 81% and 90% is significant. There was a whole bunch of new notes coming at me. I gave it a fair shot, looked at the clock and realized it was 1:25AM, and said screw it.

High and Dry is one of the more melodious tunes I've played on RS and I couldn't help noticing that I was sounding pretty awful. Not sure if my two-week old strings are already going bad or what. Maybe they were just cold; it was sort of chilly in the house yesterday. But, I didn't seem to have any trouble with Are You Gonna Go My Way. I managed to move the solo on that one up from 55% to 61%. Couldn't quite match my best score on that song last night but I was close - around 78,000 (versus all time high score of 79776 from earlier this week). Which makes me wonder if there's something hinky about High and Dry in the RS software.

I noticed that I was constantly getting a warning arrow that I was sharp when I played the 2d string 10th fret A - but RS only said I was sharp on that note when it followed the 1st string, 12th fret high E. Any other time I played the A on the second string it was fine. So, I started cheating and just playing the 9th fret A-flat after the high E. (B at the 12th fret, A at the 10th. . . should be an A-flat at the 9th, right?) That actually seemed to work. I double checked to be sure I wasn't bending the string and if I was I sure couldn't tell it. So, I don't know what the problem was. Your input is welcome - just leave comments.

Just so I wouldn't end things on a sour note - literally or otherwise - I took a romp through Outshined before I quit for the night. And, once again, I ended up going to bed around 2:00.

Technically, I could play Event 6 any time as I've met my self-imposed 70,000+ standard on all four songs on the setlist:

Mean Bitch: 86,737 (all phrases maxed except solo)
Are You Gonna Go My Way: 79,776 (solo 61%)
Rebel, Rebel: 76,799 (all maxed? no solo. . . )
High and Dry: 72,970 (all phrases maxed except solo - 81%)

I sort of unofficially decided to see if I could max out all the phrases before I did this Event, but I'll probably change my mind on that since I just realized that I haven't played an Event for about 2 weeks! Not to mention that it looks pretty unlikely that I'll be maxing out three solos any time soon. Tomorrow night I might crack open a couple of beers and go for it. Might even video tape it.