Thursday, February 23, 2012

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.

1 comment:

  1. Hey! Thanks for this blog! Really love this game and this is just icing on the cake.

    The issue you are having with RS telling you that you are sharp or flat is a common one I see on youtube.

    The intonation of the guitar is off. It's most apparent at the 12th fret. The problem is, at this twelfth fret, it's supposed to be exactly half the distance from the nut to the bridge.

    Most guitars have adjustments to adjust this distance at the bridge. Tiny screws that turning will move the saddle of that string forward (towards the nut, shortening the length) or back (away from the nut, lengthening the string)

    By adjusting the length of the string, you can position the half way point exactly at the twelfth fret and thus, fixing your intonation problem.

    Most guitar shops "should" be able to do this for a nominal fee. However, GC supposedly tuned my guitar up when i bought it, but it wasn't right.

    Getting the intonation correct is paramount to a good sounding guitar.

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