A Long Break and the Benefits of Time Off

It's Spring Break and we took the opportunity to leave town for a few days last weekend. When I got back, I had too much catching up to do to play right away, so I went nearly a week without playing guitar at all. No Rocksmith, no guitar, nothing. It seems to have paid off.

When I picked up my guitar and booted up RS for the first time after a break, I was refreshed. I felt no pressure to play anything I didn't want to play. I felt no pressure to master any solos that I didn't feel like hammering on. I felt no pressure to compete in a weekly challenge. No pressure at all, actually. I just scrolled through the songs and picked out a few things that I felt like working on or just playing.

Oh, and the soreness in my left-hand index finger was virtually gone. I can still feel a little tightness in the joint when I make a tight fist, but it's a LOT better than it was.

So, here's how things went:

When I'm With You - Hadn't played this one for quite a while and wondered how it might go on the new EG112. Slight improvement - brought high score up from 58k to 66k.

Carol of the Bells - Still working on this one but making good progress toward mastery. This is one of my experiments in working on multiple arrangements simultaneously. This time I just worked the single note arrangement trying to catch up with my combo score. Feels like I've gotten to the point where I can't make any more progress by simply playing through the whole song; I think it's time to go into the Riff Repeater on this one and really tighten up some of the phrases. I made very little progress (just a few hundred points) on the single note version by playing through three times.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Gotta keep this one in memory banks for Christmas! I could definitely feel this one getting rusty, especially when it came to remembering the solo. Managed to set a new high score (208k) on the second play through.

Rebel Rebel - Used to have a ton of trouble with all the string skipping in this riff. Now it's much better and much easier. Still rough as a cob, but far better than when I started. Very monotonous song, but for some reason I seem to just spaz out at random times and screw up the riff completely. Still, managed to reach a new high score on this one, too.

Surf Hell - This was a true test of the value of laying off and letting go. I nearly burned out on this favorite of mine when it was the Ubi forum weekly challenge song. I was pissed when the best I could manage was a 205k score! First time after laying off for nearly a week - 230k+! I just played it. No worrying about scores or early groove bonuses or any of that. Just jamming and digging the crowd at the 3d Street Lounge.

I played everything except Surf Hell about 3 times through. Generally, the first play through yielded a lower score than the last time I played. The second scores were all better than the last time I played. And, the third scores were significantly better yet. (Surf Hell just blew everything away right out of the chute, but I've had that one mastered for a while now, which makes a difference.)


I also downloaded some new stuff. I've visited the DLC store a few times lately and noticed some stuff that looked fun. Then, of course, everybody on the Ubi forum has been raving about the Blues DLC from last week so I had to check that out.

I picked up:
Symphony of Destruction
Barracuda
Born Under a Bad Sign

Now I'll have to add these pages to my spreadsheet workbook so I can track my progress on all this new material.