Mastered One at Last! I Want Some More another Easy Song.

Mastered Another One
Well, finally. After several weeks of concentrating on improving songs I had played prior to reaching Level 7, I finally mastered one. I Want Some More first popped up as an encore song in my Event 4 way back in January - not long after I started playing Rocksmith. That was the combo arrangement. I mastered the single note arrangement. The combo is not far behind with a current high score of almost 83k.

This is not the first song I've mastered. Just the first one in a long, long time. Since March 21st, to be precise.

[I have since started keeping rehearsal notes by date rather than by song, although I still maintain my progress spreadsheet by song. This makes it much easier to keep track of when I reach certain milestones but  still allows me to track progress on each song.]

I Want Some More is REALLY Easy. Really. Easy. 
Given that it took me a grand total of 13 plays through this song to get it to Master Mode, I'd have to say this one may outrank Go with the Flow on my Easi-ness Scale. (See my analysis of Easiest Rocksmith Songs here: http://myrocksmithjourney.blogspot.com/2012/04/easiest-rocksmith-songs-unscientific.html). I immediately played a MM performance and discovered that this song may be very easy to play but it's not so easy to memorize! My first MM performance was an anemic 144,876 (70/31), which pales in comparison to most of my Mastered song scores. A second run got me a 173,076 (84/42) which is better but still far short of the 202k on my next lowest scoring MM song.

Still, even with this relatively low MM score, I Want Some More falls squarely in the "Beyond Easy" category of Rocksmith songs. And, it's actually sort of fun to play. Not quite as much fun as Surf Hell in my opinion but also not nearly as challenging, either. Frankly, I Want Some More should probably appear a little earlier in the game as an event song rather than as a solo. I don't know. I don't even want to get into that discussion, but I'll say this: If you're a raw beginner and you're feeling discouraged, learn this song. It'll give you a little confidence boost.

Moving Along with My Journey. Events Still on Hold.
Mastering a song moved me well along the path on Level 8. I've been moving forward but very, very slowly. Some nights by only a few hundred points. A score over 100k makes a significant difference.

I've decided to go ahead and resume my "world tour" and start working on event setlists again. I Miss You has been on my list of upcoming event songs so long that I felt like I had it memorized before I had ever attempted to play it. So, Sunday night I went ahead and played through it for the first time. My score was far from impressive, but I did manage to qualify the song for Event 8 (at 22,200 - 81/32) on my second try.

I will stick with my previous rule regarding events and qualified songs: No event gets played until every song on the setlist is at 70k or above. So, it could still be a while before I actually play another event. And, I'll continue to push toward Mastering songs that I've already played.

Works out nicely that Outshined is the Ubi/RS forum challenge song of the week this week. That's one of those songs I've had sitting at the cusp of Master Mode (with a score of 96,609) but just can't seem to push over the edge. I'll take advantage of the excuse to at least try to master that one this week. And, of course, I'd like to take a crack at Mastering the Combo arrangement of I Want Some More while that song is still fresh in my head.

Still working on Barracuda, too. I've come too far to put that one on the back burner now. I'm down to just cleaning up Solo 2 and I'll have that one Mastered. I'm well over the 100k threshold and just trying to max out the level on Solo 2.

Scale Runner Warm-Ups
I've started warming up on Scale Runner to begin my practice sessions. I've been remiss in not working on my scales. Also, what better way to ease into a practice session? Jumping straight into songs lately has often had the effect of leveling DOWN some things that I'm just not good enough to play cold. So, I just end up having to do more Riff Repeater work later. Better to get good and warmed up before I launch into playing full songs or even work on other harder stuff in Riff Repeater.

I have no specific agenda in Scale Runner. I haven't done a lot with some of the more "exotic" scales toward the bottom of the list but other than that I try to generally keep my scores level across all the scales I'm working. In other words, I don't want to have 30,000,000 on my B-MAJ scale but only 10,000 on my G Blues scale. I just set an arbitrary threshold and try to reach it before I move on to practicing songs and phrases.