Looks like it's been over a month (nearly two months, actually) since my last post where I apologized for being a slack blogger. But, in my defense, I have been on an actual vacation - at least for a week of the several weeks which have passed since my last post. Also, some IT changes at work have made it impossible for me to access this page from the computer where I spend most of my time. . .
I took my acoustic guitar on vacation to beach and worked on my Christmas songs a little (even though I would have preferred to play some Jimmy Buffet). Missed an opportunity to play a paying gig while I was away and my wife ended up in the hospital for 24 hours with a kidney stone. Other than that, it was a great vacation!
When I got back, the RS bass add-on was just hours from being released. I downloaded it the first or second day it was available and so far I love it. Took about an hour to download over my bargain ISP connection, but once it was finished downloading it played perfectly right from the start.
My son and I tried multiplayer mode with one bass and one guitar last night - and that works great, too! Really a lot more fun than playing multiplayer with two regular guitars.
Bass seems quite a bit easier for me than regular guitar. I've already played 5 events and reached Level 5 - National Headliner after only 3 days of playing. I have not gone into the Riff Repeater yet, but according to the boxes above the lyrics that show up during rehearsal I have maxed out the phrases on at least a couple of songs already. My son has reached Master Mode on at least one song.
Unlike my approach to the regular guitar side of RS, on bass I plan to zip through events and songs until I start seeing the same songs come around for a second time. I'll be curious to see how that works out. So far, I'm already seeing some songs come up for a first play with almost all of the notes showing up. But, so far, I've only run into one song that I didn't qualify for an event on my very first play. Overall, to me, bass just seems far easier to grasp.
I've also unlocked two secret squirrel club songs on bass - something I haven't been able to do on regular guitar after months of playing. (In case you didn't know, any songs you unlock with bass are also available to you on regular guitar. However, in multiplayer mode, you can only play songs that both players have unlocked. Which makes perfect sense - I just never ran into the issue before last night when playing multiplayer with my son on bass.)
The only glitch-like issue I've noticed so far on the bass is the tuner. When tuning to D or E-flat, it seems like the tuner jumps wildly until I finally nail the pitch. Just makes tuning to non-standard tuning take a little longer. Not a huge problem.
Switching back and forth from guitar to bass is effortless and glitch-free. I haven't noticed any change in the way my guitar game plays since adding the bass add-on. It seems like venues pop up in a sort of random order when I play bass events - not sure why and it doesn't make any difference. Just noticed that I seem to be seeing larger venues earlier with bass than I did with regular guitar.
In short, I'm really enjoying the new bass stuff! My third finger is still a little sore - never did get an X-ray, but I might. Right now, my only issue is these huge blisters on my first and third fingers!
