Every once in a while I get an e-mail saying that DLC is still being released for Rocksmith, and I'm very happy to hear it. I haven't bought any for years, but I'm glad to know this "game" is still going strong. It was a lot of fun to play and I definitely got "better" at guitar for my efforts. About a year ago I replaced our broken Realtone cable thinking I'd fire up the RockBox and play again. Sadly, I never even took the cable out of the bag when I opened the Amazon box. The XBox, which we bought solely for the purpose of playing Rocksmith (hence "RockBox") has been relegated to watching NetFlix and Hulu, something we do far too much of.
I see that my last post to this blog was nearly 6 years ago which is very hard to believe. Lots of stuff has happened since then. I suppose one of the bigger events which has sort of changed the course of my life in some ways was when I dislocated my elbow (by falling off a skateboard in a park). I did that before my last post here but I guess that set the stage for changes. Once my kids finished high school and left the nest, that was pretty much the start of a wholly new chapter. Physical therapy got me to the gym, the gym got me to the pool, and - long story short - I've been lifeguarding and swimming and teaching swim lessons and CPR for five years. Haven't picked up a guitar since I don't know when (although I still own them all - and need to sell most of them off). I've played drums maybe twice since then. Got the piano in the living room tuned last Christmas, just in case someone came by who could bang out some carols, but nobody did.
More recently, I bought a little sailboat which I've been working on, and I've taken up various other hobbies which I'm better at than guitar playing. Gotta admit, as good as Rocksmith is, I never really got to a point where I felt like I had become a true guitar player. I'm pretty sure there's a special gene you have to have and I just don't have it. I can play along, and that was a blast, but for me it just never translated to real-world skills. It's not Rocksmith. It's me. Seriously. I don't think Stevie Vai, Prince, and Eric Clapton together could turn me into a guitarist - much as I'd enjoy being one.
All that being said, I suppose it's time to officially recognize that I'm probably not going to add much more to this blog in the future. I suspect Rocksmith has changed so much that anything I've written here is outdated and irrelevant now. But, I won't take it down. Maybe there's something on here that someone will find useful or inspiring. And, who knows? Maybe I'll grab the old Alvarez one evening and suddenly be able to play. Sometimes a long break from something helps put it in perspective and you improve simply by virtue of not trying too hard. If that happens, I'll be back to let you know.
If you find this post, I hope you do read back through some of my earlier stuff here and get inspired to play. If you do, I wish you the best and I hope you have even half as much fun playing Rocksmith as I did. For now, Gallagher is unplugging and putting the axe in the case. Thanks for reading.
