Finally Back to Rocksmith Super Elite Guitarist

Pretty quiet weekend on the Rocksmith front. With Hallowe'en coming up, there's a lot going on at our house and I didn't play as much as I might have wanted to this weekend. Still, I managed to squeeze in one bass event and one guitar event.

I also manged to get down to the local GC to hang out for a while Saturday and ended up putting a nice little MIM Telecaster (white) on layaway. . . More, to include pics, when I pick it up. On that note, anybody want to buy some guitars? I'm starting to get overstocked!

Been a while since I pulled out the bass so I decided to play a little bass first. In fact, I finally got around to putting new strings on the used Yamaha bass we bought back in July. The strings were a little grungy and rusty when we bought it and they hadn't gotten any better since then. It was long past time to change them out. I've had a new set lying around for weeks - just too lazy to put them on. While I had the old strings off, I had a good opportunity to clean the fretboard. I used lemon oil furniture treatment, a T-shirt, and a fairly old piece of Scotch-brite pad. I wouldn't normally use the Scotch-brite, but this fretboard looked like it hadn't been cleaned ever, and it's a pretty old bass. I needed that extra cleaning power to scrub all the gunk off. Plus, it cleaned the fretwires themselves pretty nicely. I cleaned up the bridge and body while I was at it and overall it came out looking pretty good. To be honest, it sounded about the same to me but the strings felt better.

Event Location	3d St. Lounge	Notes
Date Played	10/27/2012	Unlocks:
Song	Score	Guitar	Epiphone Rumblekat
The Spider and the Fly	96615	Pedal	Degrader
Slow Hands	22697	Tone	Relentless Bass (Panic Switch)
Panic Switch	107186	Tone
Number Thirteen	57339	Tone
Step Out of the Car	57009
High and Dry	65470
Minimum RSP	178700
Event Score:	406316	Total Score to date:	appprox 4,500,000
191%

I qualified and performed a five-song set at 3d Street Lounge. It went well. I qualified every song on the first play except for Spider and the Fly which I missed by about 1000 points on my first try. On my second play, I blew away the 64,700 MQS by scoring 90,896. I improved all of my scores during the actual event. In fact, my score on Panic Switch jumped from my pre-event qualifying score of 58,936 to a blistering 107,186! I got a first encore, High and Dry, and scored 65,470 on that. But, no double encore despite achieving well over 200% of the event minimum.

I am REALLY, really starting to dislike the random nature of the double encore! Looking back over my first 5 events on the bass restart, I've had 4 double encores. Can't complain too much about that, I guess. But, there just doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to this. On my first four events I scored 300%, 335%, 197% and 2384% of the event minimums. That's WAYYYYY above the presumed 120% requirement, so getting the first encore was easy. And, on each of my first encore songs I scored over 90k. No question about the second encores, either. On Event 5 I got 191% of the event minimum score but I only scored 65470 on my encore. Apparently, even though that's the first time I've seen that song on this journey, that's not good enough. Of course, the dev's have said that 120% of event minimum and 95% (of something) on the first encore just gives you a free spin - a 50/50 shot - at getting a second encore, so I guess after 4 in a row I was just due for a miss. Still sucks. At the very least, I'd like a better explanation of what the 95% is supposed to be on the first encore song.

My guitar events are getting harder and harder and I'm frequently accepting reduced qualifying scores after 4-5 failed attempts. Event 28 last week was horrible. 3 out of 4 songs reduced and failed to make the MQS on 2 songs during the event. Fortunately, I exceeded EMS on two songs and passed the event - barely. I've noticed that when I accept reduced qualifying scores on songs, RS is not showing a reduced event minimum. But, the EMS is reduced. Otherwise I would not have passed this event.

Event Location	Symphony Hall	Notes
Date Played	10/24/2012	Unlocks:
Song	Score	Guitar	Vintage Gibson L-5 CES
When I'm Gone - Combo	59043	Pedal	none
Jessica *	48258	Tone	none
Loser - Combo	67783	Tone
Carol of the Bells - Single Note*	81996	Tone
Minimum RSP	243836	Reduced from  265,200 (does not show reduction in game)
Event Score:	257080	Total Score to date:	not recorded
105%

A horrible event that I just wanted to get through and put behind me. The guitar event from this weekend was much better than that one, but in the end I was pissed off by RS's refusal to give me a double encore! In 29 guitar events, I've only gotten 3 double encores.

I only reduced the MQS on one song - Kryptonite, but then I ended up exceeding the original MQS anyway. In fact, I bested all my qualifying scores in this event except for the encore song. Got one encore - Step Out of the Car - which I had played before and apparently kicked butt on in Event 22. I got 100768 on it in that event but only 87350 this time. Still, that's 130% of the event minimum. Gotta be close to 95% accuracy on the encore. And, 3 out of 29 is nowhere near 50/50 odds. In fact, that's closer to 1:10. So, what gives? I'd like to know.

Event Location	Liberty's	Notes
Date Played	10/28/2012	Unlocks:
Song	Score	Guitar	Gibson Les Paul Recording
Spider and the Fly, The - Combo2	71367	Pedal	Square Mod
Burnished - Combo	62313	Tone	Machine Operator (Spider & Fly)
We Share the Same Skies - Combo	50395	Tone
Kryptonite	69045	Tone
My Sharona	66724
Freebird - Combo*	58313
		Level 10 reached
Step Out of the Car - Sgl Note	87350
Minimum RSP	291774	Reduced from 297800 original EMS
Event Score:	465507	Total Score to date:	15,000,000+
130%

Whatever. I made it back to Level 10 on guitar - "Super Elite Guitarist" - which is where I was before I had to restart my journey due to loss of my game save data.

Kryptonite is a great example of where RS needs to add chord IDs to the RSNH. The intro and most of the song is an arppegio based on the Bmin, G, and A chord progression. But, RS doesn't tell you that at any point. So, you're scrambling around trying to hit these individual notes which seem completely random. Once I stopped to see what chords might actually work, things got much easier in a hurry. So, FYI, if you want to play Kryptonite by Three Doors Down, use the chord shapes for B-minor, open G, and open A. Those are the chords you're picking on.

Also, I've started working Scale Runner again as an exercise. Last night I worked the Blues scale a few times until I got up to 5 million. Took about 6 tries. I've noticed that there's a new bug in the RS software so now your Scale Runner scores are not saved. Every time I pull up Scale Runner, everything is back to 0.