Last night was the 7th night of my restarted Journey. I've played 15 events and every song in my song list except one (Good Enough, which just hasn't popped up yet for some reason). I was moving along pretty well but now the climb is getting steeper. One-run qualifications are getting harder to come by as get more songs that I didn't play a lot before the restart. Event 16 is a big one - 7 songs at Symphony Hall. Qualification scores are up and three songs for my next event have qualifying scores of 90k (the maximum).
I started the session with my Ibanez, which I really love playing. It's got incredible sustain and a really nice tone. It's also a well-balanced guitar; it just sits nicely in the strap. The only trouble with it is that the previous owner lowered the bridge so much that the strings buzz when I play above the 12th fret. Easy adjustment. I just haven't gotten around to it.
The buzzing seemed like it might be an issue when I started working on the solo to Six AM Salvation, so I switched to my Gretsch. I love that guitar too. It's actually lighter than the Ibanez, which surprised me. It just seems like a big, heavy guitar with that Bigsby tremelo, but it's not. Oddly, though, it wants to rock forward as though the head is heavy. As my buddy Bob predicted, I don't use the tremelo - or at least I haven't really used it yet. Still, nice to know it's there if I decide to try it. Gotta decide between these two. . . I'd love to keep both but that's just silly and I really don't have room for them. As it is, I'm waiting for GC to have another sale on wall hangers so I can pick up a few more to hang all the guitars I have lying around.
Event 16 Set List:
California Brain
Space Ostrich
More than a Feeling
Keep Yourself Alive
Next Girl
Six AM Salvation
Smoke on the Water
I lowered my qualification scores on two songs. I don't like doing that, but when RS asked if I wanted to lower the qualifying score on Space Ostrich, I pressed the X button and nothing happened. I tried a few times. Finally I just gave up and pressed A and let RS lower the score so I could get on with it. The qualifying score was dropped from 44,300 to 36,720.
Six AM Salvation has a qualifying score of 90k. I got the score up to 71,382 (88/164) in 3 times and was "offered" the option to lower my qualifying score. I declined and went to work on the solo in Riff Repeater. That's really the only hard part of the song. I spent a lot of time working on it but couldn't level it up from 50% and couldn't even play that level at full speed. By then, lowering the qualifying score looked like a pretty good idea unless I want to put my entire journey on hold for a month to work on one solo. So, I played the song through again, got a 78,755, and accepted the offer to lower the qualfying score to 78,855. I ended up with a score of 80,512.
Took me two times to get California Brain qualified.
I qualified More than a Feeling, Keep Yourself Alive, and Next Girl in one shot. Next Girl had a 90k qualifying score and I still Mastered it on my one qualifying run - my first mastered song on the restart.
Smoke on the Water has a 90k qualifying score, too, but by the time I got around to that song it was very late and I was done. I got a 81,926 93/93 on it and packed it in for the night. Pretty sure I can get this one qualified in two more runs.
I didn't even touch the bass last night. But, I will say that I really enjoy playing bass. I am very glad Rocksmith added it.
I am getting to a similar point where the qualifiers are in the 70 to 90 K range. I just got to level 8 but i think i am going to need a major change in strategy going forward.
ReplyDeleteMy back of the notebook calcs lead me to believe that i can probably get to level 9 just by playing the remaining 45 arrangments and averaging 50K. Add in a few 100k from the trainers and i should be able to do that in 4 or 5 hours.
OTOH, Level 9 would just be for braggin rights, and i don't think anybody cares ;-) My goal is to get better as a player, so perhaps i should focus more on getting tracks over 70K (or 100K, whatever) and getting some MM.
Oh, I did get my first MM - Boys don't cry chord and i managed 161K playing it immediately afterwards.
Essentially, i am trying to decide if i should work on many tracks and make small improvements or if i should work on few tracks and get MM for them. I am unsure which way i am going to go.
Hey, given your stat-collecting tendencies, why don't you use rocksmithbuddy (rsevole dot com)?
Tim
I originally started RS with the intent of working every song up to 70k and to some extent that worked. I had over a dozen songs mastered and memorized (loosely) when I lost my data. But, it was often very frustrating. I mainly went with the Event-focused approach this time to get back to where I was. I think once I get caught up to myself I'll lean toward a more balanced approach - work on mastering songs I really enjoy playing and leave the rest at qualifying minimums. Think I'll do a whole separate post on that topic.
DeleteAs far as rocksmithbuddy, I guess mainly I was pretty fully vested in my spreadsheet system before rocksmithbuddy got started and I didn't feel like trying to transfer all my data over to someone else's website. I've looked at the site and it's impressive. But, I can edit and access my spreadsheets without getting on the Internet.
I played 2 events last night and a few tracks this AM and will get Level 9 on the next track or two. I was playing all of the tracks i had that i hadn't played yet (mostly single note and chord) so that meant the qualifier was pretty low (20K give or take) and the chord arrangements are pretty easy (scoring 80 to 100K).
ReplyDeleteI think once i get a score for everything, i am going to go thru and try and get them all to 70K, and then all at 100K and so on.
I have really honed in on what it is i suck at - changing strings quickly w/ my pick hand - harder if the strings are not adjacent, harder if i don't have a fret finger on the target string. I may have to address that IRL.
I like RSBuddy cause it gives me a frame of reference. when you score 110K on go with the flow, it is good to know that everyone scores at least 110K on GWtF, and you don't need to find an A&R man. It can also show you what you are weak at (and compared to others) so you know what to work on.
Tim
My weak spot is painfully obvious - it's solos!
ReplyDeleteMost of them really take a lot of effort on my part. There are some I just cannot get. I may actually take a couple of lessons to get the Solo, Pt2 from Carol of the Bells nailed before Thanksgiving. I got the rest down pretty well after MUCH work - but the second part is just too fast and too much for me to get a handle on. There's got to be some technique that I'm lacking.
I hear ya, i suck at solos too. They usually skip a bunch of strings ;-) actually, unless the solo is ungodly fast, if it stays in a 'box' and doesn't skip around too much, i am ok. Once it either goes super fast, or, has a bunch of string skips, i am toast.
DeleteIf there is a downfall to the RS scoring, i think it is that you don't get a "solo" score - and i think MM addresses that - but if the song has a short but difficult solo, but lotsa notes (powerchords or whatever) then the notes in the solo aren't worth that much and you can get a pretty good score by nailing everything and sitting the solo out. I think i just did that yesterday on one of the velvet revolver tracks.
Tim