A Night Off and Updated Rocksmith Progress Chart

Took the night off last night - staying up playing RS until 1 or 2 AM every night. (I can't start earlier because I spend an hour or so on my drums when I get my chores around the house done after work.) Simply put, I'm wiped out. Last night was the first time since I got RS that I just felt too tired to play.

Maybe a night of rest will give this bone-deep callous on my first finger a chance to heal a little. I can't even feel the pip on the F key on my computer keyboard. In fact, the callous is so deep that it actually impairs my guitar playing - I can't tell if I'm even on a string. It's like having a built-in slide on my fingertip. The tip is completely numb. My third finger is almost as bad.

This also gives me a chance to catch up on my spreadsheet project. Still don't have all of my notebook data transferred to my spreadsheets. Here's my latest cut of the main summary sheet. I've added columns for best streak and best %-age. Also a play count column. (RS gives you a play count somewhere - I'll have to go back and get those numbers for everything I've played so far.)

I've entered formulae so that the summary page will pull data in from my individual song worksheets. That way I just enter the date, score, streak count and % once on the individual song pages. The formulae on the main page will pull everything from there and give me an overall view all on one page. Geek on!

My original source included links from a lot of the song titles and artists to Wikipedia or other Internet pages. I'm changing those links to point to the individual song pages. That way I can jump straight to the song details from the main page. Not sure what I'll do with the artist links. Might kill them or just leave them as they are. They can be inconvenient - if I accidentally click on a cell I end up teleporting to the Internet and reading about White Denim. . .

Anyway, here's what it looks like now:

Song	Artist	Date First Played	Event #	Qualifying Score	High Score	Best %	Best Streak	Play Count
A More Perfect Union	Titus Andronicus				#REF!
Angela	Jarvis Cocker	1/23/2012	4	0	76029	0	0
Are You Gonna Go My Way	Lenny Kravitz	1/0/1900	6	16400	0	0	0
Between the Lines	Stone Temple Pilots				0
Boss	Chris Lee				0
Boys Don't Cry	The Cure		1	n/a	32372	0	0
Breed	Nirvana	1/0/1900	5	28800	72334	96	79
Burnished	White Denim				0
California Brain	RapScallions				0
Carol of the Bells	Seth Chapla				0
Chimney	Yellow Moon Band The				0
Do You Remember	Horrors The		5	61800	132554	88	27
Freebird	Lynyrd Skynyrd				0
Go With the Flow	Queens of the Stone Age		2	n/a	86600	0	0
Gobbledigook	Sigur Rós				0
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen	Brian Adam McCune				0
Good Enough	Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers				0
High and Dry	Radiohead		6	25200	0
Higher Ground	Red Hot Chilli Peppers		2		79013	95	110
House of the Rising Sun	The Animals				0
I Can't Hear You	Dead Weather The		3		85957	91	67
I Got Mine	Black Keys The				0
I Miss You	Incubus				0
I Want Some More	Dan Auerbach		4	n/a	23837
Icky Thump	White Stripes The				0
In Bloom	Nirvana		2		82550	0	0
Islands	xx The				0
Jules	Seth Chapla				0
Me and the Bean	Spoon				0
Mean Bitch	Taddy Porter		6		86737
Next Girl	Black Keys The		1		101993	0	0
Number Thirteen	Red Fang		4		66064	90	144
Outshined	Soundgarden		4		90436	86	59
Panic Switch	Silversun Pickups				0
Play with Fire	Rolling Stones The		4		55320	80	42
Plug In Baby	Muse		5	n/a	29715	0	0
Rebel Rebel	David Bowie		6	19500	0
Ricochet	Brian Adam McCune				0
Run Back to Your Side	Eric Clapton				0
Satisfaction	Rolling Stones The		1		108484	99	272
Six AM Salvation	Versus Them				0
Slither	Velvet Revolver				0
Slow Hands	Interpol		3		70966	0	0
Song 2	Blur				0
Space Ostrich	Disonaur				0
Step Out of the Car	Boxer Rebellion The				0
Sunshine of Your Love	Cream				0
Surf Hell	Little Barrie		3		91274	89	85
Sweet Home Alabama	Lynyrd Skynyrd				0
Take Me Out	Franz Ferdinand				0
The Spider and the Fly	Rolling Stones The				0
The Star Spangled Banner	Seth Chapla				0
Under Cover of Darkness	Strokes The				0
Unnatural Selection	Muse		4		57289	87	105
Use Somebody	Kings of Leon		3		60425	87	98
Vasoline	Stone Temple Pilots		3		85738	95	138
We Share the Same Skies	The Cribs				0
We Three Kings	Versus Them				0
Well OK Honey	Jenny O				0
When I'm with You	Best Coast		5	31100	58578	95	128
Where is My Mind?	Pixies		4		59846	0	0

Running Dry on High and Dry Solo

I may need to take a night off. Or change strings again. Turn up the thermostat. Or something.

Last night, per my latest strategy, I picked High and Dry (Radiohead) to work on. At a score of 72,900, High and Dry is the weakest of the 4 songs on my setlist for Event 6. That's probably a lot to do with the fact that I've played through the song 4 times and that's it. I qualified it on my very first play through (51,375/25,200) but it needs work.

Things started out great. When I went into Riff Repeater, I only found 3 sections that weren't already maxed out. The first two sections went down fast, well under the 30 lives that RS gives us. Sort of made me wonder why I hadn't maxed these out while playing through the whole song. Probably a transition issue I'll need to deal with.

Then I got to the solo.

Solos seem to be my weak spot anyway, but this one - even though it's really simple - was killing me. I just can't get it. I burned through 30 lives on Leveler. I moved up from 73% to 81%. That was it. Then I burned through 30 lives on Accelerator and never reached full speed. So, I went to Free Speed. Played the 81% phrase level at 100% speed within 5 tries. WTH? Back to Leveler and -nothing. After about 10 tries to level up, I just forced it up to 90% with the settings. That didn't help!

Moving up from one phrase level to the next is often a matter of a couple of notes thrown into what you're already playing. Not on this one. The difference between 81% and 90% is significant. There was a whole bunch of new notes coming at me. I gave it a fair shot, looked at the clock and realized it was 1:25AM, and said screw it.

High and Dry is one of the more melodious tunes I've played on RS and I couldn't help noticing that I was sounding pretty awful. Not sure if my two-week old strings are already going bad or what. Maybe they were just cold; it was sort of chilly in the house yesterday. But, I didn't seem to have any trouble with Are You Gonna Go My Way. I managed to move the solo on that one up from 55% to 61%. Couldn't quite match my best score on that song last night but I was close - around 78,000 (versus all time high score of 79776 from earlier this week). Which makes me wonder if there's something hinky about High and Dry in the RS software.

I noticed that I was constantly getting a warning arrow that I was sharp when I played the 2d string 10th fret A - but RS only said I was sharp on that note when it followed the 1st string, 12th fret high E. Any other time I played the A on the second string it was fine. So, I started cheating and just playing the 9th fret A-flat after the high E. (B at the 12th fret, A at the 10th. . . should be an A-flat at the 9th, right?) That actually seemed to work. I double checked to be sure I wasn't bending the string and if I was I sure couldn't tell it. So, I don't know what the problem was. Your input is welcome - just leave comments.

Just so I wouldn't end things on a sour note - literally or otherwise - I took a romp through Outshined before I quit for the night. And, once again, I ended up going to bed around 2:00.

Technically, I could play Event 6 any time as I've met my self-imposed 70,000+ standard on all four songs on the setlist:

Mean Bitch: 86,737 (all phrases maxed except solo)
Are You Gonna Go My Way: 79,776 (solo 61%)
Rebel, Rebel: 76,799 (all maxed? no solo. . . )
High and Dry: 72,970 (all phrases maxed except solo - 81%)

I sort of unofficially decided to see if I could max out all the phrases before I did this Event, but I'll probably change my mind on that since I just realized that I haven't played an Event for about 2 weeks! Not to mention that it looks pretty unlikely that I'll be maxing out three solos any time soon. Tomorrow night I might crack open a couple of beers and go for it. Might even video tape it.