Mastered One at Last! I Want Some More another Easy Song.

Mastered Another One
Well, finally. After several weeks of concentrating on improving songs I had played prior to reaching Level 7, I finally mastered one. I Want Some More first popped up as an encore song in my Event 4 way back in January - not long after I started playing Rocksmith. That was the combo arrangement. I mastered the single note arrangement. The combo is not far behind with a current high score of almost 83k.

This is not the first song I've mastered. Just the first one in a long, long time. Since March 21st, to be precise.

[I have since started keeping rehearsal notes by date rather than by song, although I still maintain my progress spreadsheet by song. This makes it much easier to keep track of when I reach certain milestones but  still allows me to track progress on each song.]

I Want Some More is REALLY Easy. Really. Easy. 
Given that it took me a grand total of 13 plays through this song to get it to Master Mode, I'd have to say this one may outrank Go with the Flow on my Easi-ness Scale. (See my analysis of Easiest Rocksmith Songs here: http://myrocksmithjourney.blogspot.com/2012/04/easiest-rocksmith-songs-unscientific.html). I immediately played a MM performance and discovered that this song may be very easy to play but it's not so easy to memorize! My first MM performance was an anemic 144,876 (70/31), which pales in comparison to most of my Mastered song scores. A second run got me a 173,076 (84/42) which is better but still far short of the 202k on my next lowest scoring MM song.

Still, even with this relatively low MM score, I Want Some More falls squarely in the "Beyond Easy" category of Rocksmith songs. And, it's actually sort of fun to play. Not quite as much fun as Surf Hell in my opinion but also not nearly as challenging, either. Frankly, I Want Some More should probably appear a little earlier in the game as an event song rather than as a solo. I don't know. I don't even want to get into that discussion, but I'll say this: If you're a raw beginner and you're feeling discouraged, learn this song. It'll give you a little confidence boost.

Moving Along with My Journey. Events Still on Hold.
Mastering a song moved me well along the path on Level 8. I've been moving forward but very, very slowly. Some nights by only a few hundred points. A score over 100k makes a significant difference.

I've decided to go ahead and resume my "world tour" and start working on event setlists again. I Miss You has been on my list of upcoming event songs so long that I felt like I had it memorized before I had ever attempted to play it. So, Sunday night I went ahead and played through it for the first time. My score was far from impressive, but I did manage to qualify the song for Event 8 (at 22,200 - 81/32) on my second try.

I will stick with my previous rule regarding events and qualified songs: No event gets played until every song on the setlist is at 70k or above. So, it could still be a while before I actually play another event. And, I'll continue to push toward Mastering songs that I've already played.

Works out nicely that Outshined is the Ubi/RS forum challenge song of the week this week. That's one of those songs I've had sitting at the cusp of Master Mode (with a score of 96,609) but just can't seem to push over the edge. I'll take advantage of the excuse to at least try to master that one this week. And, of course, I'd like to take a crack at Mastering the Combo arrangement of I Want Some More while that song is still fresh in my head.

Still working on Barracuda, too. I've come too far to put that one on the back burner now. I'm down to just cleaning up Solo 2 and I'll have that one Mastered. I'm well over the 100k threshold and just trying to max out the level on Solo 2.

Scale Runner Warm-Ups
I've started warming up on Scale Runner to begin my practice sessions. I've been remiss in not working on my scales. Also, what better way to ease into a practice session? Jumping straight into songs lately has often had the effect of leveling DOWN some things that I'm just not good enough to play cold. So, I just end up having to do more Riff Repeater work later. Better to get good and warmed up before I launch into playing full songs or even work on other harder stuff in Riff Repeater.

I have no specific agenda in Scale Runner. I haven't done a lot with some of the more "exotic" scales toward the bottom of the list but other than that I try to generally keep my scores level across all the scales I'm working. In other words, I don't want to have 30,000,000 on my B-MAJ scale but only 10,000 on my G Blues scale. I just set an arbitrary threshold and try to reach it before I move on to practicing songs and phrases.

Barracuda Solo1 and Interlude Maxed! More Riff Repeating in Rocksmith

Barracuda - I'm Biting Back Now
At last! I started off last night with the first solo phrase from Barracuda.

First I ran through it in Free Speed at 78% mastery. I got 100% speed in 10 tries. So, I bumped up the mastery level to 100% and ran it 30 more times reaching 97.5% speed. Not 100% but close enough to try Leveler.

I started Leveler out at 85% mastery (forced up from 71% which is apparently the level where I've been playing this phrase when I play through the whole song). I leveled up twice in Leveler and Maxed it out! Finally.

Inspired by that success, I moved on to the Interlude. I thought I'd already mastered this phrase, but when I went into Riff Repeater last night it was not fully levelled out. It's possible that I maxed it out recently but then leveled down when playing through the song. . . Anyway, it only took 8 tries in Free Speed to reach 100% speed at 100% mastery (forced up). Then I Maxed it out in Leveler in 2 tries.

After this progress, I played through the song twice.

106,625 (92/102)
111,385 (94/155)

The first time I did alright but was well below my previous high score of 110k. I just wasn't quite prepared to work in the solo and the interlude, so when they came up I really just sort of blew both of those phrases. The second time through, though, I actually played the phrases I'd been working on and got a new high score. Barely. Accuracy was slightly below my best of 95% and the streak was well short of my best (182), but I was in the ballpark on both.

That just leaves Solo 2, which I can actually play. I worked on that some last night but my guitar is really buzzy up at the 15th fret which is where most of Solo 2 takes place. RS was having a tough time scoring me with all the fret noise. I hate to raise my action, but I need to make some adjustments before I pursue that phrase.

Damn Volume Knob!
I also had another volume knob malfunction last night. Was playing along and suddenly I was getting nothing - even though I know I was playing the notes. Check that damn volume knob and - sure enough - I had inadvertently pulled it around to 0 with my pinky. I'm seriously considering ripping that knob off of the pot.

Carol of the Bells
Just to keep from totally forgetting this one, I ran through Carol of the Bells twice. No Riff Repeater work or anything - just two straight-through plays.

80725 (88/59)
82137 (90/108)

Again, accuracy and streak were slightly below my all-time highs, but I got a new high score (by a mere 135 points). Still, it's progress.

I Still Want Some More
It was getting close to 1:30 AM when I pulled this up. Just planned to run through it once and then knock off for the night. But, I jacked it up - 94,846 (93/158). My streak was actually double my previous best, but my score was down by 4k and I wasn't happy with that. So, back to Riff Repeater to refresh my memory of the damn pre-choruses. I got the first one back up to 100% in Free Speed in 13 tries. Then I got the second pre-chorus up to 100% speed in 17 tries. Played the whole song through again - and my score dropped again.

93,892 (94/192).

I was pissed. WTF? But, now that I look at the numbers, I realize that I actually increased by accuracy by a percentage point AND I totally blew away my next highest streak. So, not that bad, I guess. Still, even though I had just worked the pre-chorus (both versions), I really dropped the ball on those phrases when I played through the whole song.

No problem. I'll get it. And, when I do, I'll master the song. I'm close and sneaking up on it.

Working Free Speed and Leveler to Max Phrases

I've now got 3 songs over 100k and 6 songs over 90k which I have not yet mastered. I've got 6 more songs over 80k. It's sort of a pile-up waiting for me to master something. Anything. As usual, when I look at each song to see what stands in the way of mastering it, it's almost universally the solos. But, not always.

I Want Some More - Points!
I started working on I Want Some More recently just to break up the monotony of Barracuda and Carol of the Bells. I also figured I might actually be able to master this one relatively easily since it has no solo. I'm within a few thousand of the 100k threshold, but there's a "pre-chorus" that's slowing me down. Actually, although Riff Repeater seems to treat them as one, there are really two distinct pre-choruses (similar, but in different keys or something). I leveled the first pre-chorus up to 93% and reached 98.2 speed at 100% mastery in Free Speed. I figured out that the second pre-chorus is different from the first one when I went to play through the whole song and got to that part. Still some Riff Repeater work to do there.

Barracuda Biting my Ass
Lots of Riff Repeater work on this one last night. But, I'm down to just Solo 1 and Solo 2 phrases.

After working the Interlude in Free Speed (100 @ 70% in 5 tries), I leveled this phrase up to 100% in Leveler. Like having an Easy Button.

Then I worked Breakdown 2 until I finally maxed that phrase. I ran it in Free Speed and got 100% at 88% mastery in under 10 tries. Then I forced the mastery up to 100% and got 98.4% speed in 30 more tries. When I went to the Leveler, I maxed the phrase in 10 tries on the nose.

[NOTE: It's possible to level up to 100% in Leveler without actually Maxing a phrase. However, outside of Riff Repeater, RS seems to treat 100% unmaxed the same as 100% maxed. I'll find out if that's true soon.]

Despite my improvements on individual phrases, I still fell short of my all-time high score when I played thorugh the whole song. I ran through it three times, increasing my score each time but still 4k short of my high score of 110k. That strikes me as sort of odd. . .


Symphony of Destruction
As Megadeth songs go, this one seems relatively easy. Good thing because I'm not exactly tearing it up. I've played it several times this week (four times through last night) and I have yet to break 30k. I'm not really working on it seriously - just playing through and seeing if I can keep improving. Usually I get a much higher score before I hit the wall and have to dig into Riff Repeater, though!


I'm very grateful to the forum member who turned me onto the fact that you can force the mastery level in Riff Repeater up or down as needed. (Just hit the Start button on your controller once you get past tuning and then scroll over to Set Mastery. Click A or the PS equivalent and adjust the mastery level just like the audio lag correction tool.)

This has been a working strategy for me on mastering phrases. I highly recommend it. Just play through the troublesome phrase in Free Speed and keep forcing the mastery level up until you have it at 100. Even if you don't get to 100% speed at that mastery level, you'll be able to level the phrase up much faster than by just working step by step. I really think working with ALL of the notes in a phrase as opposed to just a few of them helps. You can run as fast or slow as you want in Free Speed, which is what so many people complain about not being able to do in Rocksmith. You can. Just not the whole song at once. But, I don't see working the whole song being a very practical approach. One phrase at a time works for me.

I don't, however, recommend Accelerator for this purpose. Accelerator tends to accelerate me faster than I want to go. I only use Accelerator when I just can't seem to get a phrase up to speed even after I know all the notes .

The Easiest Rocksmith Songs - An Unscientific Analysis

** This post has been updated to include a bunch of DLC that I've bought in the past year. Please check out the new updated post on this topic posted March 27, 2013! **

Somebody on the Ubi forum posed a question recently which got me thinking. Basically they asked what the other forum members thought was the easiest song on Rocksmith. Much subjective discussion ensued. Since I've been keeping data on my own Rocksmith progress, I figured maybe I could use my data to come up with a somewhat less subjective ranking of the songs in Rocksmith. Of course, ranking the songs also answers the converse question: what is the hardest song on Rocksmith?

This is by no means meant to change anyone's opinion. Nor do I pretend to have any particular expertise in statistical analysis. I passed my required Stat 110 course in college and that's it. Because nobody seems to truly understand how Rocksmith scoring really works, the equation I came up with is purely intuitive.

How I Did It (free lifetime membership to this blog to the first person who can identify the movie in which a book of this title appears)
I've been tracking my high scores, play counts, accuracy, and streaks since I first started playing Rocksmith. I threw all of these numbers together into a made-up equation designed to sort of reflect how hard or easy each song is. Basically, I divided my highest score on each song by the number of times I've played the song. Reasonable, right? If it takes you 50 times to qualify a song for an event at 30k RSP, that's obviously a harder song than one which you score 100k RSP on the third time through.

Then I multiplied that resulting number by the my best accuracy percentage. If I get 30k RSP with 100% accuracy, that's probably a pretty easy song. But, if I get 30k RSP with only 50% accuracy, that song was a little harder. Easier songs get a higher multiplier. I'm not sure this is a valid manipulation of the data. It really depends on how RS takes accuracy into account in its scoring paradigm. So, I also tried dividing by the accuracy percentage. The results were not significantly different. I was tempted to just leave accuracy out of the equation altogether, but I think it's a valid factor.

Finally, I multiplied the whole mess by the amount of my longest note streak. To make the numbers more digestable, I simply divided by 100,000 and rounded to one decimal place to get a ranking number. The higher the value, the easier the song.

Of course there are almost countless other ways to fiddle this data. I also tried simply adding my high score and longest streak values, multiplying the total by the accuracy percentage and then dividing that by the play count. This yielded roughly the same results. So, while I wouldn't submit this for my PhD dissertation, I'm perfectly comfortable submitting it as a blog entry.

Songs That Aren't Included and Why
To lend at least a little credibility to my equations and the resulting rankings, here are the limits of my "research." First, I've only ranked the songs I've actually played. (Duh.) There are several songs and alternate arrangements of songs in the original RS song list as well as a ton of DLC which are not included here. By the same token, several DLC songs that I have bought and played are included in my ranking.

I also omitted the alternate arrangements of some songs when the arrangements are very similar. For example, on songs like Angela and Surf Hell once you learn the combo arrangement you pretty much know the single note arrangement and vice versa. In fact, my scores on the different arrangments of these songs are within a couple of thousand points, but the play counts are significantly different, which would skew the ranking either way.

I also left out a few songs that I have played so many times for fun that my play counts would skew the calculation and make those songs look a lot harder than they are. Surf Hell also falls into this category. I don't know how to eliminate the high play count effect except possibly to do the calculations using an estimated play count from when I mastered the song. I may try that later.

There was a handful of songs that I never tracked accuracy or streaks on, either because I hadn't refined my notekeeping at that point or because the songs came up as encores. At least one of these, Song 2, was mentioned in the forum thread as being one of the easier ones. On these I just plugged in some reasonable numbers to make the equation work (since you can't divide by 0).  Also, I don't manually track my play counts. Due to a minor coding glitch, RS doesn't provide a play count for Play with Fire, so I have no value to plug into my equation for this song. I had to just take a wild guess at how many times I've played each arrangment.

A Comment on Chord Arrangements
One of the first things I noticed about my ranking is that a lot of the easier songs are the chord arrangements. I know some people have trouble with chords, especially really new beginners. My equation doesn't take that into account. If you aren't comfortable with chords yet, just ignore the chord arrangements in this ranking and look at the rest of the list. I've identified the Chord Arrangements with italics.

Now, on with the show! In order from easiest to hardest, I present my ranking of Rocksmith songs:

Beyond Easy:
Go with the Flow - combo

Easy:
Rebel Rebel - chords
Song 2 - combo
Satisfaction - chords
Freebird - chords
Next Girl
Boys Don't Cry - combo
Plug in Baby - combo
High and Dry - chords
Angela - combo

Medium:
Run Back to Your Side - chords (obviously)
Do You Remember - chords
Do You Remember - single note
Where is My Mind - combo
Number Thirteen - single note
Smoke on the Water - combo
I Want Some More - combo & single note
Breed - combo
High and Dry - combo
Barracuda - combo
More than a Feeling - combo
Unnatural Selection - single note
Vasoline - combo1

Challenging:
Satisfaction - single note
Number Thirteen - combo
When I'm With You - combo
Do You Remember - combo
Mean Bitch - combo 2
Use Somebody
Go With the Flow - single note (slides make this one much more challenging than the combo)
Rebel Rebel - combo
Slow Hands - combo
Carol of the Bells - combo

Hard: (keep in mind that this ranking is from easy to hard, so the hardest song is at the bottom)
Play with Fire - combo
In Bloom - combo
Higher Ground - combo2
Are You Gonna Go My Way?
Play with Fire - single note
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - combo
I Can't Hear You
Outshined - combo 2
Higher Ground - combo 1
Symphony of Destruction - combo


I divided the songs into groups mainly to make the list a little easier to read and then I felt obligated to give each group a heading. However, Go with the Flow is sooooo far out in front based on my "Easi-ness Calculation" that I had to give that one its own group and heading.

Even if my equation is way off, Go with the Flow scores so high that I'm pretty sure it would come out on top in any analysis. By my estimation, Go with the Flow is the easiest song in the original Rocksmith songlist and Higher Ground is the hardest. Of the DLC that I've actually downloaded and played, Symphony of Destruction is the hardest, but there's a lot of DLC I haven't got yet.

You are free to disagree. I'm not even sure I agree with the results in terms of hardest songs. Unnatural Selection seemed harder for me than Higher Ground, although I've not mastered either one of them.

Rocksmith Tracking Spreadsheet Project

I am close to releasing my Excel spreadsheet for Rocksmith progress tracking. I'll probably just make them available on Amazon or something like that. They'll be cheap. I plan to offer a hard copy version in a spiral binder as a rehearsal notebook that you can manually enter your scores and other notes in. You can transfer all that data directly to identical Excel workbook pages on your computer if you choose to do that. If you enter the scores, you'll get nifty charts that show your progress on each song automatically.

If you've followed this blog and looked at the Progress Tracking pages you've seen what I've got.

Basically, the spreadsheet workbook has one page per song where I enter my scores, accuracies, and streaks along with rehearsal notes. For each song, there's also a graph which automatically plots the scores to give a visual representation of progress. I may add lines for accuracy and streak, but I'm still messing with that idea.

Right now I have lines and entry pages with automatic graphs for the Event versions of all of the songs that came with RS originally. I've also completed lines and pages for all variations of most of the songs (i.e. all the single note and combo and chord arrangements for songs which have them).

I've got 23 songs left to do alternate arrangements for, so probably about 45 more pages to add to my workbook.

I've also got a bunch of DLC songs to do. I've only done tracking pages for the DLC songs that I've actually downloaded myself at this point, so I've got 28 DLC songs left to do as of today. If they add any DLC this week, that'll just add to my workload.

Hopefully I'll wrap this up very soon and have copies ready for anyone interested.

Playing, Listening, & Refresing Memories

I haven't played through God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen much lately and I can feel my memory slipping. Figured it was time to give this one a little more attention. I didn't want to just jump right into it though because I had a pretty nice high score of 209k sitting on the scoreboard. I didn't want to mess that up with a cold run, so I eased into it through the back door.

First I played through the Combo arrangement five times just to get the feel of the song back in my head. The two arrangments of this song are really two parts of a duet rather than "Combo" or "Single Note" arrangemens. So, the Combo arrangement is quite different from the Single Note, but, since it's really just the second part of the duet, I think playing one part helps me "hear" the other part better. (More on listening in a minute.)

After 5 runs through the whole song, I increased my score from 56k to a new high of 62,070 (86/38).

Then I felt like I was ready to tackle the Single Note part that I mastered a while back. I had a couple of bad starts, so I cheated and hit the restart button. Now that I've figured out how to restart a song, I do it a LOT. Why not? I might have restarted two times before I got it together. At that end of my full run-through, I actually improved on my high score with a 210,466 (95/81)!

After that I ran through Carol of the Bells a few times. No Riff Repeater or hammering on the solo - just playing through. My score was off of my high by less than 1k and all three scores were 79k's (79129, 79964, and 79632). In gun talk, that's what you call a tight shot-group. I suppose musically you'd say I'm getting more consistent. Still, that's consistently 21k shy of mastering the song.

Wrapped up with a run through Barracuda which also seems to be settling into a fairly consistent 103k range with 93% accuracy and 132-note streak. I levelled up on the part with all the chimed notes, but I still have 5 phrases to max before I'll have the song mastered. I may start working that a little harder this week.

Lately it seems like the accuracy and streaks tell me more about my progress than the raw scores.

Listening
You might not think playing high school marching band percussion would teach you much about playing guitar. And, I'd say in most high school bands (at least when I was in school), you'd probably be right. But, I played at a high school where the band director was willing to support motivated players. We had a highly motivated percussion section when I was at good ol' SHS, so Uncle Al hired a percussion major from a local university to give us some extra instruction. This guy (Tom) was a drum corps guy, so we were introduced to a whole new level of playing.

Four snare drums were supposed to sound like ONE snare drum. Every note was precise in duration, timing, and dynamics. No more beating on drums like a troupe of trained apes.

One of the biggest aspects of this whole new corps-style approach was LISTENING to each other.

That habit has bled over into everything else I've ever played. Unless you plan to play alone as a soloist for your entire playing career (like many pianists I've known), you have GOT to learn to listen.

I've heard it suggested that you should turn down the volume of the backing track on RS so you can hear yourself better. I would argue that you should turn down your guitar and listen to what's going on in the backing track. Of course, you need to hear what you're doing, too, and I'm not discounting the advice of a fellow RS Forum member (especially since that advice was offered in a slightly different context). But, if you plan to ever play guitar with real people, you need to get used to turning down your amp and listening to what everyone else is doing.

That's my soapbox for the day.

The Long, Hard Road to Playing Solos - Soldiering on in Riff Repeater

It was a good weekend. I'm sore as hell from edging and trimming my lawn, but I had three pretty productive practice sessions. My motivation is increasing with progress. I'm moving forward slowly, but I AM moving forward.

The brief summary is I bumped up my high score on Carol of the Bells to 80,924 (90/88), which represents a 2000 point increase over my previous high score as of last Thursday. Friday and Saturday nights I only managed a few hundred points, but by Sunday I was doing much better with the solo.

Friday Night
I started each night warming up in Riff Repeater instead of trying to play through the whole song. Friday I got the Outro back to 100% in Accelerator within 21 tries. Then I maxed it in Leveler in 5 tries. Moving on to Solo 4 in Free Speed, I managed a 93.5% with mastery forced up to 65%. Then I played through the song five times:

76,847 (87/52)
75,146 (87/39)
78,799 (90/55)
78,924 (90/75)
77,754 (89/63)

As usual, my first score dropped off a bit from the previous night's high score. That's just something I've come to expect, even if I warm up on something else first. But, the drop was only 2k - not quite as much as I've dropped off in the past. However, on the other end, my last play through dropped off, too. Getting tired? I don't know.

I've now played through the song 71 times. This doesn't count several times that I've started the song badly and then restarted it. And, of course, it doesn't count the hundreds of Riff Repeater runs.

Saturday Night
I picked up with Solo 4 in Riff Repeater and worked it hard without a lot of success. I ran through Free Speed 60 times at 50% mastery and got 89.9% the first 30 and 98.4% for my second 30 tries. Leveler was a total fail - after 30 tries, I didn't level up at all. So, I forced the mastery level to 65% and ran through Free Speed another 30 times reaching 97.3% (with a high of 98.9%).

[Still a little irritated that Free Speed only registers your FINAL attempt rather than your highest percentage. But, I still wouldn't want it to change. It's just frustrating when you have a bad final run and end up with a lower posted percentage.]

Ran through the whole song just three times gaining less than 1000 points:

77,705 (90/95)
77,353 (restarted from end)
78,998 (92/95) 

Note my starting score only dropped off slightly from the night before. Also, accuracy and streaks steadily improved over the course of two nights. So, while the scores weren't improving dramatically, they weren't dropping off dramatically from night to night, and other indicators actually continued to improve.

Sunday Night
I continued with Solo 4 in Riff Repeater and made significant gains. I ran Free Speed 30 times at 65% mastery and got as high as 99% of full speed ("official" percentage from my last run was 97.9%). Then I forced mastery to 100% and after 30 more tries had my speed up to 94.1% (with a high of 96%). This time when I went to Leveler I increased my phrase level from 50% to 90% within 30 tries.

Played through the song 4 times:

80,116 (88/88)
78,077 (87/83)
80,253 (89/55)
80,924 (90/88) New High Score

Note that the first run through on Sunday night did not drop off. In fact, that was a new high score. I dropped off on the second run but then increased the score two more times.

I think the Riff Repeater is working.


Other Stuff I Worked On
Of course I continued playing Barracuda when I was finished hammering on Carol of the Bells. I didn't make any significant progress on overall scores, but I am seeing an improvement in accuracy and streaks. I've actually dropped off of my high score (105k), but accuracy is up in the 95% range and my best streak increased to 182.

I did some Riff Repeater work on the Breakdown Sunday night. Ran Free Speed three times (30x each) at increasing levels of mastery - first at 77% then at 88% and finally at 100%. Got up to 98.8% speed at 100% mastery. After that I played through and scored 103,647 - best score for the weekend but off of my all-time high by 2k.

Sunday night I also decided to work up another low-score song that I've played at least once before: I Want Some More, which I got as an encore a month or two ago and hadn't really played since. Played through 5 times, increased score from roughly 26k and qualified the song for events with a score of 70019 and unlocked the Rust Belt Rules tone. Total play count to date: 6.