Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

I did a couple of extra hours yesterday evening while my enthusiasm is still high. I can’t decide how much extra time to put in or not. On one hand I should get the practice in while I still want to. But on the other maybe it will be less frustrating and I’ll get fed up less quickly if I just stick to the one hour per day.

I spent quite a lot of time on the “guitarcade” stuff, which are arcade games that teach you basic skills like getting the right string and navigating the fretboard. These are brilliant for making repetitive learning fun but you can end up losing on them quite fast and then you have to go through two stats screens, the start screen and the little intro animation before you get back to the game. It feels like I spend more time waiting for the game to restart than I do playing it a lot of the time.

I’m also struggling with some of the basics even though I’m doing okay on the harder stuff. For example I’ve completed the chords lesson to 100% but I’m finding it really hard to hold the pick without gripping it and I really have to focus to do alternative picking (where you go up and down). Maybe this will be easier when I actually know which string is which without looking.

Today I had some problems with the String Skip Saloon game. It isn’t registering a lot of my low-E strums. I thought it might be my guitar at first , especially as it fell apart today. However I had soon had that fixed with my trusty screwdriver and yet the problem continued. This meant I kept losing games because I was strumming E to shoot the bandits but they weren’t being shot.

Sometimes it would just buffer a little and then you would strum again before it caught up with you – sending two shots, one bouncing off the wall and moving all the other bandits forward. Other times it just wouldn’t register no matter how many times I tried and the bandits got to the bar. I had to give up playing the game in the end because it just wasn’t working at all. I tried calibrating my guitar but no solution there either. I might need to fiddle with my pickups as noted on their official forums.

I’ve started playing the ninja slide game too, but I don’t think I will get very far on that until I have mastered navigating the fretboard. I set a new high score on ducks redux though, so hopefully that point isn’t too far away.

Still enjoying it, still making some measurable process. The automatic difficulty level is pretty cool. I will play the same song and it will start throwing new things that me. Not that I hit them, but when you miss them all Rocksmith then goes off and recommends some lessons.

Hit my first two-string note today. Took a while but eventually I got there. I think with chords it is just going to be a case of learning the hand positions until it is second nature. It also really hurts my fingers.

One of my criticisms of Rocksmith was that it doesn’t teach you what fingers to use so I was just using my index finger for everything. However it turns out that that is just to get beginners going and as you improve it adds what finder you should be using for each string onto the display!

I almost got stuck in a loop on the slides tutorial as it kept slowing the track down and then I could do it, but when it went at full speed I couldn’t. So we went round in circles with “let’s slow it down a little” and then “you’re ready for this at full speed now” for quite a while. Eventually I mastered it though.

Rocksmith is a game that teaches you to play guitar. It is similar to Guitar Hero, but you play with an actual guitar. They claim it is the fastest way to learn. They also boast of the “60-day challenge” – play for one hour per day, for 60 days, and you will learn guitar.

I’ve had a guitar for ten years but I never took formal lessons because I didn’t want it to become a chore. I was still in education at the time and didn’t want another round of boring homework to do every night. I just had fun strumming it and learning a few basic notes without any real plan. Now I’m older and my cost benefit analysis says it is probably worth trying for two months, so I’m taking Ubisoft up on their challenge. As an added incentive, I’ve told myself that if I make it to the end of the 60-day challenge, I can buy myself a new guitar.

I started yesterday and will be trying to keep a diary of my progress on here. Everything will be filed under a new category “Music” on my blog. Hopefully it won’t get too annoying.

As I’ve covered already, my starting point is zero. I can’t play any musical instrument and I wouldn’t describe myself as having any music talent. I really enjoying singing, but nobody else enjoys it when I do. If Rocksmith can teach me to play, there is hope for basically anyone.

Day 1 entry

Managed to get everything set up. The tuning was a bit frustrating as I thought I kept getting it right but the game insisted I didn’t until I continued to very slightly tweak it for a few minutes per string. Once this was done though I got into the game, watched a few of the videos on strumming and stuff like that then tried a song.

The time flew by; I had done an hour before I knew it. I then set my timer to give me another half an hour which I spent playing a game where you have to shoot ducks by playing the right note and before I knew it this extra half an hour had gone too. I went back to play X-Kid one final time and actually managed to hit some of the notes despite fret and string changes. Sounds simple, but I could not have done that when I started today.

I’ve never walked out of a gig before because it was so bad. That is, until I went to see Tenacious D.

The gig was really late. It was billed as starting at 7pm but when I arrived at 8pm the support act was still on and didn’t disappear until 8:25. This meant it was nearly 9pm by the time Tenacious D took to the stage.

The venue certainly didn’t help. Leeds Academy sell more tickets than they actually have seats for on the balcony with the end result being that a lot of people are standing. Because you face down towards the stage, this means if you’re not right at the front you can’t see anything.

I could barely see Jack Black and when I tried to ask the staff where I could actually see the whole stage, which seemed a fair enough question for the £35 I paid, they physically pushed me away and just said “not there”.

Not that it was a specular spectacle to behold anyway. With the description of a stripped-back acoustic session I expected an atmosphere that felt intimate and low-key. What they actually seemed to mean was that Jack and Kyle simply cannot keep up anymore.

Between every song there would be a few minutes of silence while they tried to get their breath back, had a drink and towelled off their sweating faces. No continuation, no stage presence, it could barely be called a show.

After half an hour I just couldn’t take anymore. Heart-breaking.

I can’t stop listening to Lady Gaga’s new album. It is excellent.

It is a bit of a departure from her previous albums is that it is almost a rock opera. But that is probably being far too generous as it is nowhere near as polished as say American Idiot. But there is a loose journey that progresses through the album.

It is probably not an album for those that aren’t already Gaga fans. But for those that are, you won’t be disappointed.

Last week, I went to see All Time Low. I was probably the only person there old enough to buy alcohol, who wasn’t there chaperoning their child. I was worried every time the security guy walked past that we was going to say “excuse me sir, you’re clearly not a fan of this band.” Unfortunately, I have to go see pop punk bands like All Time Low because all of the bands I used to like have stopped touring after all their other fans grew up and matured.

I didn’t get there until they were half way through their set, but that actually worked quite well as I just got to hear their good songs :D.