GuitarCade and Day 05

There's always a tipping point for me to be enthusiastic about something.  Rocksmith 2014 is not the first Rocksmith.  A few other games tried to do this whole "really learn" guitar thing while playing videogames.  I'm a skeptic of almost anything, its just how I am.  It wasn't until I saw this demo on the Guitardcade that I finally said "you know, I think I want to do this"

The Guitarcade is not needed.  On a spec sheet to CEO's, the devs could have just added in a bunch of video lessons, included the "learn a song" feature and called it a day.  They could have also just included in a couple of junky, half-assed games.  The guys and gals that made Rocksmith went the extra mile on these games.  Each one has its own set of achievements and challenges.  The Guitarcade is set up to look like an 80's/90's arcade with a retro feel to the art.  The art is not just mechanical, whoever worked on these had a real love for arcades.  Scale Warriors even has a start menu like the classic beat'em ups.

I know my weakness.  I get bored of one thing I"m doing, and I move on to something else.  I do not mean in the long term, I have remarkable long term attention retention.  I get bored walking on a treadmill, I have to walk outside so the scenery changes.  I get bored practicing scales.  So the Guitarcade, I hope, is my answer.  I feel like the Guitarcade will give me direction in practicing, and will give me something to focus on even after the 60 day challenge.  If it were not for the Guitarcade and the Session sections, I would not be having as much fun and learning as much practical application of theory.

Day 05

With Day 05 I finally finished all the pedal missions.  I messed around and gave myself a new tone afterward.  I put a super fuzzy pedal in front of a low chorus.  I then put that into a clean Fender style amp.  In the effects loop I put another fuzz, this one with lots of low end.  What this accomplished was a super distorted ultra fuzz with a slight throat fuzz on the chorus effect.  Its pretty fun to play around with, almost gets that American Woman fuzz going on.

I had some Guitarcade challenges come through.  For some reason I really dislike the string set up on the cowboy shooting saloon game, and the Scale Warriors game.  I know it makes sense to have them that way, but for me it feels terribly backward.  I need to get used to it and force myself to play them, but it is discouraging.

Something encouraging though, I went ahead and tried Return to Castle Chordead.  Apparently this was a favorite from the last game.  It is an on rails shooter sort of like Sega's "House of the Dead" games.  Sega famously created "Typing of the Dead" where you kill zombies by typing phrases instead of using a light gun.  Rocksmith copies this, except you play chords to shoot the zombies.  The zombie in front may be one chord, while the zombie in the back is another.  Now, I suck at chords.  Its my main block from "knowing" guitar.  I did not think I was ready for this game.  You know what?  I did not do half bad.  It starts slow and by the end of it I was reliable killing zombies with 3 different chords.  I know I"m still not ready for it, but its fun and I don't see the harm in repeating the first level a few times.

Finished out by playing in a blues band session.  I did not make any real breakthroughs today, but it felt good doing some easy chord changes.  Also, I did my warm up practice track with no mistakes first try.