Youtube likes and Day 43

I debated on if I wanted to do this post now or not.  I have a feeling most people read these at work, so its probably a little boring to get a post of videos.  Still, this is sort of a shout out to those that are helping me and do not know it, and a little bit of a "hey check these guys out" as well.  These are a couple of youtube channels that are helping me.

Rob "Chappers" Chapman

His channel is probably 60% gear, 20% tips, and 20% vlog.  The best thing about his channel?  Watching them play.  No seriously.  Rob is a "metal" kind of player, and Cap-10 is a bluesy player.  They play practically the same couple of licks on everything they review, and they do it on purpose so you can compare and contrast the equipment.  This also means that you're learning and not even knowing it.  They aren't just showing off, this stuff is pretty simple to medium in skill requirements and their channel sound is amazing.

Marty Z

Marty Z does a lot of rock and blues, but I watch him mainly for his acoustic instructionals.  He's a laid back guy with good sound on his channel(this is more rare on Youtube than you'd think).  I like that he not only teaches you the "correct" way of playing, he teaches you "correct" variations on playing certain songs.  He's not a slave to doing it "like the artist" and I think that's an important lesson.  He's good stuff, his lessons are free even though he works for a pay website, and all around is really helpful.  He does a good mix of "pop" acoustic songs, but is really focused on 60's and 70's rock.




Day 43

I am quickly falling into playing Blues-rock and Metal(of the Doom/Sabbath varietal), which are two genres I really don't mind being practiced in.  Thing is, I love 70's rock.  So all yesterday when I practiced, I thought of 70's rock songs while playing and tried to match some phrases.  I was not trying to actually copy a song, because I'm not good enough to do that yet, but at least use it to get me into the mood of playing less blues inspired rock'n'roll and more pure Rock.  It resulted in a couple of new phrase recordings, so I'm quite happy about that.  It is still hard as hell not to fill "space" in the practice session with blues licks.  I really need to just learn some Rock licks.  Still, I'm trying to focus on basics all through the 60 day challenge, and not so much learning songs... after the 60 days though...  I have plans.

The "accents" lesson in Rocksmith seemed a little silly to me.  Rocksmith 2014 is amazing and they obviously did a lot of great new work on it over Rocksmith.  I read and watch comparisons and I really do not think Rocksmith 2013 was something I'd have stuck with.  Rocksmith '14 has the session mode, much better Guitarcade, and the Riff Repeater... I can't imagine trying to learn any songs from the game without Riff Repeater.  If you get 2013, just do it if you see it cheap and you want to import all the songs from it.

I would like to see some videos added for the Chord and Technique section of the game.  There's this "Tool Box" section you can access that is for quick reference, so I can see why they did not do videos on most of it, but things like "tapping" and "slap and pop" techniques should at least have a link to the Lesson on them.  Idealy just a quick refresher video so the player doesn't have to watch all the lesson again.  Something for the next iteration.  Really though, I am so extremely happy with 2014's edition.  They did not just sit back and do nothing to improve it.  I see now a competitor on the market that uses big names, selling them as "instructors" and presenting the songs as tabs on screen.  If I had never played Rocksmith I would think Bandfuse made a lot of sense.  After seeing it in action, I think that maybe the Rocksmith version of notes coming head on is a better way, but maybe I'm just used to it.  Not going to turn this into a Bandfuse review/bash though.  Just look at some vids if you're interested.  I'd still pick up Rocksmith 2014 instead.