Day 60

I'll start by saying this:

The 60 Day Challenge is to set up some Facebook-like Ubisoft thing and keep it updated.  It is also to play an hour inside the game.  My Ubisoft page did not like to update, so it says I have a grand total of... 9 hours played, which is horse-shit.  Next, I did not stick to playing the whole hour inside Rocksmith.  I am going to practice wherever it inspires me to practice, and some days it was figuring out how far I can push my amp's tone shaping abilities; some days it was practicing unplugged on my porch while I watched it snow.  Some days I spent 4 hours doing nothing but Session mode.  Some days I did 45 minutes of Guitarcade and then switched to my amp.  So technically I did not take the 60 day challenge "correctly" so take that how you will.

Day 60

Before...

It has been 60 days since I started using Rocksmith.  When I began, I had some theoretical knowledge of what I was supposed to do with a guitar.  I had some years of experience playing bass guitar.  I could fake my way around to sounding like I could play something resembling blues.  I have a sound file of me trying to make what I understood as "power chords" sound like a song.  It is pretty terrible now that I listen to it.  My fingers were awkward past the strings that my bass had.  My picking was super sloppy, and so "wrong" that my finger nails were scrapping against the strings and hurting for days.  Fretting on the thinnest strings hurt like hell, and felt like the strings were going to shred my finger tips.  If someone showed me where to play, I could do some stuff... mostly sounding like a bassist trying to play guitar, but I could not come up with stuff on my own in a "correct" way.

After...
(next paragraph omits things I already learned by playing bass, the lists include only things I learn and attribute to Rocksmith)

After 60 days I have knowledge of the Pentatonic scales and how to use them in a band setting.  This is directly attributed to Rocksmith because I practiced with the bands in the Session section of the game.  I can improv play lead in whatever key a song calls for.  My picking has come full circle, I now have a much better attack on the strings, especially strumming.  My fingernails never touch the strings.  My fret hand no longer hurts when I use them all around the neck.  My fingers were numb for weeks while they got used to playing, but now have full feeling back in them, and retain their toughness with dealing with strings.  I have a few pages of chords that I know from memory and can switch between many of them fast enough to play songs.  I can sight recognize chords being played by people I watch.  I can improv in blues, rock, heavy metal, and I can imitate 60's psychedelic rock, 70's hard rock, 90's indie alternative and punk, and several types of metal.  I can do a little funk.  I now can palm mute, use double stops effectively, play harmonics and somewhat tremolo pick.

What of Rocksmith?

I know I'm forgetting to list stuff.  I think that's pretty good progress for 60 days with a "video game".  I can fully recommend Rocksmith 2014.  I also encourage people to not get the original 2013 edition, because all the things I highly love and have highly helped me are not features in 2013.  Easily the most amazing thing about Rocksmith 2014 is the session mode, followed by Guitarcade and then the tone designer.  I think that as time goes by I will find the Riff Repeater to be invaluable as well.  Things in Rocksmith 2014 have pushed me further than I could have gone on my own by just practicing an hour a day by myself.  I am much further than I thought I would get in the 60 days, not only in music theory and knowledge, but application as well.

Do I consider myself a guitarist?

That's a hard question.  I do consider myself a bassist.  So do I know as much on Guitar as I do on Bass?  I think perhaps so.  But then why will I not call myself a guitarist... it has got to be my hangup on chords.  I just will not consider myself a guitarist till I can sit in with someone and have them say "its (insert chord progression) in the key of (insert key)" and be able to play that.  In reality... if I have the balls to call myself a bassist, then I should be able to call myself a guitarist too.  If I was asked, I would say "I could play a little guitar".  So yea... I guess I'm a guitarist of the beginner variety.  I do not know if I approached this as a beginner guitarist would though.  I came at the game wanting to learn to be good at jamming and session stuff.  I'm not here to learn some songs, I'm here to learn what to do during ALL songs.  I'm not here to learn what someone came up, I'm here to learn how to come up with my own stuff.  My musical goal is not to have a band, and play concerts.  I want to get together with some friends, have some beers, and do some jam room rock.  I'm well on my way to being able to do that.

Where do I go from here?

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog.  I had fun doing the 60 day challenge, and I really hope to keep this pace in learning guitar.  If this inspires you to get Rocksmith, let me know, it would make my day.  Posts here will slow in pace.  It will be added into rotation in my main blog that I link to my real life friends, and so perhaps one post a week.

What about your playing?

I am going to continue playing the Guitarcade, especially because it is fun.  I am going to continue through the lessons as I come to things I need to know or practice.  Songs I am going to do differently.   I am going to come at the songs in game with a hybrid Rocksmith/Youtube approach.  The session mode is still my #1 source of practice and would be worth buying the game for alone.  60 days are over, but I know I've only begun, as cheesey as that sounds today.  The challenge never said that after 60 days you'd be a guitarist and know how to play a million different chords with only your pinky.  It is a great start, however, and I certainly could recommend a beginner to do a 120 day challenge.  Then a 180 day challenge, whatever keeps them practicing and playing.

Any final words?

Rocksmith is not a effortless method to learning guitar.  Someone that is used to figuring out video games and working on accomplishing achievements and moving on is going to have problems.  You can not approach it like a video game.  You have to approach it like learning anything else.  You have to redo lessons, you have to redo practice tracks, you have to repeat things over and over until it becomes muscle memory, and then do it again.  Rocksmith is a lesson plan, it is a teaching tool, it is a learning device and a guitar technique encyclopedia.  It is not a "get rich quick" scheme.

Do not under estimate the value of Ducks Redux.

Make something new.

Be creative.

If you're not creating,

you're consuming.

Be a creator, bring something new to this world.

TV Yellow and Day 51

TV Yellow

This finish, more than any, made me raise an eyebrow when I saw it.  I would expect such a color from Fender, but not Gibson.  Fender used surplus car paint supplies, and did the whole art deco clean look.  Gibson, on the other hand, used stained and burst finishes that required much more time consuming, hand-crafted work.  So what is up with this yellow finish?

Well the hint is in the name.  TV Yellow.  The story goes that one of the Gibson people had visited the set of a medical drama during the 1950's.  To their amazement, the entire staff of the hospital were clothed in yellow scrubs and yellow lab coats.  It intrigued them, so they asked the people on the set.  They told him that the glare of the lights in the studio would smear and reflect weird into the cameras, which were all black and white at the time.  The Gibson guy knew instantly because they had the same problems with instruments used in live performances.


To a black and white TV, a yellow guitar appears as a very bright, white color.  Gibson went further though, and they established a yellow color that looked yellow to the naked eye, but would show the wood grain when viewed through a television camera, making it seem like it was a very high quality, time consuming translucent white finish on the instrument.

The days of needing the TV Yellow color are over, but enough musicians used them in the past that they are now considered a staple finish, especially for the more streamlined models of the 60's that Gibson came out with, including the SG body styled Les Pauls, the Les Paul Jr's, and Les Paul double cut Specials.

Day 51

Knockin' on Heaven's door is still going.  I'm doing what they recommend, and I've gone up about 10% mastery with it today.  I guess that's working?  I said I'd give the Rocksmith way of teaching songs a fair shake in these last 10 days of the challenge and so I'm sticking to it.  It really does not seem that hard of a song.

I looked yesterday at my Ubisoft account, an account so old it had a password I know I had not used since my Everquest days.  It says I have 3 games, but two of them are so old they aren't registering as games that the Ubisoft website can pull up lol.  I'm thinking it was Shadowbane that tied me to the account.  Anyway.  It says 9 hours played!  9 hours??!?  What the hell, I was past 9 hours in the first couple of days haha.  I have no idea how its reading it, but its reading it very very wrongly.  I know that I have not done all my 1 hour of playing inside Rocksmith, but I know from experience that I have waaaaaaay closer if not past 60 hours already.  I've spent entire afternoons, 3+ hours in session mode, especially at the beginning.

I am so excited about the future.  I do not see the 60 days being up as an "end" to the challenge, if anything I see it as a looming "its time to get down to business" thing.  I plan on taking up through the bass route, and doing more in the rhythm section of the game.  I'm going to put my nose to the grindstone learning 70's hard rock because it looks like I have a very good aptitude for it.  Sadly the non-Zeppelin 70's rock, but the power chord and blues rock, yes.  I'm already working Stranglehold, Black Betty, and Alright Now(by Free) into a combined melody.  This blog should continue, maybe not daily, but in some compacity.