Hand stretches and day 33

Don't be a hero.

Everyone should be warming up their hands and arms for use before playing.  I am surprised this is not gone over in Rocksmith.  When I first started bass, I had to find ways of keeping my fingers and arms moving at work throughout the day.  They would get tired and ache all the time while I was playing.  Now that has not been an issue for years.  Since I very much play notes and I arpeggiate chords with bass, I never really had to stretch my hands.  I stopped doing the stretching exercises.

I have had to start that again.  My arms do not ache(maybe my shoulders, but that's already stopping only 33 days in), but I know that my fingers could stretch for chording a lot easier if I started up a stretching routine.  While looking on youtube for some recommended ones, I came across 2 different people that talked about not stretching before playing guitar, getting carpal tunnel, and having to not play for 4-5 months because of it.   It doesn't even take you 5 minutes to do the adequate stretches.  Here's a stretching vid, it is more comprehensive than the "for guitarists" vids I've seen, and I have found it is really really good.

The results are immediate.  This is not something you have to do a few times before you see the result.  Now, over time you'll be able to stretch further, yea, but immediately your chording should feel a lot better after doing stretches like these before you play.


Day 33

Split my playing in 2 today, so I got more Guitarcade practice in than usual.  This is because I really do use them to warm my hands up.  I guess its a good time to do a post about hand exercises, you've probably read it before this then, even though I'm typing it after, so I'll not go into it here.

I've been neglecting going through my session mode missions.  I pretty much figured out everything on screen in the first couple of times playing.  I'm not someone that can ignore something and say "I'm sure I'll be told what it is later".  No, when I'm presented with something I don't know, I instinctively find ways of figuring it out if I can't figure it out myself.  So going through those missions were tedious, but there is one saving grace: the recommended bands part of the missions.  I probably would not have rocked with a kazoo, something I do just for "fun" in the past few days, if I had not been given the band as a mission requirement.  Session mode continues to be very important for me, as I wish I could jam with people more than I do.  Nothing helps more than playing with other people.  Playing by yourself in your room or garage, you can develop an isolation syndrome where you think you're improving, but you're not really doing anything useful to anyone but yourself.  To your ear its a neat new phrase, but without knowing how it fits in with a band, it may be kind of bad.

I am seriously about to give up on the "learn a song" section of the game.  I have yet to learn any skills for playing other things while playing a song in this section.  When I'm playing, the song is broken up into so many small chunks, and the difficulty swings wildly from easy to hard at the drop of a hat, and I focus more on doing the thing instead of learning a song.  Seriously.  I think I'm done with that aspect.  It does not help me.  I only get angry.  Not because the songs are too hard, that would never make me angry, but the way the game adjusts and chops up the songs, its useless to my brain.  It helps zero.  Maybe time will change it.  I've several times said "ok, today I'm going to play a crap ton of Learn a Song" only to get so angry I have to walk away from the Tv for a few hours.  I'm not an angry person, its not easy to make me angry.  If I focus on Lessons, Guitarcade, and Session mode, I can play for 2+ hours and not blink.  Five minutes into Learn a Song and I"m ready to break stuff.

I guess I"m a little harsh on the Learn a Song thing.  There's plenty there that can help people.  Its not bad for me due to Ubisoft's lack of trying.  I think I've just convinced myself over the years that Guitar Hero is a waste of effort if its not for a room full of people, that playing tiny bits of songs that don't make you sounds like a song is a waste of my time.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted if this changes.  I hope it changes.

Spotlight Guitarcade: Return to Castle Chordead and Day 28

Return to Castle Chordead

Return to Castle Chordead is a game focusing on helping you transition from Chord to Chord, while learning the chords.  In it, you have a sort of lightning guitar that will shoot the enemies as you play the chord that appears above their heads.  If it takes a while, the chords will start showing up in a chart near the enemy.  You "fly" through the level in first person mode, stopping at scenic areas while the enemies, in this case they are the undead, come at you.  Play the right chord, shoot energy at the undead, destroy them.

This game is based on the old rail shooter by Sega, "House of the Dead".  It is said to be "on rails" because you do not really control how you move, it is more like a roller coaster that stops while you shoot zombies.  This type of game has already been used in learning, as there is a "Typing of the Dead" series where you typed words and phrases to attack the zombies.




Return to Castle Chordead was a wonderful surprise to me.  I played it first because I had a mission to, and it was way back in the beginning days of me playing.  I thought I would be horrible at it, since I was horrible at the space shooter game.  To my surprise, I did really really well in the first game.  The graphics are right up there with the House of the Dead when it first came out, so I think it matches the style very well.  Return To Castle Chordead is super campy though, but I think that is very much on purpose.  It is almost a parody of House of the Dead instead of an homage.

My main problem with it is that you are not in control of the chords used.  I really think it would be much more useful if the difficulty was based on the enemies, not the difficulty of the chords, and you get to choose the chords if you wished.  I guess it makes it much more of a "game" to make you progress through though, so maybe its incentive to keep playing.  Still, this is a sort of minor criticism that could fit in a few games in the Guitarcade.

Day 28

Something new and awesome happened today.  I was at my girlfriend's house and she had the TV on as background noise while she made me a wonderful dinner.  I glanced up from my tablet and saw a girl playing the guitar in some commercial for the Disney Channel.  The cool thing was, I was picking out the chords she was using.  I was doing it by sight, and I was recognizing the way she was holding her fingers.  This is really cool to me, and it makes me excited about my musical future.  One day I hope I could do that by the sound alone, but biology may have made that impossible, at least I could watch someone play a song and learn it by watching instead of having to look up notation or "how to" videos.

I am finding that saying the chord is really helping me while I do my stuff in Rocksmith.  I am used to video games, and there was a time I played some Guitar Hero.  The colors come and go and you're not worried really about remembering WHAT the color is, only that you pushed the button are are waiting for the next color.  Video games have conditioned my brain to a certain way of learning.  Some how, when I say "E minor" or "A minor" its getting stuck in my brain that I'm not playing a game, I'm learning guitar.  I also kind of equate this habit with being able to watch other people play and recognize their chords.  Instead of thinking "oh that's the part of the practice song here where I do this" its "that's an E minor".  I don't know if I'm really describing it correctly ir explaining why saying it helps, you'd think that's be like saying "looking at your fingers helps", that it would be something you'd want to eventually ween yourself off of doing.  I guess it is just making it feel like learning and less like performing the correct procedure in a game.

A few days ago I went and bought a few things for my musical stuff.  One of the things I picked up was a 1.14 mm gauge pick from Dunlop.  When I first started I got the "medium" gauge Fender picks.  A few years back I wanted to try picks on my bass, you know... cause sometimes you just wonder.  Anyway, I had several left over and I've ended up using a .88 dunlop since I've started the Rocksmith challenge.  Well, I have to try the extremes, I can't see myself ever liking anything flimsier than a Fender "medium", so now I need to find the top.  This 1.14 has basically no flex to it.  The attack this thing makes(the strike through on the string) is really intense.  I do not thing I do chords very well using it, but I really like the sound my blues playing sounds with it.  I like it, but I really think that .88 is what I'm going to stick with.  The .88 picks are still very stiff, but not so stiff they make chord strumming too distinct.  With the 1.14 I was almost sounding like I was quickly arppegiating the chords.