Legendary: Brian's Guitar and day 18

Brian May is the guitarist for Queen, and one of the greatest rock legends.

In 1963 though, he was just a kid with almost no money.  What he did have, though, was a father that was willing to help his son achieve his dreams.  Brian and his father scoured the neighborhood for materials.  Someone that lived near them was throwing away an old 18th century fireplace mantle, made of mahogany.  It was worm ridden in some places, but they were able to shape a neck out of it.  Next they planed some oak to be a fret board.  The inlays are mother of pearl buttons they collected.  The body is semi-hollow, being made of oak with a thin sheet of mahogany for the top.  Next he made a tremolo with a knife and some motorcycle springs.  He then found some old shelving plastic and used it to "binding" material, the outline around the body that is popular on Les Pauls.

He bought some pickups, but rewound them himself.  He also sealed their pots to protect the pickups from microphonic feedback.  This was important because he wanted to include a way to cause feedback on purpose.  His dad had enough electrical engineering know-how to help him achieve this.  He could then induce it at a whim, instead of walking in front of the speaker hand hoping it worked like Clapton and Hendrix did.  I personally did not know his guitar could do this, but now it makes so much sense.  There's this part in the solo of "We Will Rock You" that I used to characterize as "the guitar coming back and eating itself", but now that I am older, I realize its the self induced feedback that he designed to be in the guitar.  Its genius.

It took him and his father  two years to make the guitar, and now its given the world 40+ years of pure, epic, awesome rock.  The guitar now is a legend, and has been named "The Red Special".

I referenced BrianMayGuitars.co.uk to make sure I got the details right, and claim no ownership of the story.

Day 18

Today was a Sunday, so that means I had an audience while practicing.  I still have a lot of work to do on making Everlong sound really nice, and it is very hard to do an arrangement all by yourself without having a way of switching from clean to distortion.  Which, I can do do with my real amp, but the game amp not so much.  During "Learn-a-song" it will change automatically for you, as if you have a road crew.  No such luck in real life.

My girlfriend played some more of her favorite games and then shocked me with playing Smoke on the Water :)  I thought she had learned that in school band, but she said she once had an acoustic.  She had never gotten to play around on a electric with some nice distortion to it, so she had a lot of fun.  I have several times thought about buying an extra guitar to keep at her place so I could practice over there.  When I have the money, I think I'll need to get a practice amp so she can play the guitar whenever she wants to as well.  She has no PS3, so I can't loan her Rocksmith.

I loaded up a metal band in session mode, the "classic" one, I can't remember what its called right now as I type.  Just a week ago I had listened to it, and just could not achieve any type of mellowness with the band they presented.  Now, though, with palm muting, I feel like I can at least jam with a metal band.  Speaking of Palm Muting, I have heard of people using palm muting on acoustic before, but my mind just could not wrap around what or why people would do it.  I decided, since Sundays are kinda crazy anyway, to load up an acoustic simulator and see how it sounded.  I then played bayou, cajun sounding music for about 20 minutes.  That's the sound palm muting on an acoustic does.  Cajun blues.  My repertoire of genres is increasing 

Almost 1/3rd through the 60 day challenge, and I am very happy with my Rocksmith experience, I've learned things that even if I stopped using Rocksmith today, would be skills for playing guitar that I'd use the rest of my life.

Blisters and day 17

I mentioned earlier about the aches I'm getting from new techniques and how I feel like it means I'm finally "learning" guitar.  I guess I should go into that a little.  A lot of people gloss over that, but a lot of newbie players get turned off from guitar because of it.  I remember the blisters when I started bass.  Callouses do form, it just takes time.  Funny thing I should mention, bass players have different callouses than guitar players.  I obviously did not stick with guitar 10 years ago when I got Jasper but I did turn to bass playing.

Bass playing gives you what I call "cat pads" or "dog pads".  At least, from my experience.  They are broad and thick callouses made specifically for dealing with bass strings.  When I re-visited guitar a few years back, the guitar strings basically shredded these bass callouses.  I got blisters UNDER my callouses, and even tore a callous.  Over the years I still came back to guitar from time to time to play some very crappy versions of metal songs I noodled away on, and I did get an appreciation for blues, so I played some 4/4 blues rock from time to time too.  I no longer shred my callouses, and as of yet I have not got my blisters, but my fingers do still hurt, especially with bends on the thinnest strings.

I have no real advice on blisters and callouses.  There is no "magical" cure all with them.  If you moisturize, you're going to delay getting callouses, but if moisturize helps ease the pain and lets you practice, then do it.  .  I can just tell you that it gets better over time.  I also beg that you do not give up because of the physical pain.  Rocksmith has things you can do that don't involve your fretting hand, or at least let you fret with an alternate finger.  The Guitarcade is full of things that can still help out with practice even if you can't fret well.  Once you get your callouses, you can even not play for a few years and come back and the strings will not be so bad.  So its like a long lasting benefit.

Also, do not take a shower and go to playing guitar for like an hour.  Let your callouses dry completely, you can ruin months of build up by grating wet callouses on strings

Day 17

Just an uneventful practice day that is is probably boring to read.  Warm up, some palm mute practice, and then playing Everlong.  Hopefully something above is worth reading ha.

Playing Everlong over and over, at least the arrangement I have decided on playing.  Well, I still haven't decided completely on which arrangement I'm doing.  There are some signature sounds of this song that I could try and incorporate.  I don't have the technical build up of the song, but I won't be singing it, so I have to think about how bored people would get listening to the same parts over and over if I'm playing it for them.  So I'm going to do a ABC method.  A is the beginning, B is the buildup C is the chorus, D is the alternate picking method of A, and E is the finish I've devised with a little palm mute thing.  So I would play it like this: A B C D B C E.  There is a reverse version of C that I need to learn because I think I'm going to put that in as well in a 3rd chorus.  I don't know, I'll play around and decide.

Explaining Lag Part 2 and Day 14

Lag Part 2, if you're looking at this first, then go here for part 1

Lag Part 1

Television Lag Reduction

Some TV brands have a special "video game" mode that will switch off all the fancy filters and processing so that it reduces video lag and improves game to button reaction times.  If your TV does not have them, then you need to set up a visual mode for it.  I can't help with every TV, you're learning guitar, I have faith in you being able to figure out your TV.  Just go through and turn off your cinema modes, your auto-colors, your dynamic contrasts, your dynamic volume.  Digital noise reduction is a HUGE no no when it comes to gaming.  After all of this, you may need to use the Lag correction option inside the game to slow down or speed up the game, depending on how much an improvement it makes.

Signal Checkpoint Reduction

As I mentioned before, you can have a long chain of goings ons.  The worst that could happen in a typical home would look like this:

PS3 > HDMI > TV > HDMI > Receiver > Speakers

That's got the signal being Encoded and Encrypted twice, de-crypted and reshaped twice, and converted at the end.  We have to cut down on this.

Best option  to reduce audio lag is to not use digital audio at all.

PS3/360 > analog cables > Receiver > Speakers

The PS3 and 360 can output analog, your Receiver/amplifies the signal to your speakers.  The Receiver can be a stereo unit with an input, it can also be some headphones.  Every PS3 comes with a set of RCA cables.  You only need the white and red audio ones.  You can then go into sound options and choose your system to "multi-output" so that audio comes from your HDMI and your Analog connection.  This will cause an echo with your TV, so simply mute your TV and listen to the sound coming from your Stereo/Receiver/headphones.

The problem here is that not everyone has a receiver(I don't) and perhaps not every stereo has RCA connector inputs(mine doesn't).  Here is what you need:

RCA Female to 3.5mm Stereo Plug

It is less than 50 cents, and shipping is under 2 bucks.  I hook my White and Red audio cable into that, put it in my audio-in(MP3 player hookup on some stereos) and I'm set to go.  Alternately you can use this to plug into your smart phone and record yourself playing very cleanly.

I can confirm this works.  The game's lag feels similar to my actual amp's lag, which is pretty imperceptible to me while playing cords.  Without this set up, using HDMI sound, the delay would mess up my strumming patterns, and I could not play as fast as I was able because the delay kickback would bother me.

Here is a component cable for the PS3 that will work, its under 5 bucks
5 point Component cable for PS3

Use that with the RCA>Stereo dongle, and you'll be doing great.  Remember you have to activate the audio to be sent in both signals using the PS3, and you'll want to mute your TV so you don't hear echo.

EDIT: If you have speakers for your computer that are plugged into a power outlet, then you have a "receiver" built into them.  You could plug the stereo jack mentioned above into them and it will be just as good as the connection I personally use.

Day 14

Holy crap 2 weeks?  It does not feel like I've been doing this for two whole weeks.

I am working on learning a song inside Rocksmith.  I have not chosen which I want to do to 100%, but I'm trying several different ones.  I have to really like the song to put this much effort into it this early on.  I do not think I can get 50% difficulty and be satisfied till later.   Candidates so far are Last Dance with Mary Jane, You Really Got Me, and Sixteen Saltines.

While auto-wah>chorus>reverb made me feel like a rock star, palm mutes and power chords make me feel \m/etal.  I am a huge 90's metal fan.  I basically considered Dimebag as my less well behaved older brother I never had.  My friends and cousins used to watch the Pantera home videos, it was like Jackass before Jackass in a lot of ways.  Lots of metal that I find I like does not have the super squealy guitars like the 80's metal, it has the palm muted chugging riffs of the 90's.  I palm mute practiced for at least an hour today.  Pretty much the same things over and over, but that's how you get muscle memory.

I have a leg up on the Power Chords.  I knew how to play "Brain Stew" by Green Day for years.  It is a power chord, and so my fingers already have that shape memorized.  I have also used that shape while practicing the intro to "Clean My Wounds" by Corrosion of Conformity, a riff from their guitarist Pepper Keenan.  Pepper Keenan is one of the top riff masters of today, you can also hear him doing the slow/sludge thing with Phil Anselmo in the metal super group "Down".  Look up Stone the Crow and Eyes of the South for songs by them.

Tomorrow will be another day I can devote several hours to playing, and now that I have my new lag-free set up, I'll be wanting to put it through its paces.