Spotlight Guitarcade: String Skip Saloon and Day 41

String Skip Saloon

String Skip Saloon is a game where you play a bartender/owner cow-girl.  Bandits have decided to raid and destroy your saloon, so you have to defend it by shooting a pop-cork gun at them to knock them out.  Each "lane" of bandits is a string on your guitar.  You pluck/pick/play the string to make the cow-girl fire in that lane.

This game is a take on a game I had never known about or played until a little over a year ago.  It is called "Tapper" and the reason I know about it is because it was the video game character bar in Wreck-it-Ralph.  In that game you pour and sling beer down the counter tops to the awaiting cowboys.  The sounds are very period correct, and the game is almost exactly what you'd expect from a game inspired by Tapper.

String Skip Saloon helped me immensely... kind of.  The game did not help me learn the strings, though since I was a bass player before, I had practice with that sort of thing already.  What the game got me used to was the way the game presented the lessons and songs.  In traditional music, the top string is actually the bottom string.  Meaning, "high" "top" string is your highest pitched, skinniest string, and your "low" or "bottom" string is your thickest, deep bass string.  Counter intuitive to beginners, but "normal" for anyone that's used sheet music or tabs.  The way the game is set up, like Guitar Hero where the notes fly toward you, having it a mirror image of your guitar is easier... if you're new.  String Skip Saloon helped me learn an alternate view of notes and schematics and get "used" to it.  I flipped the strings on screen, that IS an option, so it would feel familiar, but it made the actual song and lesson thing harder.  So you'll just have to figure out which is best for you, and String Skip Saloon can help.

Changes I'd make?  I'd allow the strings to be switched for JUST this game, instead of having to switch them for all the lessons and songs as well.

Day 41

I have said before that because of my written word habits, I record just about anything interesting I might not remember later.  I came across one of the recordings when I was practicing power chords.  It was a clean recording, but there was a part where I continued through the chord into a sort of lead phrase and it sounded great... I stopped for some reason and didn't continue and went back to the chords.  I could not remember how I played what was recorded there, but it caused me to get to experimenting.

I'm working on moving in and out of chords while playing some lead.  I'm trying to get it all to sound like it all fits.  I know a lot of it is timing, but it is also getting the phrase right in the amount of time before you have to go back to the chord so that you don't sound like you put a halt on the song.  At least, that's what is going through my mind as I work on and try to get it working right.  Its much easier to do when playing some chugging metal, because the distortion will carry you through.  With a clean sound, its much harder, and so that's what I've been focusing on.  The more I get into chords, the more I want an acoustic.  Rocksmith has an acoustic modeling amp, so that's a help.

Once again, and I can't emphasize this enough, Power Chords are wonderful for practicing this.  Don't turn your nose at them.  I can go back and forth to them easily, and it really gets my confidence up.  Once you're physically prepared for this kind of play, you can then move on to using other types of chords.  They can easily be stepping stones, and they sound great and that's encouraging.  They help me and so I can only assume they'd help you.

I guess I have not had a huge "break through" in a while, and I'm not sure if this is good reading or not.  Playing both rhythm and lead in the same song might not be an epiphany but it is a real skill I'm practicing along with chords.  My pieces are getting better though.  My phrases are matching up and I'm sure what I play can be confused as music.

Wahhhhhh and Day 34

The Wah, the Auto-Wah, and the Envelope Filter.

These are some of my favorite filters for just having "fun" with.  If you are new to instruments, you can sound like you know what you're doing if you have one of these to play with.  Its the funk "wick wicka wick wah" sound, the "bow chicka wow wow" sound.  To the new, they all seem the same, but to someone presented with the 3, it becomes a little more clear.  So here's what they are, and consequentially the differences.

First off I should talk about the origins.  The origins in modern music is thought to be traced back to the 20's and 30's when horn players learned they could manipulate the horn mute in and out to create a "wah" kind of vocal sound to their playing.  Later this was reproduced in electronics in the form of a Wah Pedal, later came the envelope filters.  Sitars are known to be able to make this type of sound too, but the influence in modern rock is from the horn players.

A wah-pedal is a filter that let's you change the filter's "Peak" by using your foot.  Where the peak is determines where the sound gets highest or lowest in the signal modulation.  You can hear it very noticeably in Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child(slight return)".  The Wah-pedal makes every performance a unique experience, with slight changes in how much the player uses the pedal affecting how the song sounds.  The performance is not standardized, but there's much more "expression" from the player.

(video above is my favorite pedal of any type for any instrument of all time, the Bass IQ from EBS)

Technically an Auto-wah is an Envelope Filter.  A pedal uses an Envelope follower to create a voltage from the volume signal of the guitar.  This volume signal changes the peak of the modulation of the signal.  The difference is that an Auto-wah typically stays set at a fixed position that you choose and creates a much more consistent sound.  This is useful for recording or freeing the player from having to manipulate a pedal and focus on playing.  The notes will always trigger the auto-wah at the same spot and make the same sound.  What is typically known as an Envelope Filter allows the intensity of your playing to alter the sweep.  If you play lightly, you sweep slower, lower, longer and softer.  If you play hard, you'll trigger the sound to make a fast, quick, snappy and short sweeping sound.  It brings in the "expression" from a wah pedal, but frees the player from having to mess with a pedal just like an auto-wah.

I am a huge fan of Envelope Filters on bass guitar, though my enthusiasm for wah of all types on guitar is growing.

Day 34

Wow.  Some days.  Some times there's like this thing in the air.  Your state of mind, the atmosphere, the guitar is tuned just right or the knobs on the amp are tweaked to some kind of point... Today I had the most metal practice session ever.  Like, I would not mind playing in front of some people kind of playing.  I needed extra arms to make the lml etal horns while I played.  I was playing so metal, I am pretty sure that I accidentally bumped into actual parts of Black Sabbath songs.  I would look up those parts to see how close I was to them, but then I'd be so excited I'd play 3 more hours and I just can't do that right now lol.

Its snowing outside, and I'm pretty sure I was playing the Viking raiding anthem.  I dare not entice them more.

The ironic thing is, I was like "ok, today I'm mastering the next tier of "Simple kind of man".  A song that is decidedly un-metal.  I just don't know what got into me, but I kinda wished it did so more often.  Anyway, I have began noticing people playing chords that I know while watching TV, movies or youtube.  Now I'm starting to recognize when people are playing a bunch of power chords.  I was watching some really good pedal demos today, demos done by the people that make the pedals, and they sounded really good and all they did was play power chords.  I experimented with power chords which lead to my metal practice today.

I know there's a hipster sort of thing going on and has been for a long while, where if someone is playing a lot of power chords, some smart ass says "pfft, they're just playing a bunch of power chords" and frequently its by people that a power chord is just about the only term outside of "note" that they know.  Come on.  People are better than that.  Music is music.  Do not become a snob of technique, because let me tell you, unless you're Bucket Head, Joe Satch or Malmsteen, there's always going to be someone that can put your skill to shame.

Appreciate the simple and complex.

And never be ashamed of the music you make(I need to listen to this advice myself).

Legendary: Bass of Doom and day 32

It is no secret that Jaco was a troubled man.  Mentally unstable and an abuser of drugs, Jaco's reputation for being troubled was only matched by his virtuosity as a bass player.  In a spark of this inspiration, he pulled the frets out of his Fender with a butter knife, filled in the holes with plastic wood, and then coated the board with epoxy.  He had just invented the modern Fretless bass.

I waited to talk about this bass till after I had said something about the "Tool" vs "Art" views people have on instruments.  Jaco definitely fell in the "tool" category.  All he cared about was the sound that it made, and so he had several basses over the years depending on the sound he wanted.  His most famous though was a 1962 jazz that he defretted, now called "The Bass of Doom".  Jaco was reported to have drug it around by its headstock, letting the body scrape on concrete and tile floors.

In the mid-60's, the broadcast company CBS bought the Fender company and started running it like any other business.  They started gutting out the higher quality parts and started substituting bulk supplies of wood, cheaper grade hardware, and cutting corners on assembly.  The 1962 that Jaco played was a Pre-CBS Fender, of which the Jazz bass is the rarer type, as the P-bass, Stratocaster, and Telecaster had been made in the 50's, and in higher numbers.  It is of the most valuable and expensive bass types in the world.


Shortly before Jaco met his death, his bass was reportedly stolen from a park bench in New York.  Jaco was never one to cherish the instrument, and simply left it there while he did other things.  The bass disappeared for many years until someone brought it into a shop in 2007 to sell it for some cash.



How did the bass disappear so easily?  Well it was almost always photographed in its 70's and 80's condition.  In 1986 the bass was broken into chunks.  For five months a luthier put it back together.  They had to use maple vaneers on the top and back of the body to add stability.  This radically changed the look of it.  There were also other rumors.  There was confusion over if the bass had been lightly spray painted purple by the mentally unstable musician in his later years.  Also, there were many look alikes by the early 90's, as the color was common, and so were the modifications that Jaco had popularized.

The guitar resurfaced and Jaco's family went to court to get it back.  The most recent bassist for Metallica was a huge Jaco fan, and spared no expense to help the legal proceedings go toward the family of Jaco.  It is still owned by him, though the family can buy it back at any time for the price Robert Trujillo payed the family.  It is reported that Robert has let many of Jaco's famous followers come over to admire and play the bass.

Day 32

I"m continuing to make progress in my chord work.  I'm picking up the chords fast, but being able to switch between them accurately or fast enough for a song is taking time.  I am doing better than I ever imagined I would, but then again chords have always been the bane of my music progression.

I have an envelope filter that I bought for use with my bass guitar.  It is a cheap one, but regarded well among several people since it can be used for bass or guitar.  Years ago was the last time I plugged it into my guitar, and I don't think I got a single usable or musical sound out of that combination.  That's why it took me years to try it again.  I'm happy to say that my skills have definitely improved since the last time.  I had a lot of fun with it, and its definitely something I plan to do more often to lighten my spirits.  An envelope filter is sort of like an auto-wah.  It is dynamic in its execution, so if you pick hard, you get a quick and snappy "womp" but if you pick lightly and slow you get a "woooooooomphh".  If you mute the strings, you get a sort of poppy sound like opening a wine bottle.  Its an essential sound for funk.

I have begun to find power chord areas on the neck that I really like and sound decent through a clean, kind of acoustic setting.  I'm mainly saving these sounds in my head for when I don't have to substitute power chords, and use real chords.  Its a kind of "saving for later" thing I guess.  I have a few sound recordings of things from before this Rocksmith challenge started, and as I have progressed, so too have these sound recordings progressed.  They've gone from a wide open, tons of incorrect notes, to a more focused, smaller amount of incorrect notes.  Still, I think they are sounding better as time goes.

Music Branches and Day 22

In my post titled "Regression" I talked about being able to back up in time to find the influences of your favorite bands that would in turn be able to influence you in your playing with the same genre.  Sometimes though, you do not have to go back, but you can branch sideways in time.  For this I gave the example of "Grunge" in the 90's.

The person I was talking to likes some Nirvana.  I told this person that this was only natural, as their favorite genre was Punk.  I said that if you take the top Grunge acts of the early 90's, you can basically split them with Grunge and a more classic style and see EXACTLY how they formed their music.

If you take the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones, and Black Flag, and you add the typical Grunge characteristics to that style of music, you're going to get Nirvana.  Kurt Cobain wrote in his own personal journals that the Sex Pistols were thousands of times more important to him than The Clash.  He was also a huge fan of the pre-punk band The Stooges, and of their lead singer Iggy Pop.

If you look at the "world music" influenced heavy rock of The Who and Led Zeppelin, and then listen to Pearl Jam, you're going to see similarities there too.  Heavy 70's rock mixed with Grunge fits with classic Pearl Jam perfectly.  If you take heavy metal, like Black Sabbath and Motorhead, and mix that with grunge, you're going to get Soundgarden.

Being a fan of Grunge might lead you to being a fan of playing more genres than you ever thought you would.  Nirvana can lead you to Soundgarden which then leads you to heavy metal, or it can lead you to Pearl Jam which will lead you to classic rock.  All the while you can be going back and finding those influences and before you know it, you are a very very diverse musician.

Day 22

Holy crap did I play a lot in day 22.

Started out before lunch doing my warm ups in Rocksmith.  I have pretty much stopped doing Gone Wailin' every day, and I only play it when I'm in the mood for it.  It has helped me with my chord strumming, and I very much appreciated it, but I have lots to do now and I feel like I can drop it.  I still find Ducks Re-dux good for getting my mind thinking about the fretts, I kind of need it to get past the 12th fret faster, as I'm getting into some songs that use a lot of stuff up there but that marker skip to 15 is F'ing me up.

After lunch I checked out the Everlong that is in the game.  I had pretty much stopped playing this version because its a version of the song I never see myself playing.  I know the parts that I don't play, but I don't really practice them.  As I've said before, Everlong is done live with 3 guitars and a bass.  The "Lead" version on Rocksmith has stuff in it that sounds HORRIBLE unless you have a rhythm guitarist backing it up at the very least.  Anyway, I was doing a few things wrong, and I needed to know if I wanted to do the reverse lead up on the last uptake of the chorus.  I also went to youtube to see more versions of how people play it online.  I fixed a couple of things I was doing WAY wrong, and it has made my version sound much better.

I then decided to record my little bits of songs I use to practice the Pentatonic minor/major scales, and a few other little phrases I play a lot.  I named each one and recorded them on my phone in case I ever go a long time w/o playing them and want to remember them.

I then practiced several songs in Rocksmith that I had already done.  Blitzkrieg Bop I have learned and played to 95% completion.  I just mess up a little going through the whole song, but I know the parts.  That is by far my most done song, and its also rated the "easiest".  Though, Everlong has several songs rated below it on the easiness meter, and I disagree with it.  I tried Thunderkiss '66 and did quite well.  I was right to wait till I had done a ton of palm muting.  I am very surprised to do that it is tuned in Standard E also.  I did 16 Saltines and I am fairly confident that I could get all of it, except the solo, with an evening of really focusing on it.  I tried one of the random "I don't know this band" songs because it was listed as easy, and it was, but omg, I think i'd rather mute the TV.  There were a couple of more that I can't think of right now, I'm typing this the next morning instead of after the practicing like usual.

I watched a movie and playing in the pentatonics while watching the movie.  They are easy enough to do without looking at the fingerboard, so I was fine even though it was a sub-titled Japanese samurai movie.  So all in all, it was a real productive day.

Regression and Day 20

I posted before how my decision to play what is fun to me helped me become a better bassist(and eventually a better guitarist).  The other way that broadened my horizons and improved my playing was finding my influences and looking at their influences.

Some of the players over at Talkbass have some amazing talent, and they show it in youtube videos.  As I began watching them I noticed that there were probably 2 real camps of play style that I liked.  There were the slappers, which I already knew their influences.  I really don't have a knack for it.  Another was the jazz bassists.  They idolized Jaco Pastorious and the artists influenced by him.  I had tried to listen to Jaco several times, and I just never "got" it.  Later I learned more theory, and I learned about more technique, and one day I listened... and it hit me.  It was one of the most game changing days of my musical creative hobby.  I understood what his fingers were doing, and I understood his techniques and I understood what was amazing about him.  There was still a lot of "elevator" music I could not stand to listen to, but I eventually found songs of his I liked.

I listened for more music that featured this sort of fast play "busy" bass playing.  Yes, finally, I heard John Paul Jones, frequently down mixed in songs so that Page got the spotlight, but I could hear him back there, going nuts, making great music.  From John Paul Jones I looked at those that he influenced and found Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots.  I had their first 4 albums, so I go back and listen and holy crap does it sound like John Paul Jones' style.  Stuart Zender of Jamiroquai was kind of doing funk slap with this "busy" bass style too, Virtual Insanity has some great bass.  Many of the artists I found playing like this never cited John Paul Jones as a inspiration though, so I dug around and found that JPJ and many others idolized Motown.  I learned of James Jamerson, who played on more #1 songs than the Beatles and Elvis combined.  Songs like Bernedette by The Four Tops, What's Goin' On and Let's Get it On by Marvin Gay.  My Girl!  Heard it Through the Grapevine, I was Made To Love Her, Aint Nothin' like the Real Thing.  ALL JAMES JAMERSON.  I listened to these songs over and over, and learned the parts that I was good enough at the time to play. 

Guitar is like that too though.

Like ACDC or The Rolling Stones?  Angus Young and Keith Richards love Chuck Berry.  Even their tone is similar to the stuff Chuck was doing long before either were in a band.  If you look up Chuck Berry playing on TV you might see something familiar.  Angus Young's antics on stage.  The way he walks when he plays and the way he struts when he does solos, it is all an homage to Chuck.  Well if you want to play like Keith and Angus, Chuck Berry is a great way to start.  If you can play Back in Black or Highway to Hell, chances are you could play anything Chuck Berry has put out.

"aliens have found our voyager spacecraft and have sent a message, I will read it as it comes in... it looks like it is only 4 words long... the words are; Send More Chuck Berry"

Watch his solo in that video.  There's a lot of famous guitarists that got their start seeing this on TV and thinking it was the coolest thing they had seen when they were kids.

Rocksmith actually has this built into the game

I was talking to someone about punk.  They really like Greenday.  Well, Greenday has their influences as well.  I told them to listen to bands like The Clash and The Ramones.  Rocksmith has a Ramones song, and learning that would help with learning Punk in general, Ramones is a great lesson in punk rock's basic music origin.  I told this person that they could look outside of punk as well.  The Kinks is where a lot of the punk sounds came from, particularly the punk leading up to Greenday anyway.  Dave Davies pioneered the whole fuzz type of distortion, and if you can play several of the easier Green Day songs, then you have all the tools you need to play The Kinks' earlier stuff.  The Kinks is on Rocksmith 2014 as well.  So you have 3 good generations of "punk" music each separated by about 20 years, but each close enough that you could tell the influence.

This kind of lead to talking about genre mixing bands that are still taken together as a whole, but that's another post for another day.

Day 20

Today I figured I would do the Power Chord lesson.  Green Day's "Brain Stew" was a simple song I learned early on.  It was easy to play and it was recognizable by people I knew.  It was not until much later that I realized that this was the perfect introduction to Power Chords.  I practice Brain Stew even today, to keep my finger's memorizing that shape.  Power Chords keep their same shape all over the board, so unbeknowst to me, I was learning skills that would help me on about a billion songs.

The lesson was pretty well explained.  The problem I have with the lesson is that they do not going into the finger positions very well.  You start telling new players to use their pinky on something as simple as Power Chords and they are going to get sore, tired, and stop doing it.  I use the old blues man's left hand techniques.  I rarely use my pinky finger because I gotta be ready to bend strings at any situtation, so I learn to stretch my ring finger for that.

There is perfectly good ways to learn to use your pinky finger, I just don't think power chords is a way of doing it.  I have never seen anyone use their pinky finger on Power Chords in a real life applicable way.  I built my strength of my pinky playing My Girl on bass.  The version I played was based on the minor pentatonic scale and it turns out I was learning that shape without knowing it... so bonus.  But the point is, on bass the frets were so wide I had to use my pinky in that song.  I see people use their pinky while doing minor pent stuff all the time.  If you're going to give someone an exercise to build up physical conditioning, make sure it is going to be useful.

Anyways.  I feel like I have taken the lessons that have really interested me and stayed doing session mode stuff and improv way too much.  So for the next couple of days, I am going to focus on perfecting the lesson tracks of the last few lessons and even getting academic about the minor scale positions.  

The tech of Fender vs Gibson and day 15

Like a sports team rivalry, a lot of new players are going to come across fans that are very argumentive between the 2 guitar heavy weights in the industry; Fender and Gibson.  To a lot of non-guitarists its just going to be a style war.  Fender looks like they have 1950's car styling and Gibson has that old guitar look to them.

Gibson has been making guitars for 120 years, and they go back to the era of mandolins and banjos, and a lot of their guitar designs were based on that.  Many of their newer designs, like the Flying V and Explorer, were ways of combating Fender's success in the 50's and 60's.  Fender came in and said "we can do it modern".  Their guitars were light, they were based on ease of play in "modern" music, and weren't shackled by an old legacy.  So you have the "old vs new" thing going on too.

The real, applicable choice between the two brands comes down to sound.  There are really two distinctive sounds that come from choosing Fender or Gibson.  That is "single coil" vs "Humbucker".  Even today, with new types of pickups, they are described in these terms.

Those are single coils.  This is what Fender traditionally used.  We have wrapped magnets that are aligned in a single coil.  They are bright and very well defined.  Hendrix in his early years favored these, and Clapton in his later years favored them.  They have a crispness to them.  From a technology standpoint, they do have a problem, the 60 cycle hum.  When these coils are powered differently(adjusting the blend), you get a hum sound.  This hum is the sound of alternating current going through the coils, and it happens in more than just guitar pickups.

That is a Humbucker, patented by Gibson.  There were ways of eliminating the hum before, but Gibson's design is the mainstay of the industry.  Without going into too much detail, it is two coils wired in reverse polarity, so that one side's 60hz hum smashes into the other side's reverse polarity 60hz hum, and you basically get no hum.  You also get a darker, less crisp sound from the pickup.  It is a matter of preference on if you find that a down side.

Hendrix played Woodstock with single coils, but Clapton did much of his work in Cream with a humbucker.  Heavy metal is often associated with the dark sound of a humbucker, unless you look at Iron Maiden.  Jimmy Page's most used guitar live is a Les Paul with humbuckers, but recording he preferred a telecaster(an earlier Fender guitar using single coil).  So there's a famous trap where some knucklehead will talk about Page using Les Paul, making it the ultimate tone, and maybe even playing a song for you so you can hear... and its a telecaster on the recording.  You can get close enough with either to do the kind of music you want.  There's nothing wrong with having a preference either, just watch out chasing popular guitarist's "tone" because that can be a money pit.

Day 15

Ugh.  I am not a tall person, which means I do not have long arms.  This has not bothered me much with bass guitar(whose scale is about 10 inches more than a regular guitar) because I tend to play up near the neck.  In Motown, you want that thicker, rounder sound that comes from playing near the neck.  I rarely, if ever play near the bridge.  Well, in palm muting, my right hand is basically married to the bridge so that I can get the right sound.  This means new angles for my left hand, because palm muting also works best at the farthest end of the fretboard near the nut.  So my arms are extended, my wrist is at a new angle, all this meaning I have sore arms all the way through.

Its a good thing I like playing metal inspired riffs.  I've done over an hour of just that today, despite my arms aching.  Palm muting is such a game changer for me.  I can go back and experiment with EVERYTHING I've ever played.  Ever home-grown riff, every hacked together "song" I have ever done, and add palm muting.  I have done lots and lots of just muted sweeps to add percussion and keep timing, and now I can do actual palm muting.  I'm looking at what works where, and what sounds good, and I'm still working on getting my technique down.  This feels like "learning guitar" to me.  Sorry to maybe be a downer to any new guitarists, but learning guitar hurts.  There are ways to minimize things hurting, and definitely it hurts less if done "correctly" but there's no doubt about it, you're going to ache, get blisters, and get tired.  Its those that soldier on through it that get stronger and are able to do it.

That's not all I'm doing today though.

I'm working on songs.  I am still having problems learning songs using the game's interface though.  I think I am going to just have to use the Riff Repeater option to slow down and learn parts till I'm fast enough to play it normal.  The main game likes to dumb down the sounds in parts that I suck at, and then at parts where I'm almost 100% on, they keep it dumbed down, and I'm like "quit treating me like an idiot because I don't have the solo down, I've got the chorus, I've done the chorus, you've seen I can do the chorus 100%, stop adjusting the chorus already" and it gets my head all angry and next thing you know, I fuck up the chorus.

With one of the songs I'm working with, I'm getting the most known parts done using the riff repeater, and then going on youtube to see some "how to do" videos on other things, because sometimes I can see things better watching hands play the song, than just looking at notes coming at me head on.  So I guess that's a suggestion for Rocksmith 20XX.  Include videos of people playing the song, because sometimes that helps.

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.