Requests and Day 35

"Play something you've come up with"

That's what every newer guitarist would want to hear.  The reality is that when you sit down to show someone that you're learning guitar, they instinctively want to hear something they recognize.  Its only human nature, they want to compare you to something they've heard to be able to judge your skill.  If you can play something they perceive as a good song, they're going to think "oh wow, my friend can play this popular song!".  I'm guilty of it as well.  I used to ask "can you play Sweet Child of Mine" and in the later years, "know any Pantera?"

I've been on the other side now though, and I regret being that way.  When you're new and you're learning, you're focusing on technique and practicing.  In all reality, you probably know some pretty good sounding things to play that uses the techniques you know, but you might be missing one technique to be able to play ACDC, or Guns N Roses.

You also might know a few genres.  You might be tempted to say, "well I can't play that, but if you tell me a genre of music you like, maybe I can play something in it for you in that style".  Seems like 90% of the time they're going to say "I like J-pop" or "know any Skrillex?", or something equally as un-guitar or something you just don't know the style of.

That's just how life goes.

So if you're reading this, and you have a friend that is practicing and learning guitar, remember what I've said.  There are 10 million-billion songs out there, and chances are your first 20 you can come up with aren't going to be something they can play.  Look at them, smile a little bit, and say "just play something you know or something you've come up with yourself".  You're going to hear something new, don't be scared, you might be the first person ever to hear a new piece of music that never existed in the world before.  It could be great.


Day 35

I have pretty much decided on 4 "tone" categories that I like to play in.  Clean for acoustic/chords work, light overdrive for bluesy stuff, British Crunch(my favorite) for ACDC sounding rock, and high gain "High on Fire" tone for metal.  Today I played with the Tone shaping section to try and get two of these:  high gain metal and low gain overdrive.

I have to say that low gain overdrive is the hardest to get "right" with the sound in my head.  I think that's why there was so much fuss over the Tubescreamer pedals that Stevie Ray Vaughn popularized.  He sort of gave everyone a "base" to start from.  There's a billion tubescreamer clones and light overdrive circuits in the pedal world.  Am I happy with what I"ve done in Rocksmith to get the sound?  I'm about 75% happy.  I would like my natural tone to get out a little bit more, but none of the low gain pedals have a mix built in to run a dry signal through.  I may have to go to the regular drive category and just really roll off the drive.  My real Marshall amp does not do this sound very well, I need to break out my amp modeler and test out some stuff.

I am about 90% satisfied with my high gain metal tone I have though.  I looked up Matt Pike's amps and found that there might be a clone of it in Rocksmith.  So I chose that amp, maxed the gain, and then put a high gain distortion pedal in front to boost it even more.  Its pretty awesome sounding metal bliss.  There's a lot of Matt Pike inspired metal guitarists out there these days, so I can cover a lot of ground with his sound.  Take away some bass in the signal and you can get a lot of Mastodon's sounds, for example.  I'm not a squeally diddly diddly dealeo doo kind of metal fan.  I'm more of the Black Sabbath heavy riff kind of metal fan, and Matt's tone is sort of an Iommi on steroids kind of sound.

Straps and Kazoos and Day 29

I have a strap problem.



It is weird some of the things you realize about yourself.  I've known for quite some time that I try to get the strap that matches best with my instruments, to me it was common sense, something everyone does, right?  Well apparently I have something deeper than that.

My girlfriend and I were at the music shop earlier this week and looking at the acoustics on the wall.  They had 4 of the same model, just different adornments and cosmetic changes on the wall.  It is at this point I want to emphasize that they all sounded pretty well.  I looked at all 4 and listed them to myself "this one here is most like the kind of bass I'd go for".  It was made of a rare figured wood, with just a few adornments.  "this is more like the electrics I'd go for".  It had more Gibson-esque inlays and adornments with a solid color.  "I think I like this one least".  The least one had garish inlays all up and around the neck, and the body we very embelished with abalone, and even the color was a color I shy away from.  No way does this guitar say anything about me.



Then I went to look at the straps they had at the store, which were situated so that I was looking at these guitars while I looked through the straps.  They had the usual nylon, something I'd only get for a super pointy 80's guitar I'd never buy in the first place.  Then there was this why leather one with these tasteful, almost japanese styled flower imprints dotted here and there.  It matched very well with the garish looking acoustic, and suddenly if I was going to buy one of these 4 acoustics, the one in last place suddenly became a contender for first place.  It was then that I realized I had a problem lol.

Realizing a problem is the first step to fixing it.

I hope.

This is the part where I be a responsible example and tell you that you should pick a strap based on comfort first and looks last. But, come on.  That works if you're being all "zen master" but we all know its more "oh this looks cool... is it comfortable".  Its fine to go for looks, just DO NOT FORGET the comfort part.  Oh and its physics, if your guitar is hurting your shoulder because its heavier than you're used to, get a wider strap.  Padding can help, but not as much as adding an extra inch of wideness.



Day 29

So today I jammed out with a kazoo.  Yea, I'm surprised as you are.  There is actually a kazoo in the Session feature and its featured in a band i had to use for a mission.  My guitar has enough fuzz on it to basically be a kazoo, so sometimes it was hard to tell them apart lol.  It was a nice, uppity ditty in Pentatonic Major in the key of C I think it was.  Maybe it was A.  Not my cup of tea, but a fun experience none-the-less.  You kazoo players take heart, someone in Rocksmith is carrying the torch to legitimize your musical instrument of choice!

I also played in a "Newgrass" blues based country band.  I played in Pent Major again, but this time in G.  So far the key of G is my favorite for blues playing, so this was actually pretty cool.  I'm no where near as good with the Major Pent as I am with Minor though, but practice practice practice as they say.  Speaking of things in the key of G, I'm currently practicing transitions out and into G with the chords I already know.  This is going to open up several new paths for me, song wise.  I honestly can't remember if I have said this already, but watching a Foreign Film with Subtitles really helps me stay in one spot, and focus while I play through the chords.  I live in a world where since middle school they have taught multi-tasking as the "normal" resting state, and worked as a chef where the difference between good and bad is how well you can multi-task, so its hard for me now to sit there and do one task and not feel like I'm wasting time.  I know watching a film and practicing are technically 2 things, but it could be much much worse.

I really need to redo all my preset sounds.  My mainstay, based on a plexi/OCD overdrive sound just doesn't have enough low end to sound nice when palm muting, and also it has a little too much dirt for the kind of stuff I'm practicing with these days.  I still never got a fuzz I liked, but then again I'm not playing anything where fuzz fits all that much.  I think tomorrow I'm going to get a cleaner, fatter over drive for my primary, and a high gain "High on Fire" sound for a backup.

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.

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.

Tools and Day 09

I know that there are a lot of Mom and Pop stores out there that are struggling to make a profit, especially if there is a music mega-store around the corner.  Many guitarists make their money off giving lessons.  Face it, the only way 99% of guitarists can make any sort of income from their playing is by teaching others.  So I understand when something new comes in and threatens that source of income.  I remember when DVD instructional videos started to actually use the DVD format to make something useful(I own a few DVD's that are just run throughs as if they are just VHS's).  There is this knee jerk reaction where I see a lot of backlash against new teaching tools, and I find it ridiculous.

I've seen forums with lots of guitarists(and bassists) of all types, and whenever anyone asks a question on how to learn this or that, there is a lot of "find yourself a teacher or you'll do it wrong".  That's the #1 go to answer.  I can tell you that nothing is more useless to someone at home seeking advice than to be told to get professional advice.  Then, mysteriously when I go to these advice giver's profiles that they are advertising all over their pages that they are available for hiring.

Just saying, there is a lot of self interest out there.

You go to Youtube and watch the "60 Day Success Stories" for Rocksmith, and in the comments you see these people, "this game is shit, look at the shitty technique this person is playing"  or "if you got a real teacher you'd learn this in 30 days", "so he learned a song in 60 days, I bet he couldn't make his own song that didn't sound like shit".  The usual youtube vitriol.

Then I found this guy on youtube(unfortunately I'm having a hell of a time re-finding him even in my History) where he talks about how he offers a "Rocksmith Course" to his students.  They buy the game, and he uses it in their lesson plans, and I"m thinking "This guy is genius, this is the kind of teacher I'd look for".  One of the things missing from Rocksmith is a live tech you could contact and ask questions to.  It would also give someone better direction on what they're supposed to be doing.  He did not look at Rocksmith as a competitor, he looked at it for what it is, yet another tool to help students learn.  You knowwho IS NOT offering a Rocksmith assisted guitar learning course?  Your competitors.

BTW, I am not payed to do this blog, I don't have advertisements enabled, and I know no one that works for Ubisoft.  I just get angry at the rejection of technology, and when it comes to guitar, there's a lot of that.  Bassists seem to be much more accepting(neo speakers, solid state, class D switching power amps etc etc) of tech and maybe that's why I identify myself as a bassist first, and guitarist 2nd.




Day 09

Had some unique fun today.

I did my new warm up routine(look at day 08), and then I let my girlfriend try out the Guitarcade games.  She is a cellist and a kick ass Guitar Hero player.  I figured that the first couple of games would be fun for her.  Gone Wailin' was her favorite one, she probably could have played that one all night long.  Its day 09 and I still have lots of fun with Gone Wailin.  I mainly chase the "achievements" as you can get super far and not get a lot of points, or you can play for a long time and not really get satisfaction.  It has helped me too.  You get the most reaction by going through the strings, and its fine to do it with a lighter touch.  It has made my strumming much lighter and tighter.  When I first started, I was trying to punk rock it, and then have to retune my guitar after the game ha.

She also played String Skip Saloon, and also complained about the strings being "mirrored" and not like written music.  So I don't feel like a complete idiot. Oh and I did reverse it and try to do a lesson... I didn't like it.  So I'm stuck doing it the default way.  I really can't decide what I would recommend with a new player... it IS easier when doing lessons, but it is opposite how new players will be exposed to non-game written music.

Played some session play for a while.  I really need to learn to do the "funk" strumming.

I am having the hardest time getting a fuzz tone that I like.  I have known for a while I would have difficulty with that because every company makes like 20 fuzz pedals(except for Boss).  Hell, Devi Ever practically made a company out of making fuzz variations.  Currently I am using(and not 100% liking) a Buzz fuzz 2, hi-lo filter to make it decay, and a bass boost 5 EQ pedal in the loop to put some heft back into the signal.  You'll be hearing a lot about my look for my fuzz tone.

Is this a game? Also Day 08

Is this a game?

Well, it certainly has "game" in it.  The Guitarcade section definitely has some fun games.  This is definitely not a Rhythm game in the same sense that Guitar Hero was.  Guitar Hero was made for you to feel like.. a Guitar Hero, while hitting buttons according to music track ques.  All the games in the Guitarcade are there to have you practice something, so there is not really a way to play Return to Castle Chordead in a more casual non-chord way.  You can't get a room full of random people and throw the controller(your guitar) around and have fun.  The Song Learner in "easy" setting is mind numbingly boring because its not filled with un-needed taps, every thing you play, even on "easy" is a part of the song.  Duck Re-dux is close to Guitar Hero in technique, but there's no cool music to go along with it.

I would say, "do not look at it as a fun game where you learn guitar".  I would put it rather, "A way to learn guitar, with some games involved".  There's a huge difference there, and I"m worried some people will get it, not find a way to have fun with it, and then give up.

I played Guitar Hero, and even had a version of it.  I got some fleeting feelings of playing guitar with it.  I saw that ACDC released a whole sub-game of songs for it, and immediately wanted to get it.  But then I remembered that I want more.  I don't want to feel like I play guitar, I want to actually play guitar, and in the end, playing the ACDC songs that I've always wanted to play will feel hollow.  I had a real guitar sitting next to the TV that was like "play with me".  I know not everyone really wants to be a guitarist, but I do, and RockBand and Guitar Hero just felt like wasted time unless I was in a group of people just trying to have fun.  But that's personal, that's for ME.

This Rocksmith, this "game" is exactly what all the guitarists that bitched about Guitar Hero were saying they wanted.  Plunk this down in a room of friends, and they're not going to have fun.  Get a room full of guitarists and... well, you'll have spilled beer.  Taking turns at Guitarcade games will be fun, but I think some people might get self conscious about the amount of guitar stuff they know and suddenly want to use the Jam Session.

Maybe for Rocksmith 2016 they will add a "Guitar Hero" difficulty setting.  You could pass the guitar around, and have it so player 1 tries it at 88% difficulty for real, and players 2 and 3 has Guitar Hero difficulty set up for the first string use only?

Just a thought.

Day 08

Wow.  This Rocksmith can make you feel like a million bucks.

I did the mission today where you play in three different keys, using the Pentatonic Minor.  The game suggests you try the bands Hard Rock, Acoustic Blues, and Garage Electric.  I first started with the Hard Rock, and the game gave me this auto-wah, phaser sort of effect.  I almost switched over to my pre-set distortion, but decided to give it a go.  I felt like Jimi at Woodstock.  There is a saying about wah pedals and hammer-ons and feeling instantly like a rockstar, and I never understood it till last night.  The band did its incredible thing, and I figured out where the band was going to drop out and just have the beat going, and at that point I started soloing on the highest string... wow.  It felt good.

Then I did the acoustic blues, and again, I came up with something I loved.  It is almost impulse to grab my recorder.  Another hobby of mine is writing, as in words on paper.  If you ever have an idea you are encouraged to write it down, just in case you use it later.  I've had lots of notes brought back into my writing, so I have this habit of wanting to record every jam.  I gotta remind myself that it is just jamming the pentatonic scale, its ok, its not mind blowing.

I know I suck.  You know I suck.  Chords show I suck.  But for a brief time, I'm feeling awesome and accomplished.  That's worth the price of admission.

I think I've nailed my warm up routine down to playing Gone Wailin' to get my muscles warmed up.  Then Duck-Redux so that my brain is working on the fret layout, then I change up which i play next.  Its about 20 minutes of warm up time.  Then I do a quick session run of riffs I enjoy playing.  Then I decide what to do that day.  I have not had to re-adjust my pick in my hand at all lately, and that makes me happy.  i'm still struggling with getting the G and B strings confused.  I'm a bassist first, and a 4 string player at that, so those new strings mess up my hand's count.  All in time, I suppose.

Things to Come and Day 07

There are several things I can write posts about with this game, but in 60 days I will be running out of topics that are purely about Rocksmith.  In an earlier post you saw me talk about the History of SG's, and I think I'm going to continue putting up some music related stuff like that.  I'd like to clarify why I think they taught the Overdrive, Distortion and Fuzz topics out of order.  I'd also like to talk about some common Pedal designs that get copied over and over and resold for ridiculous amounts of money(Ross Compressors, Tubescreamers, and FuzzFaces).  Then there is the fact that I think of guitars like samurai swords, and I'd like to talk about the origin and the journey of a few fabled guitars/basses through the years.  The way Brian May got his guitar is a very cool one, and then you have the journey of Jaco's recently re-discovered Bass of Doom.

I also have a few personal posts that I plan on having.  I have a post already written about my own personal guitar.  Its not a "look at this expensive, nice, badass guitar, aren't you jealous?" kind of post, because my guitar wasn't expensive, and I actually have a story that goes along with it.  Generally I will try to not have robotic non-posts about stuff that means nothing to me.  I either think its cool to know, would like to try and educate, or mean something personal to me.

I will continue my daily updates.  I feel like there will be days that are kind of uninteresting.  Its the equal of speeding up time in the "My success story" videos on youtube.  I will, however, continue to document the general happenings of my day inside the game.

Day 07

Wow, its been a week already?

Well today I messed around with the Riff repeater because the missions had me doing that.  I also got diverted into sorting songs and playing something from the 1980's.  I chose "Every Breath You Take" because there's not a lot of 80's stuff in this game by default.  The song threw an F chord at me and it looked like I had to twist all my fingers and use 2 hands to be able to do it... I'm so intimidated by chords.  Anyway, got through the song, got the mission done, not sure what good it did...  The Riff Repeater is really nice.  Ever wish you could slow down a song in Guitar Hero/Rock Band?  Maybe you could, I did not play those games later on.  Well you can do that here.  You can adjust the difficulty and the speed, you can even have the game alter it as you get better.  I'll do a larger topic about it later.

Played some Ducks Redux.  It had an annoying habit of not being able to tell the difference between my 2nd fret on the E string and the first.  I re-tuned the guitar, and still, it had that problem.  It was not a problem before... I'll have to keep an eye on it.  I may have to look and see if others are having this problem.

I had decided that on day 10 I'll force myself to learn a song.  Learning theory and application is just so much for fun for me right now.  I'm not playing in front of anyone, so its not like I get requests for songs people would know.  I'm more interested in what I can do in making my own stuff up.  I broke that decision and played some more of "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks.  Turns out that song is like a sharp "E" tune, but not enough to be a different tuning altogether.  So every time I play that, I have to re-tune for other parts of the game.  I felt like I have improved already.  The confidence in my fingers to find the correct place and to be able to shift while keeping that simple power chord used in the song has me optimistic.  Still going to wait and focus on it after day 10 though.

Bass cheat and Day 03

I have mentioned that I am much more of a bass player than a guitar player.  I can play several genres of music in bass, and a bass in my hand feels natural.  In Rocksmith 2014, there are 3 career paths you can choose from: Rhythm, Lead and Bass.  At any time you can switch between them easily on the main menu.  I did find a flaw with this... your missions are not career specific.  This kind of sucks because Missions are sort of your road map of how to learn.  Also, this means I can essentially cheat.  If there's a mission that is hard for me to get correct with Lead guitar, I can switch over to bass and fly through it(at least now at the beginning).  I will have to keep myself in check, and also I will need to make more accounts so I can learn the others separately later...

So the bass is pretty awesome.  I recognize the amps that they have modeled for bass.  They do not have my particular amp(Thunderfunk), but they do have Eden, SWR, and a few others that are descended from the amp mine is descended from.  I was able to dial in a close enough tone to what I generally play with, and was able to jam pretty successfully with an in game band.  Really fun, and only a few issues.  The audio lag is more noticeable for me on bass, but that's because my amp is one of the quickest response amps ever made, so I feel the lag much more on bass(I really need to get my cable situation set up to reduce this lag).  Also the tracking of my note playing is behind, and this could be a software issue, because I don't think I play all that super fast on bass.

Still, bass was fun, and they do have some fun bass songs available for DLC.  If you want to do more than chug your E string to the rock offerings of the original set, then download the Soul Classics pack.

Day 03

I decided to warm up with jamming in the Session menu, and ended up going through a lot of the missions.  They showed me what I had already discovered, that the scale shape can stay the same moving up and down the neck, and you just change the key you play in.  Next they had me choose several types of bands to play with.  I really liked the Electronic Campfire whatever band, I can't remember the name, but campfire will get you there.  Its sort of a folksy/electronic band with a clean sound from the guitar, I had a lot of fun with it.  I sounded like crap with the Grunge band.

They keep giving me missions to play for 10 minutes with various bands, and at first you might think "omg, I just came in here to warm up" but then you remember, you're memorizing the scale shape, and also learning how the notes in each key sound and what works.  They had me play with the tempo, and change keys while jamming.  Once it started having me play with the Vintage Rock band, I started having a blast.  I liked what I came up with in the sessions so much, that I played well over the 10 minutes, and even grabbed my phone.

Yes, I recorded myself.  No, I'm not prepared to have them on the blog yet... unless for some reason I get the request from those on my G+ and Facebook account.  Anyway.