Guitar Status: November 18, 2012

It was another weekend where I was quite busy on Saturday, so I only had one day to practice; and I again chose Rocksmith over Rock Band 3.

In terms of non-song stuff: I did the tremolo technique challenge (quite easy, all the practice I’ve done on that paid off), which only leaves me with the chord challenge to do. So I think I’ve learned, or at least seen, all the techniques the game is going to throw at me; though, going through the menus, there seem to be videos explaining more techniques. And I unlocked another minigame, this time about scales. That was frustrating, because it’s something I really would like to learn, and the minigame seems like an appropriate method. But the game thought I was out of tune enough to miss notes; I fiddled around with tuning, but something weird seems to be going on with the frets.

Which is a nudge that I should get my guitar looked after—probably there’s some basic way it’s out of adjustment. Or maybe I should just buy a non-Rock Band guitar? I certainly plan to do that eventually, so maybe now is the time, I just don’t feel like figuring out how to pick out a good one.

After that I went through maybe 8 songs? The game really does have a solid library; Rock Band has more songs, but Rocksmith‘s taste seems like it’s probably about as good. (Perhaps slightly narrower, but narrower in a way that is reasonably consistent with my tastes.) And there’s a lot of overlap between the two games; I assume that means that the same bands are willing to be approached by both franchises. I also browsed the DLC selection, and there are lots of songs there that I would like; I haven’t bought any yet, because I haven’t finished the on-disc songs, but I’ll be happy to jump into the DLC when that’s over with.

A good session, minigame tuning frustration aside: I really enjoyed it. I’m still about pros and cons of the two games—particularly noticeable today was Rocksmith‘s forcing (or at least strongly encouraging) you to learn songs full speed as a whole instead of going through chunks slowed down. So at some point I’ll definitely want to go back to Rock Band 3 with an eye towards the differences, and towards getting out of that game some of what I’m getting out of Rocksmith. And, conversely, I’ll have to look through Rocksmith‘s various menus to see what options there are for learning songs. But for now I’m doing what Rocksmith is suggesting and am getting a lot out of that.