Pro Guitar Status, August 14, 2011

I took a couple of weeks off from practice: I was busy playing board games two weeks ago, and I was at Def Con last week. (I did play once at work, which was a helpful reminder that I should give Pro Bass more of a try as well.) I was busy this weekend, too, but I really need to put in the time to avoid backsliding, so I went through four songs on Saturday.

Last time, it became clear that I needed to work on my alternating strumming; I’d put in a bit of time on that with the guitar unplugged, and it started going better almost immediately. I wanted to find out how much of an effect that had had in game, so I went back through Rock Lobster; before, I’d only managed to successfully finish one of the training segments, but this time I managed to finish all but one of them! So clearly my practice had had an effect; I still don’t feel particularly comfortable with alternating strumming, but I’m at least capable of doing it not completely incompetently, and I’m sure I’ll get better as I keep going. (Especially if I continue to practice it outside of game; incidentally, the string mute really does interfere with alternating strumming, I think.)

I can’t remember too many other details of my experience this week, other than that Get Free was a good match for my current skills. I didn’t make it through quite as many songs as I would have liked; and it’s a bit unfortunate that the two Apprentice songs I have left, Antibodies and Du Hast, are probably my least favorite songs on the disc. Though the mercy there is that the reasons why I dislike them aren’t because of their Pro Guitar parts…

I’m looking forward to moving up a tier of songs next week!