Rock Band Status: October 21, 2012

Tier 2 would seem to be the tier of songs that I don’t really like very much but that probably would be good for me to add to the rotation for didactic purposes. The latter certainly makes sense, given my level; the former is, I suppose, bad luck. With that in mind:

Last week, I said I was adding London Calling and 20th Century Boy to the rotation. The former is staying in there, but when I played through the latter this week, I decided that the solo at the end was annoying in ways that I didn’t particularly want to work on. I also tried out four new songs this week, all of which I would learn something from practicing but none of which I was super excited about practicing. Right now, I’m thinking I’ll stick with I Need to Know, I Got You (I Feel Good), and Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before, but I’m not 100% sure about that; Riders on the Storm doesn’t make the cut. (Which makes the practice rotation pretty long: I spend most of an hour at the start of each session practicing the same songs. That’s fine, though, it’s good for me; in fact I should probably spend more time, focusing on the trickiest bits.)

The other event this week was that Rampant Coyote published this comparison of Rock Band 3 and Rocksmith. Most other posts I’d read strongly took the side of one game or the other; in particular, Rocksmith proponents’ negative comments about Rock Band 3 left me thinking that I didn’t expect to be aligned with their judgment about Rocksmith, since clearly we disagree about Rock Band 3. But this post spoke favorably about both games; and I am definitely seeing ways in which not listening to the guitar is causing me problems. I’m still worried that Rocksmith is not the solution in that regard, because of the audio lag that it apparently introduces with normal TV setups, but it’s only $45 these days, and I’m spending enough time on guitar that it’s worth a flyer at that price. So I’ve ordered a copy and will give it a try.