Archive for May, 2013

Guitar Status: May 27, 2013

May 27 2013 Published by under Uncategorized

It was a three-day weekend, but I somewhat uncharacteristically only practiced guitar on two of them. Part of that was having a violin recital coming up: I needed to practice piano for that, and we had a rehearsal for the Bach Double. Some of that was wanting to leave a bit of time to burn down my list of one-off things. And some of it was wanting to relax and hang out with Liesl and Miranda. (E.g. we played a bit of Galaxy Trucker today, and made a more complex dinner than normal.)

Still, I did get in good practice on two of those days. Nothing huge to report: I’m sticking with my mix of doing one event a day (to go through a random mix of old songs, plus some new songs if I’ve bought any over the last week or two) plus some focused practice (that Tom Sawyer arpeggio section) and some of my other favorite songs (went back to More Than a Feeling for a while and got the solo up to 100%). A very pleasant (and, I think, productive) way to spend time.

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Guitar Status: May 19, 2013

May 19 2013 Published by under Uncategorized

The game threw the rest of the Rush songs at me this weekend: Limelight, Red Barchetta, and YYZ. Generally on the hard side for me, though some of the chords were familiar from Subdivisions and Tom Sawyer. All good stuff, but I think right now focusing on Subdivisions as a song and on the arpeggios in Tom Sawyer is enough Rush for me; maybe the next time they come around I’ll do better. (Subdivisions is quite tractable; Tom Sawyer will require more practice, but it’s good practice.)

They released a Maroon 5 pack this week; I got Misery and Harder to Breathe, and enjoyed both of them. Good chord practice in the former, and the latter is pleasantly funky.

The other thing that’s going on musically is that there’s another violin recital coming up soon. The main new piece for me is the Bach Double; I like it a lot, and one of the other students playing it came over today to practice it with Miranda and me. Good stuff, it sounded okay when we started and pretty good by the end.

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VGHVI Minecraft: April 25, 2013

May 18 2013 Published by under Uncategorized

We didn’t have a Minecraft night in March, because I was on vacation, but we did have one in April. It actually ended up being only Miranda and me, but that was just fine, because we’d started a building project in February, so we wanted to continue with that.

Our cow guard stands watch

Our cow guard stands watch

We’d left things with a couple of hallways, a living room, a workroom, some stairs up to the roof, and a whole lot of rock to carve out. Some of that rock is on this level; there’s room for at least one more floor above, and of course lots of room below. But we decided to start carving out more space on the first level, starting from the entrance: it’s a fair amount of walking from there to the first room.

We didn’t want a big room by the entrance, but we decided to have a nice little nook there to sit in, plus some coat hooks. (Almost all Miranda’s design here, I just do the broad carving.)

Some new windows by the front door

Some new windows by the front door

The entrance nook

The entrance nook

The nook, hallway, and stairs

The nook, hallway, and stairs

After that, we started work on a much larger room. It’s behind the workshop and the living room; I honestly can’t remember exactly what we planned for it (it’s not done yet), but knowing us, it’s probably mostly going to be a library? It connects to the hallway and to the living room; there’s also one quite large niche at the end of it with a window overlooking the temple. (We’re trying to fit fairly well into the existing exterior shape of the mountain, and it happened to bulge out there.)

Putting a window from the hallway into the new room

Putting a window from the hallway into the new room

A dangerous criminal is behind bars

A dangerous criminal is behind bars

The outside window in the new room

The outside window in the new room

Looking down at the temple from that window

Looking down at the temple from that window

Starting work on the floor

Starting work on the floor

The door between the new room and the living room

The door between the new room and the living room

The other side of that door, with some pictures and shelves added.

The other side of that door, with some pictures and shelves added.

At this point, we got distracted because Miranda wanted to set off fireworks. So she did! Some outside, up on the roof, and some inside the new room, because, well, why not?

Outside fireworks 1

Outside fireworks 1

Outside fireworks 2

Outside fireworks 2

Outside fireworks 3

Outside fireworks 3

Outside fireworks 4

Outside fireworks 4

Outside fireworks 5

Outside fireworks 5

Outside fireworks 6

Outside fireworks 6

Inside fireworks 1

Inside fireworks 1

Inside fireworks 2

Inside fireworks 2

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Guitar Status: May 13, 2013

May 13 2013 Published by under Uncategorized

I’ve hit the Rush portion of my song list in Rocksmith, clearly: the game had me play Subdivisions last week, Tom Sawyer this week, and I see both Red Barchetta and Limelight in the next event. Subdivisions was great because its arpeggio section was good practice for me; the arpeggio section in Tom Sawyer uses some of the same chords but throws in a few more, as it turns out. Which is also great: there’s enough common ground between the two songs for me to be able to start to make sense of Tom Sawyer, but it’s definitely a stretch for my current abilities. So after I’d gotten to where I could play the song well enough to qualify for the event, I went back to that section to work on it in practice mode; I returned to it again on Sunday and even on Monday morning (I took the morning off from work), a good choice.

I can’t remember too much about the events other than that; but I have been playing songs outside of events more and more often these days. Sometimes I’m returning to the same songs, often trying to learn multiple guitar parts from them (More Than a Feeling, Anna Molly, Six AM Salvation); sometimes I’m just dipping into fun stuff. Sometimes I focus on sections in riff repeater mode, sometimes I just play through the whole thing.

This morning I decided to try to unlock all of the pedals, so I went to look at what on-disc songs I hadn’t gotten 70,000 points on. There were a few, and rather than bang my head against them, I decided to try out alternate parts to unlock the pedals that way. And that was an interesting experience on itself: unsurprisingly, it turns out that songs that I’d been having trouble with the main part on are also tricky (but more manageable) on the other parts, so I got some good practice with fairly fast plucking and pull-offs.

After doing that, though, I got to where I’d gotten 70,000 parts on at least one part of all songs except for The Star-Spangled Banner; I started working on the latter and then I realized that it wasn’t showing me a tone to unlock! So I looked more closely and realized that, on some songs, there’s an alternate part that unlocks a different tone than the main part does. So I guess that’s what I’ll work on next week; certainly my experiences with trying out alternate parts have been almost universally positive. Heck, maybe after that I’ll go through all of the alternate parts that I haven’t tried yet.

I like where my practice is going these days: playing through events some to give me randomness, working on a few specific songs to get better at them, working on arpeggios specifically to try to improve my skills there, and also trying to explore more broadly. This adds up to a very pleasant way to spend my weekends.

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Guitar Status: May 5, 2013

May 05 2013 Published by under Uncategorized

Very little guitar practice this week: Saturday morning and early afternoon was spent a performance of Miranda’s school orchestra, the rest of Saturday afternoon was spent on work stuff, and Sunday afternoon was a bit of work and a bit of catching up. So that only left two hours on Sunday morning; I went through the event that was queued up plus two new songs.

The new songs were White Wedding and Eye of the Tiger; both pleasant (and both at least a little ridiculous). In terms of old songs, the main bit of note was that it threw a Rush song at me for the first time in a while: Subdivisions, and I did pretty well at it once I went through a few of the sections in riff repeater mode. In particular, I managed to get the arpeggio fairly solid; I think I’ll probably practice that one outside of game for a while, it’s a good level for me.

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