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.

I went through a couple of events in Rocksmith this weekend: pleasant, as always, and it’s nice to both see a new song (Get Free) and to return to songs I enjoy that I hadn’t played for a little while (a couple of Clash songs, and Santana’s Smooth).

But I’m also trying to step a bit away from the events: so I spent some time going through individual songs, sometimes trying to learn segments, sometimes learning a different part from the one the game throws at you from default, sometimes just enjoying playing a song. I’ll continue doing that: I like the randomness that come from having events suggest songs at you, but it’s good for me to dive into songs a bit more.

I also had an interesting talk with Joan about what she’s focusing her guitar practice on. (Which she spends a lot more time on than I do!) I’m certainly being conscious about what I focus on: I’m not focusing on pedals and sounds like that, I’m not focusing on trying different guitars, I’m not focusing on improvisation, but I am focusing on execution. (With, right now, a focus more on my right hand than my left hand.) Listening to her talk about what she’s getting out of her theory grounding was quite interesting, though: that’s something that I should consider thinking more about. This weekend was particularly interesting in that regard: Joan and I spent some time a month or so ago improvising around a twelve-bar blues, and a couple of songs that I played this week had sections that are based on that. (So I should spend more time playing with Joan, to get more to think about! Though I’m sadly super busy this month…)

I didn’t spend a huge amount of time playing guitar this week; though we did go to an Arlo Guthrie concert on Thursday which was surprisingly good. (And unsurprisingly full of old hippies, even Liesl and I were among the youngest people there, let alone Miranda.) Lots of his dad’s songs, lots of his songs, lots of songs by other people he met when growing up; I ordered a couple of song books after the concert, maybe I’ll try to learn some of them.

I’ve hit an arpeggio-heavy bit of the Rocksmith on-disc songs; still hard, but I’m doing a little better than the last time I hit those songs. So: progress, yay. No new songs this week; I downloaded Get Free, but I haven’t played it yet.

The February VGHVI Minecraft session was a small one: Miranda and I were the only people building, though one or two other people dropped in to chat. As is my wont, I started by flying around taking pictures; this time, a window in the ground caught my eye:

What’s that window doing on the bottom of that pit?

That window actually showed a view into the very first mine complex that we built in this world, albeit in a later room; I didn’t take any pictures of that room, but I did wander into the library across from it, and ran into a surprise:

Oh, hello there!

I see you peeking around the corner

Sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere with your browsing

After that, I flew around a bit; on a cliff wall near the temple complex, I ran into some more cows:

Cliff-dwelling cows

And that alcove between them caught my eye:

Alcove in cliff wall

So I decided to start digging, for the first time in ages, and Miranda decided to join me:

Miranda and I start digging

We started with a corridor going into the cliff and then going out to the left, where the cliff ends (just beyond the left cow): we put in a sitting room there, with a nicely furnished couch and bookshelves. And a big window, looking out on the temple complex.

The view out over the temple area

A lamp next to the couch

A door on the other side of the window

Bookshelves in the back of the room

That door on the outside leads to a natural set of stairs up to a roof area, so I went out there to explore a bit:

The window from the outside

The view from the roof, showing the towers

Wandering around up there a bit, I decided that we could build a set of internal stairs leading up to the roof as well, so we did that next. (With our traditional roles of me laying out the basic geometry and Miranda making it habitable.)

Working on the stairs

The view from the roof at night

The view of the temple complex through the window at night

The finished sitting room, including carpet

We left a good-sized chunk of space between the sitting room and the stairs; we decided to turn that into a workroom.

Carving out the workroom

Installing some furniture

More furniture and decorations next to one of the doors

Putting in a gate and flooring

That made a good start on the house; time to give it a name.

Cows. They’re remarkable cows.

But there’s still a lot to do! There’s a fair amount of space within the cliff on the level that we’re on, we just have to decide how to use it; there’s also room for at least one story above us, possibly for two of them. I’m sure we’ll get back to that this month.

I’d been on vacation, so no guitar for a couple of weeks, but I got back on Saturday, and spent several hours on Sunday playing Rocksmith. Which was fun, I’d definitely missed playing guitar over break!

I bought all three of the songs on the latest bit of Rocksmith DLC: Have You Ever Seen the Rain?, Ballroom Blitz, and Southbound. I’d played the former in Rock Band 3, and found it pleasant enough; it’s similarly pleasant in Rocksmith, though there’s not a lot to do, it’s all chords, with the only interesting aspect being a moving bass line in one section. (Hmm, and also that, on most of the C chords in the song, Rocksmith throws in a G on the bottom E string.) Ballroom Blitz was mostly straightforward but also quite fine, I’m looking forward to playing that again. And Southbound seems like a reasonable challenge for me right now.

Lots of string bending this week: some in Southbound, and some in the on-disc songs the game threw at me. Which I can still feel slightly in my fingers, I can use the practice!

Rocksmith put out a three-pack by The Cure this week; I got it, good stuff in it. Other than that, not much to report: I’m starting to get used to Cult of Personality (and I’m doing okay with the fingering that Rocksmith suggests), but it’s definitely not the easiest piece in the world. I’ve played that song enough times now that the game is going back to a standard rotation instead of throwing it at me every event, though. (And it only threw the new Cure songs at me two or three times, presumably because they were easy enough that that was all I needed to get to 90,000 points?)

I’m thinking I should probably change up my practicing a little bit: still do at least one event a weekend, to get random songs thrown at me, but also try to master one new song, so I don’t end up getting to where I can do a half-assed job at everything? We’ll see. I might also try going through other parts a little more systematically, in general I enjoy it when I see those in the double encores.

Nothing out of the normal to report this week. I bought one new piece of DLC for Rocksmith: Cult of Personality, its riff is a little trickier than I expected, and Rocksmith fingers it in a quite different way than Rock Band 3 did. Not sure which way I prefer yet. And I’ve finally played all of the DLC I bought other than that song enough times that I’m seeing on-disc content in events again; nice to see those songs again.

I get the feeling I’ve gotten better after my journey through the DLC. And I’m continuing to somewhat inadvertently unlock Master mode: I did that on Plug In Baby yesterday (fun with scales!), and I discovered that I unlocked it on Surf Hell some time ago and forgot about that. So I spent a little time today going through old mastered songs again, so they don’t get too rusty.

The violin recital that I was doing piano accompaniment for happened on Friday; it was fun, but I’m glad to have it over. I didn’t do a great job, but hopefully I did a good enough job that I didn’t distract from the kids’ playing.

Guitar wise, songs are definitely getting harder at the difficult level I’m at now; I’m generally only given four or five songs in my set, but it may well take me two hours to get to where I qualify. I’m not unhappy that I got that Rush 5-pack, but all of those songs are pretty trick. Still, they’re all rewarding, too. And other songs are fun; e.g. today I played Anna Molly and Hit Me with Your Best Shot, both of which are mostly chord progressions that are interesting enough to not be boring and that are also fun, combined with enough single note stuff to keep me on my toes. I do hope the game starts including on-disc songs in the mix again soon; not sure what the trigger will be for that. (Maybe the total number of times I’ve seen a song in an event?)

A busy weekend (we went to a concert this afternoon, the Brentano String Quartet performing works by Haydn, Bartok, Purcell, and Beethoven), so not as much Rocksmith as normal. But I did manage to go through a couple of events, one of which took quite a while because it threw me two Rush songs at about the 90,000 level. (I still have a ways to go to get the arpeggios right on Tom Sawyer.) From this week’s DLC I bought Anna Molly, which I quite enjoyed going through.

I’ve probably spent more practice time this week on the piano, actually, practicing for accompanying the Suzuki violin recital. We had the rehearsal on Friday; I was a little worse than I would have liked, but I did well enough on the first movement of the Vivaldi, and was pleased to learn that nobody was playing the third movement of the Vivaldi after all. That concert is this coming Friday; glad to be doing it, but I’ll be glad to have it over with as well.

I didn’t practice guitar at all in the middle of the week; I can’t quite remember why in retrospect, other than that I was a little busy and was spending some time practicing piano for the recital. Which is going okay; I still don’t like the arrangement of the Vivaldi pieces, but I’ll do a competent job at one of them and may get good enough to do a competent job at the other.

I did play a bunch of Rocksmith this weekend, though; my Japanese teacher had to cancel this week’s lesson, which freed up a noticeable amount of time. The game is still throwing an exclusive diet of DLC at me; I think that will change soon (it’s frequently asking me to get 90,000 points, which isn’t too out-of-line with where I was on the on-disc content), but I’ve been thinking that for a while, so who knows. Fortunately, I like all the DLC I got; I wish I weren’t seeing the same pieces quite so frequently, but I can deal with that. (And I’m on the edge of thinking it’s a bit of an overdose of Rush, but I can deal with that, too!)

Last week, I alleged that Rock Band 3 throws more chord variations at you during London Calling than Rocksmith does; I played through that song today, and I now no longer think that’s the case, I think it’s actually throwing the same chords at you, just on different strings. Interesting seeing the difference. (There’s definitely a difference in More Than a Feeling, though.)

I’ve played enough events now to unlock all the guitars, which prompted the game to give me a bit of a graduation speech. So I decided to look at the achievements; I had all the non-bass ones except for two that I can get any time I want and the ones for the games. I used that as an excuse to give most of the games a try; I got the achievements on the games for scales and chords, the other games will take more work. I’m still not a huge fan of the games, but they’re mostly teaching useful skills, so I’ll probably try to nibble away at those? (I seem to be in an achievement completionist mode these days: I’m working on getting all of the achievements in Mark of the Ninja, too.) I haven’t yet unlocked all of the pedals and tones; I assume the latter drives the former, and I’ll get the latter as I keep on progressing through the on-disc content.