I didn’t play much Rock Band this weekend: we decided to watch the last six episodes of Last Exile on Sunday afternoon, and that combined with grocery shopping didn’t leave much time for guitar practice. No regrets about that, though: Last Exile is a great show, and what guitar practice I did was productive!

I went through my new normal practice songs: from Tier 0, that means Last Dance, Yoshimi, and I Wanna Be Sedated. And I was very pleased with how Last Dance went: I got a 513 note streak, only missing two chords, both near the start. (And one of them was a two-note chord, no excuse for that.) So I’m getting significantly better at barre chords: I’m going to keep the song in the rotation to consolidate those gains and to build up strength (I can make it through one playthrough no problem, obviously, but my hand is somewhat tired at the end), but that’s a huge improvement.

I’m doing less well on the other two; Yoshimi in particular I really would like to get better at. And then I moved on to Tier 1; from the previous songs, I decided to keep in Outer Space and The Only Exception, and I also went through Jerk It Out and will add it to the practice rotation as well. I definitely have room to improve in Outer Space, but it’s good solid chord practice for me to work on, and the solo is also useful practice. The other two have somewhat more idiosyncratic chords; I’m not sure the specific chords and chord transitions themselves are going to be common enough for me to need them for many other songs, but they’re all chords that I would like my hands to be able to do without thinking. Plus, Liesl and I both like singing The Only Exception, the lyrics are very sweet.

Yesterday, Liesl and I went through the Blitz songs in Rock Band 3. A good collection: nothing that I was super in love with, but very few that I disliked, and in general we had fun. We went through them on guitar/bass; for a lot of the songs, it seemed like the vocals were the high point, so we’ll have to go through them again in vocal harmonies. (And I should do another sweep of songs that I haven’t played in pro keys, too.)

One bit that I hadn’t realized: the Blitz soundtrack includes two songs that were part of Rock Band 2 but that we weren’t allowed to export to Rock Band 3, namely Give It Away and Spoonman. I in particular really appreciate them for including Give It Away, because without that, it would have been impossible to play all of Blood Sugar Sex Magik in Rock Band 3, which kind of sucks. So yay to Harmonix for making that possible again.

Today I went through some pro guitar: I went through some of the tier 0 songs again and then started on my second tour through tier 1. In terms of tier 0, I think I’m going to leave I Wanna Be Sedated, Last Dance, and Yoshimi in the rotation for a while: they all have me emphasizing different core techniques that I still have significant room for improvement at, and they’re all songs I basically enjoy, so I should keep on going with them. Probably the solo for I Love Rock and Roll, too.

I wish I’d taken better notes on tier 1, because there were two or three songs in today’s selection that I also felt that I should replay, I just can’t remember what they were! And, of course, several that I was less excited about and will drop. (And one that I was unsure about: I really like The Only Exception, but that’s mostly because of singing, I don’t know yet how I feel about its guitar part. I’ll probably keep it in the mix for another week, though.) I only went through maybe six of the tier 1 songs, it wasn’t a particularly long session, so lots more exploring to come.

I was a little worried about how my guitar behaved the previous week, but fortunately replacing the batteries seems to have fixed the problem. I went through the rest of the Tier 0 songs (and repeated a few from the previous week); generally pleasant but unexciting. I’ve now gotten five stars on all of the on-disc ones except for Rehab and Midlife Crisis; both are scattered enough that I don’t really enjoy working on them, so I don’t think I’ll spend time there.

I will repeat some of the others, though. I was pleased at how much better I was getting at Last Dance by the end, I’ll want to keep that in the rotation because my hands just have to be able to do that reliably. I was less pleased with my problems with Yoshimi; another song where my hands have to be able to execute reliably. (And, honestly, I was expecting better, I’ve practiced that one a fair amount offline.) I should probably keep something power-chordy in the rotation, but nothing is really speaking to me; not sure what to do about that. Mostly I’ll move back up to Tier 1 next week, I think.

And on Sunday, Liesl and I sung together for the first time in ages. Which was fun, as always! Though I’m definitely out of practice. The best part was when Miranda joined us for the last 30-60 minutes; we introduced her to some geeky songs that she was previously unaware of, and ended up getting the #5 spot on the leaderboard for 30 Lives. And I quite enjoy the three-part harmonies in the last part of that song, too.

Some pictures from the August 2012 VGHVI Minecraft session. First, Jonathan and animals:

Jonathan thinking about his next move

His loyal dog watching him.

Surrounded by animals on the ice

Miranda built a midair mine:

Miranda’s midair mine house

Top view of the midair mine

Miranda and Jonathan both experimented with redstone, though I’m not sure either of their creations survived:

Miranda experimenting with redstone

Looking through a passage at the temple

Cats examine Jonathan’s project

Side view of Miranda’s project

And finally Jonathan decided to build a house for his cats, and Miranda followed suit:

Jonathan building a house for his cats

A cat checks out the house

Miranda starts work on another house

Cats examining the blue house

Inside the blue house

Pictures added to both houses

Decorated front of the blue house

A cat, the blue house, and the pool

I was looking for the next song to focus on, and decided to go and give all the tier 0 songs a try. No practicing, just diving in and seeing how it was going.

Living in America was power chord practice; I was a little disconcerted how badly it went at first, but pretty soon I figured out how to use muted chords to my advantage when shifting and ended up with gold stars on it. Last Dance really made my hands hurt—I should work barre chord practice into the mid-week routines. Still, it went pretty well, I think that was the song that I managed five stars on for the first time? I also beat my previous high on Beautiful People; only four stars, though, but it’s metal with a dropped D tuning, so I don’t want to spend too much time on it.

The thing is, though, part of the reason why I missed notes on that one was because the guitar kept on playing false strums. And I went on to a couple other songs, and the same problem kept happen. I swapped out MIDI cables and turned the guitar off and on, and it didn’t go away. So then I got frustrated and stopped. And, of course, after stopping I thought that maybe the batteries were low; I swapped those, but didn’t go back to the game and play.

So, a brief session, and one that ended in frustration. But assuming I can resolve that problem, I actually think I’d enjoy going through the tier 0 songs and trying to get five stars on all of them and gold stars on a few more of them. That definitely seems like it’s within reach now. (The one thing I’m curious about is whether I’ll finally be able to beat Dan Bruno’s score on Yoshimi…)

It’s been a month and a half since I last posted here—I’d hit a wall on pro guitar, and while my plan was to start over when that happened, being more selective on what I played and trying to get really good at a few songs, that plan was interrupted by a vacation, two sets of guests, and a conference. But that’s all over, and this was a three day weekend, so: time to get back in the saddle!

Which, to be honest, my brain wasn’t really raring to do. That’s probably the reason why I downloaded Rock Band Blitz on Saturday and ended up spending almost seven hours on it. My basic takeaway is that it’s a quite reasonable price for a 25-song pack, but as a game I’m not impressed with it, and I don’t like the coins mechanic; I played it for maybe another hour today and I’m not sure I’ll play it again, I have a strong preference for the regular Rock Band gameplay.

On Sunday, though, I did pick up the guitar, going back to tier zero songs. Specifically, I started with The Hardest Button to Button—it’s the song that the training goals encourage you to start with, so it seemed like a good place to restart. And wow, I was a little rustier than I realized: it’s mostly slow arpeggiated power chords, with a few non-arpeggiated ones thrown in, but I made more mistakes than I would have liked. Still, after a while (an hour? two hours?) I was playing it acceptably well—I didn’t get a full combo (though it seemed like that’s plausibly in reach), but I did get gold stars, which is good enough for me. Sounded fine plugged in, too; a pleasant song to have gone through again, but it’s basic enough that I don’t think I’ll particularly return to it.

The next song that I went through was I Love Rock and Roll: I reminded myself of the basics of it yesterday and focused on the solo today. It’s a song that I like (both playing and singing) and that I think will be good for me—the power chords are straightforward, but there’s a solo that I thought was within reach, and a tremolo bit that’s good practice.

And I was pleased to find out today that yes, the solo is within reach: I managed to get 100% on it not only on practice mode but when playing through the song in game. It’s near the edge of my capabilities, and it’s again pointing out areas where I’m rusty (as well as the fact that my calluses have receded!); I plan to add that solo to my regular out-of-game practice routine. Partly because of that rust but partly because playing it unmuted pointed out areas where I should consider working on my technique: the game encourages me to play certain bits as pull-offs, but they sound lousy when I do that, which either means I should work on that bit of my technique or I should strum those notes. Definitely something to work on.

The song is, sadly, kind of frustrating to play unmuted in game, because the non-solo/tremolo bits have enough pauses in them that the game picks up false strums all the time. Though the good thing there is that I eventually figured out how to turn down the crowd noise, so at least I’m not getting booed; that makes it manageable. And when I played it muted, I did quite well: I didn’t manage gold stars, but I did get one playthrough with a 184-note streak. (And where I missed some easy notes at the start—if I’d been crisper there, maybe I would have gotten gold stars.)

So: back in the saddle, with a bunch of free weekends ahead of me. With one new addition to my practice repertoire; and I did well enough on both of this weekend’s songs that I plan to move onto new songs next weekend.

As I discovered last week, Tier 5 is where I’m starting to hit a wall. And my plan for that is not to fight the wall: once it becomes clear that I’m not making any more progress, I’m going to start over on simple songs and really focus on them.

What I wasn’t expecting was for that to happen this week. But I was going through training on Oye Mi Amor and thought: I could learn this song, and I would actually probably really enjoy the process. Or rather, I would enjoy the process eventually: but right now, it’s pointing out areas where I should shore up my basic skills even on songs that focus on aspects of guitar playing that I’m less incompetent at.

So, rather than press on, I decided to stop. I’m going on vacation soon, then guests are visiting, then I’ll be off at a conference; so I’m honestly not sure how much Rock Band time I’ll have in the rest of July and in August. But come September I will refocus.

I had a pretty big backlog of recently-purchased DLC that I hadn’t gone through the Pro Keys on (36 songs, it turned out), so I went through all of those on Friday and Saturday. The main takeaways from that are that Huey Lewis and the News are fun on keys and that, if I want to go for a Pro Keys streak, Private Eyes is a good candidate: it’s very repetitive and there’s no chord transition in it that I should miss. Which didn’t mean that I actually succeeded at full comboing it, and in fact my longest streak, 495, was 5 short of what I needed for the in-game achievement, but still, at least now I know about it if I want to go for that.

After last week’s experience, I decided to try adding Good Girl to the practice rotation. Which I was pretty rusty on, so I went back to practice one repeated single-note bit and the solo. The former of which is quite manageable; the latter is actually within my grasp, though it will take me a while to get there. So I think it should stay in the rotation, it’s a good choice for me.

And then I tried my first Tier 5 songs. Continuing the Huey Lewis theme from earlier in the week: The Power of Love turned out to be surprisingly fun on guitar. An easyish but pleasant two-note chord bit that I enjoyed moving around on, a more bluesy bits with chords that are less familiar but that I’m starting to get used to, and even the solo seemed potentially within reach. So I’m thinking I might actually add that one to the practice regime, though the solo in particular will sound bad for a while.

The other song I tried was Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting. Which was fast with a bit of sliding around: nothing individually seemed that hard, but it was too fast for me, enough so that I didn’t get three stars at it. I’m fairly sure I could get three stars without too much more work, but I’m reaching my limit, and this didn’t seem like a song worth pushing it on. So for now I’m leaving it as is and moving on; in the unlikely event that I make it through three stars on all or almost all the other Tier 5 songs then I’ll come back and get the third star on this one, but for now I’m thinking that’s not the best use of my time.

On Saturday, I had a pleasant time at Dan Apczynski‘s place playing games with him, Jorge Albor, Mattie Brice, and Kirk Hamilton. Which was super fun; we played some board games (Pandemic, Betrayal at House on the Hill) and some Rock Band 3, and Dan even gave me some super-useful guitar tips! Just having him show me around his setup was useful, but he also had some suggestions on getting better tone.

On Sunday, my goal was to finish Tier 4. Which I did! Well, sort of: the two songs I had left were Sir Duke and Humanoid, and I only managed two and a half stars on Sir Duke. Which I do think should probably be Tier 5, and has one characteristic that makes the game particularly unforgiving when playing it, namely that it has slowly strummed chords that it represents as a closely spaced arpeggio instead of a chord, and the timing is almost impossible to get right on that. Though the flip side is that I later found a section where it was perfectly happy to let me strum chords extra times; not sure what’s going on there, but I guess I got to cheat the scoring both ways, so it all balances out? Lots of ninths and minor sevenths, though, which I’m not good at; I enjoyed the song, and I can imagine returning to it eventually, but for now, I’m not going to put in the time to get three and a half songs.

That one is just DLC, though; for in-game achievement purposes, though, the one that counts was Humanoid, and that one I did manage to get three stars. Actually, if I’m remembering correctly, I got four stars on it? It’s unpleasant metal, and in particular I didn’t enjoy the fast dropped-D power chord stuff at the start; I did enjoy a later reasonably trick bit involving jumping between medium-high frets on the high strings and then low frets on low strings, that’s something I wouldn’t always have been able to do. Still, ultimately: not something I enjoyed, I went through once and then declared victory.

I’d also downloaded a couple of pieces of DLC this week. Good Girl was Tier 3, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it: some pleasant power chords, some full barre chords that I was pleased that my hands could jump to with very little problem. And the single-note runs were within reach, too. I’m thinking I might even add that one to the regular practice rotation—not my favorite song overall, but the guitar part is fun and instructive for me right now.

The other was Drops of Jupiter. Which was only Tier 2, but I found it a lot harder than Good Girl: a fair number of slightly unusual bits and some arpeggiation that I didn’t always get right. It was reasonably fun to play, but I don’t think I’ll return to it.

So: Tier 5 next! I’m pretty sure that Sir Duke is only the first of many songs that I won’t get three stars on, and I’m also sure that solos will start to be way beyond me. (I’ve started adding scales to my out-of-game practice in an effort to help with that.) I doubt I’ll push all the way through Tier 5, and certainly not through Devil Horns, but I’ll see what I can do. And when it gets too hard, I’ll probably start over at the beginning and really try to learn stuff.

Partway through June, we tried out a Minecraft mod pack called Tekkit as our VGHVI game. (Patrick Holleman was kind enough to host.) I just wandered around taking pictures of the new blocks; here they are.

The first thing I saw was strange orange pipes; they turned out to be the top of some sort of automatic mining device.

These are the tops of automated mining devices

Looking down into a mine

Looking back into the mine once I have my draw distance fixed

Sunset above the mine

The bottom of one of the mine pits

Then I went into the nearby castle:

Castle entrance

An indoor farm

Some strange colorful pipes, I think for sorting

Our genial host

Pipe system on the roof

More roof ducts

Some pipe machinery in the basement

The output of those pipes

There's a lot more stuff in the item list

After wandering that castle, I traveled to another hall; I think that one was Pat’s, but I’m not completely sure.

Approaching our destination

Inside the hall

Looking down from the roof

Walking through rubber trees

A strange apparatus

Computer monitor

Outside view of hall

Traveling back through the snow

An interesting tour, and I liked the way Tekkit was packaged; very convenient. There’s clearly a lot of stuff there; I didn’t have the energy to really dig into it (frankly, I’m still scared of getting sucked back into Minecraft, and it could be a lot worse with Tekkit), but it wouldn’t surprise me if Miranda has already started playing Tekkit on her own. Many thanks to Pat for showing us around!