Not a lot of practice this week, but I did go through my standard practice list (throwing Subdivisions onto it), and do a couple of new tier 4 songs. Specifically, on Saturday, I did Something Bigger, Something Brighter; most of that piece is fast triplets that I’m nowhere near accurate enough on. Which was frustrating at first, but actually I enjoy the way the triplets sound when I play them unmuted and when I don’t have to keep up with the actual song, so now I’m converting that into a practice bit for outside of game, and am hoping to get better at it. Which is good, because I have a long way to go: I was convinced for a while that it was going to be my first non-three-star song, but when playing it unmuted I actually managed three stars through a combination of being able to hear the triplets a little better and having the game being a little more forgiving on the non-triplet sections. (Normally, playing unmuted is bad for your score, because it falsely claims you’re strumming in pauses just from string vibrations, but on fast runs, that actually sometimes fills in glitches in your playing, so I got up to 4x multipliers in places where I probably didn’t deserve it.)

I also broke my A string on Saturday; this time, rather than replacing all the strings, I just replaced that one. Here’s the video I used this time, worked well, and I’m managing to get the string wound more neatly.

On Sunday, I learned Lasso. Which turned out to be quite good for my level: the chords are a bit unusual for me and a bit fast for me, but in both cases they’re definitely within reach. The only bit I can’t get is the solo, which basically is playing something fairly straightforward on the G string combined with accents on the high E string—it’ll be a while before I can do that, but at least now that I’m thinking about it that way I can do the G string part and sound good and have a framework for thinking about it if I want to try both parts.

My D string broke while I was in the middle of today’s practice; not sure if that’s a coincidence or if strings generally have similar lifetimes or if combining new strings with old strings puts extra stress on the old strings somehow? At least I’m good at replacing strings now; and at least I have a backup guitar, so I can just swap guitars until I’m done practicing.

This weekend, I started on tier 4 Expert Pro Guitar. So far, I’ve managed to three-star every song; coming into this tier, I was not expecting to maintain that streak.

The first song I played was Rush’s Subdivisions. I’ve always enjoyed playing Rush on fake guitar, but this is the first time I’ve tried it out on the real thing. And it was tough but manageable (I was going to say tough but fair, but this is music, fairness is irrelevant), chords that I needed to work on but that I could deal with. And, sure enough, I enjoyed it: I think I’m probably going to put it into the practice rotation, because I suspect I have a lot to learn from it.

Next was Everybody Wants to Rule the World, the easiest of the on-disc tier 4 songs. I didn’t take notes after playing it, so I can’t remember the details: I remember there was picking that was a little too fast to be within my comfort zone, I can’t remember what else was going on. Pretty sure I enjoyed it, but not enough to want to frequently return to it.

Today, I went through the middle third of 2112, namely Discovery and Presentation. I was pretty sure that this was going to be the first song I didn’t manage to three-star: my first run, I wasn’t that far over two stars, there were some very rough bits. The thing is, though, the rough bits are in two parts: it ends with a long solo that’s way too hard for me, so that’s a total loss. But the rest is chord sections; they’re somewhat unusual, but I managed to get the basic approach right for most of them, and when thinking about it more, I was pretty sure I’d be able to do a passable job at the one chord section that I’d totally screwed up. So I went back through the training section for that bit, and played it over and over again, and eventually managed three stars on the song. (And 26th place on the leaderboard, DLC leaderboards are kind of silly.)

So: I’ve managed to survive my first week of tier 4! Wonder how long that will last…

I didn’t put in as much time on guitar as I normally do this weekend, maybe around two hours or so? But I did make it through three pieces (plus the usual assortment of review.)

The first was This Bastard’s Life. It had tons of seventh chords, including what I think are slightly nonstandard variants; educational but very hard, I only managed to get my third star on the final held note. I would probably profit from playing this over and over again, though right now I’m not planning to put in the time; I wish I had other pieces that let me learn some of those seventh chords in a slightly friendlier context.

Next was Killing Moon. I felt that This Bastard’s Life was marked as one tier too easy; Killing Moon, in contrast, seemed to me to be marked as at least one tier too hard. Repeated easy chords over and over again; single notes with room between them and not requiring much hand movement. I guess the difficulty was assigned because of the solo, which was long; but the solo was super easy as well (again, requiring very little hand movement and slow enough that it wasn’t hard to sight read most of it), so I’m not sure why it was marked as tier 3 instead of, say, tier 1. Having said that, I ended up at 49th place on the leaderboard, so I guess it somehow played to my strengths?

Finally, Heart of Glass. A bunch of single notes, with string jumping, and a few two-note chords that were unusual enough to give me trouble. I barely managed the third star, which surprised me, I felt that I should have done better than that.

And, with that, I finished tier 3! I suspect that this is the last tier that I’ll be able to get three stars on all of the songs (at least on this go through)—I expect I’ll be able to play many of the tier 4 songs, and even enjoy several of them, but random variation in difficulty means that a few will hit my weak points enough that I won’t be able to get to three stars without more hours of work than I’m willing to put in. We’ll see, though; just making it to tier 4 on expert feels like a real accomplishment, and I’ll be perfectly happy to start over with the easiest songs, trying to really master the ones I enjoy the most.

I was out of town for the last couple of weeks, and I was pretty busy today catching up with stuff, but I did manage to get in a bit of practice. Mostly I went through old favorites; the one new song I tried was One-Arm Scissor. Which was quite tough at the start, hard enough that I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get three stars on it, but after a couple of tries I started being able to play the unusual chords in it. Sounded quite odd when plugged in, I think there must be some sort of alternate tuning going on there?

When practicing older songs on Pro Guitar this week, I concentrated on Tier 3 songs instead of my earlier practice playlist (which was mostly Tier 0); and wow, Tier 3 is so much fun. I went through More than a Feeling, Working for the Weekend, Combat Baby, Viva La Resistance, and Ziggy Stardust; all fun, all instructive, all worth returning to. (Viva La Resistance is maybe a little boring to play, though not to listen to, but it’s good tremolo practice.)

And the first song I played this week may well get added to the list; I didn’t take detailed notes, but I really enjoyed playing The Look. Walk of Life was okay but not great; Tier 3 on Pro Guitar versus devil horns on fake guitar, and it’s a little hard for me to imagine what would make it devil horns: unrelenting, but not ludicrously fast, and either no solo or an easy one. Admittedly, my hand did hurt by the end of it, but not so much that I didn’t play through it several times; good, albeit not quite as much of a keeper as several of the other songs. As was Spanish Bombs: that one was mostly barre chord practice.

After that, I went through five (I think) songs on Pro Bass, finishing off Tier 3 and doing the first two songs in Tier 4. Pleasant but, of course, noticeably easier than guitar, and I have no idea why the first of those Tier 4 songs was marked at that level, it was quite easy.

The one blemish was that my guitar started acting funny, not detecting input reliably even after swapping batteries; that happened before and it was caused by the MIDI cable, so I swapped that out and yes, it was the problem again. So I ordered another backup; and, since I’m starting to get paranoid about equipment availability, I also ordered a spare MIDI adapter.

I worked on the Musical Offering some, too; getting better, but my heart wasn’t in it this week. Not sure if I was tired or if that’s a sign that I’ve been working on that for too long; not sure I have the energy to really polish the 3-Part Ricercar, but I would like to get the 6-Part Ricercar sounding better, so I’ll keep going for a few more weeks (a month, really, to be realistic) longer. Not sure if I’ll pause on piano playing after that (to focus more on guitar and on non-musical pursuits) or switch pieces.

What with GDC, I didn’t play Rock Band at all last weekend, and basically didn’t do anything musical for almost two weeks straight. This weekend was a little busy, but clearly I didn’t want to let that happen again, so I made sure to play some Rock Band on Saturday.

Which was, of course, great! I went through my regular round of practice pieces, and then on to new pieces: only three this week (like I said, I was a little busy), which were:

• Combat Baby: super fun. Nice single note bits, pleasant chords that were mostly bottom three/four strings but with some interesting seventh fret playing around. Learned something (especially about the latter) from playing it plugged in.
• Viva La Resistance; great song (one of my favorites to listen to on the disk), though actually not my most favorite to play guitar on. In particular, the alternating strumming is sometimes a bit too fast, especially when playing it muted; it improves significantly when plugged in. But even so I made it through it fine and there are a fair number of non-tremolo parts to enjoy; and it’s a reminder that I should get back to finding five minutes to do tremolo practice every evening. (Easy enough to do while cooking dinner, after all.
• Ziggy Stardust: the arpeggiations were extremely similar to those in More Than a Feeling, it had nice power chord mixture, single note runs, all around lots of fun.

In fact, tier three guitar has been great all around: More than a Feeling and Working for the Weekend remain two of my favorite songs to play. (I should probably come up with a tier three practice list to return to, and quite possible all three songs that I learned this weekend will go on it.) So maybe that’s my current sweet spot? Which is gratifying: I’m sure I’ll hit a wall at some point, but I’m halfway through the difficulty curve on Expert and I’m still doing more than okay. The flip side is that I’m not coming close to perfect on any of these; but that’s good, too, I imagine I learn the most if I can do well enough on a piece to enjoy it and to motivate me to really learn it while having enough flaws in my playing that I really do need to work to learn the piece.

Liesl and I also started chipping away at the DLC backlog on Saturday (on fake guitar/bass); nothing too striking there, though Call Me was a reminder that I really like singing along with Blondie. (I fear that the high notes there are just enough on the edge of my range that I’d be nervous singing when anybody else is along, alas.) And Liesl and I should go through the Hall and Oates and Heart songs on harmonies, too.

Today I put in my piano practice; felt rusty (and my fingers actually felt sluggish, through a combination of the temperature and being out of practice), and the Three-Part Ricercar sounded as bad as I can remember in a while. The Six-Part Ricercar started bad, too, but eventually got better; I really am getting close to not sounding horribly incompetent at that. And I went through some songs from My Neighbor Totoro at the end, always fun to play through Ghibli music.

I was busy on Sunday, so I only got to practice on Saturday, but it went well. The missing arpeggiation lesson is finally starting to come together, I got 97% on it a couple of times. (Though I’m not doing so well on the tremolo lesson these days…)

Then I went through some of the old songs that I liked; Working for the Weekend and More Than a Feeling are both super super fun to play, and they’re both great for me to be working on right now on a technical level. So I’m definitely going to come back to those.

For the new songs, I’m actually just going through the motions a little more than I have been in the past—not sure if I’m getting burned out a bit or if none of them are super exciting. Here are the new ones:

• Funk #49: Boring and repetitive, but playing plugged in was surprisingly instructional. There’s a hammer-on bit and a bit where you add the sixth string to the second through fourth strings, both of which made a difference that I wasn’t expecting when I listened to them.
• King George: Arpeggiation and chords at the start that I should have done better on; fun power chords; an easy, short, pleasant solo. I didn’t do particularly well, but I basically enjoyed it; not sure why I didn’t put in more time on it, maybe I should come back to it later?
• Turning Japanese: Another one where I should have done better, though I didn’t take many notes about the song, so I guess it didn’t make that big an impression on me.
• Oh My God: I did well on the repeated notes, okay on the chords, but much less well than I’d like on one scale bit.

The other thing about the guitar practice was that something started to feel funny with my playing part way through. I hope/assume it wasn’t the strings, given that I just replaced them; maybe it’s the picks? I should experiment more with that next time.

I also put in some Musical Offering practice this weekend, and for the first time I can start to see what the 6-Part Ricercar will feel like when I basically have it in my fingers and can actually start really listening to it. I still have some work before that happens, but I’m a lot more optimistic about the how it will be after my second pass going closely through the piece than I was a couple of weeks ago.

The main unusual event that happened this week was that I replaced the strings on the guitar for the first time. Electric guitars are different from other instruments that I’ve dealt with, because the strings are a lot stiffer; I wish I’d wound the bottom two pegs a bit more, but they seem to already be holding their tune fine, so I guess I didn’t screw things up too much?

This weekend’s pro guitar pieces:

• Werewolves of London: an alternate tuning, and the music itself was mostly boring but with a few bits that were harder than I’d like mixed in, all of which added up to something I didn’t enjoy.
• Me Enamora: It started off with single note bits that were fun but a bit too hard for me, then strummy bits that I had the wrong pick for (I would have liked a thin pick, but I couldn’t have played the single notes with that), then a solo that was definitely too hard for me, then repeating some of prior bits. I like the song; right now it’s too hard for me, but I hope that eventually I’ll come back to it and be able to do rather better on the single note bits in the start and somewhat better on the solo?

That was the last of the solid songs, so next on to moderate:

• Working for the Weekend: Really really fun, absolutely one of my favorite pro guitar songs. Though I didn’t take good notes on it, so I’m not exactly sure why I enjoyed it so much; I’ll definitely be playing it again and will find out more. It also sounded quite good plugged in.
• Hey Man Nice Shot: Full of fast dropped D power chords, changing constantly instead of repeating the same chord over and over again; the upshot was that I couldn’t hit them properly, and didn’t particularly enjoy the attempt.
• More Than a Feeling: Arpeggiation that started out a bit too hard but where I eventually started getting used to it; chord bits that were pleasant, and a surprisingly accessible solo. I should return to this one, too.
• I Can See for Miles: Surprisingly accessible and pleasant. It had unusual chords, but not too many different ones and they weren’t too difficult. And that made it quite interesting to play when plugged in, hearing what those chords sounded like coming out of the amp.

I also went through five (I think?) songs on Pro Bass. I’m actually on the moderate difficulty tier on both instruments now (though noticeably further ahead on pro bass), and bass is giving me trouble more and more often, though it’s still generally a bit easier than guitar.

Liesl and I also finished going through all the on-disc vocal harmonies content; that’s been a lot of fun, and while there are songs that I have no desire to sing again, on balance it was good to have an excuse to branch out more than normal. I was amused to see that we’re in the top 1% of the harmonies leaderboard: so now I’m there on pro keys, pro guitar, and harmonies, and pro bass is certainly attainable. Pro drums, not so much; and, while I haven’t checked, I doubt I’m particularly close to the top 1% on solo vocals, I think there’s a lot more people who have done a few songs on harmonies than who have gone through all the songs. (Also, Liesl is a better singer than I am.) Still, we have gotten gold stars on many of the songs; in fact, I think the “5 star every song on expert harmonies” goal may well be attainable for us?

I was getting over a cold this weekend, so even though it was a three-day weekend I didn’t play as much Rock Band as I normally do (and didn’t play piano at all); but I did eventually get in five songs on the guitar. Specifically:

• Sister Christian: Fun power chords, combined with some nice flips and other variants. (Training mode didn’t warn me about that, but I was pleased to discover I could sight read them.) The solo was a bit beyond me, but will be good to return to when I’m better. And I was shocked to be ranked at #74 on the leaderboard, no idea what was going on there.
• The Con: It had you strumming odd subsets of the strings, and I’m fairly sure it was using an alternate tuning. The result was that I didn’t feel like I was actually playing the song, just a gamified variant of it; I didn’t even try to see what it would sound like plugged in.
• False Alarm: In general, I’m not much of a punk fan, but it was fun to play (albeit noticeably faster than I would have liked). In particular, it changed up the power chords, moving around a bit on the lowest string of the chord, which made it more interesting than it would have been otherwise.
• Don’t Bury Me … I’m Still Not Dead: I was worried about the chords where you only play the A and G but not the D string, but they sounded fine when plugged in. It was a bit faster than I’d like, but not too bad, and was fairly power chord heavy. I used a medium pick on this, which I’m noticing myself doing more often: songs with fast chords but also with single note runs.
• Living on a Prayer: Honestly, in some sense I think this is the perfect Rock Band song. Total rock anthem, guitar part with a pleasant mixture of power chords, bassy bits (maybe a bit too many bassy bits, to be honest), a solo that doesn’t overstay its welcome, in the middle of the difficulty spectrum, over the top chorus, reflexive lyrics containing a euphemism for a guitar, ridiculous key change. So glad they redid this for Rock Band 3—not really so much my style of music, but it’s archetypal purity in the context of the game more than makes up for that.

The other thing that happened this week was that I broke a string for the first time. I didn’t have any spare strings (whoops! Normally I’m better about advance planning than that), but fortunately I have a whole spare guitar, so I could keep on going.

Some general practice notes:

• I’m up to 70% speed on that arpeggiation lesson; and it’s revealing that, not only am I not good enough at shifting to F chords, I’m actually not as good at shifting to G chords as I think I am. (And I did badly on the tremolo lesson this week, not sure what’s going on there.)
• I created a guitar practice playlist, to make it easy for me to go over my current batch of songs that I want to practice every week.
• I’ve started writing down key chord progressions for some of those for use when practicing outside of game, instead of trying to remember them. Which got me used to the notation of chords with a dropped note on the bottom, and also had me realize that the weird barred C chord in Take On Me is actually an E chord with a G# on the E string. Interesting.

This week’s new guitar songs:

• Have You Ever Seen the Rain: I’m only playing it now because I just downloaded it, it’s deservedly warmup, but I liked the moving bass part to move it into the practice rotation.
• I Need to Know: mostly plays around on the seventh fret, with a bit of arpeggiation thrown in, I can tell that the difficulty is increasing.
• I Feel Good: Different chords than I’m used to (more R&B / funk), but I got used to that soon enough, and I was surprised how much I liked the sound when plugged in. I need to work on scales more, though.
• Riders on the Storm: pleasant noodling around that felt more like a bass part than a guitar part. And then some annoying vagueness on the high frets.
• Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This One Before: some pleasant chord variants, I didn’t do so well on the arpeggiated bits.
• Need You Tonight: there were three different modes of the piece: some 9th fret chords, some rhythmic alternating strumming, and a bassy bit. All of which added up to something I enjoyed.

I went through a few songs on bass, too, and Liesl and I sung for maybe two hours? We were going through some on-disc songs that we hadn’t sung; and we seem to be getting better, we’re getting gold stars surprisingly often.

Quite happy with that amount of practice, given the number of other things I did on both Saturday and Sunday. And I was good about piano practice: I practiced on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. I’m on my second pass through the 6-Part Ricercar in the Musical Offering; it’s going quite a bit faster than I expected, though I’m also starting to realize just how little I understand the different voices in that piece.