June 30 update

Today for me started out beyond frustrating. See, I have my method of doing things when it comes to practicing. I start with my Les Paul, then move on to my Strat, then on to my SG, then on to my Ibanez where I hit THE DAMN WALL! There is nothing more frustrating to me personally than a high action (distance from strings to the fretboard) in this case, to me, the action on my Ibanez was high enough to fly a 747 under. It took me almost 2 hours to get the action to the way I wanted it and to adjust intonation. I stuck with it and finally got my action back down to earth.

This permitted me to move on with an upset frame of mind on to my other SG, my ESP LTD F50 and today for the first time in god only knows how long, I was able to play my P-Bass. I know when I've had a good day based off of whether or not I hit the ability to hit the bass. Keep sticking with Rocksmith and things get much easier as you go. Yes, it's aggravating, yes it's frustrating, yes it makes your fingers hurt, but when you're able to post numbers like this, it's not as bad. Inch by inch, anything's a cinch, yard by yard it's very very hard. Check out the accuracy, and the mastery

June 29th 2018 progress

Wow a lot of progress today, on the rhythm and the lead fronts, managed to break out every one of my guitars, but wasn't able to have enough time leftover to dig the bass out. Here's the numbers for the day.

June 27th progress

Well, call me a liar, I know I said I was going to focus on lessons from here on out, but Rocksmith released the Joan Jett pack and hooked me a largemouth bass on a cheeseburger. Regardless my numbers for today make me very happy. I can't play everyday as I've said in the past  with my wife being off work so on the days that she's home, I'm blasting out whatever I can do in the time that I have. So here's today's progress

Weekly youtube channel started

Don't ask me why since this is something I usually would not undertake because I don't like talking to people let alone being seen, but I started a youtube channel which I will be updating minimum once a week to discuss my progress. I can be found on youtube at the following location
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPDojb6wcEO-sSKNzOVFYrw?view_as=subscriber

End of day 6/21

Well, to say today was a massive event for me is an understatement. At the end of practicing, I have total 366 hrs 56 minutes. So, to catch everyone up, On lessons at 100% I have the following:
Shifting 101
Sustains 101
Slides 101
Bends 101
and Chords 101

So my target right now is Legato 101 which is currently stuck at 98% and I'm going to be hitting that one hard in riff repeater. I've had to go in and slow it down and am executing it at perfection at 70% of total speed with 100% of the notes being hit. To me, it's frustrating and boring to be doing Riff Repeater on a lesson, but there's no real choice if I want to get this done. So, for the long term goal at the end of the next 365 hrs (bringing it to 730 total hours played mark) it's to have at least 3/4 of the lessons at 100%. Here's to hoping.

365 hours of gameplay

Well, today's the big day,
Today's the day I hit the equivalent of playing an hour a day for a year. So, what now? Well, after all the stumbling around, I'm going to be using the next 365 hours to work on the "lessons" portion of the Rocksmith 2014 game simply to try to keep the statistics together because the guitar arcade section of the game has it's own "timer". I'm going to be spending the next couple of days going over my guitars and trying to get them all set up while I'm out with family.

Reading a book today

Nothing playwise to report today on actual playing, went on the road down south to visit family, but I'm starting to read Absolute Essentials Of Music Theory For Guitar as written by Don Maclean and can be located here

I keep seeing over and over on the Rocksmith forums that theory is very overlooked in the game and it's one of the bigger critiques amongst those that are detractors of the game. On a recent trip to my local Guitar Center I asked several instructors about the necessity of learning theory and was told identical answers which when boiled down is best answered as follows "If you are going to be playing alone, it isn't necessary. If you are going to be playing with a band or with other people then yes it is absolutely essential."

When used with that particular logic, it rings true. The point of Rocksmith is to teach YOU guitar, not to teach you to play with a band. Yes, session mode does exist, but it's not really that well fleshed out. I expect that this will be addressed in the next update of the title.

So another thing about the Rocksmith community that needs to be addressed is the Guitar Hero/Rock band variation of notation vs. sheet music/tablature. Anytime you are crossing two worlds (video games and whatever real world might exist) there's going to be some grinding of gears in adaptation.

Rocksmith uses the "Guitar Hero" note highway where the notes scroll down the screen at you and you strike the note/chord at the moment it hits said line. It's metaphorically like walking through a song as if it were 3 dimensional changing lanes and what have you.

Traditional music and tablature scroll from left to right and for individuals that learned to play utilizing this method of playing it's a very uncomfortable change like trying to learn to read text in a Chinese format (up and down).

The other big divide is that by default, rocksmith comes with the low E string at the top of the list where as music (sheet and tab) list the notes low in pitch to high in pitch top to bottom.

So what ultimately we have going on here is this: two schools going head to head for similar end games, but unwilling to budge on the manner of writing. I get it. Musical notation and tablature are the way they are and have been for decades, while Rocksmith is the relative new kid on the block that is tapping into what was at one point a gaming phenom in pop culture. While so long as the music is accessable through Rocksmith via licensing, this is great news. However, when you want to learn something from a songbook, it's all literally upside down and sideways.

In the options menu, the notes can be flipped from the low E being on top to being on the bottom which is serviceable for the most part, but there's no setup to make the notes appear like tablature/sheet music. For something like that you'd need to hopefully wait for the next rocksmith or some other type of music game.

So when it comes to this back and forth if you're truly going to just play to sit around the house and fart on the guitar from time to time then by all means stick with just rocksmith. But if you are truly wanting to learn how to play then you need to learn some theory.

The first thing that this book works on is reading musical notation and the various signs that are used in sheet music. I'm also attempting to learn to memorize the fretboard. The other thing that I enjoy about this book is that each chapter comes with a test at the end so I'll be working on that as well as I go.

So, all that being said, I'm out for the day. I'll see you guys tomorrow, best wishes, and keep shredding.

The Road to 20k hours of playtime on Rocksmith 2014 remastered.

Welcome everyone to my blog,

My name is Matthew, I live in Austin, Tx. and I am hooked hopelessly on Ubisoft San Francisco's Rocksmith 2014 game. The game term is used very lightly as this is a tutor for playing a real "not a plastic" guitar. It won't teach you enough to play in a band, that requires learning music theory and other items that are not included in the game but are easily enough learned through books. 

So, why the 20,000 hour standard? Well, the rule of 10,000 hours is tossed around on the Rocksmith forums often enough and even though it's contested in certain circles, it's at least a benchmark, a target to hit, a goal to strive for. At the age of 41, some might say that it's an unrealistic goal and if I weren't unable to have a job due to a horrendous back I wouldn't try for this. However, this is one of those times when I'm going to try to push this out as hard as I am able simply because of the amount of free time that I have due to this back problem.

How am I going to go about documenting this? For most, in this age, it would be documented via youtube but since I do not as of yet know how to utilize that tool and I'm better at working with words that are written rather than with speaking as I have a bad stutter. For the time being, I'll be taking two photos on days that I practice: One at the start, one when I'm done for the day. I'll be recording which songs/lessons/times I spend on guitarcade and providing photographic evidence of such to document. If I feel that there are any personal feelings or thoughts I'll be posting/sharing those as well. This is as much for me as it is for you.

As for the gear that I'm using? Well, it's as follows

Best choice (wal mart) Stratocaster knockoff

Irin (ebay) p-bass knockoff

Lagrima (ebay) acoustic/electric

Maestro by Gibson SG

Glarry(ebay) Ibanez rg knockoff

Glarry(ebay) b.c.rich style knockoff

I use thick picks (light green) from Ernie Ball

My strings are GHS boomer 9's

When it comes to my selection of gear, the reviewer that I use is a youtuber that is very succinct, to the point and probably one of my all time favorites simply because he's not afraid to do reviews for cheap gear so if he's reviewed it, it's probably on my watchlist and on the way to being purchased. My youtuber may be found here if you're looking for gear on a budget, this is your guy.

On days that I do not practice on the xbox one, I will try to read the books and post what I've learned, if I'm out of town, I do have rocksmith on my laptop and that will be specified on days that I play it which will not be often due to me being out of town/state/country. It's just easier to load up the laptop than to go through my entertainment center and untangle the spaghetti cords that connect the xbox to the television.

Ultimately, I'm going to attempt to document everything I can in as much detail as possible, so expect daily updates for the most part. So, why 20k hours when ten will do? Because of this:

I came across this useful chart at this webpage and when reading the Summary and the amount of time required to hit that mark, I only had one thought "Challenge accepted". 

So, that's my story. I'm pushing through to twenty thousand hours. I'm doing this at 41 and 1/2 years of age. I'm not being sponsored, I'm not being endorsed, and no one asked me to do this. At my age, with the health conditions I'm facing, this is going to be one HELL of a ride. So let's rev it up and see how far this ride goes. So for me, it's 20,000 hours or death. 

One quick note though, I'm at the time of this writing 11 hours away from 365 hours. That's 1 year of practicing 1 hour daily. So why did I wait so long? Largely to see if I could stick to it and because I had a VERY chaotic year and it seemed to me as a good point at which to start and make this push.

Ubisoft S.F. if you're reading this, thank you for this game. I wouldn't know what else to do with myself without it. When your back goes out, everything goes to hell and doing something as simple as even tying your shoes becomes torture. On some days, even picking up my guitar by the neck sucks ass.