Red Saturday Morning

Yesterday my personal trainer kicked my ass, and the day before I 'ran' close to 6 miles, so this morning I was hurting. Did some school work until Lisa left just before noon, then headed into the basement to continue with the current quest. The first five songs on the list were "Real Good Looking Boy", "Red Barchetta", "Red Tandy", "Release", and "Reptilia". Sort of daunting for a drummer of my abilities. I used RGLB as my warmup on Hard, kept it on Hard for the Rush song, then moved back to Expert for the last three. Soundly beat my old high scores on every song, adding "Reptilia" to my list of gold stars for the first time. So the weekend is already a success. 99 songs left on the 'unplayed' list.

Last night I stopped by to have dinner with my dad. Had 3 beers in the course of the evening (I give thumbs up to Two Brothers' Resistance IPA), so drumming was pretty much out of the question, but I still had time to kill so I sang a few songs then switched to guitar. I've been very comfortable with playing guitar on Hard for most songs - though my poor fingers can't handle any really fast solos, and alt-strumming is something that I'm just not very good at - but I'm trying to learn how to play on Expert. So I did a few tier 1 songs and surprised myself by upping a bunch of scores and even added a new gold star to my (really small) collection. I just wish that I could remember what it was. Came damn close on a couple of others, too. The session reminded me how much fun playing a 3/4-scale plastic Stratocaster can be.

The 'P's

Since I'm basically talking to myself here, I'm going to continue treating this blog as my Rock Band-centered diary. RB2 is about the only thing that brings me any sort of sense of accomplishment in daily life right now, so that's what I'll tend to blather about.

Today I continued my quest to get all of my drum tracks off of the 'Unplayed' category in solo quickplay. I'm working my way through the 'O's & 'P's at the moment. After I finished with my chores, I went into The Cave for a session before lunch. I usually warm up with something easy, offbeat and upbeat - in today's case "The Best Day Ever" by Spongebob Squarepants. Yes it's silly and easy but I need some silly now and then. Wierd thing: I FC'ed it and didn't get gold stars. I must've skipped a star power activation somewhere along the line.

So I started to knock off a few songs - "Oceans", "On the Road Again", "One of THOSE Nights" - all of which give me some problems (so I was getting a little tense), and then I hit "Panic Attack". I'm not a prog/metal fan by any means, and I'm not very good at the song, but I set the difficulty on 'Hard' and gave it a shot. Everything was fine until the end when I completely lost the beat and failed out at 99%. Some loud profanity was involved. Ended up doing it on 'Medium' and almost beat my previous high score, but had a bad taste in my mouth. I hate "Panic Attack". Next up was "PDA", so it was back to 'Expert' - but lead leg struck and I just couldn't hit the triple kicks at all, which got me even more pissed off than I had been. Ran through it on 'Hard' and shut down for the morning.

After eating lunch, I went to the gym and came back for another go, and somehow things got better. Started off by knocking off a few tracks on vocals (RB2 on disk tracks that I've never even tried), and even though I really suck at vocals, it got me ready for drums again. Only did 3 tracks - "Peace of Mind", "People Got A Lotta Nerve", and "Pleasure (Pleasure)", but I soundly beat my previous high scores on all of them, including a new set of gold-stars for the Neko Case tune. So the day ended up okay. I have 113 more songs to go.

Don't know what my "project" will be after that.

My Hero

Taylor Hawkins. I don't know how he does it. From my limited experience, he seems to like almost constant kicking more than anyone else.

I fired up RB2 this morning to knock off a few more "unplayed" songs in solo quickplay, and before I could finish my warmup, an invite to play online came in. I don't do this much, but this time I had the time & energy to give it a shot. My partner (or partners) in plastic rock were a platinum vocalist and a platinum guitarist. Since no one was talking to me I couldn't tell if it was one person doing voxtar or two players. Either way, they were both good, and I had a great time. They mostly chose stuff that I could live with, until somebody - not me! - chose 'Sin Wagon'. While the song itself is fun, it's really a chore on X drums so I hung my head and dropped down to Hard, where it is merely annoying. We played 'Mr. Brightside' (another leg killer) and I made it through okay. Finally, one of the other players chose 'My Hero'. I survived, but not without crippling myself for the next few hours.

Anyway, I'd be happy to play with you again sometime, Sea Stewardesss - just no more Sin Wagon!

Back to Linux homework now.

A Slow Week

First, here's my GGaHT run, plus my 3000 note streak. I'm no elite-level drummer, but I don't think I'm too bad for a 47-year old with precious little training (and talent). Apologies for the poor picture quality.

Didn't play too much during the week, but managed to get the "unplayed" list down to somewhere in the 160's - So I got that going for me. One of my former co-workers stopped by on Tuesday so we could play Eric Cartman's version of Poker Face. While it was worth a chuckle, they didn't use the 'Whale Whores' lyrics, so it didn't live up to my expectations (what a surprise). Also downloaded two of the JoCo tracks from RBN - Code Monkey and Ikea - and while the drum charts were very simple, they were up-tempo enough to be fun. They'll definitely make it into the party rotation, like all the others (Skullcrusher, Re: Your Brains, etc.). I like the way the RBN songs prompt you to rate the track after you're finished with it. I'll definitely be sampling more of them when I get a chance.

Another 'milestone': Let There Be Rock came up on the unplayed list and I gold starred it for the first time, joining - barely - the elite group of 12,598 others who have already managed it. I don't have too many RB2 on-disk gold stars, so I tend to get excited about them when they happen.

My quick kick issue is still troubling me, though not quite as bad as it was. I'm avoiding Creep for now. My scores are still improving on most songs, so I haven't quite hit what I assume will be my old-age limit yet. I hope that I have a few good years left, 'cause RB drumming is still a helluva a lot of fun.

Streaky

Would this be a good narcissistic journal if I didn't post a lot about how great I am, and what way cool things I've been doing? That's what I thought. Well, too bad. I'm not that great, and I don't do much cool stuff, unless you think grocery shopping is cool. So I'm left with my adventures as a Rock Band drummer. How special.

So today, my quest to get rid of all of my "unplayed" songs in solo quickplay continued. I've been working my way through 'H', and had left 'Green Grass and High Tides' because of its epic length. I figured I'd knock off 'High Voltage (live)', and forgot what a marathon that song is. Holy crap! When I was done I had a 3000+ note streak, a new high score, gold stars, and a sore right arm. The song isn't particularly difficult but it is long. Gotta do something while Angus is noodling away, I guess. After that I took a break to go see the eye doctor, came back did a single warmup (my first ever FC of '29 Fingers') then laid into GGaHT. I had forgotten about the deadly blue pad sequence in the middle of the song, but aside from that I had my best run ever. I'll even try putting up photographic proof tonight.

Off to Linux class.

Time Off

Stayed away from the kit for 3+ days last week just to see what effect it might have on my quick-kick problem. While my leg feels better, I seem to be worse than ever when playing 'Creep'. This is really frustrating me because it's such an easy song (and mildly fun too, in a relaxing, laid back kind of way). At this point I'm pretty certain most of my problem is mental, as my scores on songs that don't have leading quick kicks are still improving.

If I can motivate myself, maybe I'll try some time in practice mode.

Meanwhile, my favorite score tracking site - Keldon.net - is updating again. As of this morning I have 158 confirmed gold star songs on drums, and I know that there are a few more in the pipeline. Yay me.

Todays project (after taking care of household duties, of course): bring up my last five 3-star songs to at least 4-star status. They are: Visions, Rude Mood, Time Bomb (live), Behind Blue Eyes, and Sea and Sand. All five are sources of pure misery to me. I can barely squeak past Visions on hard, and it's such an awful song that it hurts to practice. The others are just too fast or too crazy for my brain and/or hands to keep up with.

Another Day of Unemployment

I spent a good chunk of the day doing homework for my Linux class. My aging brain isn't soaking things up as fast as it used to. No worries, though - I'm keeping up with the script kiddies well enough.

The leg problem has forced me to step away from the drum kit for a while - I'll try to avoid it for as long as I can - at least a few days, maybe as much as a week. In the meantime though, I need to Rock! So today I finished putting solo guitar scores on the last 12 DLC songs that were still un-scored-upon. I'm not a great plastic guitar player: I play mostly on 'Hard'. Out of the 12 songs, only Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' 'The Waiting' stood out. The two new Silversun Pickups tracks were interesting, as were the two Mother Hips tunes.

After that, it was back to Vocals. My voice sucks, but I'm slowly learning how to control it well enough to sing a few of the songs on 'Hard' and even 'Expert'. I nearly gold-starred 'Go Your Own Way', and I did gold-star '21 Guns'. Nothing to really brag about, but I am getting better. I'll keep playing through all of the songs that have no solo vocal scores - that's well over 500 tracks as of today.

I miss drumming already, but my leg feels better already too.

Lead Leg 2

I managed to get some more playing in today, even with 6 hours of homework and 2 hours of cooking/scutwork. Still can't do leading off-beat kicks to save my life. I have no problems with trailing kicks, though. Foreplay/Longtime came up on the list of songs to do and I upped my score by well over 10,000 points, to within shouting distance of gold stars. My leg feels weird, but I'm fairly certain that most of the problem is mental. Maybe I should take some time off?

Haven't bought any of the RBN songs yet - I'd like to get through all of my 'unplayed' tracks first. 218 left to go!

Lead Leg

I've been playing a lot lately. Between homework, the job search (there isn't much to search for), and my chores as a house-husband, drumming keeps me from going over the edge.

Anyway, I've suddenly lost the ability to do relatively quick triple kicks, along with what I call quick leading double kicks - this is when you precede a beat with a kick drum hit. 'Creep' is an easy song that is full of quick leading double kicks - it's part of the main beat. I mastered Creep a long time ago - it's even on the short list of songs that I've FC'ed. Suddenly I'm unable to do this quick double kick at all. It drives me crazy and I'm not sure how to fix the problem other than to just keep playing. As to the quick triple thing, I've never been very good at them, unless they're slow, but right now I'm worse than ever. Like dropping down to Hard on quite a few songs worse.

On the fun side, now that the leaderboard star-tracking glitch is fixed, I'm going back through all of my 'unplayed' songs to put them in their proper category (3-star, 4-star, 5-star or gold star). I had almost 300 tracks to play when the fix was made. Now I'm down to 230-something. It'll take a while. It's a good exercise as it forces me to play songs that I don't normally play very often. Todays surprise song was 'Entangled' by Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives, which was a helluva lot more fun than I remember it being.