Songs Old and New

I've picked up another song from Guitar Hero.
It's Same Old Song and Dance by Aerosmith.

I can play all of the normal bits.
I can play one of the three solos.
In time, I'll be able to play it perfect.

It's an excellent electric guitar song.

It's not particularly easy, and there's not a perfect tab.. but I figured out the opening guitar solo out myself.

Darren's been playing my guitar all of a sudden...
I'm surprised to see they want to handle it now, esp. as I'm leaving Thursday for Idaho.

I've been busy - I've got lots of packing to do.

But I did put in a fair amount of guitar practice today.

I've been looking for the old version of Be Like That by 3 Doors Down that I learned. Darren's been messing with it.
I used to have that song perfect... on acoustic.





If I could be like that... what would I do...

More Guitar Hero Songs

Watching my brothers play GH III gives me ideas. I learn a lot.

I can play a lot of "parts" of songs... it's helping me broaden my abilities.
I can pluck faster thanks to The Seeker, for example. You can see it here.

Some of the stuff I don't even know what it's called.
Let alone who sings it.

Once again, on the left you'll find a link with Guitar Hero and Rock Band Tabs, if you're looking for songs to rock...

Today I picked up a piece called "Radio Song" by Superbus.
It's a weird part-English, part-French-I-think song.
I can play the opening perfect, not sure about the layout of it...

A peek? Sure.


Can't pronounce my favorite part... lol...

They call me the Seeker

I've been searching low and high...

Today I've perfected another Guitar Hero song.
For real.

It's called The Seeker ...by The Who. Lol... who knew I would go after such a band?
I mean, if you read my stuff, you'd know I'm a Jack Johnson man.
I like the softer stuff.

Didn't stop me from learning the parts "My name is Jonas" or "The Metal" or "3's and 7's" though...

It's actually rather easy. You can find it and others at the Guitar Hero / Rock Band link on the left.

It is a fun one - I love the lyrics.
The chords are A,D,G, and C. Much of it a beginner could pick up. They're first-position chords. Of course, it's not all child's play.

There are some fast-plucking, and misc "realistic" parts most people would have trouble with.

Nevertheless, it's a good, fun song.


Here's a video:
ah... the sixties and seventies... lol...

I won't get to get what I'm after... 'till the day I die...

Studying Guitar Hero (Seriously)

I'm not going to rant about playing the video game.

I'm saying I'm seriously studying it, from a guitar perspective.
I'm learning how they made the difficulty increase, and how it applies to the real songs.

I've learned several riffs from misc. songs already, and I can play one of them.
It's My Name Is Jonas by Weezer.

The tricks used to make the things that sound difficult are simple hammer-ons and pull-offs. With mastering those, I'll be able to play anything.

The Metal by Tenacious D (i.e. Jack Black lol...) I know most of.
If you know it or listen to it, you'll discover it doesn't sound easy... and it's not.

I've learned lots already taking this seriously, and if you're learning to play guitar, take a peek at guitarherotab.com, specifically GH III if you want to see the stuff I'm interested in.

It's all good... I'll add a permanent link on the left under guitar! If you're going there, you'd better have spent or be planning to spend some time at Guitar Cardio too!

I haven't had time to work on my song of late. I need to continue...

Practice and Improvement

Today I did a lot of work on my guitar. I played a little GH, but nothing mentionable.

I didn't create much, but I played all I know.
I got Hey There, Delilah back in shape.
It's a good song.

My fingers are killing me right now, particularly the ones on my left hand.

I'm getting better, but I need to keep going. I feel like I've almost slacked off.
I think I might head off to Guitar Cardio to do some exercises.

That should help.

I just had a thought recently... Eliza's older sister Abi is getting married this summer.
I'll be there.
I bet I'm going to be asked to play her a song... I might have one written by then anyway.
Scary thought. I might actually have to play in front of a crowd. I've never done that!

Anyway, I'll keep chugging along.
Here's the awesome vid.

Playing Guitar (Hero) Again

On a side note, I'm well under way on beating Expert on GH. I rock in every meaning of the word. lol...

I've got back to playing my guitar more (finally), and I must say I feel kinda stuck.
I haven't done much new of late.

I'm thinking of writing a song, and I have the material to do so, but no lyrics.
However...

The gears are turning.
That's my expression for "i'm thinking about it".

What do you guys think? It's kinda strange to ask the internet questions, but seriously...

What topic do you think I should choose? Any ideas? I want to pick something unique.
Something close to me, but no mushy cliché love song.
It has to have meaning... I don't want it to be silly, otherwise I'd pick randomly.
I want it to be GOOD. Something people would want to listen to.

I wonder....
Well... if you've any suggestion, comments are always welcomed.
Enough musing for one night.
もう寝よ。

Beating Hard - Upside Down

I beat it!!! I beat the Devil Went Down to Georgia final battle!
I was extremely pleased with myslef... seems like I've been finghting to for weeks.
I'm trying to F.C. (100%) all of easy for fun... if we get five stars on all we'll get a new guitar, supposedly.

Enough Guitar Hero.

Jack Johnson! I'm so cliché.
Lol... no, seriously. tonight Thomas showed me a music video of him doing "Upside Down" for Curious George.

It's kinda cute to me, and I love the song.
This one I actually recommend you check out.

Watch it! It's cool.
I'm SO learning this one. I love JJ. Even more.

If you're interested, Eliza brought me on to this very sad one.
It parallels some stuff she's dealing with so well it just about made me cry.
It's White Horse, by Taylor Swift.


I also want to give a shout out to Andrea... I know it sounds silly, but I wasn't aware videos could be put straight in until I saw her do it... I just was a little slow on making the connection that I could figure out how to do it as well. I may be a veteran of the internet, but I'm new to the creating/coding/blogging side of it.

Well... I've been staying up because Stacy and Darren took Thomas to the hospital over his asthma. I was goung to stay up till they got back, but it's almost 3:30. I've got to sleep eventually. Peace.

Receiving the Eagle Scout Award

Today I spent every waking moment dealing with my Eagle Court of Honor.
I had things to write out, I had to iron all of the uniform, there was the actual occasion that evening, and that night I spent dealing with concerns abt... Eliza. Her boyfriend broke up with her - not like we didn't see it coming.

I gave an acceptance speech thingy - it went well, supposedly. I ended up directing it toward the younger scouts and the cub scouts that were there. I gave my two-cents about why Scouting is important and why they should never give up, I think.

That evening I saw Sarah there at church. We spoke for a bit - Everyone was dressed up - it was kind of amusing. Aside a personal fiasco involving her I won't mention, nothing significant happened. But needless to say, clearly the assertion that she's just been busy is true. My freak-out mode officially ended yesterday...

Uh... by the way, for those who wonder, Sarah is my girlfriend, or at least was at one point (complicated i know), and Eliza's my best friend - she lives like 7 hours away these days... but we keep in touch still. She's moving to Utah around the time I go back to BYU-I, so we might hang out every now and then more in the future.


Anyways...
I listen to music from Guitar Hero that I put on my iPod more than I thought I would. I skip lame bonus tracks, but considering the GH songs constitute 88 out of a little over 400 songs I have, I would hear them randomly often.
It's part of getting exercise - I listen to it when I go running.

This is one of my "big news" posts - there aren't very many occasions where I deviate almost completely. But with Eliza's breakup, my Sarah, and my Eagle Scout award thing tonight, there are always things to be blabbing about.
I'll shutup for now.
Peace.

No Guitar Hero Today

I don't know if I mentioned, but I finally have all the Guitar Hero songs on my iPod. I had them for a while, but I wasn't sure how I wanted to group or sort them.
I finally just gave up and threw them into iTunes.

Well, today is Sarah's birthday (the "girlfriend") and I still haven't got in touch with her.
It's really depressing.
Our relationship has never been simple, but I don't know what to do with myself.
I got her something for V-day, but still haven't given it to her.

I talked to her mom for a few minutes. She said she's been busy. From the way she's treated me when we last spoke on the phone - a long while ago - that's probably all it is.
I hope I'm right. We'll see. I really do miss her at this point, for a million reasons.

It will probably cheer me up to have Guitar Hero III on my iPod. I will probably not take advantage of it till tomorrow, though.
I'm in a lot of discomfort. I get my bandages out on Monday, too. Yuck.

I won't have them today - I don't play GH or listen to that kind of music on the Sabbath. It's the Lord's day of the week, and focusing on inviting the spirit, reading my scriptures, etc. is better.

Happy Birthday Sarah! She'll never read this though. I just needed to say it.

Well, I often strum my guitar mindlessly in the evening, and I've been able to play a few hymns. I'm not even sure what the names of the songs are or the words. I just pull a distant tune from my head. It does invite the Spirit, though. I feel at peace.

Obsessed with Guitar Hero

I'm officially a Guitar Hero nerd. The very one I've always disliked.
Oh well. Too late, now.

I'm stuck on the last chapter of Hard mode.
I just beat Raining Blood by Slayer today. It's the first one.
It's stupid. I won't be playing it again anytime soon.

I already skipped ahead and had beat the second and third.
they are:
Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson ...and
Number of The Beast by Iron Maiden

Cliffs of Dover is a beautiful instrumental. Even those that don't care too much for electric guitar would like it. Someday I'm gonna learn it.
Those of you looking for something entertaining, watch this nutter FC it ("full count" i.e. 100%) on expert mode here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOLZeeCS0-4
It's actually neat to watch and listen to, considering it is silly guitar hero.

Right now I'm stuck on the last one...

One by Metallica.

I have... only One left in the game.
lol...
Well, sorta. Then I get to play Devil Went Down To Georgia.
It's a guitar battle. against the devil. even better, I live here in Georgia.

peace out.

Fire's on the mountain, run boys, run...
the Devil's in the house of the rising sun.

If Guitar Hero Were Real...

No. I'm not some nerd fantasizing about being cool.
Quite the contrary.

I've decided to learn all of the songs in Guitar Hero (III) on my guitar in order.
On my guitar = for real.

Not to be too silly, but I guess I could call myself a real guitar hero at some point.

It doesn't seem like it will be too difficult.
I worked on the first one, Slow Ride by Foghat today.
I just about have it down.

I'm kinda proud of myself.

I'm getting my wisdom teeth out tomorrow, and I'm kinda freaked out.
I hope I get this up in the evening before I get to bed, otherwise it won't be seen for a few days.

String Bending

I ran into a few problems with reading tabs recently - there was notation for something I'd never learned.

It's string bending!
If you push a sounding string left or right with the finger holding it down, it makes a
whammy bar - sounding noise.

personally, I don't care for the whammy - it deadens the sound too quick, and it makes your strings wear out faster. With all the technique out there, A whammy push is really not worth the trouble in my opinion.

But this trick, however.... is awesome. Very bluesy in certain contexts.
It's not particularly difficult, and has a lot of application.

I discovered it in Welcome To The Jungle tabs - something from GHIII.
I happened to hear it on the radio on the way to the Red-and-White Ball tonight... lol...

That was a lot of fun - that dance was youth and singles, so I got to spend time with my many friends old and new...
On another note, I actually people I can label friends now.
Life isn't so bad, I guess.

I am still dreading V-Day.

Hammer-ons and Pull-offs

These two techniques constitute some of the "real" things good guitar players know. I'm getting better with them, and hope to have a more broad reach of things to learn.
(i.e. more fancy stuff!)

I can now play "twinkle twinkle little star" with them alone, albeit rather clumsily.

Learning to pluck the string with your left hand too means you can play more notes faster - this can double your finger-picking speed.
I'm still getting the hang of pull-offs... They're kinda tricky.
I looked up how to do these two recently - They're the type of things that have to be learned in person. That's why I've fallen behind on technique - no teacher.

But I found a solution: YouTube. As much as I hate mindless YouTube videos by random nobodys, I did find useful stuff.
So my lesson is learned - in effect, never judge a book by its cover.
Same applies to videos and what they appear to be.


In other news, I have been looking at Guitar Hero songs to learn.
I have the whole of GH III audio and I think I'm going to put it on my iPod.
That will get interesting. I'll be sure to find the ones I want to learn.

Considering the fact I haven't really yet learned a song my electric guitar was meant for, I think it's about time to rock. :)

From Guitar Hero?

I've been watching my brothers play Guitar Hero III (sometimes with my real guitar in hand) and I've been thinking of learning something from it.

I'm not sure what, though - all I know is I do have an amp now, and it makes sense that I should learn a song meant for an electric guitar.

I still find Guitar Hero a bit cheesy and fake, as impressive as some of them have been on occasion. Still, there are classics on it, or at least some that may become classic, and I would be foolish not to take advantage of what's available.

I do have stuff I need to catch up on, like I'll Be that Lee suggested.
I figured out the chords to Hit Me With Your Best Shot (Pat Benatar) just by listening.
That's a start.
It's E, A x2, C# x2, B x2
E - 779997
A - 577655
C#-9 11 11 10 9 9
B - 799877