Oh, Good. Another Guitar Post.

Ow.  Owowowow no... nonononono dammit! (Sound of guitar pick clattering to floor).

Sigh...

You know, my wife tells me that she enjoys listening to me play at night. She finds it relaxing, she says.  That poor woman.  I mean, what the hell is her job like where hearing me blunder my way through "Spider and the Fly" or some other song a million times in a row while I yell obscenities at my fingers is through any relative measure "relaxing"?  Is she under constant sniper fire while she sits at her desk at work or something?

As bad as that is, at least from her point of view there on the sofa she knows what is going on and why.  She can see the whole picture.  She has context.  I can only imagine what my three-year-old son thinks as he's drifting off to sleep.

I can picture my boy years from now relating the following story to his psychologist at the "Prison for Cartoon Supervillians":  "My father?  Well, I really don't remember too much of him from when I was little, but every single night he would read me a book, tuck me in, and tell me he loved me.  He would then go out in the living room and violently and relentlessly curse while beating cats into each other for an hour and a half. (shakes) Can... can I get one of those smokes offa yeh?"

Pfft...  "Relaxing", indeed...

Hell, it's not even relaxing for me, and I am a willing and eager participant in this thing.  I blame Rocksmith's auto-adjust feature on that.  I will be standing there oh-so-pleased with myself that I can finally plink out every fourth note to some small section of some Tom Petty song without crying (for once).  Then, like a jealous god punishing a mortal for his hubris, the software decides to reward me by increasing the difficulty level and all of a sudden the screen turns into a Technicolor explosion like something out of the "Beyond the Infinite" scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Notes all up and down the rendered guitar neck and never-before-seen chords of every type pop into existence as suddenly as if someone stuffed Coldplay's piano full of Lego bricks then hit it with a grenade.  It's all I can do not to dive behind the sofa with my hands over my head and rock back and forth in fetal position until it goes away...

Oh, and it does go away... which is worse.  You screw up a musical phrase badly enough and Rocksmith will cheerfully ramp down the difficulty level until it matches your skill level - that is, until you aren't embarrassing yourself too much.  This is the emotional equivalent of going up to the plate at a slow-pitch softball game and the noticeably bored pitcher starts waving in the outfielders yelling "This guy again...No hitter... Everybody move on up". 

Seeing the screen gradually morph before your eyes from what looks like a flock of crazed birds-of-paradise into some abandoned ghost town with the occasional note lazily tumbleweeding through is one of the saddest things ever. "But that's not fair," you weep.  Except it is.  You know in your heart of hearts that it is 100% totally, objectively fair...

It's just not very relaxing.

After one of my more spectacular failures Rocksmith came back with the heart-sinking recommendation that I practice my A chord.  Not the A5 power chord. Not Am7.  Just straight up "A". Literally one finger.  To those of you that don’t see what the big deal is here maybe an analogy will help.  

Imagine someone comes over to your house to visit.  While they are there, you decide you need to use the restroom.  When you enter, you reach in to turn on the light but, instead, you accidentally turn on the fan.  You grumble, turn off the fan, turn on the light, do your business, and return.  Your guest then says “Yeah, uh, I couldn’t help but notice you had some trouble in there with finding the light switch in your bathroom.  Why don’t you head back in there and flick the lights on and off for half an hour or so until you feel you’ve got it down pat?  I’ll wait here, ok, genius?”

Well, enough whining for now.  My right wrist has nearly recovered from my pathetic old-guy attempts at hitting enough notes of Song 2 by Blur to qualify for my gig, and, since I apparently have some sort of musical version of Stockholm Syndrome, I think I will give it another shot.  

Or twelve.

Man, I love this game...