Pancake and Waffle (Part II)

He was really hoping to earn the hamsters before Christmas, and it was already November, so he started practicing.  He was frustrated at first – his fingers didn’t seem to want to go where his brain was commanding them to go and hitting the correct string without looking down was “impossible”. 

But he stuck with it.

After a while he became a bored with playing the two games (he managed to get 500k in String Skip Saloon and about 1 million in Ducks Redux) so he started playing a couple of the easier songs.  “Next Girl” (Black Keys) and “Angela” (Jarvis Cocker) were slow and simple enough, but he was only scoring in the mid-30-percents for proficiency for each.  I encouraged him to practice parts he was having a problem with using the Riff Repeater tool – a feature of the software that allows you to gradually improve on sections of a song you are having trouble with. It didn’t seem to be helping at all.

And then it happened: the “click”.

We’ve all experienced the “click” at one time or another.  It’s when you are struggling with some seemingly impossible task when, suddenly, the light switch is thrown, the scales drop off your eyes, and the third metaphor you are looking for to tie up the end of a run-on sentence presents itself suddenly.

He quickly climbed up past 90% on both songs.  Since he, like his mother, has music “in his bones” I wasn’t all that surprised.  I, on the other hand, have to “fake the funk” pretty much constantly and often quite literally.  Nothing really sticks.  I just don’t “get it” on the same level as real musicians do.

He started playing “Satisfaction” (Rolling Stones) and wasn’t doing all that great – even on a ¾ size guitar his hands are too small to keep them in one place that high up the neck of a guitar.  In mid-December he went back to playing the games and managed to get 7 million in String Skip Saloon and a whopping 19 million in Ducks Redux.  For reference, you get a special achievement in both games for scores above 10 million… so, you know… not bad.

He got the hang of switching between easy chords by playing Dawn of the Chordead and Star Chords but he hated (still hates?) both of those games.  I guess it was a “too much, too soon” thing.  I dunno.  Regardless, that practice seemed to help him switch between phrases fast enough to start to do really well on it – routinely hitting in the low to mid 80%’s.

Christmas came and went hamster-free (bummer) but he was still on Winter Break so he practiced – he wanted to tell his classmates he got them when he returned to school. He went back to his easier songs and was able to hit Master Mode for a large portion of both. 

Master Mode?  Oh… It’s when you have nailed a phrase or phrases in a song well enough for the on-screen notes to gradually fade to nothing, forcing you off the crutch of visual cues and making you rely on your ear and you memory. He scored above 100% on one of the songs, but I can’t remember which.  It was pretty cool to see those notes disappear like that.

He decided to end the night with one more go at Satisfaction.  The pic on the left shows the result.

He smiled hugely and then stopped.  “Wait,” he said.  “You guys are both here.  I just got through playing my other songs above 90%.  I just got above 90% on this one.  Does that mean I get my hamsters?”

My wife looked at me and I looked at her.  She grimaced lightly.  I shrugged and smiled.  “Yes,” I said. “A deal’s a deal. Congratulations!” 

It was Saturday evening, January 4^th.

To be continued...