That's true actually, and gives people a false impression of the game when they first try it, because if you tell them to play along to the music then it can screw them up. If you are trying too hard to hit the notes by watching when they pass the bottom of the screen then that will screw you up for the higher difficulties as well. I get the impression from the people I know that aren't very good at the game, that they are trying to use the screen too much for timing. I basically just look at the screen to see which notes are coming rather than when I have to hit them.
Sounds a bit like myself really, I tend to go through phases of being really interested in something and then it just fades out. With guitar that's happened a few times I think, though not too much recently (mostly because I ended up being the drummer in a band me and my friends had, so one of my friends has actually used my current guitar way more than I have!).
At least while your son is playing Guitar Hero it will be building up his rhythm, dexterity and finger strength, so next time he tries guitar it will be that much easier!
Someone above linked to http://www.guitarrising.com/ . That is the kind of thing that could encourage people to play more often, as they can 'beat' songs rather than just learn them. It's maybe slightly distracting from the musical appreciation part, but it's nice too to have a tangible rating on how well you are able to play if you see what I mean - gives you a sense of your progress and then you'll be less likely to give up/get bored. When that game comes out it's quite likely that I'll be playing my guitar regularly again:)
When you're playing guitar hero on hard/expert it's pretty similar to playing a song with power chords. That Queens of the Stone Age song on hard is particularly fun (I think it gets harder than playing real chords when you get to expert, but that's probably just because my hands are used to your basic E/Em/A/Am barre chord shapes, but they're not used to switching between guitar hero 'chords' properly yet). The solos aren't very realistic at times, but they sure can be challenging. It's hard to sound great on a real guitar like you say because you have to develop a nice clean technique I guess - Guitar Hero doesn't care how hard or where you press the buttons..
Maybe you could get some tab for a couple of the easier songs on guitar hero and then teach your kids?:) I downloaded the tab for The Metal, it didn't sound right at all, which could be because it's crappy tab, or because I just need practice. If I practiced as long on the real thing as I did trying to complete the song on the game (it took about 3 evenings I think before I cracked being able to do all those crazy hammer-ons and pull-offs without having to strum the notes), I'd have it sounding pretty cool I think.
Some of the songs on Guitar Hero are actually more difficult to play on Expert than they would be on a real guitar (at least that's what I find, yes IAAG). I'm serious about that. I think a lot of that is just down to having to have the timing so precise, whereas irl you can get away with a bit of artistic license if you know what you're doing:)
Main differences on a real guitar are that it HURTS for a while until your fingers toughen up and get used to pressing strings, and you need more strength to do hammer-ons and pull-offs (which are absurdly easy on guitar hero because the buttons are so light). Then of course there's the whole extra dimension of up/down over the 6 strings, but if you can get used to using all 5 buttons on guitar hero without looking to see where your fingers are, then you can probably get used to 6 strings on a guitar too, it's just a matter of spacial awareness and muscle memory. The final difference between Guitar Hero and a real guitar is that you need to get some friends who play drums, bass and sing, and are free whenever you want to jam:)
Wow. Now that's more like it:) A friend pointed out if I spent as much time practicing on my real guitar as I did on guitar hero then I'd be amazing, and I basically agree. Sadly you get more of a sense of achievement from guitar hero than you do learning a song just for the sake of learning on the guitar. This will provide a way to feel like you are achieving something while also practicing proper technique and timing. Excellent!
I know that some will think that saying you don't feel you're achieving much when just learning by yourself sounds silly, but honestly I can play some pretty complicated stuff, which I am proud of sure, but I have no incentive to try and play it along to say a click track to make sure I get the timing exactly right and stuff like that. When you just learn a song by yourself you probably will just learn enough to scrape through and make it sound "good enough" rather than get it perfect. Games like this will help with trying to achieve perfection, and would be a really good way to get kids interested in playing proper guitar IMO.
Agreed. I'm a guitar player, and I thought it was lame until I played it. Then I just realised how much fun it is!
I can't wait til the drums and stuff are added, as I'm also a drummer, and it will make practicing much more fun and varied (I have an electronic kit but I never make time to use it). Simulating drums is pretty easy so at least the drummers definitely can't whine:) At the very least games like Guitar Hero are good for improving your rhythm and coordination.
Stupid things like C3PO belonging to Anakin just spoiled it though. It was totally unecessary. They were going too much for trying to link everything together or to 'explain' everything in the other movies, even half-hearted Star Wars fans like me already knew how Darth ended up wearing his life support machine and such. Oh and the 'romance' dialogs in the 2nd or 3rd movie was terrible.. Lucas by himself is awful, he needs someone like Spielberg to keep things interesting.
I agree that Return of the Jedi was awesome, we recorded it and watched it a zillion times when I was a kid. Why would you have to ignore the Ewoks for it to be good? I used to love the Ewoks cartoon series as a kid too:D
Even now the original Star Wars are good. If they released them on Blu-ray I'd get them straight away. Currently I only have the Special Edition VHS box-set, probably as I was waiting for them to finish making the new ones before getting a DVD box-set.
I think plenty of Battlestar Galactica fans would disagree. Then there's Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man.. just because Star Wars was bad doesn't mean any new stuff will be bad. It does mean that Indiana Jones could be bad though, as Lucas seems to be an idiot. But Steven Spielberg is back on board too so that gives it a chance:)
Yeah, I don't see why Indy found her attractive, but I guess when you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by creepy bald guys painted in blood, you get desperate.
I'd like to hear what/.ers think about the Speed Racer movie now - there were lots of people complaining how awful and confusing it looked from the trailers, but I quite liked it when I saw the actual movie. The plot was fairly standard, though what can you expect from a film based on a children's wacky racing cartoon from the 70s, really. The action and racing was good even for someone interested in cars like me, and it even had a few twists despite me reading about Racer X here on/. Previously I didn't know anything about Speed Racer, I thought it was something new! They could have had a little more Christina Ricci, but overall it was very entertaining:)
Yep, the trailer is okay if you let it wash over you, but if you watch carefully you can really tell how old Harrison is, and the whole thing seems like it might be a bit of a farce. Of course the other Indy films had farcical moments too, I didn't realise how funny the kid beating up adults was in the Temple of Doom when I was a kid, but watching it more recently I realise how over the top it is. Not that it's a bad thing:)
Thanks, I already got a fan control plugin shortly after getting the Mac actually, though I have left it in its default state for Windows, it seems to be higher there anyway.
Hmm okay after reading about someone else who did clean up his thermal paste, he didn't really notice any difference - after he realised that he'd disconnected the temp sensor which was causing the fans to go on full blast and cool it down a lot! Thanks again:)
Nobody can be fired for patriotically pressing a button that they thought would fly an American flag!! If your average person saw a big button marked 'Broadcast Flag', what would they think?:)
Well, the way I used to consider it was that if God was there and had designated what I consider to be enjoyable, it would be pretty easy to fix me in a permanent state of enjoyment, or remove the parts of me that experience pain, disappointment, boredom, etc - but then I'd kind of just be a vegetable anyway. I sure plenty of people would still prefer that than living an eternity in their current state though.
The thing is, as far as we know we have no control over what happens after we die. We may, like in Discworld, get to choose. That would be nice; you would get your fading into nothingness and I would get to go meet my ancestors, watch the history of the world in 3D, and maybe hang out with God and have a few beers:)
I just had a strange thought while wondering how to phrase my own thoughts on the nature of the universe (possibly multiverse? was reading a bit about it on wikipedia earlier) and how amazing it is that anything exists. I always get freaked out by it when I think about how something has just always been there. Even now.. it really just makes no sense. No science can explain it, religion can't explain it.. and my thought was that even if God exists then he could be just as confused at his own existence as I am about mine... It's just not possible to conceptualise something coming from nothing, or something just always being something. No matter how much I think the Universe makes no sense though, it still hangs on defiantly and makes the stairs in the hall creak.
Has any philosopher ever made a similar statement about God probably being as confused at his origins as we are?;) It seems quite likely they have I suppose, I'm not very well educated in such matters.
I'm actually Scottish, and was having a hard time of thinking of any US bands I know that suck badly enough to be considered weaponisable. If it was a british weapon, I was going to go with the Spice Girls.
That's kind of what I am getting to be like just now. I am naturally quite good at a lot of things, was good in school, have good reactions, am naturally flexible even if I don't stretch for years (good for martial arts:p ), can play instruments, can take photographs which others regard as 'arty' even though I didn't study art.. all of that I used to just regard as a gift. Then as you say when the bad stuff happens you are led to believe that it will all be for good in the end. Well, in most situations that seems to be the case, I can see positives that have come from bad situations, but since about 2 years ago I've had several different bad situations which I think were just bad. Aside from all my positive physical and mental abilities, I think I have a predisposition towards depression and even OCD - which evidenced itself quite strongly for a couple of months the first time I came off anti-depressants. It was the most horrific time in my life by far, you do not even want to know..:s Since then I've mostly been in a low mood, which has affected me 'spiritually' and I've been left just not knowing what to believe. I think the idea is kind of funny that we all just came into being coincidentally and are sitting here debating it, when we're all just going to be gone again in a couple of million years anyway:p
Very true. You can brainwash yourself by thinking about the same stuff too much for years, probably could even make yourself believe something you initially know not to be true.. I used to pray but it waned and basically I don't anymore, and my faith is wavering just now as I consider other possibilities. The thing is though that possibilities that don't involve God tend to just involve us going back to a distinct lack of consciousness when we die - at least believing in God can give you a warm fuzzy feeling, even if it's based on false hope:/
All of that is childs play compared to how anything has ever existed, ever, anywhere. Maybe the Universe doesn't exist in a time or a place exactly, but it's just amazing that anything exists. I find the notion of God existing or of the Universe being randomly spawned from nothing (or another Universe which was created by a God that eventually evolved from its own Universe which had been created from nothing which.. etc) amazing. There cannot have ever been a start, and if there was, there really shouldn't have been. WHAT THE FSCK >. DOES NOT COMPUTE!
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That's true actually, and gives people a false impression of the game when they first try it, because if you tell them to play along to the music then it can screw them up. If you are trying too hard to hit the notes by watching when they pass the bottom of the screen then that will screw you up for the higher difficulties as well. I get the impression from the people I know that aren't very good at the game, that they are trying to use the screen too much for timing. I basically just look at the screen to see which notes are coming rather than when I have to hit them.
Sounds a bit like myself really, I tend to go through phases of being really interested in something and then it just fades out. With guitar that's happened a few times I think, though not too much recently (mostly because I ended up being the drummer in a band me and my friends had, so one of my friends has actually used my current guitar way more than I have!).
:)
At least while your son is playing Guitar Hero it will be building up his rhythm, dexterity and finger strength, so next time he tries guitar it will be that much easier!
Someone above linked to http://www.guitarrising.com/ . That is the kind of thing that could encourage people to play more often, as they can 'beat' songs rather than just learn them. It's maybe slightly distracting from the musical appreciation part, but it's nice too to have a tangible rating on how well you are able to play if you see what I mean - gives you a sense of your progress and then you'll be less likely to give up/get bored. When that game comes out it's quite likely that I'll be playing my guitar regularly again
Well, I know Bam sings/sang in CKY at least, so why not? ;p
When you're playing guitar hero on hard/expert it's pretty similar to playing a song with power chords. That Queens of the Stone Age song on hard is particularly fun (I think it gets harder than playing real chords when you get to expert, but that's probably just because my hands are used to your basic E/Em/A/Am barre chord shapes, but they're not used to switching between guitar hero 'chords' properly yet). The solos aren't very realistic at times, but they sure can be challenging. It's hard to sound great on a real guitar like you say because you have to develop a nice clean technique I guess - Guitar Hero doesn't care how hard or where you press the buttons..
:) I downloaded the tab for The Metal, it didn't sound right at all, which could be because it's crappy tab, or because I just need practice. If I practiced as long on the real thing as I did trying to complete the song on the game (it took about 3 evenings I think before I cracked being able to do all those crazy hammer-ons and pull-offs without having to strum the notes), I'd have it sounding pretty cool I think.
Maybe you could get some tab for a couple of the easier songs on guitar hero and then teach your kids?
Some of the songs on Guitar Hero are actually more difficult to play on Expert than they would be on a real guitar (at least that's what I find, yes IAAG). I'm serious about that. I think a lot of that is just down to having to have the timing so precise, whereas irl you can get away with a bit of artistic license if you know what you're doing :)
:)
Main differences on a real guitar are that it HURTS for a while until your fingers toughen up and get used to pressing strings, and you need more strength to do hammer-ons and pull-offs (which are absurdly easy on guitar hero because the buttons are so light). Then of course there's the whole extra dimension of up/down over the 6 strings, but if you can get used to using all 5 buttons on guitar hero without looking to see where your fingers are, then you can probably get used to 6 strings on a guitar too, it's just a matter of spacial awareness and muscle memory. The final difference between Guitar Hero and a real guitar is that you need to get some friends who play drums, bass and sing, and are free whenever you want to jam
Wow. Now that's more like it :) A friend pointed out if I spent as much time practicing on my real guitar as I did on guitar hero then I'd be amazing, and I basically agree. Sadly you get more of a sense of achievement from guitar hero than you do learning a song just for the sake of learning on the guitar. This will provide a way to feel like you are achieving something while also practicing proper technique and timing. Excellent!
I know that some will think that saying you don't feel you're achieving much when just learning by yourself sounds silly, but honestly I can play some pretty complicated stuff, which I am proud of sure, but I have no incentive to try and play it along to say a click track to make sure I get the timing exactly right and stuff like that. When you just learn a song by yourself you probably will just learn enough to scrape through and make it sound "good enough" rather than get it perfect. Games like this will help with trying to achieve perfection, and would be a really good way to get kids interested in playing proper guitar IMO.
Agreed. I'm a guitar player, and I thought it was lame until I played it. Then I just realised how much fun it is!
:) At the very least games like Guitar Hero are good for improving your rhythm and coordination.
I can't wait til the drums and stuff are added, as I'm also a drummer, and it will make practicing much more fun and varied (I have an electronic kit but I never make time to use it). Simulating drums is pretty easy so at least the drummers definitely can't whine
Stupid things like C3PO belonging to Anakin just spoiled it though. It was totally unecessary. They were going too much for trying to link everything together or to 'explain' everything in the other movies, even half-hearted Star Wars fans like me already knew how Darth ended up wearing his life support machine and such. Oh and the 'romance' dialogs in the 2nd or 3rd movie was terrible.. Lucas by himself is awful, he needs someone like Spielberg to keep things interesting.
I agree that Return of the Jedi was awesome, we recorded it and watched it a zillion times when I was a kid. Why would you have to ignore the Ewoks for it to be good? I used to love the Ewoks cartoon series as a kid too :D
Even now the original Star Wars are good. If they released them on Blu-ray I'd get them straight away. Currently I only have the Special Edition VHS box-set, probably as I was waiting for them to finish making the new ones before getting a DVD box-set.
I think plenty of Battlestar Galactica fans would disagree. Then there's Batman, Spiderman, Iron Man.. just because Star Wars was bad doesn't mean any new stuff will be bad. It does mean that Indiana Jones could be bad though, as Lucas seems to be an idiot. But Steven Spielberg is back on board too so that gives it a chance :)
If we somehow combined the two then we could make all of the movies mediocre!
Yeah, I don't see why Indy found her attractive, but I guess when you're stuck out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by creepy bald guys painted in blood, you get desperate.
I'd like to hear what /.ers think about the Speed Racer movie now - there were lots of people complaining how awful and confusing it looked from the trailers, but I quite liked it when I saw the actual movie. The plot was fairly standard, though what can you expect from a film based on a children's wacky racing cartoon from the 70s, really. The action and racing was good even for someone interested in cars like me, and it even had a few twists despite me reading about Racer X here on /. Previously I didn't know anything about Speed Racer, I thought it was something new! They could have had a little more Christina Ricci, but overall it was very entertaining :)
Yep, the trailer is okay if you let it wash over you, but if you watch carefully you can really tell how old Harrison is, and the whole thing seems like it might be a bit of a farce. Of course the other Indy films had farcical moments too, I didn't realise how funny the kid beating up adults was in the Temple of Doom when I was a kid, but watching it more recently I realise how over the top it is. Not that it's a bad thing :)
I have a banjo too :D Crazy hillbilly bluegrass is way better than country *cough* :) And I like the bagpipes
Thanks, I already got a fan control plugin shortly after getting the Mac actually, though I have left it in its default state for Windows, it seems to be higher there anyway.
:)
Hmm okay after reading about someone else who did clean up his thermal paste, he didn't really notice any difference - after he realised that he'd disconnected the temp sensor which was causing the fans to go on full blast and cool it down a lot! Thanks again
Nobody can be fired for patriotically pressing a button that they thought would fly an American flag!! If your average person saw a big button marked 'Broadcast Flag', what would they think? :)
Well, the way I used to consider it was that if God was there and had designated what I consider to be enjoyable, it would be pretty easy to fix me in a permanent state of enjoyment, or remove the parts of me that experience pain, disappointment, boredom, etc - but then I'd kind of just be a vegetable anyway. I sure plenty of people would still prefer that than living an eternity in their current state though.
The thing is, as far as we know we have no control over what happens after we die. We may, like in Discworld, get to choose. That would be nice; you would get your fading into nothingness and I would get to go meet my ancestors, watch the history of the world in 3D, and maybe hang out with God and have a few beers :)
;) It seems quite likely they have I suppose, I'm not very well educated in such matters.
I just had a strange thought while wondering how to phrase my own thoughts on the nature of the universe (possibly multiverse? was reading a bit about it on wikipedia earlier) and how amazing it is that anything exists. I always get freaked out by it when I think about how something has just always been there. Even now.. it really just makes no sense. No science can explain it, religion can't explain it.. and my thought was that even if God exists then he could be just as confused at his own existence as I am about mine... It's just not possible to conceptualise something coming from nothing, or something just always being something. No matter how much I think the Universe makes no sense though, it still hangs on defiantly and makes the stairs in the hall creak.
Has any philosopher ever made a similar statement about God probably being as confused at his origins as we are?
I hope your snorted vegetables continue to make you happy for some time to come
I'm actually Scottish, and was having a hard time of thinking of any US bands I know that suck badly enough to be considered weaponisable. If it was a british weapon, I was going to go with the Spice Girls.
That's kind of what I am getting to be like just now. I am naturally quite good at a lot of things, was good in school, have good reactions, am naturally flexible even if I don't stretch for years (good for martial arts :p ), can play instruments, can take photographs which others regard as 'arty' even though I didn't study art.. all of that I used to just regard as a gift. Then as you say when the bad stuff happens you are led to believe that it will all be for good in the end. Well, in most situations that seems to be the case, I can see positives that have come from bad situations, but since about 2 years ago I've had several different bad situations which I think were just bad. Aside from all my positive physical and mental abilities, I think I have a predisposition towards depression and even OCD - which evidenced itself quite strongly for a couple of months the first time I came off anti-depressants. It was the most horrific time in my life by far, you do not even want to know.. :s Since then I've mostly been in a low mood, which has affected me 'spiritually' and I've been left just not knowing what to believe. I think the idea is kind of funny that we all just came into being coincidentally and are sitting here debating it, when we're all just going to be gone again in a couple of million years anyway :p
Very true. You can brainwash yourself by thinking about the same stuff too much for years, probably could even make yourself believe something you initially know not to be true.. I used to pray but it waned and basically I don't anymore, and my faith is wavering just now as I consider other possibilities. The thing is though that possibilities that don't involve God tend to just involve us going back to a distinct lack of consciousness when we die - at least believing in God can give you a warm fuzzy feeling, even if it's based on false hope :/
All of that is childs play compared to how anything has ever existed, ever, anywhere. Maybe the Universe doesn't exist in a time or a place exactly, but it's just amazing that anything exists. I find the notion of God existing or of the Universe being randomly spawned from nothing (or another Universe which was created by a God that eventually evolved from its own Universe which had been created from nothing which .. etc) amazing. There cannot have ever been a start, and if there was, there really shouldn't have been. WHAT THE FSCK >. DOES NOT COMPUTE!
the Chinese have stolen Country and Western!