blingdomepiece - The slow pro key 5* grind

**malkieriking** · Joined: 01 May 2010 Posts: 1744 Location: Dearborn, MI

Whoa, nice work. 7 5*s in a week for you is incredible with how few are left (and how crazy so many of them are). It may be slow, and it may be a grind, but the 5*s are coming, and I think (and hope) they continue to come in the oncoming days.

Good luck if you go for any more hard 4*s too, or whatever endeavors you set upon in the immediate and distant future.
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zage1337, in my accomplishments thread wrote:

Ever since I started Blitz I played the silver ball
From Thrasher down to One Vision, I've must've played them all
but you aint seen nothing like him in any song at all
that malkieriking SURE PLAYS A MEAN PINBALL

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

Thanks man. Pretty sure I won't have a week like that again but you never know, sometimes progress comes in a jump unexpectedly.

Played it for about 90 minutes straight, to get it from 305K to 383K. The 305K run was 90% notes hit, my best run here was a 95% with worse OD usage. I gave up trying to combo Outro Solo D under overdrive and instead saved up a full bar and activated it for most of Solo B/C. Cutoff is 379K so this is another just-enough run.

Total 4-note chord clinic, no idea what key it's in either. Training Mode says D minor, which at least works for the opening chords, but D minor is the saddest of all keys and Stash is a pretty happy song. It kind of sounds like it's more modal to me. Some of the chord changes are easy, like three fingers stay the same, while others involve both a move and a shape change so take a bit more focus/muscle memory.

I have 67 more songs, of which 31 are final tier DLC.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**mazegeek999PSN** · Joined: 23 Jul 2012 Posts: 460

**malkieriking** · Joined: 01 May 2010 Posts: 1744 Location: Dearborn, MI

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

This is the only song I played this week. Felt kind of emotional hitting the 5* during that triumphant finale verse/sax solo :-P.

Four places to activate in the song (for me), Verse 2A/2B, then leading into Bridge 1, then Verse 5, and then at the end if possible (this last one is the least important and I actually wasn't able to on this last run). The first two activations are especially a ton of points, the first one got me from about 70K to 270K heading into the first piano solo, and I'm not sure how much exactly you get from the 2nd activation because I kinda had to focus on the notes but I came out of the second piano solo around 470K. That was way ahead of any other run I've done (my previous best was 430K and my previous after that was 400K) so I knew I had this one pretty well in the bag. Anyway right after the second piano solo there is a unison OD, so the third activation is at the end of the bridge for most of verse 5, with a chain in there.

There's a four-note chord in this song that I've only ever seen in Prelude/Angry Young Man's chorus, but it appears here regularly and I got used to hitting it. There are also a lot of unique chord transitions in this song (again, compared to the rest of the HMX library) so it took some repetition to get them down. One of the obnoxious chords from Stash makes an appearance late twice, so getting it down previously helped my late-song multiplier.

Going into the week my best previous run was 482K but that was my only run over 400K. On the 28th I played a few times and managed a 411K run. I then took everything until the first piano solo into practice so I could "technical FC" it all. This got me a best run of 452K. On the 29th I took all the sections between PS1 and PS2 into practice and finally beat 500K, with a 509K run. Yesterday I played a few times and my best run was 504K. Today my first run was 531K and it took six more full runs (and a bunch of restarts, usually after PS2) to get the 596K run. The practice got my best accuracy from 88% at the start of the week to 92% here.

This was also my only run was a streak over 220. I'm actually not really sure how I got to 286, it was either in the run-up to PS1 or I comboed everything between the two piano solos.

66 songs to go.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

The verses are a pretty good exercise, a whole bunch of three-note chords followed by a single note that is not part of the chord. I played the whole thing thumb-ring-pinky and then the pinky would play the extra note. The challenge is to not accidentally overhit on the other fingers while doing this.

The chorus chords can be tricky too but through repetition I got pretty automatic at those. I am terrible at the outro solo, actually managed to fail the song once tonight on a really botched run. After I got to where I could pretty well combo the first copule of minutes of the song, my fingers forgot how to hit the chords in the outro. It's a hard thing to explain, the muscle memory just wouldn't click in. Finally had a run where I did ok-ish on the first two verses (missed an OD but score was still not bad) and then didn't botch the outro, and that was just enough (cutoff is 397K).

I can do the chorus now... index-ring for everything since I can't alternate fingers fast enough, so I'm just stabbing away at the keyboard really

. When I 4*ed this a couple months back I was about 70% in the Chorus-B sections, and now I'm 96%+ so it's actually the best place to activate for points.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

Hey it only took 2 1/2 years but I finally got this one. This song seems like it should be easy because it's short and slow-tempo, but it moves around constantly, has very little repetition, and there are some really annoying rolling 4-note chords that come up twice in the song.

Took about an hour of playing tonight, including practicing a few sections for memorization. As an indication of how this song can be for me, my first run of the day was 40K 3-stars. And if I play it again in a week that's probably what I'll get again :-P.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

Decent but not great run, but I am pretty solid on the verse riff now which is really the difference maker.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

This song is an exercise in patience... another one without a ton of repetition so necessary to learn it section by section. Also one of those songs where I was missing in different spots every time and then finally had a run where I hit a lot more.

My high score before this week was 113K, 87% notes hit. Got a 114K/90% two days ago, 162K/93% yesterday, and then this today.

That was my last Bon Jovi song, 61 to go in total.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**mazegeek999PSN** · Joined: 23 Jul 2012 Posts: 460

Great job, lots of randomness in that song.

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My Accomplishments Thread | My YouTube Channel

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

Yeah, you said it.

Gave up on Challenging tier for now, made progress on a half-dozen songs but not where I need to be on any of them. Moved up to Nightmare and got this terrible song out of the way finally.

When I say terrible, I mean that the song is terrible, not the chart. The chart's just annoying, with a lot of glisses and honky tonk fills in the middle of the verses. There's also an OD at the end with four identical four-note chords that seems broken to me somehow, I kept missing it even in practice and it's really easy, and you have like 5 seconds to get ready for it so you can't mess up the shape. I finally tried to hit each note later than I felt it should and got it. Took me an extra 3-4 runs because of that BS but anyway, it's done now.

60 songs to go, of which 5 more are country pack classics.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

Not too bad really. Only 4*ed it at the end of April but I think that was lack of familiarity with the chart. Also, for the hard parts that are there (stretches of an octave, transitions to four-note chords) I've been doing harder versions of that for the last four weeks. The part before the outro is where I missed most but this was less work than most of my recent 5*s. 59 to go.

Got a couple 4*s earlier, didn't want to bump just for that, now down to 23 songs to get there.

FCed Free Ride verse and chorus in practice and thought "Hey I should get the 4* pretty easily now". Took about a dozen tries because consistency is hard. The 4* run I FCed the second verse and chorus together and hit 4* on the sustained note on the break. I suck at the outro riff so I wasn't that close to 5*, but that would be the key to doing it.

Me and Bobby McGee I just had to play a dozen times in a row and figure out how to use OD well ... my piano solo is still fairly poor so that would be the thing to work on for 5*, as well as overall consistency.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**pizzzapizza** · Joined: 16 Feb 2007 Posts: 1281

keep up the good work on this accomplishment

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

Not dead yet.

Seventh full run of the day, best one before this was 186K. Started restarting runs after the 5th if I wasn't happy with the opening. Really nailed the second half on this run which is what did it.

Two Queen songs to go, Somebody to Love and I Want It All.

58 to go overall, so I'm a Rock Band 1 setlist away

.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World

**blingdomepiece** · Joined: 03 Aug 2007 Posts: 4358 Location: Ottawa ON Canada

It wasn't the bridge that made this annoying. The best I ever got on the bridge was 47%, which got me 65% notes hit on the song. In this run I hit 41% of the bridge, which got me 61% notes hit... I'd guess over half the notes in the song are in the bridge. But yeah, the bridge was basically irrelevent as long as I hit enough of it to pass.

What was annoying was the fucking gliss-into-overdrive phrase at the end of the second guitar solo, and having to wait 3 minutes to miss that over and over. I tried a few different ways of hitting it: 1) hit the gliss normally starting on A and jumping to the chord, 2) hit the first note of the gliss with index and then cross over so my thumb is already on B for the chord, 3) gliss as normal and hit the first chord with my index-ring-pinky, 4) gliss as normal and hit the first chord with my index-middle-pinky. As it turned out #2 was most consistent for me, hitting it a whole five times in practice, and eventually twice in real runs. The first time I fucked up an easy chord after that out of nervousness, the second time I had a bit of shaky finger syndrome but managed to keep it together.

So yeah, basically FC the rest of the song, use OD well, and flail through the bridge, and you 5* this. One Queen song to go.
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Expert Pro Keys: 50/63 GS, most recent The Killing Moon
Expert Pro Drums: 53/83 GS, most recent Free Bird / Oh My God / Oye Mi Amor
Expert Pro Bass: 6/83 GS, most recent Everybody Wants to Rule the World