{"id":1820,"date":"2013-02-04T12:38:54","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T11:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1820"},"modified":"2013-02-04T12:38:54","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T11:38:54","slug":"born-to-be-wild-how-to-break-a-guitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/02\/04\/born-to-be-wild-how-to-break-a-guitar\/","title":{"rendered":"Born to be wild &#8211; how to break a guitar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=epredator\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>As I may have mentioned before I like guitar games \ud83d\ude42 Rocksmith has been a great advance and forms part of many of the talks I give including the one I will be giving a week today at BCS Hampshire as part of the Animation and Games development specialist groups events.<br \/>\nLast week I dived back into Rocksmith as some new DLC arrived in the form of Steppenwolf &#8220;Born to be wild&#8221;. As I tweeted at the time this felt like a circle was complete. Born to be wild was one of the tunes in the original <a href=\"http:\/\/epredator.blogspot.co.uk\/2008\/12\/guitar-hero-rockband-and-quest-for-fame.html\">Quest For Fame guitar game<\/a>. It featured in an amusing encore where a very gruff knuckle dragging cartoon character shouts at you &#8220;PLAY STEPPENWOLF!!!!&#8221; and you then launch into a tennis racquet strumming rendition. One of those video game phrases that has become part of some of our vocabulary.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bo8VgNeMty8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nThere are 3 new songs in the DLC, Born to be wild is in the middle of this video \ud83d\ude42<br \/>\nNow of course this is for real guitar not plastic buttons or cricket bats. It would appear though that my poor old Fender Squire (a cheap version of a Stratocaster) had had enough though. It was starting to wander out of tune after every song and felt a bit funny. Then there was a loud shattering noise and it sort of exploded. After 23 years the inner metal parts seemed to have given up the ghost.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/epredator\/8433199524\/\" title=\"Corroded gubbins on 23 year old cheap strat by epredator, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8361\/8433199524_bd10bda57b.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"Corroded gubbins on 23 year old cheap strat\"><\/a><br \/>\nThe whammy bar nut sheared but also many of the parts holding the strings in place were none too happy either. It was a sad moment but these things happen. I pondered buying a more expensive guitar replacement, but thought instead I would pop down to Argos (of all places) and get another cheap(isn) fender. So came back with this<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/epredator\/8432116741\/\" title=\"Shiny new fender starcaster for #rocksmith by epredator, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8055\/8432116741_578bf15fe2.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"Shiny new fender starcaster for #rocksmith\"><\/a><br \/>\nNow I know a bad workman always blames his tools but my old guitar was actually making life a lot more difficult for me. I had forgotten that about 20 years ago ( in its 23 year life) the string guide at the top of the neck had broken. I went and got a new piece from a proper guitar shop but it was a bit to large. As I was only tinkering I thought it would be ok but it meant all the strings were a lot higher from the fret board then they should have been. (It should have been cut or filed down but I dind&#8217;t have anything that would deal with it.) This meant extra pressure and fraction of a second extra time to push strings down.<br \/>\nThe new guitar now feels amazing, even for a \u00a399 one. The strings were much lower any chord changes just flowed a little better. As it was a similar style of guitar everything else was pretty much the same. This change was instantly measurable too. As Rocksmith is scoring your work too there was a noticeable uplift. I still can&#8217;t play really properly but I am getting closer \ud83d\ude42<br \/>\nSo it does pay to have something decent to use as a tool for the job, but equally working with what you have makes you appreciate improvements more. <\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.feedingedge.co.uk%2Fblog%2F2013%2F02%2F04%2Fborn-to-be-wild-how-to-break-a-guitar%2F&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;\" allowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe><div name=\"googleone_share_1\" style=\"position:relative;z-index:5;float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><g:plusone size=\"tall\" count=\"1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/02\/04\/born-to-be-wild-how-to-break-a-guitar\/\"><\/g:plusone><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I may have mentioned before I like guitar games \ud83d\ude42 Rocksmith has been a great advance and forms part of many of the talks I give including the one I will be giving a week today at BCS Hampshire as part of the Animation and Games development specialist groups events. Last week I dived<br \/>\n            <span class=\"excerpt-readmore\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/2013\/02\/04\/born-to-be-wild-how-to-break-a-guitar\/\"><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1821,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions\/1821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedingedge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}