Trouble with Power Chords Challenge

[Teknophyl]

The challenge doesn't register anything past the G5 chord. I'm hitting all the right strings; I can hear them as I play them. I admit though I'm not being careful right away about muting the other strings.

Does muting the other strings count towards the note being played?

[RelativePrime]

Hey there. When you say it "doesn't register anything past the G5 chord", so you mean anything higher on the fret board?

I had a bit of trouble with this challenge too at first. The cords sounded okay to me, but would not get counted. I found I had to A) play them a bit harder than I had been, especially getting the low E and A strings to really ring true and B) Really make sure you hit the mark, not too early or late. Just doing this made a pretty big difference and it started registering them much better.

[Teknophyl]

Originally posted by RelativePrime:
Hey there. When you say it "doesn't register anything past the G5 chord", so you mean anything higher on the fret board?

I had a bit of trouble with this challenge too at first. The cords sounded okay to me, but would not get counted. I found I had to A) play them a bit harder than I had been, especially getting the low E and A strings to really ring true and B) Really make sure you hit the mark, not too early or late. Just doing this made a pretty big difference and it started registering them much better.

That's right. A5 gets registered about 50% of the time, and the others don't make it very often if at all.

I wondered if I was strumming hard enough. But I'm also trying to be careful about not hitting the other strings. I wish RS would describe the method for muting the other 3 strings while strumming... and let me adjust the tempo so I can slow down and play a little more carefully.

[zenzombie]

I've found variance in the game registering certain frets based upon which of my guitars I use. One guitar had trouble with any notes involving the 1st three frets of the E string, and the other had trouble registering the notes on anything past fret 12 or so on the E string.

Maybe its a similar problem, maybe not Adjusting the bridge and pickup made the difference for me.

[TimTeml]

Try not fretting the strings so hard, you can change the tone very easily by pressing to hard. It's all about touch, just enough to change the strings length, not so much that you stretch it. When you get to the drop D tuning you will notice it a lot more because the E string has a lot of slack in it.

[JinjaBeard]

a couple things i can think of:


1. To quickly test your A5 chord (A on 6th string 5th fret, E on 5th string 7th fret), play each fret/string individually with a tuner and ensure you are seeing notes that are very close, if not perfectly in tune. Experiment with different amounts of pressure on the string to see if you can adjust your techique- as suggested, maybe you're pressing too hard.

if they're not in tune, then your intonation is probably off. google this and set it as best you can. this will involve moving the string saddles forward and backwards, and possible lowering or raising the strings very slightly if you run out of saddle movement.

3. yes, rocksmith DOES penalize you for playing extra strings in a chord, or not playing all the strings specified.

proper technique for playing power chords is two things: 1. use the "meat" of your fingers to lightly touch the strings not being played in order to mute them..mostly this will be done with your index finger lightly barring the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th strings when playing an A5. (i say 5th because it doesn't matter if your index finger touches the 5th string..your ring finger will be playing it on a higher fret). your ring finger can also help by muting the 4th string.

the second thing is to work on your picking accuracy so you are only hitting those two strings. In a lot of rock guitar you can get away with "sloppy" picking/strumming if you mute properly. "In Bloom" comes to mind as it's a big dirty thrashy slow jam. you'd have to have tighter picking technique with something like Higher Ground with more notes per minute. both will benefit from good picking and muting technique.

i hope that helps!

[Teknophyl]

Playing clean strings did the trick; nearly a silver now (just have to work on my transitions). But once I slowed down and watched myself play the 3 strings only, I improved a lot.

Thanks for the help.

[JinjaBeard]

Originally posted by DerivedClass:
Playing clean strings did the trick; nearly a silver now (just have to work on my transitions). But once I slowed down and watched myself play the 3 strings only, I improved a lot.

Thanks for the help.

right on! http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Doom-878]

Yeah with my RB3 Squier Strat I have to lightly fret the lowest notes on the low E. Plus I had troubles too with the power chord challenge while I golded the chord challenge. I hope it's not a low note frequency issue that could cause issues on the bass patch.