Wednesday, February 9, 2011

January Sessions

In January we only had 2 sessions due to conflicting schedules, but they were memorable nonetheless. For example, it was the first time we ever played with 2 Pro guitars.

Our weekly DLC strategy seems to be to play all unplayed Pro Guitar songs, then make progress on all unplayed Pro Keys songs. We'll eventually play all of these and get to the songs without Pro Guitar or Pro Keys (RBN and mostly pre-RB3).

Highlights:
- The zaniness of trying to sightread some of the recent European DLC on vocals made it quite hilarious (ex: "Peut-Être une Angine")
- blingdomepiece did an amazing imitation of a teenage girl when he sang "Open My Eyes"...
- Bongoo picked Expert for Pro Guitar by mistake, leading to some pretty striking numbers (ex: 1 song had 78th rank, 4% of notes, 388 points, 0 stars...)
- The beers of the month were "Rochefort 8" and "Rochefort 10" (Trappistes Rochefort), plus "Aphrodite" (Dieu du Ciel)

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Bring on 2011!

Last month we had 3 sessions, which allowed us to complete the game's "Road Challenges and finish the year in style.

Going into 2011 we can finally say we're an all-Pro band (even Pro Bass), as I just received my Pro Guitar (Mustang). Even though it was pre-ordered, it took more than 2 months to arrive...

In order to learn Pro Guitar and Pro Bass faster, we'll now play in "All Instrument" mode, using 2 Pro guitars. The downside is that Harmonies won't count in the score, but we'll still sing at the same time to practice. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next Rock Band game.

Highlights:
- blingdomepiece's "Oh My God" singing was epic!
- The funniest wah-wah bass moment was during "No One Knows"
- We got some of our first FCs in RB3 on harmonies
- Some of our Expert Pro Guitar percentages were extremely low, but we were still in the top 100 scores for that instrument (ex: 8% of notes and 59th overall for "Hold On Loosely")
- Chrissy was sick for most of the month so she couldn't join us on harmonies
- We got an amazing 1.5 stars for "Llama"...
- The beers of the month were "Harviestoun Ola Dabh Special 30 Reserve", "Maredsous Brune", "Route des Épices" (Dieu du Ciel) and "Corne du Diable" (Dieu du Ciel)

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

"blingdomepiece" joins the band!

Last week we had a great session, with talented multi-instrumentalist "blingdomepiece" (of Score Hero fame) joining the band. If you've been following the band's history, the 3 Macas were alternatively joined by Trapper (1st band name: 3 Macas and a Trapper), some random people (2nd band name: 3 Macas and a Random Guest), DMan (3rd band name: 3 Macas and a Reject), Sylvie (no name change for historical reasons), and now Chrissy and blingdomepiece.

It was also a special session as blingdomepiece brought over one of the rare new Mustangs (Pro Guitar). We each tried this new instrument at various points during the night and I have to say that it is an amazing addition to the Rock Band platform. I can't wait to get my own and slowly learn to play a real guitar.

With a new member, we no longer will have to have both Bongoo and Raikan do multiple instruments. This will free up someone to concentrate solely on harmonies. We'll be rotating instruments for now for variety, but eventually settle on 1 or 2 core lineups. For example, it could be:

Bongoo: Pro Guitar or Harmonies (red)
Phoenix: Pro Drums
Raikan: Pro Keys\Bass and Harmonies (blue)
blingdomepiece: Pro Guitar or Harmonies (red)
Chrissy: Harmonies (brown)

Note: We will not be playing in "All Instruments Mode" because we want the Harmonies scores to count. We'll opt to remove Pro Keys or Bass, depending on the song. Hopefully this "bug" will be fixed in Rock Band 4...

Highlights:
- Stars breakdown: Didn't keep track, mix of 3s and 4s
- Our 1st ever song with a Pro Guitar was "20th Century Boy"
- We played DLC for the 1st time in RB3 (a few "The Doors" songs)
- We were at the last section for the "Road Challenges". After we finish this mode, we'll spend our time in Quickplay playing new DLC and our worst on-disk songs by stars, rank, etc...
- The beers of the week were "Blanche du Paradis" (Dieu du Ciel) and "Espresso Stout" (Dark Star)

Thursday, December 2, 2010

"The Police" indeed

Last week, we only played 7 songs due to starting later than usual (Raikan has amazing board games), plus an odd moment when Chrissy came down the stairs and said, "Bongoo, the police is at the door for you!"

It turned out the neighbour was quite particular about warning her if we infringe a bit on her always empty parking space and she called the neighborhood's security service (not the real police, phew). The car was duly moved and a lenghty chat between herself and Raikan resolved the misunderstanding.

Highlights:
- Stars breakdown for the 7 songs: 4 stars (4), 3 stars (3, for "China Grove", "Crosstown Traffic", "Fly Like an Eagle")
- Raikan continues his tradition of messing with the look of Bongoo's character (normal look is "extreme metal"), choosing some truly odd combinations, including a really horrendous purple v-neck shirt...
- We have to restart "The Killing Moon" 3 times, finally passing it when we were about 1 nanosecond from dying (not an exaggeration)
- Trapper helped us with a few songs on keyboard\bass when Phoenix had to leave earlier than usual
- We finish the session with 17 unplayed RB3 songs
- While waiting for Raikan to come back from his talk with the neighbour, we entered Bongoo's real first name in Google (ex: type "(name) is " without clicking Enter), and Google suggested that he was "gay for robots", "gay", "mad for fish", "a douche"... Hmm, quite funny considering I'm a well-mannered (I hope) straight vegetarian! :)

Happy Robot Sounds

Two weeks ago, we played 25 songs, also in the "Road Challenges" section. We ended the session with 22 unplayed RB3 songs, 15 of which are without keys.

We got an odd "Happy Robot Sound" all of a sudden 3 times during the session. Someone joked that it sounded as if C3PO petted R2D2 in the right way... I also heard this at my place so it must be a RB3 glitch on the PS3 and not an issue with Raikan's sound system.

Highlights:
- Stars breakdown for the 25 songs: 4 stars (17), 3 stars (8)
- Raikan's funniest wah-wah keyboard moment was during "Whip It"
- We get our 1st FCs in RB3: 1 for Raikan on Pro Keys, 1 for the triple vocalists