Can't Stop the Music

I've been on vacation, so it hasn't been as easy to get up and work out every day.

But at least I've been able to play every day - and judging by the way my wrists and forearms feel after playing some of the mid-level songs on hard on Guitar Hero III, I'm still getting a little bit of a workout. I'm still stuck on Level 7 on Guitar Hero II (as well as Level 3 on expert), but now I'm stuck on Level 7 on hard on GHIII, too. I don't know how I feel about those guitar battles. But, I was able to beat Slash after about 5 or 6 tries. And even when I couldn't beat him, I was at least making it to the end of the song and was getting beat when he used the Death Drain attack. It took a few minutes to figure out strategy (to attack only when he had a hard set of notes, or when he was about to hit the notes to get another attack), but when I did, I was finally able to beat him.

One of the things I'm really liking about GHIII is the improved hammer-ons and pull-offs. These take some getting used to, but when you get the hang of them, they sure are powerful. They're pretty tough on GHI - I hate having to put down all my fingers when doing the pull-offs - it's hard to coordinate my pinky and ring finger since they both try to pull off at the same time. I need to see if they changed that in GHII or GHIII. I just happened to take a look at the GHIII advanced tutorial and realized you now only use a single finger, making hammer-offs and pull-offs executed in basically the same way. It makes a huge difference for GHIII; and now that I think about it, I'm wondering if they made that change for II. If not, it's going to be pretty hard to move backwards and try to finish GHII.

But at least I can enjoy the process!

And since I'm working with both of these, I'll probably end up waiting for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. I doubt I'll have the same restraint for Guitar Hero: World Tour. I'm looking forward to the drums and the microphone.