Day 13 & 14 - medium songs

I got the Ramones song done and worked my way through the next lessons for The Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson. I'm not a fan at all, but this one was quite easy to work through. I got 3 stars on both songs.
Actually, I've been impressed with the way the songs introduced so far have reinforced what the preceding lessons have been teaching.
I'm looking forward to moving on to the next lessons but I'm going to be away from home for a few days so won't be able to practice at all, sadly.

Day 12 & 13 - My amp came

Not much time to practice over the last few days but I managed to get a couple more song lessons out of the way.
My amp arrived today so I plugged it in. Once I realised that the guitar doesn't need to be turned on to play through the amp it sounded pretty good. When the guitar is turned on there's a noticeable rhythmic clicking sound in the background, almost like a metronome. It wasn't too terrible though, I might try playing the game on no fail mode with it plugged it and see what happens. Unfortunately you can't play normally like that because without the string mute engaged the game can't read your strumming properly.  The amp has a built in tuner so I was able to get it tune without too much bother and it was nice to finally hear some guitar sounds coming out of it. I quickly realised I don't actually know how to play anything beyond a couple of power chords though. I need to start learning some rhythms or something.

Day 11 - Next song

I managed to complete the remaining power chord lessons, if not very convincingly. Next up is I wanna be sedated by the Ramones. Can't say it's one I'm familiar with. I have to play this one on Medium difficulty but I think I'll go through it all on easy first to try to familiarise myself with it first.
I'm hoping my amp will come tomorrow too so that might delay things a bit on the Rock Band front as I try to make some real noise.

Day 10

Didn't manage to get any play time in yesterday, sadly.
Had another go at the power chords today, I managed to get past another exercise. Trying to hold down 2 strings with one finger proved a bit tricky though, I'm not really sure how to effectively use my index finger to get just the right 2 without affecting the nearby ones. I've a feeling this one might take a while to master.

Day 8

Not much time again last night, just put in 20 minutes or so going over the chords from last night. I still couldn't do the one involving a lot of hand movement very well but I'm sure it will come with more practice.
I'm now on my second week of playing, considering I'd never picked up a guitar before I'm pretty pleased with my progress so far, I feel like I've learned a lot in a short space of time. Watching a busker performing at the tube station last night showed how far I've still got to go though, I wonder how many years it will take me to get to that standard, if ever?
I ordered an Orange micro amp yesterday, hopefully it'll come before too long, then I can really gauge how I'm doing.

Day 7 - Power chords

I started on the first of the chords lessons, first up are power chords, whatever that means. Things started quite simply, hold down a couple of adjacent strings, a couple of frets apart and strike the those strings but no others. It then gradually moved on to exercises that require moving the hand and forming chords on different strings, these were tricky but I felt like the pacing of the exercises was sensible.
One disappointing aspect is that the game doesn't take into account how many strings you strike when playing the chord. So if you are supposed to hit 2 strings for the chord, as long as you get one of them then it registers as correct. It doesn't punish you for hitting more either so it's possible to get through the exercises just madly strumming away as long as you get your fretting right. I'm not really sure why this should be, the game knows which strings you are hitting (it shows on screen all the ones you pluck) so either this is something they overlooked or it's a deliberate decision. It makes it hard to judge how well I'm striking the strings though, it's easy to hit a third string accidentally or not go far enough and just touch the second string without actually plucking it.
The other thing is, I've no real idea what the notes I'm playing would actually sound like (presumably not twa-twang, which is what I get at the moment). I definitely need an amp to practice with.

Day 6 - Completed first set of exercises

I didn't have much time to play tonight but I managed to complete the last few exercises in the introduction set. I managed to go through them with no problems even though I'd had a couple of beers, that's got to be a good sign!
Next up are chord lessons. Can't wait!