SoConfined's Tiering Thread

[JBlack240]

Alter Bridge - "Blackbird"
Machine Head - "Locust"

[tinman22897]

Don't Stand So Close to Me ('86 remix) - The Police
Closet Chronicles - Kansas

[SoConfined]

Seven new tiers. Also, updated some other tiers to list "Progressive" instead of "Prog" as a genre. Nitpicky is me.

I request Sober By Tool and New Orleans Is Sinking By The Tragically Hip.

Sober <-- holy bass chords, batman
New Orleans is Sinking

"Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)" by My Chemical Romance

Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) <-- I wasn't expecting much out of this song, but the drum solo(s) and finger-tapping was a nice surprise.

Okay...
Paranoid Android- Radiohead
The Count of Tuscany- Dream Theater

Paranoid Android
The Count of Tuscany <-- Some of my favorite solos by Petrucci in this song. Good choice.

Break the Same- Mutemath
Millionaire Waltz- Queen

Break the Same <-- amazing live
The Millionaire Waltz

Question: you do this manually through a graphics tool or is there a program for making these cards.

Manually. I screencapped one the song pages on this site to get the instrument icons/tiering pips, then edited out the background in GIMP. I have them saved in a separate file now so I can easily piece these together in MS Paint alone.

(also, I'll start with your requests onward next)

He does it through GIMP and Paint.

I appreciate the help, but please let me answer my own questions. Thanks.

I believe Butterflies and Hurricanes has guitar in it, even if it's a simple chord pattern.

EDIT: Nevermind the Butterflies and Hurricanes comment. I was thinking the Live version from Wembley Stadium.

Strangely enough, I was considering tiering the live version instead for that exact reason -- it keeps the crazy keyboard/piano parts, but layers some guitar on top of it. I guess I just stuck with the album version since I'm more familiar with it.

I like this concept a lot (especially now that you're able to post pictures with the tiers).

Hopefully everyone will be off my back about my threads and let you take over.

Ha, thanks. They're quite fun to make in my downtime, so I certainly don't mind taking over for now.

[Cipher_Peon]

I have a question, how do you differentiate between the guitar/bass and Pro Guitar/Bass tiering? It seems like they would be the same, but I know for a fact that they're completely different. How can you tell if their Pro chart is tiered less /morethan their legacy chart?

[Gunsrock13]

Thanks

[SoConfined]

Hm, I dunno if I made this clear in the OP or not, so I edited it a bit to make things clearer: Once I've tiered your requests, you can request another 2 songs.

I have a question, how do you differentiate between the guitar/bass and Pro Guitar/Bass tiering? It seems like they would be the same, but I know for a fact that they're completely different. How can you tell if their Pro chart is tiered less /morethan their legacy chart?

Good question. I'll try to explain without sounding too nerdy/complicated. :P (This is going to be a bit long-winded, sorry.)

Mostly, it depends on the type of techniques the song brings to the table on guitar and bass. For example, on legacy guitar/bass, things that warrant higher tiering are fast alt-strumming, rapid hammer-ons/pull-offs, awkward time signatures, and sometimes combinations of strum/hammer-on/strum sections that are difficult to time correctly. On Pro mode, many of those techniques can end up translating to something completely different over 4-6 strings and 17-22 frets.

A good example of how alt-strumming can translate differently in a song is Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen". On Legacy, it's non-stop alt-strumming of a few notes. This gets very tedious and exhausting quickly on a 5-button guitar, particularly with your strumming hand -- mostly because timing is harder to hit correctly with the strum bar. On Pro, you're doing the same alt-strumming pattern, but it's easier to hit with a pick. Additionally, you're dealing with a total of 3 notes throughout the majority(entirety?) of the song, which is...frankly, very simple to do on a real guitar in comparison to complex chord progressions, hammer-on variations, slides, etc. You're not doing much on the real guitar.

On the flipside, you have a song like "Stash" by Phish. It's a blast on Legacy because of all the hammer-ons coming at you -- nothing too fast, but certainly enough there to keep your fingers busy and even trip you up on a few occasions if you're not careful. There's also a guitar solo with very awkwardly-timed patterns that are hard to hit with the buttons/strum bar. On Pro, however, most of those "hammer-ons" are actually separate string plucks that move up and down a vast amount of frets, and across ALL the strings. This kind of technique is very tricky to do on a real guitar and make sound right. Then you have the solo, which is still very awkwardly-timed, but also involves travelling up and down numerous frets. The song also includes some techniques like sweeping (picking several notes across 4+ strings and making them sound like separate notes, not a chord -- a lot harder than it sounds), which can easily be charted to a small group of hammer-ons on legacy. Which is, obviously, easier. You'd be rather frustrated/tired if you had to strum all of those buttons instead of just using hammer-ons, no?

One last example for guitar: "Misery Business" by Paramore. On Legacy it's mostly a chord-fest. Chords are pretty easy to hit on Legacy, even in this song. It's just completely straightforward. On Pro, however, those chords turn out to not be your typical chords on a real guitar -- especially in the choruses and the bridge. Honestly, they're really awkward to hit right if you're not used to forming your hands in the shame of something other than basic acoustic chords or power chords. They may just look like numbers coming down the screen if you're not used to playing guitar, but they're actually really difficult chords to make your hand form until you practice a lot.

As for your My Chemical Romance request, it would be a really simple song on Pro (read: 1 dot, 2 dots max due to the speed of the song) if not for the finger-tapping section before the guitar solo. Most of the song is really just simple single-note hits and a very simple power chords. But the finger-tapping descends very quickly and could easily fail you out. But it's not devil-tier difficulty, because it's only on one string, as opposed to 2-4 strings like many metal songs' finger-tapping requires. This is why it's tiered a bit higher on Legacy -- those descending notes will be harder to hit in contrast to 5-buttons, as opposed to in contrast to 100+ buttons/notes on the Mustang/Squier. A hammer-on sequence on real guitar can take place over just a few notes/frets, but on legacy guitar, you only have the 5 buttons to work with, so it's going to require more movement back-and-forth, regardless of how easy it might be to play on real guitar.

It's pretty much the same for bass. Awkward progressions, lots of fret travel (just look at the Pro Bass chart for "Space Oddity", compared to it's really simple Legacy chart), etc, all make for a complicated Pro part. There's also that quite a few bassists find chords harder to perform on a bass than real guitar -- so, a Pro Bass chart with chords in it will likely be tiered higher than usual.

tl;dr: Pro tiering is based solely on technique, variation, and fret travel.

Sorry for being so longwinded, but that's the best way I could think of explaining it without skimming over things or using ridiculous terms that might confuse someone. :x

Thanks

No prob. Feel free to request some more.

[RosaFloydGuy]

These were some great tiers, my friend. I was quite pleased with mine. Here are two more, if that's okay.

Suite Charlotte Pike - Transatlantic
Xanadu - Rush

[Cipher_Peon]

Wow... That explains a WHOLE lot
I've been dying to know for a long time to see if I can tell by myself, but I don't have the faintest idea on what string would be used in Pro Guitar if a song required that one string being hit between various frets.

It makes my journey into Pro Guitar a lot more interesting

[generalbane]

Yes, that song is so good live!

Yours is No Disgrace- Yes
Rosanna- Toto

[SJ0414]

Really nice job. There are a ton of songs I want to see tiered, so it was pretty hard picking just two. This is eventually what it narrowed down to:

"Stargazer" - Rainbow
"Civil War" - Guns 'n' Roses