Green Day – Good Riddance (Bass in Rocksmith)
I’ve warned everyone that this blog is unpredictable and can contain just about anything. In the spirit of self-improvement, I’m tracking my improvement in several hobbies. A couple of those hobbies involve guitar and bass. I am a decent bassist, a marginal lead guitarist, and an absolutely wretched rhythm guitarist. Is that going to change for the better? I sure as hell hope so. I’m going to experiment with Rocksmith (music learning software) for an extended period of time and see if it works successfully as a learning tool.
Overview
After an extended break, I’m back with my jaunt through guitar and bass oriented playing in Rocksmith. Actually, that’s somewhat of a lie. I’ve been playing regularly over the past few months, but have been targeting some harder songs to master. I just don’t have anything meaningful to write yet. I decided to take a break on the more challenging stuff and master something simple.
Today, I’ve got another easy bass song added to my repertoire. Not that I will ever play it again. Read more below.
Song Review
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) was a saccharine ballad by a “pop punk” band. If you grew up in the 1990s or early 2000s, this song was ubiquitous. Every graduation or major life event had this song in its soundtrack, just as every bar made sure to integrate Semisonic into its end-of-night song list. Younger people might not even remember that Green Day was once a fairly legit pop punk act.
I was never entirely sold on the band, though I enjoyed their breakout album. There was some value to be gotten from Longview, and the other stuff on Dookie. The first single released for Nimrod wasn’t actually Good Riddance… it was Hitchin’ a Ride, which I think was a better song than anything on Dookie and its predecessor album.
But, ah well, Hitchin’ a Ride didn’t last long as a single, and got swapped out with this one. This song is completely wretched, though, and seems calculated for radio airplay. Any enjoyment I received from Green Day quickly evaporated once I was subjected to this song for the millionth time. This one sits toward the bottom of list, alongside Who Let the Dogs Out and Smashmouth’s complete library.
Bass Track Review
A new bass player can probably pick up this song in a day. It’s about four notes about sixty times in total at a leisurely speed. There is seriously no great difficulty to this song.
At one point, I thought I had mis-fingered a note and missed a 100% on this song. Thankfully, I caught it and bent the string to where it needed to be and got the perfect score.
If you like this song and envision yourself as a bass player in an event cover band, this is an easy pickup. I am doing everything I can to avoid calling this “baby’s first bass song,” but I give up. This is an easy one.
The Details
Played on: Epiphone Thunderbird
Difficulty: Easy
Approx hours to learn: 0
My final accuracy score on Rocksmith: 100%
