By Frank J. Diekmann
Have you behaved this year? Checked off more boxes in the nice column than the naughty? Then maybe, just maybe, this holiday your wish might come true–you can become a rock star.
For one person in credit unions, it’s a one-time holiday wish that has come to life. And it could happen for you, too, if you’re ready to put in a little–OK, a lot–of practice.
Several months before Christmas of 2011, Myles Bristowe was at a rock concert when he looked up at the stage—as so many of us have—and said, “That’s what I want.” The difference between Bristowe and the rest of us is he actually did something about it.
For Christmas that year his family bought him his first guitar and a copy of the video game Rocksmith, which had just been released in October of 2011 and which can be played on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. A new concept at the time, the game seeks to teach someone how to play the guitar without learning to read music. In normal game mode, playing with a well-known song, the player is presented with a display that shows a representation of the guitar's fretboard, divided by numbered frets and colored strings. Notes represented as colored rectangles, matching the color of the guitar string(s) to be held down, move from the background to the foreground along numbered lanes reflecting the fret position. The notes turn 90 degrees at the moment that they should be strummed; additional markers are provided to help with timing of future notes. Additionally, the game shows an ideal position for the player's hand on the fretboard for the current segment of the song, moving this up and down as necessary. (If your inner Eric Clapton wants more details, go here.
More Than A Feeling
“I made a promise to my family that I would practice until I was good enough to play in front of people,” said Bristowe, who is vice president of marketing strategy at St. Petersburg, Fla.-based PSCU. “Rocksmith was really the first time I had held a guitar in my hands.”
We all know what happens to most Christmas gifts and holiday resolutions; they’re forgotten as soon as the wrapping paper hits the recycling bin. But Bristowe kept that promise, practicing every day, and one year later was playing, appropriately enough, Boston’s “More Than A Feeling.” And this time he wasn’t alone.
“I remember what it felt like one year later to play that very first note in front of a crowd,” he said in a video he created that documented his progress.
Still playing and working at it three years later, Bristowe got a copy of Rocksmith 2014 to go with a new travel guitar that he took with him as a roadie when traveling on business so he could practice.
“I played in my hotel rooms with a guitar that would fit easily in a carry-on,” he said.
Meanwhile, to get over what he readily admits was a fear of playing in front of people, he converted his living room into a concert hall every weekend where he livestreamed a show called “Sunday Morning Rocks,” where he played Rocksmith in front of all my family and friends.”
It could have ended there, with Bristowe’s developing guitar shredding known only to a few. But then earlier this year Rocksmith announced a contest for those who had learned to play guitar using its software. The winners would be brought to San Francisco to perform live on a famed stage. The contest, which was designed in part to counter critics who have argued no one can become proficient at guitar playing using Rocksmith, invited video entries from people who had uncaged their inner Eddie Van Halens and Keith Richards by using the software. Among the winners this year were a young woman from Japan and a guy from Ireland, along with a certain credit union guy from Florida who shared his story in a video that was selected.
“On July 27th, 2016, I reached the 5,000 hours milestone of playing Rocksmith,” Bristowe said during the video. “When I held a guitar in my hands for the very first time in 2011, I promised to learn to play guitar well enough to play in front of people. To realize the full impact of that promise remains beyond the scope of my imagination.” You can watch his video here.
'Experience of a Lifetime'
Ubisoft, the company that publishes the Rocksmith software, brought the winners to the South of Market district of San Francisco for a performance at a well-known venue, Slims, which was founded in 1988 by Boz Scaggs. There the winners would all be given the chance to perform live with a professional band backing them.
“The whole thing was the rock experience of a lifetime,” Bristowe told me.
But before that experience on a live stage, the winners were taken to Fantasy Studios across the bay in Berkeley, where everyone from Tony Bennett to Journey to Stevie Wonder have recorded. With a video crew following them, Bristowe and the other winners rehearsed and did interviews with media and bloggers in the control room. The Thursday prior to the live performance Bristowe live-streamed a cover of a Def Leppard song.
And then came time for the live show when a credit union payments exec would get to be a rock star.
“We went to Slims, and backstage they had food set out, totally like a rock and roll show,” recalled Bristowe.
A famous piece of rock history, all kinds of famous rock and rollers have autographed the ceiling at Slims. “I scratched out Hendrix’s name and wrote in my own,” joked Bristowe.
Rocksmith has its own band called the Note Trackers made up of the coders who enter all the music into the game software. “They are like savants. They played for an hour,” said Bristowe. “Then I went upstairs. They showed my (winning) video. They made sure I was plugged in, asked me, ‘Do you have a (guitar) pick?’ which I did. I had handlers, and they were amazing.”
The Drums Begin, And...
At this point, after five years of daily practice, live-streamed shows and rehearsal, he obviously had no qualms stepping into the bright lights before the audience of about 450 people, right?
“Right before I went up I felt really sick; I was really nervous,” admitted Bristowe. “They told me, ‘You’ll be OK, don’t quit.’ I was terrified. But the audience roared during the video when I said ‘None of this would be possible without Rocksmith.’ It sent a chill up my spine and then all the fear went away. They said, ‘Here’s Myles, and the drums started and it all became a blur.”
While Bristowe said he doesn’t really recall a lot from those moments on stage, he opened his set with Heart’s Barracuda followed by Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer. It didn’t take long before he was performing like a veteran rock and roller.
“It just flowed. I wasn’t terrified. I leaped off the drum set, that wasn’t planned,” he said.
You can find live footage of Bristowe’s show here.
I once saw Billy Joel asked what was the toughest part of performing and he responded that it was immediately after the show when he’s in the back of a quiet van being driven back to his hotel, the adrenaline still flowing and the crowd’s roar still in his ears. Bristowe experienced something similar when his set was over.
“We packed up the van with gear and that was it,” he said. “I didn’t have anything to do.”
Bristowe is back off the road and home in St. Petersburg, but the rock and roll life isn’t over and there actually is much to do. Several years ago he helped to create a program at PSCU called Rockovate, which uses the tagline “Band Together” and which seeks to blend rock music and innovation, all in the spirit of team building, diversity and inclusion. Rockovate is also open to area credit unions.
The program has become so popular that the original band has now split into two, representing 40 members drawn from 18 PSCU departments. Staff practice for 12 weeks and then perform a big show downtown that has helped to raise thousands of dollars for charities.
“I’m back here and we have Rockovate, so I still get to rock,” said Bristowe, suggesting that perhaps he can help develop a PSCU theme song. “It was once in a lifetime at that level, but I still get to play once a year. I’d like to do more fundraising using music. Music is incredibly powerful in the way it connects people.”
Frank J. Diekmann can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info and @FrankCUToday.