gonna fire the guitards

[bkbirge]

thats the stage where u power through it like a man until your finger tips turn into rock hard booty shaking conductors

Oddly enough, after playing for 30 years I've realized that my fingers don't have rock hard calluses, more like the pads are just slightly more robust than others. They did at the beginning many years ago. I often dig in pretty hard too, I guess my body just got used to it eventually. Haven't thought about it in years. 'course I'm not doing 4 hour gigs every night either, that's probably part of it.

 

[negativefx]

Totally depends on a particular interpretation of 'i can play guitar'. I've been playing bass for 15 years or so, currently in a band, and I receive plenty of compliments on my bass playing. I rarely play any of our originals the same way twice because I play what I feel at the time. I know very little theory beyond major and minor scales... I took a few theory classes in college but forgot 95% of it. Can I play bass? Apparently if I don't know mountains of theory some would say 'no'. In my opinion, if a beginner picks up this game and plays for an hour or so a day for 60 days, they can probably crank out a few decent covers and will probably have a reasonable level of technical ability. Could they go play some cover tunes at their school talent show? Most definitely. Can they play guitar? Apparently not! What's the tipping point for 'i can play guitar'? Once you release a platinum selling solo album? I'm sure rocksmith's definition is looser than reality, but by how much? If a non-musical person were to see a "Rocksmith Graduate" play some velvet revolver, you bet your arse they would say 'yeah, they can play guitar'.

Also to bkbirge's point, I have zero calluses from playing round wounds at least an hour a day for years. Every once in awhile I get some skin tears on my fingertips but other than that my hands look like those of an office worker, not a lumberjack. I suppose if I had a better grasp on theory I might have better calluses... ;P

 

[Desirsar]

Rocksmith has a permanent 105 gauge indentation in my calluses. It's nice for instant feedback while playing the few hundred songs it has licensed. For a beginner, it's a great way to motivate yourself to practice, and you'll get better faster with a teacher, but if a kid is going to a teacher once and week and then barely, if at all, practicing outside of that because it is "boring"...

Band In A Box, on the other hand, will actually let me set up a chord progression to play walking bass lines over, or experiment with my weird ideas of "What would happen if you did I-IV-vi-V in this genre?", so I practice with that too. (No, the Session Mode in Rocksmith is nowhere close to BIAB.)

I thought of this in a totally different way. So this game will get more kids trying to play the guitar. As others have stated, they'll get to a certain level and most will just be happy with it but appreciate what goes into playing an instrument.

Fast forward 5-10 years. How many of those kids will appreciate going to see live bands because they know how hard it is and can respect true musicianship?

Sounds like a win-win to me.

This pretty much answers this...

I think that, more than anything, music educators need to rethink their approach. And that goes for the guys in the music store as well as the teachers in the classrooms and the conductors in youth orchestras. Because if we're relying on video games now to develop the future music talent, we're flat out doing something wrong and if we don't fix it, the music landscape's gonna be pretty harsh.

It's going to take something close to true AI to replace a teacher with a computer. Anything that gets more people to at least try an instrument is a good thing.

It's pretty ironic that it keeps getting easier for beginners to pick up an instrument while the venues left to play them in are drying up and blowing away.

It's great if it does help more people start to learn to play, hopefully they find it easier to persevere, music is one of the most basic joys of life IMO.

I think that's it right there. I haven't played Rocksmith, but it seems like these days there's a lot of competition for kids' attention and not as many are learning to play instruments. If someone's made a video game that piques a few more kids' interest, even if it's just 10% of those that try the game, I'm all for it.

Digital music and video make it too easy for people to overlook the value of seeing bands live. If this makes more people appreciate live music, which means more butts in seats, more venues will open up again. Market forces or something.

I watched the video and it's pretty much space-age tab on steroids.

Probably the best description I've seen of the interface...

It's not for everyone. And it's not going to flood the market with musicians. But it does a good job at what it does... heh. It's basically a gateway drug for real instruments...

And here would be the second best. Probably the biggest flaw in the game is not any part of the software design, but the fact that never once does it tell you "If you can't learn any more on your own from this game, go find a proper music teacher and come back."

I hated the horrible, horrible delay between hitting the note on my Strat and it registering in the game. I was always out of time in the game and had to hit the note before its little indicator came close to the little "on time" area. I tweaked the settings and could never make it any better. That is what made me sell it to a guy on craigslist for $30 and that is why I won't buy the 2014 version even though my interest is piqued by the bass option.

I run the 360 output into 5.1 computer speakers, and my TV has a supposed video latency of only 2 ms, and it's just a Dynex. It had to be your hardware. The new game is a lot more forgiving in its note detection (although the Score Attack mode rewards you for proper timing), you might try it again if you ever change TV or audio hardware.

I got a music teacher, and I learned my instrument the real way, I found a band, I worked my ass off... every day, till my fingers had blisters, and those blisters got blisters.

It's almost insulting... really.

Real way? Rocksmith players aren't imagining that guitar in their hands, and it's not a hologram. If someone is practicing six hours a day, why does it matter what they're looking at while they do it?

I guess it comes down to definitions for me. If you can play well enough that people will pay to see you do it, you have become a musician. When you support yourself with this skill, you are a professional musician. When you can play the riff from "love in an elevator" you are a person who learned the riff from "love in an elevator"

I can make crème brulee, it doesn't make me a chef.

Now this I agree with. Keep in mind that not everyone who learns to play an instrument ever intends to become a musician by this definition, even if they reach a level of proficiency greater than someone who is being paid to play. I "trained" at football and soccer way later than I could reasonably become a professional at them, simply because I wanted to.

 

[rolandm]

Frankly it is amazing that any kids stick with some of this stuff. I've got my 6 year old daughter on formal recorder lessons right now and a little piano (when she feels like it for fun) and I totally understand why she often hates practicing. It's hard! I'm hoping to get her good enough that she starts to enjoy it and want to go further but that initial hump stops many people from playing at all. Anything that helps kids (or adults) over that hump is a good thing in my book.

I think that's the point right there. Educators make it hard instead of making it FUN. Make noise. Make an ugly noise. Make all the ugly noises you can. Whoops! You made a mistake and created a beautiful noise there on accident? Well, screw it, that's OK too. Whatever you do, don't stop making all the noise you can.

I coach hockey, and the American Developmental Model we use to create hockey players from the age of 5 on up is actually something I experienced with my earliest violin instructor. We learned, but he never stopped making it fun. We played songs WE wanted to learn. The Star Wars maine theme for this upcoming recital? Sure, why not. He bought the music himself out of his own pocket. Sure, we still had to play the Brahms and we still had to play the Tchaikovsky. But we got our Star Wars. And for a kid in the orchestra in 1978, that was HUGE. Somewhere in there, though, he recognized our love of rehearsing and started dropping little challenges to us. Hey, can you do clean double stops? Hey, can you do string-crossing arpeggios into a single string run? Can you tune your violin by ear and have it match a tuner?

We ate that stuff UP. Challenge me? Sure! I LOVE A CHALLENGE! I'm 9 years old and no one has told me I can't do it, so I'm gonna figure out a way to get it done! And we did figure it out.

Those are the same principals that USA Hockey put into play not so long ago. Make it fun. Make it about games. Focus less on drills at younger ages, and more on small-area games and getting kids on the ice with a puck on their stick. Focus less on endless scales and theory at a young age, and focus on making a noise instead. Make mistakes, because mistakes are OK. And learn from those mistakes. You learn when you fail, but only if you've learned HOW to fail. Review, analyze, correct, re-attempt. Repeat the process until you get it the way you want it. And somewhere along the line, when you're hooked, start challenging them and demystifying the science of music.

Just my .02.

 

[Flabass]

Want to learn guitar fast, all styles?

I have no interest in this except I was watching tv late last night and this infomercial was on.

Link Removed

 

[DwaynieAD]

without reading anything beyond the title. i agree fire the guitards. you can start with firing mine.

 

[drummer5359]

Anything that gets kids interested in music is fine by me.

I was influenced by a neighbor who was a professional musician when I was a kid. My nieces and nephews became musicians partly because they were raised by and around musicians. This Christmas my niece's eleven year old son wants a bass for Christmas. (Likely, this is my fault.) I'm giving him my USA Peavey Fury and a used Ampeg BA108 as well as hooking him up with my instructor. I'll also give him a couple of Bass lesson DVDs that I have.

The way that I look at it, they are the future. Thanks to my neighbor Mr. Early, my brother and I have had a lifetime of making music. I try to pass that love of making music on as I can.

 

[Bredian]

I'll train my new roadies via "roadiesmith" to hand these out to prospects...

 

[Feral Feline]

It's pretty ironic that it keeps getting easier for beginners to pick up an instrument while the venues left to play them in are drying up and blowing away.

It's great if it does help more people start to learn to play, hopefully they find it easier to persevere, music is one of the most basic joys of life IMO.

I thought of this in a totally different way. So this game will get more kids trying to play the guitar. As others have stated, they'll get to a certain level and most will just be happy with it but appreciate what goes into playing an instrument.

Fast forward 5-10 years. How many of those kids will appreciate going to see live bands because they know how hard it is and can respect true musicianship?

Sounds like a win-win to me.

+1 to both quotes above
Get the kids interested in music, maybe more live venues will open up way in the future.

...

Recommendations for future versions: Slowly ween the player off of tab-like notation and on to sheet music as their technical skills improve. Drop out the actual note-for-note fills and force the player to do their own fill in key. Ear training. Metronome based rhythm training. The technical bits are for the most part there (low latency, cool amps/effects that sound pretty good, etc.) for this type of educational content, but I guess they found it to be not gamey enough to include. I'd really like to see them take this game to the 'advanced' level and use their technical abilities to create an array of instructional content built around the game engine they already created.

+1
I used to think "Guitar Hero? What's the point? Play a real instrument!" Yet, without GH, then Rocksmith might've never come about.

...
I think that, more than anything, music educators need to rethink their approach. And that goes for the guys in the music store as well as the teachers in the classrooms and the conductors in youth orchestras. Because if we're relying on video games now to develop the future music talent, we're flat out doing something wrong and if we don't fix it, the music landscape's gonna be pretty harsh.

Yes, educators need to come to terms with the simple fact that not everybody learns in the same way. Some kids will graduate from Rocksmith to proper lessons and learn to play MUSIC, other kids will stop with playing (Rocksmith) guitar and take up model airplane building or whatever and that's okay, too. We need the wee'uns to become engineers AND artists AND programmers etc.

My parents encouraged me to try many things, but of course I didn't like everything I tried. It did give me a better appreciation of various sports, music, dance, art, ways of thinking etc. Teachers also need to spend more time on finding ways to reach kids and less on rote dogma. I briefly took piano lessons when I was 7, and while I understand now the reasoning for teaching "Twinkle Little Star", I didn't think it was cool when I was 5 let-alone 7. If the teacher had taught me a simple boogie woogie left-hand bass line, I'd 've been hooked instantly and would've practiced piano more than "briefly".

If I'd been given a diet of boogie woogie licks instead of namby-pamby "Twinkle-Chopsticks", I would've had FUN and pressed on.

I think that's the point right there. Educators make it hard instead of making it FUN ...

+1, and not just for kids. Why shouldn't it be fun now, when I've rekindled my interest in music nearly 40 years after those puking piano lessons?

 

[Groovy_Gravy]

Oddly enough, after playing for 30 years I've realized that my fingers don't have rock hard calluses, more like the pads are just slightly more robust than others. They did at the beginning many years ago. I often dig in pretty hard too, I guess my body just got used to it eventually. Haven't thought about it in years. 'course I'm not doing 4 hour gigs every night either, that's probably part of it.

Mine aren't that hard either...
I also lotion them which I never used to and my hands became a lot healthier. I would have hard callous that would peel all the time. Now they are smooth soft (good for playin a lady . )and never hurt.