Rocksmith?

Well, it'll make you better at playing whatever songs you play. The arcade stuff is alright but I find the difficulty curve a little steep on most of them. It's no replacement for a live teacher but it makes a good supplement for lessons and anything that gets you playing more is worth a few bucks IMO.

 

I agree with the above post. It teaches you to play songs, while playing the game. I am a guitar player who bought a bass to use with rocksmith to fart around on bass. Now I'm playing my bass more than my guitars, just got my second bass today and have an amp on the way. I can play many of the songs on rocksmith at 100%, but without the game my ability falls way off. I have to supplement my rocksmith playing, which is a blast and motivates me to play, with basic scale and note reading training. I also need to take the songs I am learning on the game and print off the tab and play them referencing that and also work thought the Mel Bay bass book I have.
The game is an incredible tool, but you have to take your playing away from the game to really make it stick in a live, playing situation. I hope on the next version of the game that they apply some music theory into the learning. I want to have the notes on the fretboard and the notes on the bass clef down cold.

 

Hello, my name is Brandon, and I am addicted to Rocksmith 2014.

Just picked this up on my MacBook. I play a ton of covers already for the gigging cover band I am in. I wasn't interested in this game at all...until a guitar player friend forced me to play his. I plugged my bass into the game and tried a song I have never played before. Of course I failed because I didn't bother with any tutorials or lessons. Then I tried a song I already knew. Nailed it! Of course I still didn't really understand the game symbology.

Now that I own it and have played with all that the game offers, I am blown away. I have been playing through my 1964 Q4 in-ear monitors and the sound quality is incredible. My cheap "gaming" four string Ibanez sounds amazing in the game. So many different tones available.

It only takes a sort time to learn the symbology. I was reading it as quick as tab after about an hour of playing. Using the riff repeater to slow down the song and add/subtract notes first allowed me to learn song sections before jumping into the full song.

So much DLC out there. Guess I will start working on those Primus, Maiden, and Rush songs my cover band never wants to play.

This is a great tool to keep your skills sharp. Play in the most unforgiving mode and it will penalize you for being a fraction of a second late on a note. I had to sit up and take the Ramones song serious at that point. Ha!

I do wish the actual names of notes appeared along side the symbols. Not sure how they missed that obvious feature. That would sure help this game be a bit more educational. Of course it is no substitute for actual lessons but man it is fun and challenging.

 

Chord names show up, but not single notes.

 

Hi,

I play Rocksmith more than I probably should (instead of, you know, actual practice...).
Picked it up mostly so I could improve a bit at guitar.
Had it for about two years and nailed most of the bass versions. I think it's a good tool, especially for "effortless" pratice. You don't have to set up any gear, don't have to get out tabs or books, nothing. Just plug in and go. I think that can be really valuable to many people, given that we all know how much the small inconveniences can keep us from getting stuff done.
There are, however, some things that I believe are worth keeping in mind when using Rocksmith.
First is latency. Even though it's not really that bad with my PC, it is really noticeable to me and leads to me playing a bit before the beat so that I (and the game) can hear myself on the beat. That could potentially mess up your timing, especially for beginners.
Second is learning songs. As intiutive as the interface is (to me at least), it really is useless at helping you remember songs. I don't know whether it is too easy or something but I cannot play by heart a single song which I can get completely correct on Rocksmith. I don't know that phenomenon from regular practice with tabs etc.
The last thing for me is that the game is sometimes to unspecific vis-a-vis the technique you should be using for a song. For Behind Blue Eyes, for example, it tells you to slap some notes, without any hint about Entwistle's real technique.
I am also not 100% convinced of the accuracy of the tabs in the game. I think it is We Are The Champions (might also be something else...) where I have noticed some details missing. That doesn't really take anything from the game but might be annoying if you really love/need a specific song.

 

You can change the latency.

There's a setting for it in the game.

 

Yeah, I know. It's fine on my Macbook but the whole game will crash on my PC if I set it to lower than 2ms (which in reality seem longer than 2ms) for whatever reason. Just sayin', latency may be a problem.

 

my name is brandon and i'm addicted to rocksmith, as well.

 

i've had the game since the first one and phave bought $100's of dlc, almost 300 songs in total.

short answer is yes. i have improved and so will you. when i started the 2nd dlc song i bought was cliffs of dover. i had to play it over and over. now that song is the lease of my problems. when i started, i couldn't play around the 12 fret and now i'm better.

i recommend to get whatever dlc you want, but buy alot and different styles. all the dlc i have is still not enough for me. it's a rabbit hole like buying effects.

band packs i recommend are:

primus
earth, wind, and fire
queen
Boston
bachsmith

at some point i'll do a video review of the game and put it on youtube. you can suggest improvement to the game on the rocksmith facebook page. my bro plays guitar and both of us critic on it's music education. but if your looking for a guitar hero like game, then it's perfect. you'll improve at playing your instrument, but it'll take i long time. just play DAILY and play the all the modes and have FUN.

 

They have a Twitch feed at 18:00 EST every Thursday, where they will play through the DLC pack of the week.
They also have giveaways of Ernie Ball stuff, like picks & strings. (Yes, bass strings too)

Twitch