Rocksmith

[Gorn]

I just got it yesterday and played around for a bit. Pretty awesome game, once I figured out how to turn the onscreen tablature the right side up (upside down?). Now that it's been out for a while, is anyone still playing? Any interesting features or tips that people have discovered?

 

[matey]

i quite enjoy it but im pretty hopeless

 

[cyclopsbookworm]

I play it quite a bit. I'm poor and can't afford lessons so it was a cost effective way for me to get started. I actually got it to learn guitar, which is quite fun. I didn't start playing bass until after I'd been playing guitar for a year and a half. That has nothing to do with Rocksmith itself, just how things turned out, really.

The tabs being upside down was never a problem for me as I already knew how to read tabs somewhat. Is there anything in particular you are using it for?

I find the bass is easier than guitar up to the point of playing in master mode. I just find it harder to remember basslines for some odd reason...even though quite a few are the same basic structure as the guitar parts, just in single notes.

 

[cyclopsbookworm]

There are a lot of way cool features for guitar. For bass, the main feature is its an easy way to learn entire songs...doesn't help too much technique-wise. Tons of great features on the guitar side though.

 

[cyclopsbookworm]

Sorry for my scatter-brained responses. Anyway, on guitar I have most of all but the hardest songs on master mode. That doesn't mean I can PLAY them all on Master mode..but I'm getting there. On bass, like I said, getting to master mode is no problem, but I get lost much more easily than on guitar.

 

[Wagz]

I've been playing the bass upgrade for Rocksmith since it came out last fall.
Scale Runner is the best of the Guitarcade games for learning scales all over the fretboard.
My top tip for Rocksmith is to have a properly set up bass that is intonated properly. Since the game just checks your bass' open string tuning, any string that isn't intonated properly will miss notes from time to time.

 

[cyclopsbookworm]

^yeah, thats a must. I actually intonate and tune with a chromatic before I turn the game on (well, not every time, just when I change strings or retune my bass to play the game...I'm currently trying to learn drop c for a band I'm auditioning for).

Scale runner is awesome. I actually think the arcade in this game is worth the purchase price, especially for guitar. I love the dawn of the chordead game too. Ducks sucks but was very helpful for transitions when I just got started out. The game is pretty good at unlocking the arcade games as they become useful, and I recommend taking a time out from the songs to play them.

 

[cyclopsbookworm]

A couple more tips that might be helpful are to keep powering through the career section, whatever its called. And don't do the 'lower qualifying score' if you can avoid it and even play songs that are a bit too hard for you or you don't particularly like. This kind of keeps me from getting stuck in a rut only playing the songs I'm best at and like the most.

The bad thing for me on bass is the slap songs...I tend to play ridiculously late at night (like a few minutes after I post this, lol) and it bothers the hell out of my roomates to have me slapping away at 3:00 am. So I tend to skip those ones, telling myself I'll play them at a more reasonable hour...which I never do.

 

[cyclopsbookworm]

Any favorite songs so far on bass? I have all of the ones I'm even remotely interested in learning. (I've spent more coin on them than I care to admit, lol)

 

[edwardthewave]

I bought Rocksmith this past December for PC on Steam; including the bass DLC and of course the proprietary 1/4" TS to USB cable. 5 months later, I'd have to say I'm throughly pleased.

I think Rocksmith is excellent for teaching beginners and intermediate players popular songs. Someone who is a complete NOOB can play songs fairly competently within a few months.

It's a little pricey, especially for the DLCs, but it beats the pants off of all the crappy tabs floating around that beginners often rely on to learn songs.

However, I do have a few gripes with Rocksmith as a learning tool.

1.) Rocksmith doesn't teach music theory. It shows you how songs go and you as the player are supposed to mimic the sound, but it doesn't teach WHY. Things like key signatures, time signatures, dominants, chord progressions, key changes, modulations, A-B sections (or what a verse, chorus, bridge is) are completely untouched, leaving beginners and intermediate players devoid of knowledge that helps them become better musicians.

2.) Primarily as a bass player, the chords are noticibly absent. Since I play more jazz, funk, neo-soul sort of stuff, I'm used to reading "lead sheets", basically sheet music with the melody but the chord symbols are above the staff. Rocksmith has no such way of indicating harmony. All I see is a flurry of colored squares, and I'm not thinking "play this riff on the 8th fret of the yellow (A) string"; I'm thinking "Fm7 arpeggio". But a beginner wouldn't know to think like that. This is especially bad on songs that shift keys or have lots of chords. It would be nice to see the chords floating above the track so we know what the overall harmony is.

I'm not dogging Rocksmith, I think it is a genuinely valuable learning tool, but I think it could be improved in the aforementioned areas.

I think for more intermediate/advanced musicians, investing in the Transcribe software (which is excellently designed) might be a better investment, but it certainly isn't as fun as playing Rocksmith!

 

[Gorn]

Rocksmith doesn't teach music theory.

That's really what I was hoping for. It would be so simple for the game to have scale/chord/mode/arpeggio exercises. But it's still cool.

 

[matey]

the multipayer bit dosnt seem to work is that cause no one else is playing multi player?

 

[Handyman]

That's really what I was hoping for. It would be so simple for the game to have scale/chord/mode/arpeggio exercises. But it's still cool.

Agreed. Lots of people are having fun with this game, but the developers would be doing their customers a great service if they gave the information on the chord progression, or a way to display some sort of reasonable rhythmic notation.

 

[Batmensch]

the multipayer bit dosnt seem to work is that cause no one else is playing multi player?

What exactly do you mean it doesn't seem to work?

 

[OOZMAN]

Game was fun but the songs were too easy... and there is too much lag

 

[Gorn]

The lag for me is like a fraction of a second off. Just slightly annoying.

 

[KrisHayes]

Truly won't work for bass because of the latency. Bass playing is all about pocket - you can't learn to feel it at all with the amount of latency in this game.

 

[Jackson171]

I got Rocksmith for my wife to learn to play guitar. She has been playing drums and singing in bands for over 20 years, but wanted to get out from behind the drums into more of a lead vocalist role. She wanted to learn guitar to have something else to do when she wasn't singing. She, and the whole family, was really good at Rock Band, so it made sense.

Once we got it hooked up, we had issues with the latency, which was easily improved by using the recommended cables and set up. Kim took about 15 minutes to feel comfortable holding and plucknig the guitar, and within a few days was playing along with the game and having fun.

Here's the thing, the song selections were a bit limited, so right away she is asking me to show her some songs we play in our group. I showed her the chord progression to "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" and she had it in a few minutes. Then she just walked away from Rocksmith and never looked at it again. She is playing guitar in the band while singing now.

 

[matey]

multiplayer is just for playin with a fren not other people on line

 

[Batmensch]

Game was fun but the songs were too easy... and there is too much lag

The lag is a known problem and relatively easy to fix. Check the official RS forums over at Ubisoft.com, plenty of info an how to fix lag.