f13.net

I know some of the folks here already have this and I've been leaning pretty strong on hints for xmas. Let's hope the old lady comes through. If not, I'll have it the week after xmas anyway :)

So at some point we'll need a thread for stuff. I was just browsing the steam forum to see if the physical copy installs to steam (achievements I might actually whore for! And it seems like yes?) and I read an interesting post that seems helpful. I know it's what I'll be doing to work through difficult passages, and I also recommend learning the 'real' notes.

OP of the Steam thread, "Can I slow tracks down?"

I've had the Xbox version for some time now but just havent had the consistent time available to really spend on it.  I keep meaning to go back to it but i don't forsee that happening until some life changes happen (i.e. oldest kid going to college next year) and i get more free time.  My oldest is the actual guitar player in the family and it's not intesting to him at all.  I keep thinking it would be easier to pick up based on what i remember of his rapid skill gains from total novice to excellent player, but unfortunately it's was a combination of his youth (hand eye coordination, speed, flexibility), him getting real lessons for a few years, and spending hours and hours on it a day.

I may still try to do it to surprise him (i imagine playing rythmn to his lead would be fun) but right now my hopes are not high.  The first few sessions with Rocksmith i kept thinking to myself "why the heck did they craft guitar neck so narrow?  if they were wider i wouldn't have to fumble so much an hit wrong stings or multiple stings.  My hands are too big for this - is this really a full sized guitar?" etc etc.  Sad truth is Im old - not sure if I can actually pull this off.

Xil, dont get discouraged.  Do some more research and you'll find a guitar that fits your anatomy/playstyle.   Perhaps look into some steel-string acoustic electrics?

Pretty close to my experience, every time I play it I think this game is awesome, but then I put it back on the shelf and never seem to find time for it.  Part of this is due to the UI as Sky has already found out (without even playing it) it can be somewhat cumbersome. 

Also, Rocksmith thinks I am a better player than I am and keeps upping the difficulty to a level that is beyond fun for me.  The only way I have found to undo that is to reset the entire game, wish it were easier to just go into song mode and set the level you want to start the song at.  I should do the riff repeater to actually learn the songs but hey I'm 40+ with no illusions of becoming the great musician.  I am more than happy to just pluck along a note at a time as I take a trip down memory lane via song.

I picked it up when it released on Steam, and have been trying to play around with it at least an hour or so a day.

It's fun, and I'm noticeably improving, but there are some annoyances.

Firstly, it lets you fudge some things, and fails you on others in what seems to be a totally random, and very annoying, manner.  When you do fail, it doesn't give any feedback as to what you're doing wrong.  In general, it doesn't give you much feedback at all, so god knows what kind of horribly bad habits I'm picking up.

That, and the arcade games are all locked, until you complete so many songs, or events.

My only other gripe is that, at least so far as I've found, there's no picking exercises

So far, it's fun, and I'd say it's a decent way to get in to playing guitar, but if you're in any way serious about playing, you'd be better off getting lessons, just for the feedback on what you're doing right/wrong, and to avoid learning bad habits.

I've always looked at Rocksmith as something to play AFTER you've learned at least basic guitar.  Go through one easy beginning method book, read up on techniques, and THEN play Rocksmith to pick up the songs.  I mean really, it's nothing more than a glorified solo book that just so happens to be a game. 

It also has all the amp/effects models built in, which is glorious.

I mentioned a few weeks ago in the What Are You Playing thread that I had picked this up and gave some early impressions.  Now, a few weeks later, I have some real experience with this game.

First, I would just say that I fucking love this "game".  I manage to get a good 3 or 4 hours in a week, and would do assloads more if my life allowed it.  I think it is a technical marvel, despite the obvious failings of the interface and the gaming elements.

I am learning to play the guitar via this thing, at least in a certain sense.  I still suck, but I suck far, far less than I did a few weeks ago.  I can also tell that, as a teaching tool, this is good enough to take me much, much further...and it is intuitive and fun enough that I still actually WANT to go much further with it.

Some random observations:

- When the game starts to get too hard, stop playing the career mode.  Just go into individual songs and practice practice practice practice them.  I find myself sticking to a small handful of songs that I rotate.  The songs get progressively harder as you improve, but they don't get stupid hard like the career mode for some reason.  Partly I think this is because you often have the choice of selecting the Single note mode, which avoids any chords or combos.  This seems to be a fantastic way to improve, because it stays easy enough to stay on top off and still manages to make you improve.  It is also exactly as fun as the career mode anyway, so it just makes more sense.  When you begin to master the single version of a song, switch to Combo.  This too will start out slowly and get harder as you improve.  It is almost as if the difficulty AI works better in this mode.  I also found that after doing this for a while, I was then able to go back to the place in the career mode that was proving to challenging, and then just blowing right through it.

- If find that doing the above has helped my not only to get my hand/eye coordination to improve, but I can also tell that muscle memory in general is starting to develop slowly.  And the callouses are starting to form and the hand and wrist pain is going away.

- In the very early stages, you can "reset" the game difficulty so that it goes back to super easy mode.  Do so a few times when you are brand new to this, to avoid frustration.

- Go into the Arcade Games that support what you are trying to accomplish.  Even the stupid Duck Shooting thing helps in the beginning.  I don't otherwise spend much time here (yet), but I know I will probably need to do more in here to practice chords and stuff. 

- The riff repeater, while smart, is not much fun when you are a real beginner.  Counter to what Sky and the others have said, I would avoid it until you you get to a more intermediate state.  You will have more fun playing full songs on a lower difficulty, and be less likely to put it back on the shelf for three months.  That said, I have no doubt at all that I will do exactly as Sky suggested once I feel I am good enough to incorporate all that stuff.  Were I to do it now, I would not enjoy myself.

And again, what a bit of technical genius they have pulled of.  The detection and feedback form me has been routinely excellent.

Biggest thing missing?  FINGER PLACEMENT!  It is only intuitive on the simpler stuff.  Wish they would slowly walk you through how to place your fingers with the harder stuff.

Picked up the PC Bundle (Game, Real Tone Cable, guitar, normal cable, strap, two picks, bonus songs) the day this thread was made and have been playing it as much as I can. Always wanted to get this ever since it was first announced. Yay, delayed European release!

Initially I stuck to whatever the game recommended, but it got obvious after a while that this involved not getting to practice what you want and skipping to new songs quick. As a total guitar novice it just kicks the feet underneath you when the game suddenly throws new shit at you during a rehearse. But it's not like I mind, since most of my problems in playing correctly involve not being able to cover four frets with four fingers and a double-jointed pinky (I think my tendon slides over my knuckle, giving the finger a snapping movement). I'm trying to learn "I Can't Hear You" right now, but I'm failing in jumping 3 frets because of the aforementioned midget-hand/uncooperative-pinky issue.

Visual progression I find is crucial here though. Feeling improvement is subjective, but a score is a score and gamification works. The minigames seem cheesy to a gamer's eye, but they're really damn useful, fun and clever once you play them with a guitar. Yeah, the menu suffers heavily from consolitis, but I've gotten used to it. Load times are really quick at least.

It's just sad that the only reason we can't use the guitar as a method of navigating the menu is because Sony disallowed having an alternate controller. I'd like to know their stupid reasoning. Also not a fan of selling a DLC that just unlocks the locked content for 12€.

People have asked if it's possible to use a different USB cable, but most people who have attempted claim failure. I'm guessing the Real Tone Cable has some authentication built in.

Right now I'd like to know how to disable tune-check before getting to do _anything_ and getting rid of the intro button mashing when starting the game.

I am pretty sure the realtone cable has some analog->digital conversion magic embedded in it.  I have heard you can use it sans rocksmith to record.

That's not a bad habit to get into, though.

Yeah, but every 4 minutes?  Seems a bit much.

Oh, yeah that's a bit much. I thought he meant before you can do anything after booting the game up.

Launching the game has its own tiny ritual you need to do. Spacebar, spacebar, Enter, Enter, Enter. Doesn't seem like much, but since by this point I've already laid back on the couch with the plugged in 6-string I have to do this with my foot and I think my laptop doesn't appreciate the heel kicking it has started getting lately.

Getting past the intros in modern games is a bastardized version of what used to be entering cheatcodes.

Trip report: Clocked 17 hours in the game total so far. Got the intro to "Satisfaction" nailed down, but after listening to Sir Mick express his depressive state in slow-motion for about a hundred times I can't even ace the next bit at half speed. Either I go too far or too short on the slide or fumble the hammer-on+pull-off bit. Slowly starting to understand why musicians drink so heavily.

Can you plug your own guitar into this & will it improve your (fingering) soloing?

Yes, you use your own guitar.

It might help improve your fingering, depending on your skill level.  If you're Sky, this is probably just a fun game to play along with.  Myself, with next to zero experience, I've noticed definite improvement as I've been playing the game.  Things that used to completely throw me off, like moving up and down the fretboard, or dealing with more than the E and A strings have become a lot easier.

Chords still wreck my day, though.

Fake edit:  Game needs more songs by The Black Keys.

Yeah, I want to get it just to jam along with and learn some new stuff. Does it teach the solos? Because Megadeth. Some Allmans DLC I like, Jessica is awesome to jam to, but I know the modern lineup's extended version (from Jazzfest 2007 with Chuck Leavell sitting in). The last time I tried jamming to the album version it was bizarre.

I see four Black Keys tunes in the DLC, did you mean in addition to those?

Failtip: chords wreck my day, too. Especially if it won't let me fake it with inversions.

I saw a promo for the game and was a bit let down that it seems to push more tab learning (which is ok) and not notation (bummer, I need to learn to sight read). Note names > fret numbers.

Some things I've noticed.

To unlock the arcade games, just get gold on the relevant technique challenge (ie getting gold on harmonics challenge unlocks the simon says harmonics game)

The note lane shows you where to put you fingers by highlighting the frets (you can get away  with just the far left one for your index finger)

This.  All of this.  What seems to happen is that you slowing begin "mastering" one string at a time.  First Red (E), then Yellow.  I am at the state now where I am slowly getting better at Blue and learning to put it together better with Red and Yellow.   And so on, and so on.  You start to integrate combos in slowly as well.  Then the game suddenly starts throwing chords and more complicated stuff at you, and you yell out "WHAT THE FUCK !?" and quickly exit the current song.   :awesome_for_real:

Another gripe:  The minigames seem to all have been developed by a different human being.  In most cases this doesn't matter.  Push start to begin, or just strum a few times, no big deal.  But Dawn of the Chordead...what the fuck are they thinking here?  This is the game everyone raves about, but I don't understand it.  The entirety of the the other parts to this game have the interface set up so that the Red (E) string is always at the bottom of the screen, and my brain has adapted to that.  For this minigame, and only this minigame, they put it at the top of the screen.  I started the game the first time, and my brain instantly locked up.  I think actual fecal matter must have started pouring out of my nose.  Why the fuck would they do that?  It appears to be a really, really smart minigame, and God knows I need to practice chords.  Why?  Fucking why?  I literally could not move my hands...I just stared at the screen while zombies came up an urinated on me.

Since you only need Bronze in the Technique Challenge to unlock a minigame I went ahead to confirm this. Seems OK for me. (http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/558706883137516082/8289E2B44C63B25389531E8826991AC65FDD0FB8/)

I'm at probably week 4 with the game now.  I really like it and try to play 1-2 hours per night, but often fail due to life stuff.

Everyone here has pretty much the same goods and bads listed as I would.  I have the PS3 version.  My biggest complaints are loading times too long, tuning every 4 mins, having to use the controller too often (think I need to create a neck strap for the thing....,) and the clunky UI. 

Oh, sombody said it earlier, but they do show you fingering.  It is in the shading of the frets.  There is a beginner video on the subject right at the beginning.

I'd love to have the speed and mastery settings for just rehearsing the entire songs.  It works great for the riff practice, but I'll get a riff down in about 15 minutes and then have to completely back out of several screens and go back in just to get to another part of the song.  Sooooo clunky and time consuming for something so simple...

Also, why don't they have a clear screen of the notes when I hit pause??!!?  I'm pausing it so I can practice that huge chord coming my way and they grey it all out and put a huge opaque area at the bottom of the screen.  I have to time it just right to get the notes to stay at the top of the screen.

Anyway, still a great game to get to know the guitar more.  I've never picked one up seriously before this game and I haven't regretted doing it JUST FOR THIS GAME.  My ultimate wish would be to find the desire and passion enough to get serious with better guitars/amps/etc.   The least of my wishes has already happened.  I avoid set times of week and costs for lessons.  I have a ton of cool pedal effects and amps.  I can play along with songs with a full band.  The tuner is easy to use.  I'm having fun playing guitar.

That's not fingering, those are fret numbers.  By fingering we mean "1, 2, 3, or 4" as in the numbers of your fingers.  On your right hand (if they had fingerpicking) it would be "p, i, m, a".
Granted, guitar is a fairly improvisational instrument.  If you can get it done on your own comfortably, so be it I guess.  But it is something that may indeed lead to bad habits, like using your index finger to play every note until you need the others.   :oh_i_see:

The highlighted fretboard is 4 frets (for your 4 fingers).  So if fret 3 through 6 are highlighted finger 1 is fret 3, finger 2 is fret 4, etc.  there are no crazy spacings on the fret hand (so far) so just notice where left most part on the highlighted section is, stick your index finger there, then the other 3 fingers on the next 3 frets.

Edit: the game assumes a pick so there is no right hand fingering (pima)

Edit 2: if you mean fingering for chords...yeah nothing for that.  Maybe in the big chord book (in game) the showing fingering...

The shading does show 1,2,3,4.  I'm not understanding your misunderstanding.  You have to be fast to see it, but the shading changes depending on where you are supposed to put your fingers.  Numbering and lettering might work too, but they didn't do it that way.

Chord fingering is in the practice area.  After that, you have to just remember.

Good now I can make you guys play the chords I hate  :grin:

2
3
4
x
x
4

Or the B section to Capricho Arabe that's based off this barre:

5
6
5
3
3
x

 :why_so_serious: That last chord is an F played in a D shape. Can you guys dig what that means? If so, you're on the cusp of one of the greatest discoveries of guitar playing.

(edit - not sure how the game is displaying the fretboard, but you should be using a descending order so you can learn tablature: top number is the highest string, bottom number is the lowest string, tonally)

Game default is flipped, the idea bring you are seeing the fretboard as if it was transparent. Fortunately there is a setting to flip it for people that can read tablature.

I flipped it right away because why point the gun at your foot if you're trying to learn guitar?

I. want. numbers.  Not a shaded area I may or may not see.  And shaded area does not help read tab or notation either.   Lastly, guitar fingerings aren't as simple as just moving your hand to the shaded area.  That much is apparent on the very 1st event.  You play a riff down the neck and have a few notes up the neck, but the game doesnt "shade" the region up the neck so you're ready with the right finger.  Also, as Sky says above, many times your fingerings and shapes will change.

I'm not knockin the system, it works simplistically for what it wants to do and obviously I can easily infer the missing bits, I just would like traditional finger denotation.  If not numbers maybe colors or something I dunno.  Not just light shading where you put your hand.

Leveled up to New Act. Fuck, my fingers are too short fuckity fuck fuck power chords fuck.

For chord practice, make sure you memorize the five basic chord shapes in cowboy/open position. C, A, G, E and D. Everything on the guitar works off some variant of those 5 shapes.

Gets, you don't get a pass for short fingers. I'm a stubmeister and played bass arpeggios. What's the trouble with power chords, they're pretty straight forward root/fifth played with first and third fingers. If you add the octave on top with the pinky or laying down the third finger, it fattens it up some. Power chords with an A or D string root you can make super fat by also adding the fifth underneath, like a D power chord on the A string:

x
x
7
7
5
5

Which on the D string you have to account for the funny tuning hump (and it's a G power chord there):

x
8
7
5
5
x

If you nail those 5 cowboy chords completely, that unlocks the next step of fretboard understanding and the reason for that funny little tuning hump on the B string will become clear.

Agreed.  Sorry, thought you were saying there was no fingering information.  There is....it is just limited.  Heck, I want them to stream the real notes too just so I eventually understand the notes compared to the sound.  I work with bands at church a lot and they are always talking in notes because it is the best language to use when describing changes to a song or how one instrument should come in or end within a song.  I'm missing that currently, and I know it will always be a hurdle for me later.

Good information, thanks.  I figured out quick that chords will be all about memorizing them.  There is NO WAY you can figure out the fingering when it is coming at you during a song!

I'm having a hard time with unintentional note bending due to stretching my fingers in weird ways.  Rocksmith picks up on it and keeps failing me on it.  Actually, I think my string quality is limited for issues like this.  I think I'll eventually have to upgrade from what I have (came with the beginner's set.)

Yeah, no shit. I'm saying the same thing more than 28 years later.

To pound home why the basic chord shapes of C A G E D are important, look at a B chord.

2
4
4
4
2
x

It's really just an A chord moved up two frets (A, Bb, B; 0, 1st fret, 2nd fret). So you learn the A shape and then move it up the neck to play chords with a root on the A string.

Ditto for the F chord. Like the B, it's not a unique shape (CAGED are unique). The F is just an E chord moved up one fret.

1
1
2
3
3
1

Of course, the fingering will be different, but one you learn to recognize the open shapes it's just a matter of re-learning them in a closed shape, usually with a barre (like the B and F you learn early on). The C G D shapes are less common but really open things up later.

That's blowing my mind right now, because I get the exact opposite picture.  Something to do with the flipping you mention in your alter post?

This is $9.99 for Xbox at Microsoft store (http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/pd/Rocksmith-for-Xbox-360/productID.231083000/vip.true) right now. Bummer, sold out already.

Is the Bass stuff an add-on or DLC? Or would I need a different version to get that? The info I've seen left me confused.

The Bass expansion comes bundled after the European release. The retail box mentions it if you're unsure.


I flipped the strings the first time I ran the game out of the default setting before I even unlocked any of the minigames.

This thread is fucking hot!  (fingers and stuff!!!)  I hope my nephews like it as much you guys seem to.  The bass expansion is a must have for one of my nephews as that was his first and most loved instrument.  His dad was a professional bassist in a previous life so it runs in the family.  Maybe he'd like this game, too!  

Bought this last week, man it gets tough alright, pretty fun. I'm doing gig in a few weeks and we're covering Gary Clark Bright Lights which is part of the DLC package, although I have to say his album version is nowhere near as tasty as the live version. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ZeDn-hHGE&feature=BFa&list=PL00C5B563317D0572). I'm especially liking the riff mastery and the leveler/accelerometer for going over tunes part by part, with a fine toothcomb.

My only gripe is the lack of incentives to level up outside of just plain wanting to learn the songs, it would have been nice to have a real game under the hood.

They need to ditch all versions of this game and focus on bringing iPhone/Android versions to market, figure out some little universal phone->guitar mount and the ability to use the headphone jack as a lineout to a real amp.  I paid $130 for a pod I never use and an Android version of this game with a little tweaking would do everything the pod does +more.

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/irig/

Wow, what cool looking toys. Finally something I can tell my wife I'd like for the holiday... You've made her very happy.

http://theherofeed.com/5087/rocksmith-gets-funky-next-week/

I have nothing against Funk, but these songs are at the bottom of my list of DLC to get. Ok, yeah, it's "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer in disguise, but still.

Last year there was a free Christmas DLC, iirc. Where can I grab that instead?

Not much in the way of guitar in those tunes.

They've got like 3 free rock holiday tunes you can DL but you've got to dig for em on your console physically as I dont believe they show up on the website.
I was hoping they were classical versions of the songs but they are indeed very rock and require accompaniment so don't bother if you intend to play xmas solos in front of the family.

It's good to learn funk rhythms on guitar...and the bass lines, wooohooo!

Be careful on Xmas tunes. Some of those chords get gnarly...

There's that dreaded word I was afraid to hear.

Playing all the songs Rocksmith recommends right now on ez-mode since that's the most fun. Looking for a new "go to" song to master though since I did "Next Girl" to 100k already. I was considering "Someone Like You" by Kings of Leon, but found it too difficult for my goddamn spring-loaded pinky to grasp.

Completely guesstimating here, but who thinks the holidays are the only reasonable chance to see a sale on DLC songs? All copyright rigmarole considered.

I'm hoping it's a day after xmas sale, since I won't have it until then (one way or another).

(I'm gonna find ya)

(I'm gonna gitcha gitcha gitcha gitcha)

My 10yr old brother had his electric guitar phase last year.  He put it down (gets bored easy) somewhat due to cost of lessons.  So... I just got him this for his b-day.   Aaaaand now he's all gung-ho about guitar again.   :grin:

I'm fairly ok with the rhythm though I tend to over rely on the wahwah, I've been looking to learn some different funky chord shapes.

Rick James and Chic but no James Brown? Criminal. Or even Sly or Curtis Mayfield. But James IS funk.

Meh.  Show me some Parliament, Sly, Isley, Kool and the Gang, etc.  2nd gen. funk.  P-Funk for life baby!  And Tower of Power for the jazz band geeks.  This stuff is so much fun to play!  Shit, now I want an electric guitar.    :uhrr:

The omission of James on funk week is just as criminal as the total ommision of any Jimi in the first place. There I said it :|

Playing Hendrix's rhythms would be brutal. I think his leads are ok, but his rhythms are phenomenal.

Depends on the songs, tunes like Red House or Little Wing would have been fairly ok and then Hey Joe could be the easy mode Jimi, maybe I'm wrong but I reckon most beginners could manage that after a week or two. Just rule out songs where he thumbs the e-string the whole way through.

Wind Cries Mary makes me cry at my wee stubby hands.

Can I lose RSP over time? I was level 4 and a Steam achievement can prove this, but I'm back at 3 now. Might because I switched PCs.

Damn right, I have normal sized meathooks & it causes me issues. On the upside I'm convinced people with smaller hands have more propensity for 'fast twitch' muscle, which should return greater speed over the fretboard. This is based around a bass player I used to play with who had tiny hands and Yngwee Malmsteen who also famously has short stubbies.

One of the last songs I wrote on bass was like a

__________________11____________________
__11/12______11/12_______7____7/9__9/11__
_9_________9___________5____5____7______
7_________7___________3____3____5_______

Roughly, from memory, I think. It was a bitch to play on a fairly long scale bass, but it was a great tune. Unfortunately the guys I was playing with had no idea what to play over it, one of my last attempts at putting together a new band.

Pretty sure they don't drop. Almost certainly a steam cloud sync issue, they've been cropping up recently.

New DLC: 5 songs by Foo Fighters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BibCnCxToQ0) (no "Learn to Fly" though) and the free Xmas song pack (which I couldn't get loaded).

One thing keeps irritating and messing everything up. Despite not having fingers long enough to reach frets a lot of times they are apparently still fat enough to lightly touch the string below the one I'm pressing on, muffling it completely. If I try to move the finger away to prevent that I'm no longer on the string I'm supposed to play. Goddamnitall.

Heh, that sounds like me.  Fat, stubby fingers make for awesome natural guitar skills.   :oh_i_see:

If you get the Foo fighter pack...does it let you rehearse single notes (as opposed to only chords/combos)?  That's the difference between "must have" and "might suck" as far as I am concerned.

Focus on a more vertical approach. One of the more difficult things about playing guitar (that you'll completely forget) is the amount of attention you'll have to pay to cleanly fretting notes. You'll gain a whole new appreciation of your third knuckle!

You could also look into guitars with a wider neck, but I'd only go that far after focusing on technique. It's difficult for me to play electric after a couple years on a wide classical neck.

What do you mean by vertical?  Coming down perpendicular to the string?

Having bigger fingers, I've found that as the calluses on my fingertips get thicker/stronger, whatever, I have less of an issue with my fingertips spreading out when I fret a note, so it's a good bit easier to avoid hitting other strings now. 

When I first started, I couldn't believe that I'd ever be able to play chords without mangling them.  Then one day, I played a D chord correctly.  Well, correctly for me, anyway.  I'm sure a guitar teacher would cringe in horror at how I play some chords, but oh well.  Barre chords still are a pain in the ass, though.

Yup. You'll probably have to scoot your thumb south behind the neck. It's why we bitch about playing Hendrix (and SRV), they had hands big enough to wrap the thumb over the top and still have a good vertical placement. Bastards.

I also hate barre chords. Some things are just evil. I usually just play them on the top four strings if I can get away with it.

Yeah, see, that's the kind of advice I need to hear.  I thought that was a big no-no, so I try not to do it.

After the last patch the game no longer opens the Steam browser when you select Rocksmith Shop, so I get to see what the real store looks like. Apparently all the songs are already on your PC for you to browse, even though nothing happens when you try to "buy" them.

Still can't get the free DLC to show up.

Which position? Guitar is really weird, for every taboo, there is usually a valid style that makes use of it. For instance, apparently I do some movement with my right thumb that's forbidden in classical guitar. A friend said her old teacher would swat her for doing that (which is why she dumped him...). As a mishmash guitarist coming to classical, I find it very hard to maintain left hand thumb discipline, it's supposed to basically sit at the center of the neck's backside. I've adopted a bunch of classical posture and technique, it really does help make playing classical music a lot easier.

Edit - if there are a few specific things you want to see, I could see about shooting a couple quick videos. I have my camera tripod set up (for shooting minis) in the same room as my guitar setup right now.

Couldn't resist, had to purchase the PC version of Rocksmith (yeah $20 steam sale), hopefully I will play this version more since I wont feel like I am tying up the only TV in the house with my fumbling.  Also hoping the ps3 cable works with PC.

Yes it works on any platform. It even works on the Mac for things like GarageBand.

For those of you in the US that are awake right now Amazon is having a lightning sale for all 3 platforms for half off. You can get the PC software only version cheaper on Steam right now ($20 vs $30) but you don't get the cable with that version. Hurry, though, it looks like all the copies will be claimed before it expires.

Thanks for the heads up, Trippy.

The amazon deal was enough to get me to pull the trigger.  Thanks for the heads up. 

Same. And I don't own a guitar... have a friend who might loan me his old one though.

Dammit, she didn't get it for me. Wish I had been able to jump on that deal, 50% off is a nice start to picking up some DLC. So now I'm hunting the pc version + cable if anyone sees deals oot and aboot.

I'll sell you my Xbox 360 version for $35 + shipping  :grin:

Used copy at gamestop?  Cable is just under $30 on amazon + digital copy on steam for $20, so $50 for the pc version isn't a steal but it is still better than full retail.

DEAL  :drill:

Rocksmith is on sale through Steam for $14.99. Flash sale.

Thanks, just saw it for $15 on amazon and went....I bet it's on flash. Cha-ching!

edit: bah, only the game. DLC (the expensive part) still 35%

I've always wanted to learn to play the guitar.  Would this be something a complete beginner could learn with?  Also, what guitar would be best for this, keeping in mind I wouldn't want to pay much more than $125 for one?

Yes you can learn with this, though it's not necessarily the normal way you would learn how to play if you were, say, taking lessons.

There are a lot of choices for a cheap beginner electric guitar. Your choice is not as critical as compared to a beginner's acoustic guitar. If there's a particular guitar shape or style you like there's likely a low-end (made in China) version of that guitar like this Squire Strat:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Squier-Bullet-Strat-with-Tremolo-104494315-i1385540.gc

If you like the Les Paul look over the Fender Strat's, this is the guitar I bought.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Epiphone-Les-Paul-Special-II-Electric-Guitar-100161340-i1149983.gc (http://www.guitarcenter.com/Epiphone-Les-Paul-Special-II-Electric-Guitar-100161340-i1149983.gc)

It's got a GREAT tone, lots of sustain and I actually like the sound of the pickups better than the Squier Strat. The Strat sounded a little thin to me, while the Epiphone (which is Gibson's budget line of guitars) had a nice fat tone. The neck is a little fatter than I'd like (I do prefer the Ibanez style neck for swifter shredding) but other than that, the guitar is a steal.

Humbucker pickups sound different than single coil pickups (typically), so it's matter of taste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yudXHR6agaM

Real men play humbuckers! It's just a tonal choice, but the Strat sound is an acquired taste, the humbuckers sound much more 'natural' at first. I personally play a Gibson SG (humbuckers, similar to a Les Paul), but I would use a Strat as my second electric for the difference in sound. Plug them in and listen.

My cable showed up today. Forgot what a headache audio latency is. So I will probably have to dick around with my sound settings going between my X-Fi for gaming and onboard to cut latency for Rocksmith. My PC can't quite handle the lowest setting for Rocksmith's latency options thingy (audio engine?). Still a slight delay, might have to mess with the buffer size because it seemed to get worse after playing a few songs. Dunno. Drives me nuts, but I was still 99% songs.

The other thing that is bugging me is the color coded strings. I guess I'll have to figure out where the orange string is, because songs I know (Jessica) are completely unplayable because the crazy interface just moves too fast. I wish it would just scroll tabs at me or something.

BUT...still pretty awesome and I know most of Barracuda now, which is cool. Looking forward to digging pretty deep into this one, especially once I hurdle the interface and hopefully tame that last few ms of latency. It was really cool that it threw me into an encore on my first performance and I knew the song enough to play it more or less decently.

Forgot how badass I am on bass :p Double encore my first show! Bass being a bit easier because I only have to remember 4 colors :) And it lends itself to the easy single note stuff they start you on, though I'm generally playing the full song by the end of it on bass.

Aaaand I went nuts on some cool DLC. Looks like Risen 2 waits until the summer sale. This game is a lot of fun. Fingers a bit sore, haven't played much electric and no bass lately.

Game definitely favors the bass. I played a couple rounds of bass and was getting so far ahead of where I was on guitar I switched back to guitar (in one practice session I unlocked two venues with one song!).

Threw the first chords at me, luckily it was pretty easy, an 8th fret C Major and a partial barre on the 3rd fret in Surf Hell (a fun song to play). Then in the performance portion it threw me into a Cure song with a little fiddly melody on the B&E strings...easy melody but green and purple throw me still :) Luckily the strum part of it gives you the chord name and blocks in the position, but for beginners I have no idea how you'd be able to learn while playing that. I guess that's where the riff repeater comes in. Pretty sure I played a few out of position as I was just watching the chord names and not really paying attention to the fretboard at that point.

Odd game, but so much fun. The duck game is particularly brutal because I'm accustomed to the classical fretboard. And multi-string duck game? Yet to complete it! Very tough, but I guess good for learning the colors a bit better.

edit: still having an occasional audio lag issue, I wonder if it's the effects loop maybe. Wasn't too horrible but the bass line for In Bloom was unplayable it was so out of sync, but then I could play other things and In Bloom was fine on guitar (bizarre solo).

edit2: I do like the way it tries to fit your skill level. THe basic stuff gives you the key and the position, trains you where to look and get your hands, then adds more as you nail it.

How is your audio connected to your speakers, Sky?

Through my receiver. It used to go X-Fi's crazy 3-prong cable into the breakout ADC which converted to optical into the receiver. I just popped the optical cable into the mobo jack and enabled the onboard audio chipset, removing any latency introduced by the ADC. The odd thing is that sometimes it works ok, there's always the slightest delay but not enough to really detract from the game. Then it just bottoms out on something like In Bloom and is unplayable.

Man, was it ever hard to find just the cable.  I had to order it from Ubisoft's store. :ye_gods:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005OSFUZI

I paid $27 for it, though (actually free, amazon visa credit)

These threads helped a smidge, but I still think I'm getting some processing lag, since it kicked in during a fast riff with effects on guitar.

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/719817-A-guide-to-achieving-low-latency-in-Rocksmith-on-PC?s=81bc1bdfe6787c40d459eee9ae517e1f

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/716851-Rocksmith-PC-Configuration-and-FAQ-s-Forums

I got it from Ubisoft for about the same price.  With shipping it was about $35.

How close to minimum specs is your hardware? My laptop is pretty much on the money and it plays fine with video settings on high and audio engine on the default coefficient (4). On my desktop I set the number to 3. It's a dual core 3.5Ghz with an old Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card and the latency is only slightly better compared to the laptop.

Rocksmith is $19.49 on Steam. Except when you're from Europe. Then it's 49.99€  :ye_gods:

I paid $24.99 for the game AND the cable (thanks to Trippy) :D

i5 2500K @ 4.2GHz, 16MB RAM. Right now my ini is set to 1/150. Way better, but my ear is so trained that it's still significant in places. Do you have onboard audio? Cutting out the X-Fi entirely helped some.

I don't really have an audiophile gene that is bothered by 30ms of sound latency, but here's a blog post (http://dylanbeattie.blogspot.se/2012/10/rocksmith-gaming-fun-for-guitar-players.html) by someone describing one method of getting near 0 latency by splitting the signal and turning guitar volume down to 0 in Rocksmith.

I've begun to actually practice songs in the Event setlist instead of just blazing through them. By the time I get Velvet Revolver's riff in "Slither" down by doing massive amounts of index finger curls I have had completely forgotten how to play the confusing fingering that comprise The XX's "Islands".

Oh, shit. Didn't even think of splitting the signal. Downside is losing all the custom tones, I guess. Wasn't really an issue in the two events I played today, so I'm ok with it for now with the tweaks I linked.

It's not an audiophile thing. I've played guitar for almost thirty goddamned years now (sheesh). It's like playing through a delay pedal with the source signal zeroed out. It just doesn't work. I'd chalk it up to the more you've played guitar the worse it is, but honestly I don't know how anyone could play anything with the latency that this game can muster, especially without tweaks.

Still, lest I sound negative  :why_so_serious: I'm really digging this game a lot. The two events (plus practice for the second event) I played with my buddy over drinking beers and he thought it was the coolest thing watching me play tunes.

I'm still blowing through songs after 1 practice round for qualification. But I'm at the cusp of moving to learning them as it's getting tougher when they throw solos or complex chords. Ironically the toughest thing so far has probably been either the bass riff to Vasoline (1 3 1 3 1 3 1 3 etc), it's effing brutal on the left hand after years of hardly touching the bass; or the overall effect of playing on my right wrist. Again, years of hardly playing with a pick and my muscle memory has been exceeding what my muscle/skeletal system in the wrist can handle (remember, I used to be in a thrash band...so the brains still thinks it can rock the downpicking speed riffs...). I'm taking a couple days off to recoup, it's good to know your limits :)

Allegedly we're going to get weekly DLC now instead of biweekly. I guess sales picked up during the holidays. In that note there's already a Steam leak for the upcoming songs:

(http://i.imgur.com/K13Bw.png)

Guessing "Alive" will comprise of the Pearl Jam Pack with "Black" and "Jeremy" which was a 2 song release back in Feb.

I've been mindful of audio lag after the recent discussion about it and, to be honest, I don't actually notice any delay when playing on my 4 year old laptop (Asus G50V). I think I'll hook it up to the TV tomorrow with an HDMI cable only and see what all the fuss is about.

Oh yeah, Santana songs are up as well as wallet crushing song packs that you have until the 22nd of January to justify spending money on.

I already bought most of what I wanted from the big packs. I'll probably pick up the two good Santana tunes and the new PJ. This game is going to be hell for me :)

Starting to wrap my head around their crazy color coding stuff. Finally got a 100k score (twice in one show) and a 100+ streak. I figured out what was stressing my right wrist, seems to be the fast downpicking sections. That's a great skill to have, but it's not as natural as alternate picking, so I can fake in some alternate picking to give it a rest if I feel it tightening up.

I was laughing playing freebird, they were handing me the easy version and I kept messing up so I just played the riffs I know from the regular version and scored crap. Sometimes that works great, though.

Another odd thing is you can't do much in the way of bending into/out of notes or laying in the vibrato too heavy or it says you're off. That's probably the third biggest point drain for me (behind playing a song cold and weird 'easy' transcripts).

Did a quick bass show, it's so much fun playing bass again. I love the manual nature of it, the feel of the strings under my right hand.

Love this game so much.

Have to take a break for a while, again. Played a few sessions this weekend and felt ok, but I think the hard upstrokes on Icky Thump tweaked my wrist again.

They're running a survey at rocksmith.com/survey. Please head over and fill it out and ask for NUMBERS on the colored squares that shoot at you.

I think I could get over them sliding the focus all over (thus losing all spatial connection) if they did that. In fact, that one change could change it from a game that teaches you how to play a few songs to one that teaches you to sight read tab. If they would invert the default fretboard layout, too.

Here's the suggestions I wrote.

More customization of the tablature readout.

More immersiveness eg. choice of musical direction. Buying pedals unlock different songs. An actual store where you buy the gear for upcoming gigs. Audience match the musical genre. eg. People moshing at a hardrock gig.

A character Bio with your skills achieved and mastery level of different skills. With your avatar and appearance.

While I really only want the fret numbers on the colored boxes; it would be cool if they could integrate achievements with steam friends the way Sleeping Dogs does.

I forgot about that one, that was one of the first things I was looking for.

Asked for Sky's fret numbers on the colors as they scroll down the screen

The option to import tablature, or create our own, preferably that one could then play.

Lastly more/better feedback on where you're making mistakes, and also the ability to play the whole song in the Riff Repeater, rather than just sections.

I only jumped into riff repeater quickly, it could use some work. Needs to have a mode where it doesn't cut out as soon as you nail the piece. I turned off adaptive or whatever, which helped. But then it kept backing me up when I was playing the riff correctly (the Godzilla main riff...wiggaplease). My fiancee told me to turn it off, first time it annoyed me badly.

Next DLC: The Clash

Anyone been able to pull off a Megadeth solo?

I'm getting better with the wonky tab, but with someting that fast it's difficult both to keep my bearings as they shift the fretboard around (so the numbers on the boxes thing would help greatly there) and also when playing very fast to see what order the notes are in, they get a bit jammed together.

I almost hit 100k on Jessica last night but I had to pretty much ignore the tab and just play it. Every time I'd screw up the old lady would say 'stop reading the tab'  :drillf:

DLC for tomorrow: Judas Priest "You've Got Another Thing Coming" and Kansas "Carry On My Wayward Son" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d0YgX15BhQ)

I've been having trouble getting Rocksmith to recognize chords. Gave up on trying to master "Gobbledigook" since it seemed the game haphazardly decided if and when to accept my intonations. Having the same issue in "America's Suiteheart's" chorus, but it also doesn't help when my ring finger changes position when I'm shifting between the doublestops. Someone in the SA thread mentioned they got some leniency from changing the guitar volume, but only temporarily.

As for Megadeth solos it's way way too complex for me, not that I didn't check it out.

Yesterday when I launched the game it mysteriously opened up a new venue with an extra event comprised entirely of three Fall Out Boy songs. Found that rather odd.

EDIT: ... and Ram Jam "Black Betty"  :yahoo:

Finally got around to testing a theory, seems you can do this (if I've understood what you mean correctly):

Go into the song from the songs menu rather than the 'continue journey' menu, choose riff repeater-accelerator.

Once the section has started, pause it and manually set the speed. Then even if you complete the section it'll still repeat at the same speed until you pause it again and choose 'resume acceleration'. Far as I can tell it'll keep on repeating until you've failed 30 times. Works at 100% speed too.

I used the riff repeater once to work on Godzilla, it kept failing me on one chord. There's also a bug where it won't recognize my bass while tuning up. I can switch to the emulated bass mode, hit an octave E to fool the game, then switch back to regular bass and it's fine. It also doesn't like my vibrato (which is pretty aggressive << <<).

I haven't had any issues that I've noticed with Gobbledygook. It's odd how it hides the bonuses and feedback in such a muted text. Good in a way that it's not very intrusive but I'm watching the tab and often wondering whether it's a 'streak bonus' or 'streak over'.

Also, I'm totally getting that new Tom Petty album. That track rocks.

Best song in the game: the Octaves and Fifths technique challenge.

A good DLC once again. It's back to bi-weekly DLC from now on though.

I've been making a list of stuff to grab during the next sale. $3 a pop is a bit steep. But definitely some decent titles.

Don't forget there's about 500 variously cobbled together custom songs out there that you can track down while you wait for sales.

Say what now

oh...oh my....

This. 

Played around with creating a custom song, and it took about 2 hours to get it up and running.  Not terribly hard, other than getting the correct gear selected so that what I'm playing sounds right.

I really didn't need another time sink. But creating songs sounds cool, especially as I'm picky about how the lower levels of dynamic difficulty are chosen....

Looking over the way to make songs, that looks complicated.

It wasn't too bad, actually.  Granted, I didn't mess around with adding dynamic difficulty, and the riff repeater, etc.

Once you get a slightly more advanced level in your overall competency in playing the electric guitar you start getting drawn towards all the various expensive accessories. Browsing different amps, pedals and cabinets is a nice way to keep your interest going, but it's a financial commitment. I'm at the point where I'd like to get some more equipment to complement my cheap Epi. I'm drawn towards the Vox Mini3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1pYZJJeGZU) modelling amp right now. It's portable as well as affordable and has good reviews. I'm hoping to use the cable-split method that I linked a while back and start playing Rocksmith that way to get the best latency. Later I'd like to build a cheap mini-ATX computer optimized to run Rocksmith that I can also travel with.

The Vox Mini3 has a retail price of $100, but the only one on sale where I live is 120€, so half as expensive. I also have 2 floor speakers that are missing their own amp right now, so something that could power those would be perfect.

Oh yeah, and I keep messing up the same double-stops. Tempted to go back to learning easier songs even though I'm at Rank 7 now.

I had a fun run where I simply couldn't nail a fairly simple song because it wasn't giving me enough points to hit 90k. My buddy was laughing because I was 98% accuracy with a 228 note streak. Then I took that out of the show lineup and put in his request of Soul Man, and for some reason it wasn't registering me playing my bread and butter style triads. E major, ffs. Pretty much the game gets a bit more tedious when you need 90k to qualify all the songs.

The game is fun as hell, but it is pretty wonky.

And the note blocks need to have an option for numbers. When they start sliding the fretboard around it's a pain to keep spatial awareness.

As far as gear recommends, I'm not the guy to ask. I've never been a gadget guy. That vox thing looks cool enough.

So this doesn't get lost in the E3 thread, Rocksmith 2014 Edition is releasing in October on PC, Mac, PS3, and 360. No cable version for $20 off for people who already have cables, although that just makes it $60 rather than $80. Backwards compatible with original Rocksmith songs. There's also 50 new tracks, the new Session Mode which was the focus of their announcement at the Ubisoft conference, a more customizable Riff Repeater, a Master Mode that somehow makes it easier to learn playing by memory, and an improved UI. Pre-order bonus is "Cherub Rock" from Smashing Pumpkins.

Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BON56qblcU)

More info on the website (http://rocksmith.ubi.com/rocksmith/en-US/features/).

Is the console version less prone to latency? I might hold off for a PS4 version. The latency was really getting to me, along with the steep playing requirements for qualification later on (which in turn was a pain due to the crappy riff repeater mode which almost saw my SG put into my TV). When I'm clearly playing the note and the game just isn't registering it, the game needs to be fixed. That episode I mentioned with Soul Man ended with me putting the game down and I haven't picked it up since.

Another barrier is that I like my X-Fi for gaming, but for Rocksmith I have to disable it, enable onboard audio, change the connections then go in and tweak the settings to be Rocksmith latency-friendly.

So I haven't played in months, though I've thought about it quite a bit.

edit - oh, and they need numbers on the note boxes. Badly.

I haven't really noticed any latency issues on the PS3. The only real technical issue I've had on a regular basis is that the game frequently locks up when I try to replay a song, to the point where I usually back out to the song menu and select the song again instead of even trying the replay song button. Haven't seen what changes the new game has made to the UI when you're actually playing yet.

On the pc there is an issue where it will stop recognizing input from the bass. I go and change it to emulation mode (this happens in the tuner, I can hear the bass but it won't register) and then back to bass mode and it will work fine. If it happens during a song, I have to restart the song. Which sucks at the end of a long set, because you have to run it all again (ok, not the worst thing, but I like changing up the set list).

If there's no latency, say on Pantera? I'm buying a console. It's usually noticeable with long passages of fast notes like a Pantera rhythm section.

I mostly play bass so it's possible I might not notice any latency as much. I've noticed some occasional lag on the UI when a friend of mine and I are playing 2 player guitar and bass though. I'm also not any sort of trained musician so I'd probably notice latency a lot less than you where I'm sure even slight latency must be annoying. Obviously it also depends a lot on your audio setup, but I'm guessing you've probably done a fair amount of research on your end to get the best setup you could (for the PC I've seen people talking about editing the .ini file and such).

Before buying a console, you might be better off just waiting on reviews of the new version when it comes out or maybe a demo and seeing what problems have been fixed.

Gamespot also got some footage of BandFuse which is a competitor to Rocksmith (http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=CBl7OxgA-m4&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCBl7OxgA-m4). What little they showed of the UI seems a little more basic, but that might just be because they had four people playing.

Exceedingly.

And yeah, I've tweaked everything I've found to tweak (which made it mostly playable, it wasn't before). The last thing to try would be splitting the signal out to an amp and muting the guitar in-game, but then I'd lose all the modeling that makes the guitar sound appropriate for each tune. Doesn't help that I play through a separate audio receiver, so there's a fairly long signal chain (though a console would run through that as well).

Latency is why I don't record on the computer and bought a small multi-tracker a few years back. I'm so painfully aware of latency it kinda sucks.

Looks like they're really improving the learning tools for this one. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaXQLYS8kL4)

Somewhat mixed feelings on what they've announced so far for the setlist though:

Well, it's one step toward where they need to be. They're showing the fret numbers on the board under the boxes. If they could just make it optional to show the 2013 style, the 2014 style or the Sky style (numbers on the boxes, ala standard tab formatting more or less), it would be dialed in.

On the other hand. I've spent a shitload on DLC (albeit on sale so 66%+ off), and unless that carries forward, I'll just stick with the old one, I think.

Nice what they're doing with lessons, I don't really need that part though. It's just a glorified play a long for me.

Wait, The Trooper? Dammit. I'm in. It's got some real nice tracks in there. I wonder how much they pulled demographics from DLC sales, seems a bit heavier than 2013.

Oh. Fucking SNAP.

For experienced players though, at least they're allowing you to set the difficulty level from the start with the songs now instead of making you play through a few times with most of the notes missing and Master Mode fades in and out during a song depending on how well you're do on a particular section.

According to some Q&A stuff they did on Twitter and stuff that's been said elsewhere, they've also cut down load times quite a bit, it sounds like you won't have to go through the tuning thing before every song, sorting through songs is easier (and in the PC version you can use the keyboard to search for a song), they've apparently improved note detection (people complained about the game having trouble recognizing when certain chords were being played correctly), and some songs will now support capos (the alternate arrangement for Paint it Black requires one is the example they gave).

Man, note detection. Soul Man utterly crushed me on note detection fail, kept me from hitting 90k I needed SO. MANY. TIMES.

And the game hates that I bend notes a lot. A lot. And it doesn't like my vibrato much, either.

Still, nice they're moving forward. I'm looking forward to that pseudo numbering thing, that could be an important step in the right direction. I mean, try playing a Megadeth solo off the cuff with no damn reference numbers! Give me some frets on those blocks and I can at least wing it close. The current version you basically have to memorize any tricky passage because the notation is a little retarded and too easy to get disoriented.

Capos are for hippies.

I'm really looking forward to the 2014 edition.  I'm happy to see they got enough response from players to keep this going.  I was afraid it would be too niche and have a slow death.

Comment on latency from a Joystiq article: (http://www.joystiq.com/2013/08/25/rocksmith-2014-amps-up-its-game-puts-a-jam-band-in-your-tv/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)

Forgive me if I don't find a non-musician's opinion of playing a song badly to be the slightest bit credible.

Even with things at fairly playable latency, playing 16th notes always lags noticeably. I think there's some cpu overhead on effects processing, too. Since songs with a lot of 16th notes also tend to lay on a few layers of effects...

If they can get it to a point where I don't notice it, I'll be amazed.

I wasn't really posting that due to the author's impressions so much as the producer saying that getting latency down is something they've been working on and that he claims to have made an actual measurable improvement. How noticeable it will be for each user depending on their setup obviously remains to be seen.

Right, but that's also their current recommended setup and how I have it connected. I even disable my X-Fi and use the mobo optical to reduce time through the breakout box the X-Fi needs to do optical surround.

So, can this teach me to actually play guitar?  :grin:

Yes.

Agreed.

The original had some shortcomings in that respect which it looks like are being dramatically improved by the new one (teaching basic stuff like how to hold and use a pick, and more tools for learning chords for instance).

Agreed as above with the additional observation that even (especially?) if you're an absolute beginner it makes practicing fun.

Getting over that initial hurdle of sucking horribly to the point where holy shit you can actually play something was the hardest part for me, prior to rocksmith I never got there. Mainly because I hate people so getting lessons was out :why_so_serious:

Apparently they're going to release a bunch of DLC from Japanese bands at some point:

I started without knowing anything and can play the songs I practice a lot with on the game.  It still takes a lot of practice, but it is fun especially when you love the songs you play.  The best part is that you have a full band playing with you and you are using the right effects and amp for the song.  When I get decent at a song I almost forget I'm actually playing because it sounds so good.  I've even gone to just freeplay mode to see if I'm really playing it right and I AM!  Best feeling evar!1!

I agree they can improve on the newbie learning stuff and they are.  That's a big reason I am looking forward to this.  I have a lot more to learn.  There are tons of shortcomings to the program, but they continue to tweak and improve, which as I've said is both awesome and unexpected.  It makes me happy people like this game, they actually like it!  I've turned a ton of other people on to the game too (experienced and not.)  I've struck up a ton of great conversations with people I run across that play and trade tips.  That's fun you can't buy.

My biggest gripe, but not a killer is that I still wouldn't be able to play from sheet music.  That would be my ultimate goal, but for now this has jumpstarted my path a million times more than any other option.  Actually, I'd still be saying, "I should learn to play....."

Dren, that's why I go on about having a mode where they put numbers on the colored boxes. If they did that (and you use a properly inverted fretboard), you'd basically be learning how tablature works. I still can't play from sheet music (which is generally standard notation), but a guitarist should know both standard notation and tab, and it opens a bajillion guitar books for you (like anything Hal Leonard publishes).

Upon reflection, I think the new master mode sounds pretty awesome at my end of the spectrum. I haven't used it in the current game, because I don't really study and learn each song, I just like to dick around with it. And having master mode as a separate thing, I've never used it. The new version (if I'm reading it correctly) having an integrated master mode that will fade back in for parts you struggle with or are still learning, but fading out for stock riffs and known parts? That's a pretty decent chance for me to learn songs better by uncluttering the notation with parts I know. I think that (along with DLC carrying over, of course) bumps this up to a launch purchase for me.

For all the shortcomings of Rocksmith (and it's not a short list), it's an amazing 'game' and tool and I unreservedly recommend it to everyone.

Good video about some changes they've made to the lessons. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tLoDdlu2lY&feature=youtu.be)

They've also announced three more songs (all pretty good selections):

The complete tracklist has now been revealed:


       Aerosmith – Walk This Way
       Alice Cooper – No More Mr. Nice Guy
       Alice In Chains – Stone
       Arctic Monkeys – R U Mine?
       Avenged Sevenfold – Bat Country
       Bob Dylan – Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
       Boston – Peace Of Mind
       Bush – Machinehead
       B’z – ultra soul
       Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar On Me (2012)
       Deftones – My Own Summer (Shove It)
       EarlyRise – Wasteland
       Fang Island – Chompers
       Foo Fighters – Everlong
       Gold Motel – Brand New Kind Of Blue
       Green Day – X-Kid
       Iron Maiden – The Trooper
       Jack White – Sixteen Saltines
       JAWS – Stay In
       Joe Satriani – Satch Boogie
       Kiss – Rock And Roll All Nite
       La Sera – Love That’s Gone
       Magic Wands – Black Magic
       Mastodon – Blood and Thunder
       Minus The Bear – Cold Company
       Monster Truck – Sweet Mountain River
       Muse – Knights Of Cydonia
       Nirvana – Heart Shaped Box
       Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger
       Pantera – Cemetery Gates
       Paramore – Now
       PAWS – Sore Tummy
       Queen – We Are The Champions
       Radiohead – Paranoid Android
       Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop
       Ratt – Round And Round
       Red Fang – Wires
       R.E.M. – Losing My Religion
       Rise Against – Savior
       Rush – The Spirit Of Radio
       Screaming Females – Rotten Apple
       Slayer – War Ensemble
       Splashh – All I Wanna Do
       System Of A Down – Hypnotize
       Tak Matsumoto – GO FURTHER
       The Dear Hunter – Stuck On A Wire Out On A Fence
       The Kinks – You Really Got Me
       The Police – Every Breath You Take
       The Rolling Stones – Paint It, Black
       The Shins – For A Fool
       The Smashing Pumpkins – The Chimera
       The Who – My Generation
       Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers – Mary Jane’s Last Dance
       Weezer – Say It Ain’t So
       White Zombie – Thunder Kiss ‘65

I was hoping there would be a sale at some point before release, throw the kids a bone!

Do they have a firm date?

A firm date for what, the game's release? It comes out on Tuesday.

Sweet.  Count me in for a purchase at launch.  Good stuff.

Yep, thanks. Looks like my hope for at least a 10% sale are dashed.

My poor fingers, playing electric is rough on them as I normally play a nylon classical. And my poor wrist, as muscle memory allows me to pick fast and for extended lengths...but my muscles are also not used to it (I fingerpick the nylon). I probably should've started warming up a couple weeks ago.

Luckily I've been playing a decent amount lately, warming up for some more sessions for my classical album that may some day see the light of day. I'm going to be doing some voice over work for a friend's rpg so I need to dig out the recording rig (read: nag the old lady to get her junk out of my den :)).

Messed around with this for a few hours so far. Let me get the downside out of the way first by saying that while the DLC all transfers over for free, you actually have to pay $9.99 to carry over the songs from the disc. I can't fault them too much since it sounds like it's due to licensing costs, but it still ends up making the game a bit more expensive. Also 5 songs don't carry over, which are as follows:

Eric Clapton “Run Back To Your Side”
Cream “Sunshine of Your Love”
Seth Chapla “Jules”
Seth Chapla “Star Spangled Banner”
Chris Lee “Boss”


Everything else so far is pretty good though. As always keep in mind I'm coming at this with a complete beginner's point of view and never picked up an instrument before getting the first Rocksmith. With the first game, I largely focused on Bass as it felt like it required less in the way of detailed lessons and managed to get fairly comfortable with it. I'm still no expert, but I can at least play a lot of the easier and mid-range songs ok which is pretty good since I've only learned through this game, and have been playing less than a year (a month of which I was unable to play due to a broken collarbone).

With the new version the much improved lessons are helping me get into guitar a bit more. Most importantly they give you tools to help learn chords which is one of the main areas I felt the original game lacked. Even basic stuff like "here's how you hold a pick" is nice to have, and they even seem to have some lessons you can watch on how to restring a guitar or how to keep your instruments maintained.

The other big improvement is that the UI and loading times are a million times better in the new version. I no longer have to listen to 15-20 seconds of A More Perfect Union by Titus Andronicus after every song I play while I wait for the song list to load back up. The game also seems a lot more stable than the original also, at least on the PS3 anyway, which had a habit of freezing when trying to replay songs.

For people who are goal oriented like myself, at any given time the game usually recommends three different things for you to do (one is usually just to try to learn songs, one usually involves doing something in session mode, and one is typically doing a particular lesson, or playing one of the arcade minigames). They then take that even further by giving you little goals inside many of those activities also. For instance when playing a song it will usually give you goals to hit like getting your mastery percentage of the song to a certain level, completing a lesson related to techniques used in the song, or hitting a certain number of notes in a row. Similarly, the arcade minigames have a selection of in-game related goals to achieve as well.

I'm sure it seems silly to some people, in that the goal should ultimately be to learn to play guitar and bass better, but there's something about being able to quantify your progression in video game terms that somehow adds extra motivation. In the first game after you maxed out your level, the only way you really had to gauge improvement was by beating your score on individual songs.

Anyhow, those are my early impressions of the game so far. There's a lot I still haven't messed around with yet.

My first impressions.

Latency is still an issue, but I was running it through my normal setup (x-fi to optical breakout to receiver), since they touted latency reduction. Under those circumstances, it is slightly more playable than the original, so I'm hoping for good things when I go with the 'rocksmith setup' (onboard optical to receiver). Whatever easy song it loaded up wasn't terrible but when I went for The Trooper (a song I've played on bass for years, it was my warmup song in the day), it was nigh unplayable. The triplets kill it. On the other hand, I learned the cool lead guitar riff during the verse bridges.

That said, the experience is a marked improvement. The learning style can be a bit onerous at my level with easier songs, but I didn't tweak ways to speed that up (skipping over some of the speed increase increments, for instance). But it's a really solid tool to nail unfamiliar or complex parts. Looking forward to digging into some Megadeth with that tool, if I can tame the latency.

They didn't implement full on tablature numbers on the colored note boxes, something I still feel would complete the experience. But they do highlight fret numbers as each appears in a riff, which is a huge improvement. I can see complex passages still bogging down a bit for sight readers, but it does seem the problem of getting lost as they move the view around is mitigated by the highlighted numbers.

I did the recommended slide lesson, seemed ok enough. I was a bit disengaged since I know most basic techniques. Showing a video and integrating it into a riff seemed like a good idea, though.

For some reason I couldn't find the DLC to unlock the old core songs. I did buy the new chicago dlc, the old lady is going to be psyched. I also agree on loading times, it's way better. On the other hand, those psychedelic sound wave amps on the sides are already bugging me.

I think I've decided to get this and teach myself guitar.  Any recommendations on what sort of guitar to pick-up? Would one of the cheap ToysRUs specials be ok for a first timer since having never played, ever, I'm loath to pay $200+ for a good one.

I'm hardly an expert but I can't recommend strongly enough going down to your local guitar shop and at least just picking up a few different body styles to see which fits your hands best.

No it would not. You do get what you pay for up to a certain extent. The super cheapy ones don't play very well and will frustrate you while trying to learn.

The low-end of the major manufacturer budget lines (e.g. Squire for Fender and Epiphone and Gibson) are not much more expensive and will likely offer better playability "out of the box". My recommendation would be to get a low-end Squire or Epiphone* in the body style you like.

* The bundled guitar package is an Epiphone in fact

I bought an Epiphone Les Paul last year for less than $200 (think it was $149). I can't speak about it highly enough. It has great tone and playability. I've since tried out some other guitars in different body styles for about that price that I haven't liked as much. The key is to try out as many as you can before you buy - getting the right feel AND the right tone out of your guitar is very important.

If you know someone who plays who can accompany you to the guitar shop, that would be the ideal.


http://www.guitarcenter.com/Schecter,Electric-Guitar-Guitar,New-Gear.gc?extup=Ibanez,ESP,Squier,Dean,Epiphone,100-200&ipp=100&o=1

Only guitar player I know is this lead singer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI_n3flJDL0

I'll see if I can drag him over to Guitar Center sometime then.

It's usually pretty easy to convince a musician to go to a music store :)

I like the track, too.

If you're even pretending about thinking about maybe one day learning guitar even halfway seriously, spend the money to get a decent instrument.  Cheap guitars are terrible for beginners because they're hard as fuck to play.  Cheap guitars will make your learning curve much longer, be frustrating, and sound like hammered dick.

You don't have to spend a thousand dollars.  You can get away with somewhere between $400 - $600 if you do your homework.  Get a Fender Squier Strat, or a Epiphone Les Paul and call it a day.  Have a professional set it up for you, and then don't fuck with screws or alan keys until you know what you're doing.  Knobs, switches, and strings are okay.  There are shitloads of them on craigslist.  Mostly because they're newb guitars that players are embarrassed to admit they own once they learn enough to start showing off.  

If it's a decent sounding and playing guitar, you should never be embarrassed to play it. My SG 61 reissue cost $1600 in 2006 but don't listen to me  :hulk_rock: (also worth every fucking red cent and then some...and it's appreciated in value!)

Anyway. Rocksmith. Session mode. Fucking be there. Load up the stock classic metal band, play over changes in E aeolian. Holy shitballs is that fun. I even like how they suggest notes, keeps it from getting too stale by choosing things I might not center on. I was about to hit the 'jam with the band for ten minutes and the stupid thing locked up on me with a full system crash white noise screeching, my poor bastard of a cat who is high as fuck on nip is probably halfway to Albuquerque by now.

edit: Oh, and latency...what latency? I plugged direct from the mobo to the receiver (probably what crashed it, har). I'll have to see what happens when I'm in song mode, but in session mode there was no discernable latency. I'm fucking discerning when it comes to that shit. Niiiice.

To be clear, yea they shouldn't be embarrassed. But they are. And in fairness, even the second tier factory models that sell for five or six hundred dollars come with the cheapest parts available.

With that said though, there aren't too many reasons why you couldn't trick out a squier or epiphone to sound pretty good. Almost everything on a guitar can be upgraded. Tuners, bridges, nuts, pickups, pots, saddles, etc. The only things you can't upgrade is the type of wood, and you can't upgrade a bolt on to a neck-thru. The problem is that all those parts come with an individual premium. That's why it makes more sense to buy something decent to begin with.

My main point to anyone who may be considering buying a guitar though, is that the $200 Wal-Mart special is beyond help and should be avoided at all costs.

I see.

Well thanks for talking me out of buying the game. I'll have a few lunches instead.

Don't listen to him, you don't need to spend $400-600 dollars to get a decent starter guitar. What the hell.

Seriously.  Pawn shop.  My $60 early 1980's no-name Randy Rhoads knock-off is a great guitar despite looking like crap.  Plays better than anything else I've ever tried too.

$70 classical - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3667682/Music/prelude.mp3 (couple years ago)

My new classical that sounds and plays amazing cost me $250.

Anyway. Derail. Another couple hours tonight, game continues to impress. My only complaint is still the thing about putting numbers directly on the boxes I'm looking at. As I said, HUGE improvement by highlighting the fret numbers as you go into a riff, but if you don't see it you can basically be stuck without being sure which frets they're displaying like in the original game. Especially in complex passages with a longer jump when you're unable to look ahead until the last second.

But that's pretty much it. The interface is vastly improved and the new features are great. Love it.

Haven't had a huge amount of time to play, but when I have been playing I been trying to split my time 50/50 between learning guitar and playing bass. Bass is kinda like the comfort food for me now when I just feel like being able to play some songs. I was struggling with the guitar for a bit because even with the lessons, I was finding it a little hard to learn and practice chords. I'd kinda learn some from the lessons, but there wasn't really an easy way to find a song to play those particular chords in. However today I discovered the minigame they have in there called Return to Castle Chordead and it feels like exactly what I needed. Think Typing of the Dead but with chords. They start you off showing you the E5 which you then play to kill the zombies on the screen. After a couple minutes of that they teach you A5 and some zombies will require you to play E5 and some A5 to kill them. Then they throw in F5 and so on. Actually a lot of the arcade minigames they've made are pretty well done and actually fun to play as games as opposed to just learning exercises. I played a bit of Scale Warriors on the bass yesterday, and it was pretty good as well.

I'm also liking the song selection they've chosen. There's a lot of stuff here I haven't heard before, and most of those that I've played so far are actually quite good. Glad this game came out right now since there aren't any other games I'm looking forward to coming out for the next several month, although I'm curious to see how Bandfuse turns out in a few weeks. I can't really see it being any better than Rocksmith 2014, and it only has a handful of tracks not available here. I haven't read too much about it, but I've read in various Rocksmith comment threads that Bandfuse will actually help teach you how to read music, but I'm not sure to what extent that's accurate, so maybe in that respect it might make a good additional purchase at some point.

Velorath, do you know the CAGED method of learning the fretboard. It's the single best thing I've learned about the guitar in 30 years.

Just looked it up.  What kind of sorcery is this?

I've heard it mentioned, but no I don't know it. I only really know one person who can kinda play guitar, so mostly Rocksmith has been my only learning tool. Even then it wasn't until I got 2014 earlier in the week that I felt Rocksmith might actually be a viable tool for learning guitar so really I've only been trying to learn for 3-4 days now. Looking up CAGED I can see why some people comment that Rocksmith doesn't teach enough music theory because reading about it on a couple different sites right now, and it reads almost like a foreign language at first. It took me a few read-throughs to wrap my head around what they were saying. It seems like for CAGED one of the main things to really learn first is the chord shapes which gives me a good starting point I suppose. Appreciate the advice.

Basically, on the guitar there are a zillion ways and places to play a chord or scale. But it all boils down to 5 archetype shapes. CAGED, or the 'cowboy chords' (the basic chords all strummers know). Learn those shapes in their first position and you can move them around anywhere to play other chords. And the magic part comes in because they all link up together. If you look at the 3 highest strings of a C chord (really, grab your guitar and make a C) x32010, then make a D chord xx0232 and look at the 3 highest strings. That little 'triangle' shape? That's a link between D and C! (the pattern wraps, CAGEDCAG etc up the fretboard.

The confusing part is calling them CAGED, because it refers to the shapes not the root of the chords when you move it.

Taking that D example. if you change xx0232 to x54232, you are still playing a D major, but it's using the C archetype chord shape.

Aaanyway. You're absolutely right. Learn those basic chords first. When you've got a handle on them, I recommend a couple books to open up the rest of the fretboard and make memorizing all those insane combinations a LOT easier. I went from playing in a couple spots I memorized to more or less being able to play anywhere in any key in a fairly quick span.

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Fretboard-Workbook-Barrett-Tagliarino/dp/0634049011/
http://www.amazon.com/Fretboard-Logic-SE-Reasoning-Arpeggios/dp/0962477060/

Also, I still suck at music theory. The CAGED thing is more about understanding the physical fretboard and allowing you to play more easily.

One more thing, just to see how CAGED works without going whole hog (there's a lot to absorb at first). The two main barre chords you'll learn are most people's only knowledge of CAGED theory.

An F has no archetype, it's always played as another archetype. The cowboy chord basic F major is played 133211 (and tough as balls for beginners pushing that 1st finger barre down right next to the nut!). Anyway, that basic F chord I showed you just now is using the E chord shape, it's just that when played as an open chord, the nut of the guitar replaces your first finger barre. The root note determines the chord (again, not getting into complex stuff like inversions). So the note on the lowest string (open is E, first fret F, etc) determines the chord for the E chord shape archetype.

The B chord also has no archetype. The cowboy chord B is played x24442. This is the A chord archetype played on the second fret. For the A chord archetype, the second lowest string determined the chord (open is A, second fret is B, etc). I personally hate the A chord archetype by itself.

So learning the basic chord positions will start you on CAGED theory if you know what to look for. Then you'll start to notice when they have you play an A in second position, with the root on the 5th fret 577655...hey, there's that E chord shape archetype! You'll be using that a LOT and now you know what it is :) Because the lowest string is on the 5th fret (A) it's an A Major chord...now you can play any chord by memorizing the notes on one string instead of all six!

The last bit I'll leave you with - the nice thing about using the archetype thought process is that any tricks you learn on one chord will translate to anywhere else you play a chord using that archetype. So instead of learning 12 ways to play a riff to play it in 12 keys, you can learn it in one position and then use the method to reposition the archetype template and play it in a different key. Trust me, this is powerful stuff and cuts down majorly on rote memorization after the initial learning curve.

Hope your eyes aren't too glazed :p Come back and reference this once you get those cowboy chords down. And feel free to ask questions, I love this stuff!

Bought a $99 Matte-Black Laguna at Guitar Center's big sale and the Rocksmith cord arrives from Amazon today. Odd that no music stores carry it and none of the big-boxes like Target, Best Buy or Walmart had anything but 360 bundles.   

The daughter is thrilled and I'm considering doing the 60-day challenge myself.

Nice! I hope you enjoy learning the guitar, it's really a great part of my life to be able to sit down and play for a while. I'll try to answer any questions you have!

One game-related comment. I was playing the other night and I'm really missing the venues, setlists and encores. Though I didn't like the score requirements for qualification, having the game shoot me a set list and then 'performing' it after a rehearsal and then getting random encores was a really strong part of the first game. The new murky crowd appearing from some hallucination through the wall isn't the same.

Sky, question for you.  Is there any particular reason you have bought this for the PC?  I am thinking you don't own/play any of the consoles, but I can't remember.

Reason I ask is because I have the original for Xbox, but am considering buying the new game for PC instead.  In part because it is quite a bit cheaper.  Can you get this as a digital download somewhere?  I don't really want to buy the cable again if I can avoid it, and all the boxes I've seen so far are bundled with the cable.  So are there any significant drawbacks to the PC version?  How does the guitar even interface with the PC?  I'm a bit confused.

I'm not Sky but  you can get it on steam, that's  where I picked it up.  I went PC because I can put it on a laptop and go elsewhere in the house to not bother people.  Not so much with a console, you're relegated to sitting in front of the tv.  I think the cord is the same as the console versions as it's just a USB and 1/4" jack for the guitar.


Thanks! Played for 2 hours last night, enough to know for a true novice there's still some benefit to real lessons.  I had the damnest time dong the slide lesson, and still don't think I'm doing it right.  It also seemed odd that the program suggested that lesson before basic chord structure.  I know I'm holding my hands completely wrong just based on my inability to pick the second string at the 5 fret after doing a  slide on the g from 3 to 5.  I just can't do it at all, my fingers won't flex or bend that way, so I'm clearly dong something wrong, but I'm left to figure it out myself.

Eventually I just gave up on the lesson and went to learn a song to relax. I got paint it black and knights of cydonia to 6.5%.  Pretty damn good for my first two hours ever, even if paint was only g string notes.  Funny to note that knights was all over the board and strings in even the "I know fuckall" mode. Progression of rock music!

Yeah, I use Steam also.  I originally bought the PS2 version but quickly got frustrated with having to take up the living room to play.  Also, trying to position the gamepad near me to interact in anyway with the game was very awkward compared to just having a keyboard laying flat in front of me.  I haven't gotten as technical as Sky, but I'd imagine you have more options available to you if you want to tweak out for the best performance.

I haven't got the new version yet due to time, but I'm liking the reviews!

As to the guitar for a beginning discussion: I got a Squire for $150.  I do notice the issues with that, but for where I'm at with my learning and desire of playing guitar it is just fine.  I know I'll eventually get more serious and start spending more money.  My theory is that if I do get crazy like Sky with it, the original $150 I spent that might have to be completely thrown out would be well worth it and nothing compared to the thousands the experts and fanatics spend.  No knock on Sky at all.  I'm jealous and wish I were as passionate about all this.

Cyrrex, mainly as I don't own consoles. But also, the majority of what I have bought for Rocksmith (the original and all the original DLC) was during Steam sales. I have a....lot of DLC... But I did hold out for the original until it hit the xmas sale, and the new one was too much of an improvement for me to wait (and I don't regret that a bit). The main downside is latency, depending on your setup. In my normal setup, I use an X-Fi sound card which has an analog out to a breakout ADC, which feeds an optical out to my receiver. Too much latency for Rocksmith. Running through my motherboard's optical out direct to the receiver removes this latency. The cable works on all platforms, I just bought one on amazon for the original.

Merusk, fingering is often situational. Classical notation is nice because it tells you which fingers to use. For the slide in question you could do it like this:

1. Using your index finger, slide from 3 to 5 and then use your middle finger to fret the 5 on the next string. This is a bit awkward for my hand, you'll learn what works best for you and then have to practice to teach your hands to do the things that aren't natural (I still struggle with an open A chord after almost 30 years).
2. Similar to 1, but use your middle finger for the slide and ring finger for the next string. I use this a lot if there's not a lot of movement after, because those two fingers are close in size and length and work well together.
3. Use the tip of your ring finger for the slide and then fret the next string. If it's a sustain, where both notes keep ringing, keep the tip on the initial string and push down with the first knuckle to fret the next string. If no sustain, then hop the finger over from one string to the other rapidly. These two methods are more like how I'd do it, I think. Wish you were local, it's much easier to show than tell!

But you have the gist of the approach, work at a lesson for a while and then take a break. It's a lot of work, but it should be fun, too. Professional guitarists usually structure their practice to keep motivation and interest as high as possible, ten minutes on scales, ten minutes on chords, fifteen on a new riff, then some fun time for practicing whatever comes to mind.

On cheap guitars. I had several cheap guitars when I started out in the 80s, and cheap guitars were pretty low quality compared to today. I finally got a decent BC Rich Warlock and it fell over while we were lifting weights and the headstock snapped in half on a barbell. I think my no-name strat was $250 or so. Then I got a deal on a Peavey bass that was pretty awesome and when that got stolen I bought my second decent instrument, an ESP custom bass from their Japanese brand Edwards...but the electronics in it suck and I never got around to upgrading them with better pickups.

After a couple years of not playing in the late 90s (a bleak time for me), I started again on my ex-girlfriend's Cort strat-alike. It was awful. I still have it, it's so incredibly and insanely bad. But I told myself, if I dedicated myself to practice and hit certain milestones, I'd splurge and buy myself the best guitar in the local shop (which has great stock). My 61 SG was that guitar.

You want to get a guitar that feels good in your hand and doesn't have too many flaws, so it's not working against you. But the important thing is realizing that it's a lot of work but also one of the coolest things you will ever do in your life, and bring joy to you and those around you for the rest of your life.

/ramble

You can also get it from Amazon as a digital download if for some reason you don't want to buy it through Steam. You will still need to play it through Steam (and UPlay which is a new requirement for this version), however.

Thanks all.  Purchased for PC.  If nothing else, it was cheaper that way for sure.  More flexible, too, thanks to steam.  Won't be able to import songs from the old version obviously, but I can live with that.

I broke down and got the full (including cable and guitar) version for PS3... then frustrated with dealing with latency tuning in the living room picked up the PC version from Steam.  Massively better on my PC, latency-wise (just simple powered speakers hanging off of the onboard analog audio).  Going to need to find some additional resources on guitar to learn how to correctly hold things, etc -- I can only assume I'll teach myself all kinds of terrible habits regarding finger position, etc, if I just blunder through things on my own.

I'm quite impressed with playing a real instrument instead of a controller shaped like an instrument.  Feels like I may actually learn something.

I'm so excited for you guys! This is the kind of thing I hoped for when it first came out, after seeing so many people enjoy fake guitar playing with Guitar Hero.

Q, there are tons of resources for the basics online. Your company is your friend  :why_so_serious:

Note to self: don't start the bass track by playing The Trooper three times in a row. Oh teh blisters on mah right hand...

Those arcade games are pretty great for techniques.  Learning the string & fret locations and building up calluses doing slide ninja.  Felt like my fingers were about to bleed on Sunday.

However, I'm encountering the problem I've always figured I would with guitar.  My fingers are stubby and short, so trying to play chords is a problem because I can't arch my fingers enough to hit only the right strings is damn near impossible.  It also make long jumps on the fret board pretty problematic. ugh.

Welcome to my world. Try playing bass with stubfingers  :oh_i_see:

It becomes more of an issue with something like this game, because when I play guitar, I can invert chords, play fragments, etc; to fit my hand better.

Practice helps but there will always be chords that will be brutal to play. As I've said, the simple A chord x02220 is difficult for me. I don't like to omit the 5th on top (x0222x), sometimes I'll fake in the upper octave if it sounds ok (x2225, where the second fret is a partial barre with my index finger, 5th fret is pinky).

Using Tom Sawyer as a song to rest from The Trooper makes me chuckle. But it's actually a really easy song, with only a little bit of a left hand riff under the solo, so it dovetails in very nicely when the right forearm locks up from all those Harris triplets.

I cannot overstate how much better the latency is with this version. I don't think I'd be able to play these songs to this level without the changes they made in the engine.

IRON MAIDEN SONG PACK OOOOOOH YEEEEAH BOOOOOOOEEEEYYY!!!!

Ahem.

I'm excited.

1st report. Bass solo in Number of the Beast, not easy to play cold first time through! But that's just a matter of getting it down a couple times. The goddamned power chords in Fear of the Dark? Thou hast broken me. Remember what I said about wee nubbly fingers? Yeah, I might be able to practice this every day for a month or two and get the right hand strength to make those chords, but it will be a contest of wills (me vs Harris...Harris wins). I mean...a Bb power chord?

I think this game is good about playing in different positions, so I might move that on up to 5th position, now that I think about it. Still pretty brutal, but not x133 brutal.

I got about 100k better score with the Trooper, still not enough to take 5th yet (master). No masters for Tom Sawyer, but it's funny how quickly I remember all the little quirks of the riffs when the tabs go away. I can play it, just not the way it's recorded...I did move up a spot on Tom Sawyer hard, though (they don't like the way I play one riff). With, ahem, noted exceptions, the new Maiden lineup is a really nice set to play. I might have gone for a few less 'big hits' and more fan songs like Rime or Revelation, or back to Phantom. Still, a good workout on some good songs.

At this rate, the old metal dudes will be banging my door down to bring me out of retirement...

1 week today. Ow, my damn fingers.

It's been amazing how quickly I'm learning string locations and fret positions.  No muscle memory yet but a week ago I was thinking "fuck, I'll never remember this. Where the hell is the 5 fret?"  Today I only have problems finding things after 9 and though I'm frequently misplacing my hand between 7 and 9, I know when I'm wrong.

Maybe someday I'll actually be able to play all the notes to a song.

That is so incredibly cool. And if it helps, my fingers have been sore and blistered as well. Classical guitar is much easier on the hands.

Apparently the Tomoyasu Hotei 3 pack released in addition to the Iron Maiden pack. You may recognize one of the songs from Kill Bill. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ocwtSqRDFQ)

This week it's Alice in Chains pack. Some decent tunes, I can see going for the hits, but I would've picked a very different list (I was a big AiC fan back then).


    Alice in Chains “Man in The Box”
    Alice in Chains “Would?”
    Alice in Chains “Hollow”
    Alice in Chains “Them Bones”
    Alice in Chains “Check My Brain”

Sky's choices if he was the man in charge:

Love, Hate, Love (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jX1KAKp78)
Brother (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tev6PUzrALc)
Rotten Apple (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEeFNvvR-ng)
I Stay Away (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEZNZcfeN0s)
Got Me Wrong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRx7QdT8EZA)

What I really want is some way to buy some of the original Rocksmith songs.  Steam won't let you do it without owning it and there's a few I'd love to learn in time, like Addicted to Love, that I'm going to bet won't be re released in 2014.

Good point. I was playing a few tunes on bass for the old lady (Chic ftw), and she said 'you're building quite the set list there'. I haven't counted yet, but the original + 2014 + buckets of DLC...

Still building up my calluses, need to switch back to guitar and start alternating. Got a blister underneath my right index callus (which is a pretty solid callus), started chuckling. Still trying to master The Trooper, it's so tough because you need to be album perfect and that's unrealistic for most songs, the artist generally isn't when they play it live. Ah, well. The old lady told me not to worry about the leaderboard nerds :) I'm at a million and a half but now there's a guy up over 2 mil. Ye gods.

Have they added any more classical, jazz, blues, etc. to the repertoire?  I gave up the game because I was tired of playing shitty rock I had no intention of performing at family gatherings.  (I recall a lot of rocksmith forum whining about this same issue; not enough alternatives to rock)

Yeah, I don't see why ROCKsmith has so many rock tracks.  :oh_i_see:

Agreed.  No interest in blues, classical, country etc. here. I bought it because it's called ROCKsmith, not Guitarsmith.   Sounds like something for the fan mod community.

Although the parent company could use the tech to expand their market with different packaging for the same product.  If there's demand for it they're leaving money on the table. (Though Country guys are bigger pain in the ass about licensing I've heard)

Both jazz and blues are not very well suited to this kind of mechanic, because when I say I struggle to play rock songs as recorded (required by the game); jazz and blues it's almost heresy to play them at all like the recorded version. They're improvisational forms for the most part, at least out of every musician I've ever met or played with.

Classical would fit the format, but might sell a hundred copies. I'd love to see it but I'm not mainstream by a long shot.

Good point on the Blues/ Jazz method and very correct.  I hadn't considered the heresy behind it.  I understand Miles Davis wasn't a fan of recordings because people always expected to hear the album version vs. what the band was coming up with that night.

Classica/ Country would probably work.. though is there such a thing as classical guitar played on an electric? The sound is so totally different there since it's all acoustics.

Oh, hadn't even thought of that. Yngwie, but meh. I guess you could get a hybrid classical, but ewww.

So Countrysmith is left. Which is really rock/pop these days anyway.

I would love Fingerstylesmith but I know that won't happen.

I got this a few days ago and I'm plugging away at it. The slide lesson and the bend lesson just tear my fingers up. It seems fairly often at this point, my biggest question is what fingers to use to most efficiently play what I'm trying to play. I mean, I can make it work, but I get the impression I'm not doing it right or something. That could be just because it's all so new though.

I ended up grabbing this guitar as a starter and I'm digging it:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Epiphone-Les-Paul-Special-I-P90-Electric-Guitar-107274870-i2101227.gc

Takes time to develop calluses that protect your fingers for longer periods of play. Try your best to bend the strings with your wrist and using more than one finger.

This game is simply amazing. Everyone should get it. And before you complain about not having this song go check out smithyanvi forumsl for customs because people have made literally hundreds of custom songs for you to freely choose (including fingerstyle and bass) and customs for the 2014 version are just around the corner.

The game will also show fingerings for chords (on the fretboard, not on the incoming notes, so I almost never see them as I look ahead), but not single notes. They do give you the hand position, a darkened column the incoming notes appear on. This can be your guide for when to shift, but fingering is a pretty big topic (har har).

And slides and bends are brutal, even for me after a while. Because I play classical on a nylon string guitar, when I play electric it tears up my left hand fierce. And the bass tears up my right hand.

Still can't pop 1.6M on The Trooper (master), they just really don't like the way I hit some of the notes, I guess. I did find that the Judas Priest tunes are a great warmup set, nice pumping 8ths to get the forearm warmed up without popping it to a freeze like Maiden does.

This version does suffer a bit from note detection like the original did. Playing some of the new Green Day, it's mostly power chords which I've been playing for 30 years, 6 of those professionally :) And I get about a 40%? Yeah, no. It's humorous (but a bit frustrating) to watch the little *miss* messages popping up when I'm playing the song correctly.

Another love letter to the new riff repeater, it's gotten really nice. I've been learning some of the Maiden stuff on guitar and I want to tackle some of the Megadeth leads, but at that speed and complexity (I heart Friedman) the lack of real tabs is very frustrating, even the lack of the fret number under each note really hampers things as I'm so used to sight reading to learn. Ah, well. Maybe next year.

Eeeeexcellent. I was hoping there'd be something like a mod community. Woo-hoo.

Nailed my first phrase at 100% difficulty the other day.  (R U Mine) I was so damn happy.  Still can't hit 5 & 7 fret without stretching which puts the hammer-offs from 10 to 7 in "Knights of Cydonia" wayyy out of my league.   Making progress, though, and am starting to mess with Scale Ninja and Bends a lot more in the guitarcade to get those down.  

I still fuck up 3rd (blue) and 4th (orange) string in the middle of songs and get flustered with fast transitions between chords but I've come along, long way in the last 24 days, which is fantastic.  I'm going to be upset if I lose a lot of it when I go to Vegas next week and can't practice.



Yeah, playing String Skip Saloon I often find it misses notes I KNOW I hit and I lose.  Quite frustrating.

What Megadeth songs? I haven't seen any, or are these imports from RS1 I can't have?

Yeah, sorry. Pretty glad I went hog wild on DLC for the first one now. http://store.steampowered.com/app/206102/

Which part of fretting the 5&7 is giving you difficulty? I've developed a lot of bad habits over the years, especially on bass where I can't stretch as well, so maybe I can help out (to avoid the bad habits I mean!).

If you guys want I can also give you some finger development exercises that you will utterly hate me for.

One thing this game really punishes me for hard is my style is to generally play the upper voicings of a chord (so instead of 577655 for an A, I'd play xx7655), my thumb is pretty weak for doing bar or even some power chords because with distortion, a power chord is just two fingers no pinky and the game wants it fretted hard. My thumb ends up killing me, but it is good at exposing weak spots in technique for sure!

Like I've said before, I've got short ass fingers.  The 7&10 hammer offs in KOC's lead solo highlight this the most.   My 2 finger is on the 7 then my 3 will barely be touching the 10 fret.  Doing that and then hammering off? Forgetaboutit.

Also, if I have to hit 5& 7 as part of a chord (no idea on names yet, still working) I really need to contort my hand so the 2nd pad of my ring finger isn't hitting any other strings.  Sliding up and down on the fret bar, going from 5&7 to 4&6 then to 2&4? Kills me because I can't hold them apart consistently moving them like that.

Finger exercises would probably assist the most, tbh. What isn't about finger length is all about hand flexibility at the moment.  Years of keyboarding have given me decent nimbleness, but damned if I have any flexibility left.

Still, it's great fun though. I just lost an hour and a half and didn't even realize it.  I don't mind though as I realize I used to lose that much time and more in MMOs that have given me zero real life skills.  Really best if I don't think about the time wasted there.

7 to 10 is 3 frets, you should be using index on 7 and pinky on 10. As far as sliding, that comes with practice. Ditto finger angle, though be sure you need to not be hitting other strings, because using the left hand to damp unplayed strings is another important skill.

I just got a new Barrett Tagliarino method book (http://www.amazon.com/Interval-Studies-Lead-Guitar-Technique/dp/0980235340/), he's by far my favorite method author (I've recommended a couple of his books for years in the guitar thread). This new one is odd, as it's on one hand a more advanced book that assumed knowledge of two of his older books, but is also an amzingly good resource for what we're discussing, getting your left hand into shape with targeted practice for damping, skipping, which finger to use, etc.

This book I consider a must-have for all students: http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Fretboard-Workbook-Barrett-Tagliarino/dp/0634049011/

This exercise is in the first book I mentioned, but it's an ancient one so not really copyright :) It's called The Crab, because you crawl up the fretboard. Basically you start on F (1st fret 6th string) and play each note with each finger (1,2,3,4) then move to the 5th string and repeat. Work your way up to the first string, then reverse it back down (4,3,2,1) until you're back at the lowest note. Then move your hand to the second fret and repeat the exercise (2,3,4,5) and so on.

The tough part...once you get going, don't lift your fingers once they're down. Focus on damping unplayed strings, it gets a bit complicated to explain out without a wall of text. This will definitely help with keeping your pads vertical as you move upwards.

Good info in this thread.

I'm still working at it. Things are getting easier, but I do lose it when chords start coming at me pretty quick. And finger flexibility like was mentioned above. That's kind of a thing at this point.

Such an enjoyable game though and it really feels like a worthwhile time investment. Even when I'm not doing the training stuff, being able to jump in some songs I know/love and play along is just awesome.

Losing when things start coming fast is one reason this version is such an improvement...quickly hit the space bar (I use my toe :)) and go into the new riff repeater and work on that section until you have it down. This is how we've learned songs for years, but without the benefit of such a powerful slow-downer tool. Back in the day I had to use our multitracker which had a variable speed tape deck. Play/rewind/play/rewind arg.

After some research I found that there's no way they're going to let the RS1 songs import to 2014 without buying RS1.  Sadf, but since it's on sale I went ahead and bought it, then picked-up some of the DLC I wanted. 

Holy hell, I don't think I'll ever be fast enough to get Hangar 18 past 9%.  :ye_gods:  I now have an even greater appreciation for the metal god guitarists.

You should check out some Pantera while you're respecting :)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/222057/

To be honest, though...once you can play some stuff it's a LOT easier playing your own fast leads than learning someone else's, imo. That's why we were an originals band back in the day :p

Flash sale, go!

Fuck, while I was adding DLC they took DLC off the sale. What up with that?

Songs for the first Rocksmith are on sale, though, for 50% off.

Which is cool....but they 'fixed' the 'error' just as I was about to check out with two songpacks from the new one. Daaammmiiit.

Still, good time to get things from the old one, I guess. And for fence sitters to finally learn to play!

PS: Since I'm getting a new camera that will do HD video for xmas, I would think about doing some quick demonstrations of things people want to see. It's so tough to explain even simple things.

Bought this for the Nephew.  He's really musically inclined (piano since he was 4) but my sister never had cash for the guitar he got for his 13th birthday before they moved to Portland.  Looks like a good substitute to me!

Also; I figured out Harmonics today and proceeded to pluck away on them for a good 30 mins, driving everyone insane.  Then I realized I should have been doing the Guitarcade for that, not just plunking on the select screen.  Heh.

I feel like I'm already starting to find the limitations of my $199 guitar, though.  One: it seems to hate the "E" string and keeping it in tune. I wonder if it's a neck problem.  I frequently will not get 1E and 4E because Rocksmith doesn't recognize it.  The duckshoot game is where I notice this the most.  Two: The thing is 3/4 size because I bought it for my daughter who has played all of 4 hours on her profile. I'm nearing - I think- 50 (she kicks me off steam so I have no real metric)

Part of it is the strings, if they're too light gauge you will bend the note sharp when you fret it. Listen close to a fretted note, push hard and soft as you play. Ideally, you want to push as softly as you can while still getting the note to ring clearly. In practice, I mash the shit out of the strings, I use a fairly heavy gauge with a custom low E string because I like that to be really thick.

But yes, cheap guitars struggle to stay in tune. The greatest thing about my two better guitars is that they more or less will stay in tune the entire time I'm playing.

Rocksmith can be a bit of a dick about tuning, both in recognizing notes and in accepting a string that's not quite tuned correctly. I strongly recommend learning proper tuning, both the 55545 fretted tuning and tuning with harmonics (imo harmonics is the best way to tune, but the B string is a bitch). And hit that tuner often and run through it a couple times to make sure it's right. One of the most important things I learned about tuning is you want to tune UP to a note. Think about string tension as you're winding the peg, when you are tuning up you are keeping the tension in the peg tight. When you tun down, it's loosey goosey and playing will pull it until it tightens up. This can be slight, but it's always a factor (except locking nuts, but those make me nuts haha).

Also, when tuning up, especially on new strings, bend the strings back and forth a bit. Good bending practice, go up and down with it and pretty wide. This will stretch out the string, new strings often go out of tune until they're stretched.

It's funny all the little bits of info one picks up after three decades of playing, heh.

The Ox? YES PLEASE

Rocksmith executive producer Nao Higo has been on his twitter feed looking for PC players interested in Beta Testing updates (https://twitter.com/naohigo) by sending an email to rocksmith@ubisoft.com. I'm pretty sure you could provide them with some useful feedback Sky, you should contact them.

Sent.

Hope they're ready for some nagging about a more advanced tab mode :)

Has anyone used this for bass? My kid is bugging me to teach her how to play, and I need to get myself back in the habit of playing. This seems like it could be an easy solution for the both of us.

I'm 1000% better on bass in this game. Less colors to keep track of, fewer chords to throw you, less fast lead playing. I probably end up playing 2/3 of the time on bass because it's less frustrating with the interface.

Also:


I'm a bit better now, but I struggle with the last couple % because it wants you to play every little pickup note exactly as recorded, and Steve Harris don't play that way, dammit. So it keeps breaking the multiplier and I basically gave up on the Leaderboards because I've played the damn song professionally and been complimented by other bassists so pfft! I think one of the toughest parts of the game is that there isn't a lot of wiggle room for riffs that are really just unwritten jams or random pick up notes. Nature of the beast. Still, lots of fun and I HIGHLY recommend it.

Completely this!  I love the new riff repeater.   It blows away the first version.  I adjust either speed and/or mastery levels until I have it down to at least a level where I'm not frantic during the actual song.

Awesome. The kid's going to be 8 in February, but I'm not 100% sure that she'll stick with this or with guitar. Rocksmith seems like an easy way to get me playing again and to get her playing if she's willing to put in the time. In either event, I get to play more games and get the benefit of soothing myself with music. Life is good.

Also, your thumbs-up is pretty much the gold standard as far as reviews of this product are concerned.

Aww, shucks :) The last version was cool, but they really knocked this one out of the park. Short of a true tab mode, it's a really nice improvement and a lot of fun to play.

Got into the beta but it seems to just be to test integration of UPlay into the client so it doesn't launch separately :|

So I would imagine that investing in better speakers is probably a good idea? I've been way lax and this PC only has crappy speakers. It seems to support a fancier setup.

This is the flagship gift for this season if she gets it. Kid just got a shared-with-me Kindle Fire HD when school rolled out the BYOT policy.


We're still at least a year out on Lego Mindstorms. (Yes, that's just me needing an excuse.)

I sure hope that there's a way to unbox/install this without totally destroying the box. I want it to be Xmas morning ready ... yet still seem shiny and new.

I play mine through my audio receiver, so yeah. Something where music sounds good, and if you're doing bass you want a sub. I got a good deal on a 100W sub during last year's black friday on newegg...once I took my receiver apart and re-soldered the output daughterboard :p

I wish, wish, wish WISH I had started vids or recording of my progress.  It's goddamn amazing to me.  I'm no professional and I'm quite sure my technique is shit but I would not have guessed that I'd be able to hit "In Bloom" to 45% on my first attempt playing back when I started on Halloween.  Amazing to me that I'm not even through the 60-days yet, AND I haven't been regular enough due to weekend commitments and business travel.

And that's just one song.  I'm at 50-86% on a lot of the very simple stuff.  My hardest is Knights of Cydonia, at 47% or "Jenny" at 21%  Which sounds crappy but has me really damn happy!

This is an awesome system.

Noice!

We decided to make this a Christmas Eve present for the kid simply so that she'd have time to play. We do two family meals with two different sides of the family on Christmas, so we have started rolling out the big gift on the 24th.

It was also an excuse for me to install it on the PC early...and test it out, of course. Two hours later, I'm feeling it in my fingertips. Holy shit, beginner ranges from sad and pathetic to testing my limits...this will be loads of fun. If the kid really plays and shows that she'll practice, I'm tempted to get her a Squire or similar cheapo electric for her birthday in February.

33% off on steam today, but the DLC is not.  Boooo.

Yeah, the fall sale had the DLC up for sale for a few minutes but yanked it before I was able to check out. Last year all the DLC was on sale, too (that's why I have so much!). I was holding off on buying a few packs, so I'm not sure their strategy is working this year...since I still haven't bought them.

Got around to finally installing 2014 on Steam....still have yet to get my PC to recognize the cord correctly.  :uhrr:

It's a PS3 cable originally from the first Rocksmith, but everything I've read says it should work just fine.

It's just 1/8" to USB, should work fine on the pc.

Ok, this is odd. Rocksmith's Shop page lets me select The Clash, The Cure, The Allmans, and some other song packs. It says they're compatible with 2014, etc.

Steam won't let me purchase because I don't own Rocksmith.

Yeah, I own the 2014 version. SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, STEAM.

Short of buying the older version of Rocksmith, does anyone have any advice on how to unfuck this?

Nope you have to buy the original and then the songs you buy for the original will be available in 2014 automatically (the original doesn't even need to be installed). Note that if you want the songs bundled with the original (not the songs you buy separately) to be available in 2014 you need to buy the 2014 Disk Import Tool.

This is on sale right now at Amazon for $49.99 with cable, all platforms. Good time to jump in if you don't have it.

I originally bought Rocksmith for the PS3 then later repurchased it through steam for my PC, I did not have to do anything special to get the ps3 cord to work with my PC.

So is there any way my PS3 purchased original Rocksmith song packs can be made available to a steam purchased Rocksmith 2014 on my PC?

There actually is a slight difference between the cables made for RS1 and 2014. There is an issue with the old Real Tone Cable not working with Windows 8 due to Windows USB driver issues. Try switching between USB 3.0 and 2.0.


No.

Put 90 minutes on the non-stop mode, let the old lady pick the tracks and suddenly it was 1am after several 'just one more song...' Game is so much fun to jam with. I can play a lot of the bass stuff cold fairly passably, but a lot of relatively easy passages with a lot of movement (Dobie Gray's Drift Away for example) are still really tough due to the way they mark the frets. I know I gripe about it, but it's really the thing keeping the game from that final dash of greatness. It's frustrating to be jamming along and then 'well what note is that, or that, or goddammit why are you only giving me a fret number every ten notes, aaaah!' And then the song ends and I can play the riff passably just by jamming over it.

If you want a really solid core bass track, I highly recommend Good Enough by Tom Petty. I love the track and it goes over basic root/fifth bass playing with octaves and a few passing tones without going overboard. Very relaxing to play. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE9mM_ut62Y

You should also try out Soul Man by the Blues Brothers for some groove lessons. Real fun groove without being too complex. For a more complex awesome groove, Le Chic's Good Times is a great riff and pretty repetitive. Another easy song good for groove is the Police's Message in a Bottle, the verse and pre-chorus are pretty straight grooves and then the chorus is an easy but deceptive little groove (easy if you grew up with the song, might be tricky otherwise).

Good Enough is one of the best and only intermediate bass songs that bridges the gap between "can get 97% the first time you play it" easy stuff, and the incredibly difficult stuff (in particular a lot of the metal tracks).

Daughter wants to switch over from bass (like, the big orchestra kind) to an electric bass guitar, so we're getting her Rocksmith and I think maybe the Fender Squier Modified Special, which I'm seeing for $150-170.

I'm toying with joining in and getting the Les Paul Epiphone...

Always interesting trying to play picked bass lines. Junior Ellefson was simplicity, though he mutes through Symphony. Rex Brown on the other hand, phew. Played through Domination, which is just a great song. And I can hit all of it, though the main fast riff will take a bit of trickery when he starts to throw in triplet pedal tones. Typical Rocksmith weakness with some of the jammed lines, because it wants you to play as recorded and nobody does that for jammed riffs :p Barracuda is a picked piece but blah fingers all day. My bass rides too low to pick, I'd sprain my wrist at my speed and attack levels!

Tried some Rush and a few other more complex pieces, but my perennial gripe about lack of number in the boxes stands. It really holds one back from sight reading and I think it's ultimately detrimental to folks learning to play who might struggle to sight read tab when it could pretty easily be integrated (even as a sort of Master Mode style option?).

I had no idea what you meant about lack of numbers until I got past the intro 25% on a bunch of songs.  Yeah, it IS completely frustrating to try and puzzle-out where on the board you're supposed to be when you look down at your hands for placement then back up to the screen.  I lose momentum that way very, very frequently. 

Took a wander to the local HS band garage sale and picked-up a starter full size Fender-body for $50.  The 3/4 was getting too cramped on the high-number frets on the bulk of the songs I'm trying (Muse, Survivor, Nirvana, Rolling Stones, Def Leppard) .  Trying to pick and hit fret 21 was a bitch.

Of course, now I have to relearn all positions as they're way more spread out.  The quality of notes isn't as good, either.  Rocksmith frequently thinks E3 is E4, even after just having tuned.

I get that a lot as I have a heavy grasp and tend to bend a lot. But just fretting a note can bend it sharp depending on the fret and tension of the wire.

I just picked this up a few days ago, too.  Starting out on bass, may give it a few weeks before I start messing around on the guitar as well.  Most fun I've had in months!

Just got the 2014 edition w/ the cable due to returning an X-Box controller I thought I needed but didn't need. Wow. This is the kind of thing I would have loved when I first started playing. Really amazing way to learn songs and the guitar in general.

EDIT: And I have a question. Do the song packs for the original game work in the new version, or do I have to buy the old version to get the song packs for Rush?

Unless something has changed, the old songs work, but you have to purchase the "importer" software for $10 on the PC side.  You also need to own the original Rocksmith, not just the DLC.

Not sure how things work on the consoles.

Freebird!

I'm pretty sure you have to have the same platform for both versions and own both the games. For Rush, you wouldn't need the $10 transfer pack, DLC ports forward to the new version. You only need the $10 access fee for the tracks that were included in the first game. On the upside, the original is on sale for $20 right now on steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/205190/

I have no idea why I got a diamond pick on The Trooper last night. I had been playing for a while but wasn't quite warmed up enough for it, made lots of mistakes (only about 1.3M score vs my 1.55M best...and the leader has a 2.3M!). *shrug*

I know my comments about a tablature mode are getting old, but the stark contrast between guitar and bass on this title popped out at me last night when I sorted by mastery. Most bass songs I score 90%+ with a high of 101% (The Trooper). Most guitar songs are 60%, with a high of 87% (easy strummy stuff). Even taking into account the amount of notes the game doesn't register properly (I played Riders on the Storm /flawlessly/ and got a 78%) that's crazy. I've been playing guitar for years every day and only pick up the bass when I play the game. I generally have to stop playing bass because I'm blistering, but on the guitar I generally get fed up with the UI.

There have been a few songs where I don't care for how they positioned the transcription but it seems pretty good about letting you play it in a different position. But I found my first straight-up mistake when playing Pinball Wizard in lead mode...the bass does most of what they put as a guitar! Poor Ox. It's overdubbed so the bass wouldn't really be able to play the recorded version properly, but it still made me a little sad.

Thanks, Sky! I played Freebird so hard the last two nights that my index finger is bruised!  :drill: ROCK ON!!

Having bought both the original and 2014, I have to say I like the original's path through the different venues more than the straight song openness of 2014. 2014's use of ACTUAL GODDAMN NUMBERS on the fretboard is sorely missing in the original, but I think the sense of upward progress is better on the original. Every time a new chord pops up in the middle of a song, though, I'm cursing the lack of a fret number to give me a sense of how to construct the damn thing without looking at the fretboard underlay.

See what I keep on about! And yes, I miss the venue progression and feedback of the crowd rocking or booing. The downside to 1's venue system was the qualification requirements got so stiff by the end that it was better to reroll a new profile and start over.

#1 hope is to see full fret number support (or maybe even full on tab support for a master mode variant). A return to the venue mechanic without the stiff qualifications, or some way to keep the mid to small venues more casual and keep the tough qualification for arenas.

I am not musical at all and I know nothing about guitars etc but I luckily have a musically talented son who has fairly recently decided to take up the guitar. He's been doing lessons for a couple months and loves it. So I want to get him Rocksmith for his birthday which is coming up in a couple of weeks. Is it possible to get a decent or at least not crappy electric guitar for under $100? Seen lots in the sub $100 range but knowing nothing about them I don't know what I'm getting.

Is something like this any good?
http://www.amazon.com/Rollins-ROL-942B-Leo-Electric-Guitar/dp/B00GGGIOGO/ref=sr_1_19?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1396578867&sr=1-19 (http://www.amazon.com/Rollins-ROL-942B-Leo-Electric-Guitar/dp/B00GGGIOGO/ref=sr_1_19?s=musical-instruments&ie=UTF8&qid=1396578867&sr=1-19)

or this bundle?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RXXOX8/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1NWP8ZLJ1KJ6Y (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RXXOX8/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1NWP8ZLJ1KJ6Y)

Edit: grammar/added second link

This one doesn't have any reviews so it's a crapshoot.

That one seems better. Personally though I would spend a few more bucks and get a Squire or Epiphone. Better chance you'll get something that's playable.

Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Fender-Electric-Rosewood-Fretboard-Instrument/dp/B00D6U4962/

or that:

http://www.amazon.com/Epiphone-Guitar-Series-PPEG-EGL1EBCH1-Electric/dp/B00AGJKKH8/

What kind of guitar is he learning on now?

He's learning on on a cheap acoustic right now. I can check the brand tomorrow after he wakes up if it matters.

Thanks for the links and reply. I'll see if I can find something like those cheaper maybe. With the game/cable and the $100 I was thinking on spending on a guitar we are already pretty much at the limit of what we typically spend per kid for their birthdays. But man he loves video games and he loves music. We'll see what I can talk the wife into.

Just the guitar is closer to $100. You can get the other stuff later if he sticks with it:

http://smile.amazon.com/Squier-Fender-Tremolo-Rosewood-Fretboard/dp/B001J5RYXQ/

If you're willing to do some legwork, you can probably find a Squire at a pawnshop or used instrument store.

Go to Guitar Center, tell them your price point and see what they've got in that area.  I got a nice starter for $100 in October and found a better one at a garage sale for $50 a month and a half ago.

The best advice I was given was much like the best camera advice I've received.  The greatest guitar in production is the one you'll actually enjoy using.

The guitar in that pack is the one I got when I started playing again about 2 years ago. It is DEFINITELY worth paying the extra bit of money. It's a decent solid guitar.

If you want to spend a little less, you could get him a mini or junior sized version. The frets are 3/4 the size of a normal guitar - I bought an Ibanez Mini for my wife and it sounds pretty good. I think it was around $100. Of course, if he really likes it, eventually he'll want/need to upgrade to a normal sized one.

Merusk is right though. If you have a Guitar Center in town, go there and have him play a bunch of different guitars in your price range, and look at their used gear. They often have good deals on the used stuff.

Listen to these cats, our new guitar brothers.

Now if only this game came in drumset.

Cool thanks everyone for the advice. I'll do some shopping around and see what I can find. It looks like there is even a Guitar Center in Tacoma which is very close to me. If that doesn't work I may just end up paying a bit extra then was planning and get the one Trippy linked. Otherwise a year from now I have a feeling we'll be getting a nicer one anyway.

So I ended up getting this one for him from the local Guitar Center.
http://www.amazon.com/Epiphone-Limited-Edition-Special-I-Electric/dp/B00J8Y19XQ/ref=pd_sim_sbs_MI_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=0A55GH7QMDGA9PDTN70E
Ended up paying 119.99 + tax. I'm super excited to give it to my son on Thursday.

I don't think you'll be disappointed. The cheap Epiphones are pretty good starting guitars.

Worth mentioning that this week's DLC is a Classical 5 pack (http://www.theriffrepeater.com/rocksmith-2014-presents-bachsmith-dlc-0826-2014/). Just $4.99 for:


The link also has some videos showing how the Rocksmith team put this DLC together that are worth watching.

As much as I wish it was actual classical guitar, there's some cool stuff in there. A little of their generic rock arrangements ala the xmas tunes previously released. But that Mozart done in a gypsy jazz style is worth it right there.

I've been meaning to get in more time with this game, here's a good reason.

Obligatory hope that the 2015 version has real tab advanced mode in addition to the current guitar hero playskool mode. And a good import tool with no whammies.

PS4 and XB1 versions coming on Nov. 4th, which is nice because Rocksmith is the only reason I still have my PS3 hooked up. DLC you've purchased will import for free apparently if you're going from 360 to XB1 or PS3 to PS4.

Very cool. This will get me a little closer to being able to dump the last gen consoles.
Any word if you need to rebuy the adapter or the old one will work with the new system? I couldn't find any info on that.

The real tone cables work across all platforms.

Got around to actually installing and setting this up at last.  I'd played Rocksmith but not 2014 much yet.  Already seem to be having a small issue that Google is providing limited help with and was wondering if this is normal.  A song starts out with the typical really easy one note every five seconds or so play.  However at the end of the song, after missing almost zero notes, it's still at one note every five seconds or so.  It's still at it a second time through.

Do I have something set wrong?  Does 2014 progress the difficulty differently?  I know I can go into the Riff Repeater and turn it up by hand, but isn't it supposed to scale for me automagically?

Have you tried running through it multiple times? I haven't experienced the issue, seems to ramp up ok for me. Not that I'm thinking about it, it might be a bit sensitive to mistakes, I do remember a couple songs aggressively ramping down when I'd miss one note when I really wanted to to stay at the level it was at so I could learn it properly.

I might have to go in and manually just 100% things, I just tend to try and play the song properly anyway and hope the notes match the caveman notes they give me.

But I have issues with their continued adherence to guitar hero transcription rather than giving a true pro mode with proper tabs! I can't play some songs I used to know because the colored block thing is so primitive and awkward; as well as completely useless outside the game itself. /brokenrecord

So we finally have a guitar. I really want to mess around with relearning chords. Should I create a rhythm guitar profile? Should I work through the lead lessons?

Whichever you want to play. The chords are covered in a few lessons and then mini games for progression and structure.  Scale warriors may be where you want to start.

Hendrix 12 pack coming on December 16th. Free until Jan 31st if you have the Xbone or PS4 version of Rocksmith, otherwise it's $29.99.

Freedom
Bold As Love
Castles Made of Sand
Fire
Foxy Lady
If 6 Was 9
Little Wing
Manic Depression
Purple Haze
Red House
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
The Wind Cries Mary

Wow, nice! I either play or I'm working on most of those Hendrix tunes, so I'm pretty excited about this release (other than the price!). Talk about a game overdue for steam sale, though. Also I really wish they'd have put in Spanish Castle Magic and Machine Gun (in place of Freedom and Bold As Love). I wonder if it's the full version of If 6 Was 9, that's got some....interesting...sections.

Has anyone done much multiplayer? I've got a buddy who just started learning bass with Rocksmith 2014 and I took my cable over and jammed with him (which btw is AWESOME). Though I used my username/profile thingy it didn't load my profile up, so it must be machine based or tied to steam login? Ideally they'd update it so you could log into your ubi account inside the game so my stats/achievements would count and you could access either player's DLC.

I was really bummed because he had no DLC. I have....significantly less than none...

I played multiplayer a few times in the first one, neither of us has a bass so it was lead & rythm. Worked out pretty well, is it much different in 2014? I've got it but not done MP in it yet.

With the saves, I think steam does sync your profile so maybe that was it. I move between a desktop and a laptop and my profile works from both, using the same steam login.

How are the bass parts on the Hendrix tunes?  I've never thought about it before, but since I'm a shit guitarist and slightly less so on bass, it might be worth a shot.

I haven't learned any of the bass lines, I played a lot of Hendrix on guitar when I was a kid; then didn't play any until a couple years ago (skipping my bass period).

I'd say off the top of my head the later tracks with Billy Cox would probably be a bit less technical than Noel's stuff (Noel was a guitarist as well).

Holy shit, multiplayer is great. Finally got a second cable. And a second guitar. And then a stand that could hold four more...

We're sticking at three instruments for the time being. Trying to learn on the rhythm guitar track has given me loads of dexterity on the bass. I need to try playing it with a pick soon.

Just had a worthwhile family jam session. The kiddo was scared to play on the 12th fret on Godzilla. I showed her after, we had to take another go. Hendrix DLC is a bit out of our league at the moment, but I'll probably still buy it for later.

So does anyone have a recommendation for an entry level bass guitar? Nevermind the guy at the guitar store set me up with an Ibanez Mikro Bass (http://www.guitarcenter.com/Ibanez-GSRM20-Mikro-Short-Scale-Bass-Guitar-107010530-i1732460.gc?country=us&currency=usd&source=4WWRWXGP&gclid=CNudnaT5y8ICFegRMwodqCUA6A&kwid=productads-plaid^85457227842-sku^107010530@ADL4GC-adType^PLA-device^c-adid^44639487282) small enough for my daughter to somewhat handle yet still big enough for me to play, plus other than the chrome plastic knobs it seems fairly well made.

I need to pick up something like that. Unless I really want to dedicate myself to the bass again (by that I mean a return to 8 hrs/day avg rehearsal), I need a shorter scale due to my stubby fingers. I kerpwn the bass stuff in Rocksmith but even easy lines wear my hand out, especially since the guy who transcribed it likes to do things the hard way :p I normally play with my fingers, but the other night I was playing Holy Diver with a pick and it's just so perfect with that punchy tone.

I have to get my hermit buddy over to play on the big screen with my buttload of DLC.

Lots of Rocksmith songs 50% off for the holiday sale.

Song packs are also on sale, but only 25% and it's cheaper to buy all the individual songs in them instead.  :uhrr:

Got this for Christmas with the intent of learning to play from scratch. As this thread is showing a bit of age, can anyone recommend a good inexpensive guitar to pair this with for beginners of the current generation?

Epiphone Les Paul Special II (http://www.guitarcenter.com/Epiphone-Les-Paul-Special-II-Electric-Guitar-100161340-i1149983.gc)

That's what I bought a few years ago when I was getting back into playing. Suprisingly good guitar for the price.

The Fender Squier is also a good, cheap model.

Or at least it was the last time I knew anything about guitars.  Someone else can correct me if that's changed in the last few years.

No, you're right. Fender makes a Squier model that's about the same price and is a decent guitar as well.

A good Epi or Squier is better than a bum Gibson or Fender. I've played $300 guitars that play better than $2000 guitars.

Might also want to ask to have it set up. Some shops will just put them on the wall, a good shop will have the local setup guy come in and go over the stock every now and again.

I've been playing a bit more lately, though my DLC list is getting a bit unwieldy these days...I'm getting lazy to where if it's not in E Standard I just skip over it...dammit Mastodon! Though I did finally splurge on a decent little Snark headstock tuner which helps a lot. Rocksmith is a bit cavalier about tuning.

Though the amount of 'Miss' when I clearly hit a note is silly. At some point I might just turn off learning modes and have it throw the 100% notes at me. And then laugh at trying to learn a Megadeth solo with their shoddy guitar hero 'tablature'. :p

Yeah, I bought a $99 Laguna for my daughter that I enjoy playing far more than the $200 retail guitar I picked-up at a garage sale. I'm starting to believe the real players who say just find something that works for you.  (wish I could find a short-neck that also was also wide enough my stubby-ass fingers wouldn't hit two strings when going for one.)

Thank you all for the info. I went with the Fender Squier (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001L8NFZW/ref=od_aui_detailpages00). Geronimo!  :awesome_for_real:

Nice! Have fun and remember it takes a long time to get good. The nice thing about Rocksmith is that you can have fun while learning, though you'll eventually need to do some real learnin' to supplement the bits it gives you. Ask me here when you're ready and I'll post my instruction book recommendations (or go back through the thread if you prefer, I've posted them a few times).

Learning guitar is HARD!  Who woulda thunk it?  I've never played guitar at all, and this was my first day of practice.  I actually did a lot better than I thought I'd do.  It's tough trying to keep your left and right hands somewhat coordinated.  Does the unholy pain in your wrist from strangling the neck eventually go away?

In any case, I can't say I'm having "fun" quite like I did in guitar hero, but it is really encouraging seeing even minor improvements come quickly and I'm definitely still engaged.  Awesome tool so far!

The wrist pain should go away but it'll transfer to your fingers :awesome_for_real:

The fun gets there, Gulp. Especially as you start to teach yourself a song, only to have it level-up and become a whole new exercise in "wtf how am I supposed to transition from fret 12 to fret 7 THAT FAST. I'll never do that." and "Wait.. 21? Where the fuck is 21.. I've never gone below 12.. aaaahhh"

I've been playing for 30 years now  :why_so_serious: :drill:

My fingers still get sore if I don't practice enough...daily. Even then, I mostly play nylon strings so the electric guitar's wires will still make 'em sore. But you'll build some base callus that will prevent most real damage. I played a show on bass when I had only been playing guitar, maybe 2005 or 6, so my right hand calluses were gone...ended up going through blister - pop - blood - wounds. Felt bad for bleeding all over that kid's bass. It was an awesome show. I then played guitar for an hour, and drums for an encore set :p I don't feel the pain until the adrenaline buzz of playing is gone.

I still have to struggle to remember where the 21st fret is. The trick is to remember the fret markers are on the odd frets. I always remember 15 and 17, so I just pop up two markers from 17. Since I have a 22 fret guitar you think I'd remember it's the last marker.

Also, for the newbs: the 12th fret is the same as teh open string but one octave higher. The high frets aren't new stuff to learn, just the 0-12 fretboard repeated.

Getting over the B string tuning difference is a big early obstacle, too. It's why I'm a big fan of learning the CAGED system asap, then the fretboard makes a lot more sense.

(http://i.imgur.com/S4MYFQO.gif)

 :hulk_rock:

That was my reaction to learning CAGED after I'd been playing for 20 years or so.

Broke down and snagged two of the packs I wanted that didn't go on sale (and probably won't for a while). Wind Cries Mary transcription is off, Hendrix plays it thumb over neck.

I highly recommend everyone grab a clip-on tuner, Rocksmith's tuner is a bit, um, loose. I use this one: http://www.amazon.com/Snark-SN-5-Tuner-Guitar-Violin/dp/B004XNK7AI

Spent the evening tackling some of the session mode challenges after chilling out to some [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjZXmJJc2Gs]All Them Witches[/url]. Beat up my fingers pretty good, decent chance of blister on each one...I just get in the zone when improvising and changing up the challenge every ten minutes or so keeps it pretty fresh. Tough to sustain any real repeating melody kind of thing, but great for just running scales and trying out melodies over different stuff.

Also, ouch. Going from nylon to 11s with a thicker G because I always broke them, now I just detune them after a while.

Every Rose Has It's Motherfuckin' Thorn, Bitches!

I picked up Rocksmith during some sale a while back (maybe it was the last summer sale?) and finally fired it up last night.  I'm pretty impressed.  How long does it take to get over the fact that the view is upside-down compared to tablature, and once your brain finishes rewiring (which I assume will only take a week or so) are you still able to read tab?

(edit) I went to the start of the thread to see if this was covered.


Oh thank Christ, doing that before I confuse myself any more.

I suppose that didn't bother me so much because I primarily use Rocksmith for bass, but I also treat it like a suped-up Guitar Hero which makes sense to my brain.

That mapping would help me more (I do have pretty good Guitar Hero muscle memory) if it weren't sideways with the colors going vertical instead of horizontal.  I think.  I suspect that once I flip it into tab orientation that set of instincts will take over and it'll get 1000% easier.  Right now I'm having to actively fight the muscle memory that tells me where my fingers go.  

It's especially bad when chord shapes come up, because I see the name of the chord and my fingers automatically make the shape, then I see what looks like tab and my fingers say "oh, this is some funny variation" and they move to THAT, and then my brain arrives and says "no, fingers, this isn't tab" and then starts trying to invert what the screen is showing to show the fingers that it's the same chord shape they were doing the first time, but by that point it's too late and everyone is just angry at each other.

Where in the settings is the tab orientation thing?

It's been a while but I believe it's the "Invert" strings option.

Yes, absolutely flip it. It's stupid the default way. And I believe I've ragged on about the need for an 'advanced' tablature mode. With just, you know, tablature.

There are some pretty simple songs I can't play because of how they weirdly break up chord arpeggiation in an almost unreadable way; in tab I can see it's just a C chord or whatever. Respect people who can read, ffs.

I know I bitch about that a lot, but it's really what is holding the game back from being as close to perfect as it can get with the technology (I'll give it a pass for not understanding why I bend notes or my guitar going sharp because I clamp the fretboard like a robstah craw).

Wait, they also need to number the note EVERY TIME. Stop showing me every now and again when you feel like it. Just put the number in the box, ffs. Or do tabs. Blah, I love this game so much until these things make me GRR.

I'm doing much better with strings inverted, but I can see what Sky means about wanting to just have tablature.

The DLC is quite a racket -- $3 per song, seriously?  I'll probably still buy a bunch because I'm a sucker.  And they know it.

Buy the packs as they're a better deal since they're usually 5 songs for $12. Not much of a deal but it's there. They haven't gotten me for single songs yet and I haven't cared enough about some of the more recent packs.

I think other than the RS1 songs I've only picked-up Muse, Iron Maiden, Smashing Pumpkins and Tom Petty.

I'll admit that I'm not very good to begin with, but the Tom Petty bass lines kicked my ass a lot more than I was expecting.  REM is a ton of fun on bass, too.

If you are looking for more songs, find the stuff on using custom songs created by people. I probably have close to 200 songs in my library that were free customs. Not all of them are good translations, mind you, and some fuck up things like the effects on the guitar itself, but it's still a good way to branch out without paying those silly prices for DLC.

Steam sales are your friend for picking up tunes. But oddly it's better buying them individually when they are on sale, as the packs get less of a discount and end up costing more than the individual songs.

I'm a sucker for the DLC but as long as they keep allowing me to migrate it forward I'm ok with that. I like having a big library of relevant stuff when I play the random thing. There are so many great tunes in DLC, but Maiden is my favorite (and I was ever so briefly in the top 10 for The Trooper bassline in Master mode!). Good Enough is my favorite Tom Petty and fun to play.

Stone Temple Pilots six pack this week. Apparently this was scheduled before Scott Weiland passed away, which they made clear because they didn't want to come off as trying to cash in on his death. I've never been a huge STP fan, but sometimes I forget how many of their songs I really like, to the point where there's a six pack of good songs and yet I look at and think "those are all good songs but I wish Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart, and Big Bang Baby were in there". However we do get:

Big Empty
Creep
Interstate Love Song
Plush
Sex Type Thing
Wicked Garden

Noice! Nice mix, and this is a must-have pack for bassists imo. Dude just wails on it and is so melodic and awesome. I was just watching the unplugged the other day and I'm still in awe. I was a huuuge STP fan, though. Purple was such an amazing album.

I would've left off Sex Type Thing. Put in Vasoline, Meatplow or Crackerman.

But Creep, Big Empty and Interstate Love Song are some of my favorites, so it's all good. Real strong pack.

Got to see Scott's solo band (doing STP and VR classics) last year, dude still had it. Too bad he couldn't kick.

edit: linky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzx26V4WDlA Check that bass line.

Sold.  Thanks for the reminder!

You already get Vasoline from the first Rocksmith.

Hah. I do have more DLC than I can ever remember....

Public service reminder: older DLC is 40% off during the winter sale.

Finally got around to trying these out on bass and they're fantastic.  Thanks for the heads up about that pack!  Also happily played through a bunch of the Soundgarden stuff last night and am remembering why it's bad to stop playing for a few months.  Ouch.

Mostly been putting DLC mentions in current threads, but there's been a ton of great DLC this year. Another year without a refresh, which I'm kind of ok with, since short of true TAB or the return of the venue/crowd minigames I think it's near perfect.

But they DID release a 'remastered' version (free via patch to existing owners). Their words, because while there are some really nice QoL improvements, it's mostly just interface tweaks. Easier search, which is nice when you have a massive song list (I may have a massive song list), tweaks to how Nonstop play works, tweaks to the riff repeater (which I stil need to check out).

I already liked this game a LOT and was way better on bass (mostly their funky tablite is easier to read with 4 colors)...but getting my new bass made me really damned good, hah. Glad to see it's still getting development, the song packs have to be making a killing because they honestly make the game. I mean, it bums me out to jam at my friend's house with NO DLC AT ALL. No Rush? No Maiden? YE GODS!

Can't you get the DLC if you login with your Ubisoft or Steam account at your friend's place? Steam Friends & Family Sharing maybe?

Probably, but his computer was old and a mess (he's a hippy), so I'm not about to put my info in there!

So, my nephew has been learning cording on acoustic for a while now, is really in to it, and has asked Santa for an electric guitar this year.

He's also a complete XBox One addict (Minecraft mostly).

So my question is, is Rocksmith accessible to an old for his age nine year old?

I'd say likely yes, probably the most important factor will be getting the right guitar for his size.

Reminded me of this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejY7WOJB1HM

Probably. Invert the fretboard display in game, I don't know why they made it backwards. Otherwise he would struggle reading real music later.

Since he already knows how to play a bit on the acoustic guitar he should fine on Rocksmith. Rocksmith is designed to accommodate all ranges of players including total beginners and has lots of settings and modes to help beginners along.

I understand why they have it that way* but it can cause a lot of confusion for those who either already know tabulature or want to learn how to read it later on.

*  it matches the order of strings if you imagine your fretboard is transparent and you are looking at the strings through the back of the fretboard

I played briefly with a couple guys I knew in a 3 piece. I was guitar and vox, the drummer was the drummer, but the bassist was a percussionist I've known for decades (used to run sound for my band in the day). He'd been playing bass for about 4-6 months using Rocksmith to learn and was able to hang for a four hour jam using just charts printed from the Internet. I was impressed (granted, he's been in bands for ever but that was still a 0-60 kinda thing).

Amazing learning tool, and fun for old farts like me who don't want the headache of dealing with bandmates :)

Obligatory "wish they'd add a real tablature mode" rant. Because then it would be near perfect. And always support tracks from previous versions because holy crap.

I really need to go get a guitar or bass and play this. I bought it in a 3am amazon sale Trippy posted about like 3 years ago and it still hasn't come out of the box.  :why_so_serious:

Yes. Yes you do!

Huh, they just patched the game and enabled people to play with a USB microphone instead of the real tone cable so people can play with acoustic guitar or bass. (http://theriffrepeater.com/rocksmith-remastered-patch-notes-12132016-acoustic-guitarcade/)

Sweet!

As someone who primarily plays a classical guitar...not sure why that's a thing. Outside of my very limited current situation (trying to get my middle finger healthy and can't play bass or electric guitar), I'd never consider playing rocksmith on an acoustic. And even now, I'm just waiting it out. Also, no USB mic, I run my XLR mics through a USB preamp, not sure if that works.

There are plenty of DLC songs (i.e. not counting all the user generated songs) that have guitar parts that were played on acoustic guitars on the originals and I think it would be fun to play those parts on an acoustic in the game as well.

Love that they decided to just keep improving this. DLC song sales must be good money. (not a great surprise)

I DON'T THINK PEOPLE BUY DLC FOR THIS NOPE

I have someone who requested a ukulele as a gift. I'm thinking that it is much more likely to see sustained use if it could be used with Rocksmith. Some quick googling shows a few unanswered questions and some old articles talking about how it will be possible when Rocksmith 2014 releases. Can anyone here confirm that this does/does not work? If it does, is there an instrument you would reccommend in the $50-150 price range?

*edit*

After continuing to read on this, it seems like a U bass seems to work, but not a regular ukulele.

For beginners and those tired of trying to remember the plaskool color coding...

https://www.amazon.com/DR-Strings-NMCB-45-Guitar-Multi-Color/dp/B00DMACALC

(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81Uj2Mt51aL._SL1500_.jpg)

I have less of a problem remembering and more of a problem being able to pick the right string. "fuck that was the 5th.."

OR just plain not being able to get my hand in the right place fast enough. "14th fret, 19th, 3rd..fuck!"

That comes with time. The 15th and 17th fret markers are really useful to memorize early on, and the pentatonic box helps remember 12/14, as well.

What throws me at the top is the 20+ fret stuff, not helped by my new bass only being a 20-fret model (my old one was a full 24 fret).

Pretty cool Guardians of the Galaxy themed DLC pack this week:

Blue Swede - “Hooked On A Feeling”
David Bowie - “Moonage Daydream”
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”
Raspberries - “Go All The Way”
Redbone - “Come And Get Your Love”

More Bowie is always welcome (and Moonage Daydream would be in my top 5 favorite Bowie songs).

So I learned a thing today: http://blog.ubi.com/rocksmith-2014-song-request/

The airbourne song pack this week is a lot of fun. Not often I play through twice in a row.

I usually wait until they go on sale, but that one's on the list. Great band, hadn't heard them before.

I did buy the Muddy Waters pack at release, because Mississippi mud runs in my veins. And I now hate Willie Dixon's standup bass licks :D

Yeah Muddy Waters was a must-buy. Also (kinda) on the subject on infographics, have you seen this?

http://theriffrepeater.com/rocksmith-remastered-1000-songs-exclusive-interview-paul-cross-brian-mccune/

The interview vid at the end was actually worth listening to, lots of insight into their process.

Looks like a fair bir of DLC is on sale today, 40% off.

I guess I've been talking about this in the generic threads, so here's a cool thing I learned today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rocksmith/comments/egimx0/there_is_asio_support/

And in case we haven't discussed it in this thread, for posterity:

http://ignition.customsforge.com/

edited to add: I have a dusty old Scarlett 8i8 that I need to get out and learn to use better. Less latency, less cable nose, more options? Yes, please.

No more Rocksmith DLC. Team working on new project. (https://rocksmith.ubisoft.com/rocksmith/en-us/news/152-361505-16/the-future-of-rocksmith)

Can't say they didn't support the hell out of this game. No word on what their new project is but it stands to reason that it's probably something music-based.

Well, shit  :heartbreak: that sucks. There was so much more I was wanting them to add.

I mean, they have milked it for 6 years  :awesome_for_real:

I'm hoping it's a new version, since this one seems to have been lucrative enough for them. And I'm hoping they incorporate some of the stuff I've been lobbying for (chart mode and concert mode like the original Rocksmith with venues/crowds/encores etc). Native ASIO support would be cool, too (if you have an interface I highly recommend playing around with the stuff I linked in my last post!).

And mixed bag as it is, there's way more CDLC than there is DLC, so still lots to fill out the playlist (link to custom forge in my last post, git you some!). Worst case scenario, it just become a platform for CDLC, but I can't see Ubi leaving that weekly paycheck on the table.

Anyway, if it is a new version and not just moving on from the project entirely, that means they're getting close to release, in my opinion. They'd likely need the charters near the end to fill out the content. Unless the charters are getting involved in designing the charting end of things, which could be great for the custom forge folks. It's not exactly a fun experience (I couldn't get it working at all on my mac, I think I can finish my test DLC on my PC...if I don't have to rebuy any of the software. And I went to school for this kind of thing back in the day, heh.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a new edition of Rocksmith since the next generation of consoles is coming this year (in theory). Seems like it would be a good time to put out a Rocksmith game that doesn't have 2014 in the title.

Apparently there was some drama with a DLC creator that ended up with more drama and maybe a ton of CDLC: https://www.reddit.com/r/rocksmith/comments/hr4lqp/laceyb_never_existed_an_absolute_madlad_uploaded/

I'd be mighty careful with the download, but it seems to be legit from the comments.

tldr: fake account fake suicide real CDLC (like 14GB)

So I'm slowly getting more involved with the Rocksmith community, my main barrier being I generally just want to drink a beer and jam, not fuck around with a computer  :grin:

Check out RSMods, it's a nifty utility for the game that does a bunch of cool stuff. One nifty feature is that you can connect a Digitech Whammy DT pedal and using RSMods (somehow, I haven't done it yet because I'm poor again heh)...it will pull the tuning information from the song meta and apply it through the Whammy DT. Meaning no more retuning for those D Standard jams! Not sure if it would distort too much for the C# Standard stuff on bass, but having easier access to alternately tuned DLC is attractive for me (I'm lazy af).

Another one is the CF Song Manager, this tool can fix a ton of stuff with CDLC and update the older DLC to more modern conventions. Fixes a few bugs, as well.

A caveat: don't let your song library go over 2000 songs, it will start getting unstable. I'm getting close now and have to actually take notes on who I need to vote off the island to make room for new stuff!

i got an email today from Epiphone (the Les Paul I bought years ago was an Epiphone) and it revealed what I guess is the next Rocksmith project - ROCKSMITH+. From what I can gather from the email, it's:

YUP we've been talking about it on the subreddit, some still of the gif here: https://theriffrepeater.com/leak-gibson-email-confirms-new-rocksmith-closed-beta/

TAB VIEW!!!! I hope it doesn't suck, because I've been pretty vocal about it for years, heh.

If they do the subscription correctly, it's genius. What I wrote over there:

If they're opening up that huge catalog and adding weekly DLC packs, it makes a great deal of sense.

I have an old pal who picked up bass (he's a percussionist) and Rocksmith. He only ended up with maybe 20 hours /played, and a bunch of those were with me co-op on guitar. It was cool but not very cool...because he had NO DLC. It's a dramatically different experience.

Expecting him to amass thousands of songs like some of us do (bwahahha) is unrealistic. However, I could see someone like that picking up a sub and getting into the game.

As long as purchased DLC is still a thing, old DLC is still supported, and CDLC still works, I am excited for the prospect of a subscription service for those who need or want it.

Being that it's Ubisoft, I'm not sure hopeful they are going to allow CDLC stuff on the sub service. Just based on their recent track record, it seems more like a way to close off the ecosystem and get a sub fee.

New features in Rocksmith+: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DngQ2d4QNs

Might want to just listen if you are the type of person to get easily distracted by people who wildly gesticulate with their hands on every syllable spoken.

Also, mostly useless trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mNf_H2qHsA

Yes, this is an always-online game so it would be very easy for them to prevent non-authorized songs and arrangements (it has a built in arranger for licensed songs) from showing up in your library.

Scroll down to the FAQ section and question "Can I Play Rocksmith+ Offline?":

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/rocksmith/plus/game-detail

$15 a month, always online, won't be able to add new songs (so no customs).

That's most likely a no for me.

Yeah, hard pass and let's hope they don't retroactively nuke 2014. My current plan is to keep my old gaming pc off the Internet and use that as a RS2014 CDLC machine. Even if they shut down the forge tomorrow, I've got a comfortable amount of songs (and I've likely spent more on DLC than pretty much any sane person...which creates some salt right about now).

Also, since the game already has latency issues, the fact that they say the 1st way to connect your guitar is by using your phone's mic...ye gods. This smacks of a game developed in a legalized weed state during a lockdown.

According to a CDLC tracker with access to the tool, they like it but have already complained about not being able to share charts. He didn't get specific, and I think that given the level of access there is definitely some koolaid drinking happening at the top of the RS community right now (apparently the top charters/tubers have been working directly with the team on the tool). Apparently charting at UbiSF is going to be first pass by AI, then fixed by hand...that's another route to 'millions' of songs...

THAT SAID, there does seem to be some upsides to the new tool, due to the licensing changing (allegedly) to per-label, instead of per-song/artist. Because the tool would have access to (ostensibly) any song from that label, which can be massive (which is why they're touting millions of songs). Downside is that also means large black holes in licensing, and expiring deals without purchase means tracks disappearing.

Still seems more downside than up, given that even the folks deep in koolaid keep asterisking and parenthesizing nuggets of shit in their manna.

That smacks of "artists getting fucked out of royalties again" to me. Hope I'm wrong but it's Ubisoft and record labels, neither of which have any sort of positive track record on which to base a benefit of the doubt.

I'm not super happy about the subscription stuff but there does seem to be some pretty cool additions here, particularly for people just starting out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FZ4zQ03zGI

Like the Note by Note thing one of the beta testers here tries around the 8:16 mark should be incredibly helpful.

Ok, initial drama phase over. Watching a bunch of beta stuff from some tubers I've watched in 2014, I'm....interested. There's still a lot I'm not a huge fan of, and some of the stuff I like needs tweaking (in tab mode, stationary playhead one bar in, with scrolling tabs, and I'd like to see maybe even 4 staffs onscreen at once for the look-ahead (I'm a shape-based reader, so scanning ahead for shapes helps me a ton!).

Anyway, I still think licensing will be a mess, I already hate the crowds being removed completely. I liked RS1's crowds/venues/encores and wish that the 'other' half of the target demo would get some love. The learners are getting a ton of stuff and while the tab mode is great for experienced players, the ability to chart is cool but also kinda feels like crowdsourcing, but the whole way a lot of us play is just plugging in and running through a setlist...and having the crowd reaction was a far better feedback than the score, because that's how you actually gauge how well you're playing /to the room/, which has been completely removed.

But I'll still be checking my inbox multiple times a day for that beta invite. I'm happy to have my offline CDLC box as a backup, but ready to see what the new world brings.

NGL, after wrestling with several pieces of janky software trying to import sketchy pdfs of tabs in an effort to make RS2014 CDLC, this is something I'm /very/ interested in...

Quick overview of Rocksmith Workshop (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQMt7MVkUQ)

BTW, I know a few of you have Rocksmith (and you should really be jamming more!). With RS+'s changes to licensing, there's a pretty good chance it's going to gut a lot of the available CDLC. The customs forge that hosts the db will not host any CDLC links that have an official counterpart (so if a song ends up in an official DLC pack, it gets delisted in the forge db). The new licensing seems to be a per-label deal (with individual artist holdouts, likely Metallica for example), so that's potentially swaths of content going away soon(ish, likely releasing in a few months).

https://ignition4.customsforge.com/
https://customsforge.com/index.php?/topic/901-how-to-use-custom-dlcs-in-rs2014-remastered/

I'm a strong supporter of official DLC, but adding in CDLC is the difference between playing RS2014 with or without any DLC. Like I was at a buddy's house and we're stuck playing the handful of decent tracks that came with the game, but...meh. Meanwhile, I could log into my account and bam there are a few hundred songs we actually like. With CDLC, it's a few thousand, and the playing experience opens up significantly. Can't stress enough how cool it is to have this tool as a musician with no will to mess around with putting a band together, while still getting my jam on in a relatively frictionless way: I plug in my guitar, boot up the game, and play. I know there are other options for this kind of thing, some are cheaper (though with a steam sale and CDLC, not really), but the ease of use and quality of the RS experience is well worth it.

(this post brought to you by me pushing a copy of Cherub Rock to Haemmy...why do you hate free music bro  :grin:)

If you want an invite to the RS+ beta, we need to friend up on the dopey Ubi Connect thingy so I can shoot you an invite. CashWiley on there, but let me know if your handle isn't the same as here so I don't just dismiss the request out of hand :D

I expect to be bitching a lot soon  :why_so_serious: (just got my invite a couple minutes ago)

Went ahead and sent a request.

Invite sent. One more left!

Going to take a while to get used to the new version, and they've got a lot of things to change imo, but the actual experience of playing and sound quality are improved. It's mostly user interface stuff that needs work (the options and menus). I generated a page of notes and only played 2 songs in the 30-40 minutes I played last night.

Much obliged, downloading now!

Odd selection of music so far. I get that it's in beta so they probably don't have or need all the licensing in place right now, and also that they seem to be going for a more expansive selection of genres, but the Fresh Prince theme song?

You don't like playing Will Smith's mouth?

Song selection is slim thus far and for bassists it's...ehh.... :oh_i_see:

I've been playing a lot of Barracuda during testing. And I have a couple pages of notes going. That said, there are a number of tangible improvements in sound.

One of my favorite notes is 'if you don't license the MCA catalog, don't include Skynyrd'  :why_so_serious: But most of it is UI stuff and some missing features from previous versions. When 2014 released, it was a similar deal, when Remastered was released they cleaned up a lot of the problems. So I do have some confidence in the team in general, but there are some real headscratchers rn.

Also, I won the weekly no-prize contest against a few other bassists playing The Trooper (mostly because I played it in Master mode without any tabs because I've actually played it in front of humans for earth dollars heh).

If you check out the RS+ discord, there are a handful of devs that hang out there. Though the one that was on yesterday gave me the usual engineer blow-off of 'well, technically you can do that, so case closed' without addressing that it's like a 5 click interaction now vs a 2 click previously...and also I was talking about integrating the feature directly into the main play window (scrubbing the track, hyperactivity+silent periods es no bueno).

I think right now the major issue I have is the streaming service style layout of song selection. Here's a row of new arrivals. Here's a list of songs we think you'll like. Here's songs for beginners. Here's some random learning videos, what's trending in your area, and what's trending worldwide. I have to go down a page or two to get to everything sorted by tuning, and then even if you expand the view so you aren't just side scrolling through selections they still don't list everything in alphabetical order.

Use the Search, uhh, tab? at the top to filter. I use that as my fill-in for the old Learn to Play, filtering by E Standard and Bass, search for an empty string to return all valid hits. This still sucks because it resets every time you exit the game, doesn't sort results, resets your position every time you exit a song, shuffles the list randomly every time (see: doesn't sort), and is built to be navigated with a mouse (as is the entire new UI) and I play RS with a keyboard (so I can quickly navigate while standing up and playing, it's on a music stand at navel level). Oh, and if you've navigated 20 pages down with the keyboard, you have to up arrow through every row to get back to those tabs or whatever they call them at the top of the screen to navigate to another tabthing.

I 1000% hate the Netflix style UI, it's horrible. I never use recommendations or their quirky categorizations (in fact, I keep trying to cancel because I hate the UI (and lack of interesting content that I can actually find), but the old lady keeps convincing me to keep it. Anyway. Song cards carry no info (often the song title doesn't even fit) and no preview. Garbage for browsing, and I'm a browser (I often lobby for browser rights at the library lol). Imagine being on a console and having to type in searches all the time.

Problem is, I don't know that there is a ton they can do with the general browsing, if the intended model is to license entire label-level catalogs (the included Skynyrd stuff is from Capricorn, which bodes well for the Allman Brothers early material though). It's just that it sucks so bad right now. And it's hard to tell if it would be difficult short of having to search manually for songs, once the full catalogs are in, because they literally can't recommend anything to me right now because of the paucity of content. I wish the folks clamoring for beta slots (I still have 1 available for an f13er) could understand they shouldn't be in a hurry to get into the beta.

Even just having to type in band searches to filter by artist is a pain, because for me it's a one-handed control (I guess I play RS by porn rules). Not bad when I'm using arrow keys/pg up/dn/home/end/enter/esc for 99% of interactions. But they've gone so far into this UI, have a problem with their vision of 'millions' of songs, and I'm (as usual) a niche user.

My backup RS14 pc is still waiting patiently to be called to service. I'll likely sub to RS+ for new content (and I do like the sound pending the tone designer being added back in), but it's going to have to work hard to beat my trusty old workhorse.

To end on a slightly more positive note, tab view is pretty nice. It needs a lot of work, like most things, but as someone who lobbied for it for years, I'm happy it's in there to be worked on. The ability to read ahead farther than the note highway will reveal to you is amazing. As a sight-reader, the paucity of visual information in the note highway has always been irritating, I'm usually reading at least a staff ahead of the one I'm playing. On the downside, the implementation needs customization options, the notes themselves are too same-y when playing, as they all start to look like simple circles with difficult-to-read numbers. The sustains in tabs are distracting, too, so I'm hoping for options (like 'make it standard tab, just numbers thanks').

Since we all have extensive beta experience here, it may not surprise you that I pretty much expect we're playing something extremely close to the gold version.

Yeah, I'm guessing this is pretty close to what the final game will look like, just with more content. Bass currently only has 6 lessons right now from what I can see (3 videos and 3 corresponding practice tracks). I expect there to be a lot more songs at launch obviously although that will also make the song selection UI even worse. I'm going to most likely just have to go through the list whenever songs are added and favorite stuff. Oddly, I just noticed there's a "My Saved Songs" section if you're on the Home page, but if you're on the Play page there isn't one. Now that I know where to look for it it's less of an issue but still a baffling choice. Also there's still no way to organize the section even after you expand it.

And yeah I tried the search thing before but as you mentioned it doesn't organize results, and as we get more songs in it's going to be a nightmare to even navigate that way. I hope at some point that can at least add a "sort A to Z" functionality in there. Also I don't expect to be getting any use out of Rocksmith Workshop, but it's odd to have it off in the settings.

Overall it's good, and I trust the developers to improve on the previous entries. Considering how long it's been since 2014 released (was actually a 2013 release) it still only feels like an incremental upgrade and obviously the subscription service vs. going the DLC route was the impetus for doing a new game at this point. If there's no cost for the game itself, I might toss them a year sub (which gets you an additional 3 months if you participate in the beta) and go from there. $99 for 15 months isn't terrible considering I'd otherwise be paying $60-70 for a game at this point plus however much I tended to spend on DLC for RS. Long term beyond that the value proposition is a little shakier but by then we'll know the strength of their post-launch support.

I got into the beta tonight. I was not impressed. They somehow found a way to make the song selection UI even worse. The UI as a whole is much worse, including the way they portray the fretboard. I tried the tabs but I think I've been playing Rocksmith so long, I forgot how to play with tabs. The actual choice of songs is goddamn awful. If what I saw was any indication, it's going to be hell to find something decent to play for at least the first month, and if they don't have a much better selection by launch, I can't see paying $15 a month for this.

I fully expect song selection to be much better by launch.

The UI is getting shit on up and down the community. Because it's terrible. But as I said, the new way they're approaching licensing demands a new UI, and technically this one can accomodate the expected level of content...but it sucks. I don't envy this dev team right now.

They really bungled having a basically public beta with almost no songs. Tons of bitching from people who think beta is just a free preview. And ironically they tend to bitch on reddit, rather than the Ubi forum that devs monitor, so it's just shouting at clouds. But as far as testing, the only reason to boot into RS+ right now is testing, which I feel has to be negatively impacting the beta phase feedback. I don't want to play Barracuda much more because I don't want to burn out my ears on a song I actually enjoy. I guess I can play some Boston? Ye gods. I'm still playing RS14 when I want to jam. They're aware of the low level of content, which makes it even more bizarre. I want to mess around more with tab mode to get good feedback for them, but....

I have to wonder if the AI charting feature isn't working out well. They've hired on a much larger team of note trackers, and the job is supposed to be easier because the AI is supposed to do a good enough job that a human just has to go in an tweak the final results.

Ye gods. "Beta"  :pedobear:

I decided to dedicate the afternoon to getting a chart going in Workshop. Luckily I had been poking around the website reading the existing documentation prior to this. Unluckily, it doesn't tell you how to import a song into the workshop correctly (apparently that feature is not implemented correctly yet...). Is this stickied on the Workshop beta forum? Nah. Had to dig into threads, and there are many. Since it's documented incorrectly and there is no indication as to the workaround.

It's supposed to download in .rsw format, but right now it's downloading an .xml. Turns out you have to use the oldschool file menu to import this .xml (which I learned on the eighth thread I read on the forum). Threw up an error, but Workshop opened up. Can't play the music to the track, so eh I can't chart it. I try the 'preview' feature, which is supposed to open it in RS+ itself. It just throws up three letters on the screen and pfft that's it. Go back to Workshop, still no audio. Now RS+ is stuck on that 3-letter screen.

Ok, that's enough of that bullshit for a nice Sunday.

It's amazing these folks can even make a finished product, but I guess that remains to be seen. And I found the Skynyrd license was just Voodoo Records Endangered Species. It's nice, but I'm not wasting my time charting Saturday Night Special for some unplugged weird version from the 90s lineup, thanks. I did find Mississippi Queen, which I both can play from memory and have the actual tabs (in a book) for, so I figured maybe I'd make it easy (it's an easy tune on bass). But you can get some idea of where the licensing is using that search. I got no hits on the first dozen bands I wanted to chart, and it will only return search results (they apparently have gone full Google in hating sorted lists, which I despise). So I went with 'M' and scrolled through a bunch of garbage to find Mountain's tune (and the fanboys will mock you for not trying new music if you bitch about the lack of good songs).

I've tested so many shitty games since the Lum the Mad days, but few have been broken in so many fundamental ways as this one. If I bitch about it in Discord, I get a dismissive 'well just do this one undocumented thing you should have known about somehow'. Small wonder to see why they have a tight group of testers that have been working previously with the devs and the rest of the testers seem frustrated. Why the hell did they open up the beta to randoms like us before it was ready to be tested by randoms? Was the expectation that everyone should directly ask the devs how to do the most simple functions in discord in real time (they're not active on the forums at all, and the mods aren't stickying FAQs or solutions or really doing anything I can see).

I'm spending more time backfilling my CDLC folders than testing RS+.

I've played it the one time and haven't felt much of a need to go back. Have they actually added more songs in the last 2-3 weeks?

Yeah but nah. That was an utter trainwreck of a test phase.

I picked up a digitech whammy dt (for half price), as I've been pondering it for a while now. You can load up RSMods which adds autotune support for the whammy dt via MIDI. Basically connect the pedal MIDI to USB and the game will send the pitch to the pedal.

A few downsides. It's a blanket pitch shift, not per-string. Open tunings are basically not supported (individual strings), and you do have to drop the low string for drop tunings (so E drop D can detune to D drop C or w/e). There's a bit of latency added and the more detuning, the sloppier the definition. D Standard is /ok/ and passable for Rocksmith purposes, going to give it a couple weeks to see if it bugs me too much.

It also uses the whammy side of the pedal for cent tuning (like something in E Standard but A430 rather than A440 concert pitch). This is huge for a lot of older recordings that didn't tune the album to concert.

Since it only seems to get squirrely down in the C# Standard range, that's the thin end of the catalog (I'm not /too/ much into modern downtune metal). It's pretty decent (again, for Rocksmith purposes) at Eb standard and those cent tunings, which fills out a ton of my catalog.

So while I'm still slightly on the fence, it's a damned cool setup and just kinda works. When you get prompted to retune, just skip the tuning, the pedal kicks on and you're in the correct tuning for whatever song comes up. Really nice not having to skip around or filter by tuning, and gave me much easier access to hundreds of tunes, if not thousands. Stopping to retune the entire instrument is a pretty big impediment to mixed tuning setlists!

https://www.ubisoft.com/en-ca/game/rocksmith/plus/news-updates/2rN7QW1RC4E4NsipNX1cz7/rocksmith-dev-diary-september-2021

tldr people had issues with the beta, release slips from summer 2021 to ?

Thank god, it needed a lot more work than they seemed to have expected. Which doesn't bode well that they didn't understand very fundamental things about their own game.

You could see with the change in venues from 1 to 2014 that they didn't really understand their audience. Plus was just the worst UI and I told them so in the survey. 2014 wasn't a great interface but it was still better than that thing.

That was the gist of my feedback. I didn't hold back, but I did write about why I was so scathing (I love the game and it's an almost essential part of my life at this point). They are definitely chasing a different audience, and the horrible twitch streamer debacle (they demo'd the game using non-guitar playing twitchtard gamers) show the vastness of that gap. It's Mike Richards/Miyam/Dr Oz hosting levels of disconnect with your audience.

That said, the audio engine is definitely better. Every little bit helps, especially since I put the pitch shifter into my signal chain. A lot hinges on the catalog in general, but I feel the workshop aspect is what will make or break it. I didn't really become the massive fan of Rocksmith until I really started digging into CDLC. I don't keep track, but it wouldn't surprise me if 80% or more of my usual setlists are CDLC. The biggest question is still what will be available in the workshop, since now fans can't just track whatever song they feel like, meaning there will still be massive holes in the library (except now things can be taken OUT of the library as licensing lapses).

My 2014 install isn't going anywhere, but I'm pretty likely to check out the release of RS+, just because I love playing bass using their system.

Detachable Penis - King Missile (https://ignition4.customsforge.com/cdlc/62283)

CDLC is the best.

Hell yes, I'll play that.

Every now and again someone on the RS subreddit asks for bass recommendations. I was thinking this list may be inspiring to some here but also I just want everyone to play more RS! :) Semi-random list of stuff I enjoy playing, mostly tried to stick to 1 per artist:

Cheap Sunglasses - ZZ Top
I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide - ZZ Top
Fairies Wear Boots - Sabbath
Little Child Runnin' Wild - Curtis Mayfield
Aces High - MaidenRemedy - Crowes
Call Me the Breeze - Skynyrd
One Way Out - Allman Bros
Interstate Love Song - STP
Evidence - FNM
Abigail - King Diamond
Great Gig in the Sky - Floyd
Train Kept A'rollin - Aerosmith
The Real Me - The Who
Circumstances - Rush
Roundabout - Yes
Blue Collar Man - Styx
Suck My Kiss - RHCP
Know Your Enemy - RATM
Soul Sacrifice - Santana
Summertime - Janis
Cicatriz ESP - Mars Volta
46 & 2 - Tool
Master of Puppets - Metallica
Move On - No Doubt
Pinnacle to the Pit - Ghost
Santeria - Sublime
Tramp - Otis Redding
Born Under a Bad Sign - Albert King
Carry On My Wayward Son - Kansas

Also I think I need to consult an osteo :( I think I've got osteoarthritis in the last knuckle (close to the tip) of my middle finger, right hand. My main thumper finger. Unable to play bass with my fingers, been doing some picking. This suuuuuuuucks.

According to a recent earnings call, Rocksmith+ is apparently due out this quarter (so sometime before the end of Sept.). (https://twitter.com/TheRiffRepeater/status/1550171660988334081)

I'll likely subscribe for the first year to support the project, but my experience with the beta leaves my less than hopeful. It should be interesting if they can manage to give me a reason to not just load up my massive existing library of awesome music. I think I'm fairly representative of the hardcore RS audience as far as music collection goes, and also a lot of the regulars don't use the default RTC-to-computer setup, so the improved sound engine (it really did sound noticeably better) is not a selling point.

For casuals without massive libraries and actual setups (either digital or analog), it should be a decent option.

Speaking of setups, I forgot to update with my new ABY setup. Wish I had done this years ago! My chain runs bass - whammy dt - darkglass photon, which splits the signal. One side goes to a little practice amp, the other is the RTC to the pc (for note detection in-game, instrument is turned down to 0 in the in-game mixer). Basically I'm using an amp setup for my bass sound but still getting in-game note detection. No latency and decent sound (the DG is nice but the amp is pretty meh).

The Photon has compression in the front stage, which is nice, as well as some basic EQ for tone shaping. When I was using RS for tones, I had a clean, a dirty, and an overdrive preset (you can only have 3 user-defined presets in RS). The Photon has 3 switches, so I set up a clean, dirty, and od. It's about a perfect setup for RS. I talked about the Whammy DT previously, it's just kind of tucked away to do my per-song tuning chores behind the curtain.

Based on the beta, I see no reason to subscribe. It needed a lot of work and was absolutely not an improvement on the RS2014. Take into account the giant library of songs I have on RS2014, and I'll just save that money.

I disagree about it not improving on 2014. The sound engine was vastly improved, with less latency. Detection was far better (too good, actually, which was noted during testing). Tab mode is actually in, though I feel it's still half-baked, it works. Chord charts are a cool addition, half the time I'm watching the RS chart just for changes, not reading the chart.

My problems overall are more about the direction away from the roots of RS1 as kind of a performance thing (the venues and shows w/encores) and towards something that is clearly Not For Me. The focus on RS as a learning tool over a performance tool, foremost. But also the flying emoji bullshit and entire layout of the UI being repulsive and taking a cue from the shitty doomscroll of streaming services that seem designed to hide the things you want to see and promote garbage.

Anyway. As I said, they get a year sub from my, out of goodwill. Where they take that is on them. I have my prepper box ready and waiting, hah (my old pc, never to be connected to the Internet again, and a server backing up my CDLC library).

Heck, I've even begun my project to get links working to the server so I can just drop the links into my dlc folder and mix & match my CDLC, highlight certain artists, etc. After that it's exploring how robust it will obey linking, I plan to try making 'playlist' folders on the server that I can toss links to songs (in their home artist folder), then drop that playlist folder link into /dlc. The end goal is to have no actual CLDC on the pc at all, just the purchased dlc, all the customs will just be dynamically added when I want to change things up. And even that I want to script to add/remove links with a batch file on a taskbar folder before I launch the game. But I, uhh, digress.

Sept. 6th

Song Library (https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/rocksmith/plus/song-library?isSso=true&refreshStatus=noLoginData)

if you want to call it that

I have 3 free months from the beta and I'm not sure I'll bother installing it.

The reason I'm so sure Ubi will shut down the forge despite all dev comments to the contrary is simple. Why would I load up an entirely different app to play that, uhh, smattering of songs (filter by bass charts to live in my world), rather than the Silk Sonic, Mars Volta, and hundreds of other artists I jam on the regular?

One thing I said was going to be telling was Skynyrd. They simply don't have the rights to the early stuff fans want to play, so there is a single shitty 1994 album of versions one guy in Topeka may favor but everyone else has never even heard. Same as the beta. Song selection and availability matters. There are definitely a few good songs in there, but I'm not sure there's enough for a single coherent playlist of 1-2 hours, let alone enough to generate enough playlist material to keep it fresh week after week (I normally play 2-4 sessions a week). That list is going to get stale wicked fast, well before my 3 free months is up.

The screenshots with the flying emoji bullshit (that has replaced any semblance of playing in front of an audience) is just icing on the shit cake. Whoever thought guitarists want to play to a screen of distracting nonsense like that instead of a fucking audience needs to have their heads examined.

To play devil's advocate (don't worry, it's brief): the sound engine, latency, and note detection should all be noticeably improved, as they were in beta. I split my signal to an amp and don't use the ingame sound engine (thus removing all latency), and dgaf about score, so...

What I said about the beta is doubly so in the release based on that song list. Why would I ever pay a sub price for a song list that is clearly inferior even to the vanilla, no-DLC version of 2014?

As for the design itself, it's clearly taken the design ethos of "build it like an app for the millenials" that way too many idiots in charge (or in marketing) think is the way to market to a younger audience.

I got excited because I saw someone mention King Diamond, there are a few tracks off Abigail and a live album...all just AI charts. Feels like they really expect the CDLC community to put in the work for them this time around.

The lack of any fresh updates about changes from the beta, no new screenshots...we've seen this dance before. They were clearly close to release when they did the beta and didn't have a plan for people so strongly disliking it. I WANT to like it, because RS is amazing. I just hope they can somehow No Man Sky their way back to a good game but most indications I got was that the devs don't see a problem with their choices. This is not an update from people with their heads in the game: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/rocksmith/plus/news-updates/jRUcL6HEPsWB07OFwIg5F/rocksmith-dev-diary-july-2022-art-design

I don't know how constrained they are by management/marketing/social media teams, but after the fundamental issues uncovered during the brief beta, this seems like an odd last update before launch. And really shit engagement from the social team. It would've been so trivial to have weekly polls to let fans vote on new songs to track. At least that would feel like they understood that the shit song selection was a problem. They don't.

I agree on first blush it seems like an overall worse lineup than vanilla previous versions. But I also didn't get into RS until I had collected a few years worth of DLC (Maiden, Rush). Even before I got into CDLC, I remember jamming with our old sound guy at his house. He only had vanilla RS14 and I begged him to let me log into my profile to use my DLC, as the crappy vanilla selections made the experience aggressively mediocre at best. The next time I jammed there, we ended up calling a drummer and just printing tabs off the Internet and jamming old-school in the basement. Songs matter.

The biggest problem with the song list still being shit a year later is that it shows where the dev team and/or publisher has their focus - on getting subscription fees with the lowest possible cost for the maximum profit. Once the development of the app is done, the biggest cost is going to be licensing new songs. If they aren't licensing good ones now, they aren't likely to focus too heavily on that in the future.

This launches today. Based on how much I loved the previous Rocksmith games I would have subbed for a least a few months just to support them, but with the song catalog as it is, I can't even justify it. There's about three songs with Bass tracks currently that I'd play.

Ok, I caved and subbed for a month. The song list is shit but I thought that maybe they'd made some improvements in lessons and such to make it a better learning tool. As someone who has only ever learned from previous Rocksmith games and never had any formal training, maybe they've made a more robust learning section that will teach me some new techniques or break me out of bad habits that I don't even realize I'm doing, or things to that effect.

And nope, it's pretty much the same kind of lessons they had before. It's all minute and a half videos followed by a track you can play on that covers all the same ground as the lessons in the previous games. If anything it may actually be worse than the previous games. This game is pretty much trash.

It's what Ubisoft has been putting out a lot lately - a clearly low effort app-like product wrapped around a live service subscription. I 100% expect them to only add a small amount of new material monthly for the cost of the sub, and to offer premium songs for added real money soon after.

It's hot fucking garbage. I play 6-12 hours/wk, every week. Did not subscribe. And I have 3 free months from the beta. Instead, I imported a few new tracks into RS14 and enjoyed me some Andy Gibb's Shadow Dancing (screw you it's a funky bassline and it fits in my newest setlist).

Literally every problem from the beta a year ago is still there. There is no reason to believe that even a year's sub will result in anything but a couple decent new charts, a ton of shit charts, and no fixes/upgrades to any features. Since that's what we have from the past year to judge it by.

That said, the new bass charts are really goddamned cool and I'm mad the game sucks so bad I won't get to enjoy them for at least several years. I want to give them my earth dollars so badly, it's amazing how they've phoned this in so poorly. Could not have less confidence in the dev team other than maybe the sound engine folks (but I split the instrument signal so this is a meaningless portion of the software for me) and the tabs/bass chart folks (though tabs could be much better).

I didn't really start putting in my regular weekly hours until a couple years after RS14 came out, so at the least I can just skip paying for this until they've done /something/.

At the end of the day, all they had to do was include charts for GOOD FUCKING SONGS. A lot of them. All the bitching would've been secondary, "These features all suck but man I still have a great time playing great songs" could've been the consensus. Instead it's "Same beta problems but hey 102 Wiggles songs (and not the popular one, apparently)". Wow.

edited to add: if you're subbed and playing bass Vel, check out the bass charts I mentioned: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/rocksmith/plus/news-updates/37P255QRlxXvNJN09l2asc/rocksmith-dev-diary-may-2022-bass-chord-charts Per a reddit user: "Make sure you enable the tab view when playing ARCHI bass (Automated Rocksmith Chord Interpreter. It's their machine learning tool that creates chord charts for bass and guitar) so you can see the other notes that are suggested to work well for the improv."

I’ll check out the charts when I get a chance. Also as far as free months go, from beta or owning RS 2014, it’s “free” addition months with purchase of a sub as best as I can tell. So those 3 free months come with the purchase of an annual sub or I think you get one free month if you purchase the three month sub. They couldn’t even be bothered to give their fans a free trial period or anything.

Yeah, that's why I'm not subbing. I hope the game survives this early mismanagement.

Holy shit, it got worse. It's been ages since RS14 has been patched, suddenly a new patch that breaks mods drops right after their shit sequel slid out of their abyssal hole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rocksmith/comments/xa49mq/important_update_coming_to_rocksmith_2014/

For now, you can work around by opting into an experimental branch (in the link), but there is a reason I was sounding the bell about this. Looks like keeping my old pc to just use as a Rocksmith machine was well warranted.

This is such a total shit move by Ubi. I take back my hopes of the previous post. Fuck these clowns.

I tried to launch it tonight and it wouldn't work at all. I had to poke around and find the beta code just to get in the game.

If I was reluctant to subscribe to plus before, I am adamant now. Fuck Ubisoft forever unto death. They ain't getting another dime from me.

I am actually downloading 2014 as I write this.  I assume the custom forge stuff still works if set up properly?

For now you'll have to follow the instructions to opt into the old build (in the link above, just need the password for the beta settings panel) just to get RS working in general.

Buy Cherub Rock, as the config for CDLC is based on it. It gets delisted 2023 and the CDLC hack is based on it, but I don't think changing the ID is a big deal for the modders. Between the instructions on the site (which I haven't looked at in years tbh), and their forum/discord (and reddit if you don't mind redditors), it's not a big deal to get going.

I also use RSMods, mostly for the MIDI controlled pitch shift but it also has some great QoL stuff like skipping intro movies and auto-logging into your profile. CFSM (song manager) is also nice to fix old CDLC once you get into it. Be ready for CDLC to be real hit-or-miss. Bad tones, charts, sync, they can be a real mess sometimes. Eminently worth it for the variety, this game lives and dies by the library (see also: RS+ currently sucks due to crap library).

Once you have the old build downloaded, might be worth backing up the directory to be safe. Also, back up your CDLC! It's a weird time for RS in general but I think the community will find ways to keep RS14 alive. Hopefully not as drastic as simple me and my entire old pc dedicated to playing offline and avoiding any further Ubi fuckery.

I actually got the regular install working just fine without the beta fix.  Have to work out the process for the custom forge still.

This all makes me so sad with my cheap electric bass that I got for my kid that she ended up not wanting to use sitting there waiting for me to use the Rocksmith for PS4 she never used and me thinking that I might do that someday to learn to play bass guitar.

It might be due my fresh install, but I just loaded up 2014 and all the custom mod stuff with zero problems.  Works flawlessly.  Even playing the bass very poorly, like me, is very satisfying.  Do it.

The modders got most of it working with the new patch pretty quickly. RSMods (which is essential for me) is still broken.

Khaldun, get RS14 on the next steam sale and start playing.

MeTaLlIcA iS aWeSoMe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDxnOMjqwPQ

RS+ is garbage.

What the actual fuck?  :uhrr:

Is it bad that I know that that version is from the Spawn (the movie) soundtrack?

I still have that abomination of an album around somewhere, I think. We used to listen to it when I was running the loading docks, but we listened to a lot of high bpm garbage back then. Every time I stumble across one of those discs, I toss it in the library's free bin.

The people who did the licensing deals should all be fired. I have problems with the game beyond that but the tracks are laughable. Dollar Store Rocksmith.