Rocksmith

[Trippy]

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.

[Chimpy]

Thanks for the heads up, Trippy.

[Nazrat]

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

[Chimpy]

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

[Sky]

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.

[Chimpy]

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

[Salamok]

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.

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.

[Sky]

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

DEAL 

[Viin]

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

[Sky]

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%

[Ginaz]

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?

[Trippy]

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

[HaemishM]

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

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.

[Trippy]

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

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

[Sky]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Gets]

How is your audio connected to your speakers, Sky?

[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.

[Ginaz]

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

[Sky]

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

[Ginaz]

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.

[Gets]

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.

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€ 

[Chimpy]

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

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

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

[Sky]

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.

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.

[Gets]

I don't really have an audiophile gene that is bothered by 30ms of sound latency, but here's a blog post 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".

[Sky]

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  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 :)

[Gets]

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:



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.

[Gets]

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.

[Sky]

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 :)

[Sky]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Amarr HM]

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.

[Sky]

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.

[Amarr HM]

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