Rocksmith 2014 - Improve your guitar and bass playing

[Neil]

Seems like a fantastic update to this guitar game, anyone else got hold of it?  It's crashed my Xbox twice in the hour or two since I've been playing with it, but I'm sure another patch will soon sort that.  The UI is much improved, and seems far more tailored to your individual needs.  Guitarcade has also had a massive overhaul - Return To Castle Chordead is now not just about playing random chords to whack zombies, instead you're given specific progressions to work on, with new chords unlocking as you get further.  This is already proving very effective in drilling the chord shapes and names into my stupid head.  Plus, you have to beat each level in order to unlock the next one, which is excellent.  It's a Doom-style FPS, and the traditional game-y progression gives you more of a challenge, with - crucially - lots of things to actually work towards. 

DLC from Rocksmith 1 automatically gets imported over, although you have to pay a tenner to import all the original on-disc songs (music licensing fee.)  The new Smashing Pumpkins DLC pack looks great, but it's a tenner, ouch. 

Really do love Rocksmith, and find it a fun and effective way to improve guitar skills.  The algorithms seem better too, this time round, and demand more precision. 

[Bored of Canada]

So the thing I never quite understood was, Rocksmith is more a teaching tool, right? It's not like a party game or something like Guitar Hero?
Sounds really cool if it has actual educational benefit, but I don't have the money for all the stuff, and don't have a guitar in the house, so I'll likely give it a miss. Cool idea though.

[Neil]

Yeah, it's kind of a teaching tool, combined with gaming progressions.  Very fun and useful, and now that they've given the gaming dynamics a boot up the arse, it seems even more useful for learning and progressing your skills.

[Neil]

Argh, it just hung again!  Guitarcade really is so, so much better now.  Brilliantly thought out - I just tried playing the other chording game (StarChords) and it seems to have the exact same progression(s) as Return To Castle Chordead.  Again, this further hammers home the names and shapes, and means chords are bunched together in useful groupings.  Scales have never been so much fun, either.

PC owners who are interested should be aware that there are forums where people have made all kinds of tools for the making and sharing of customs.  In other words, you can make and feed in your own mp3s and guitarpro tabs, and have them used by the Rocksmith system.   

Gonna try Session Mode now - a band-in-a-box where the game will automatically accompany you in a way that suits what you're playing. 

[Neil]

Session Mode is fricking amazing, you guys!  Really, really good.  You can set up your virtual band, using a whole load of different playing styles, including preset kits.  Then it'll play around you, depending on your tempo - so much more fun than soloing over a backing track.  You can get it to throw progressions at you, as well, so it'll change the root note at some point, meaning you have to jump to a different position on the neck. 

The game does keep freezing, which I think is a side effect of the day 1 patch, so I might delete that until a new one comes out.  Can't wait to learn Say It Ain't So by Weezer!  Barely even got stuck into the new songs yet, but the auto-matic tone switching sounds brilliant.  And I can't wait to be able to import all the old songs, to use the new engine - it's definitely better at picking out intonation.  The timing and articulation needs to be more strict now, which is great.

[BeardFaceMan]

God damn you Neil, stop making me excited for this game! I think I may have to buy this game very soon, I just hope my PC is good enough to play it properly. I got terrible latency problems on the xbox with the original game, only way I could play it properly was fucking around with HDMI cables and separate cables for analogue, which I could only play through a pair of headphones so it was way too quiet. I've got my PC hooked up to my stereo so I'm hoping this will be better for me. Has anyone played Rocksmith on the PC before, is latency a problem?

[Neil]

Hehe you're gonna love it! More metal this time around, it seems.  And the good Foo Fighters song edit: one of the two good Foo songs, I forgot about This Is A Call. And they have Rotten Apple by Screaming Females!

100 riffs guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQlC3YE_HTo

Session mode (seriously, amazing! Fuck amp mode.) and one of the class new mini games:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxMK_xMqHLs

I'd imagine HDMI would also be the biggest issue with PC, but looking around it seems there are actually far more variables which can be problematic, I found this guide which should prove helpful http://steamcommunity.com/id/elvedrano/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides&appid=205190

[BeardFaceMan]

Yeah I'm just having a nose around on the steam forums now. That's always been the problem for PC games for me, too much fucking about and things you need to have and things that can go wrong. Urrgh. But if this game is anything like the original on the xbox then it will sound shit and put me off playing. And of course, being able to make your own songs to play in Rocksmith would be fucking ace. Hmm, Decisions, decisions...

[Neil]

Just edited in some vids for you. Can't you plug a wee speaker directly in the back of the Xboax instead of headphones? Have read of people doing that. I dunno if they've reduced lag or not, as it's fine with my plasma and audio setup.

The metal sessions bands have "doom drum kits." You can have all kinds of combos, synth leads and toy pianos and stuff in the Electronic category as well, and totally mix and match. You'd be at this for fecking hours after a smoke. They've absolutely excelled with Session Mode, such a great toy.

[BeardFaceMan]

I gotta have this now. Didn't think anything was gonna drag me away from GTA but you sir have done it.

[BeardFaceMan]

So I ended up getting this for the PC and it's so much better for me. Plays through my stereo amp no problem, sounds ace, and no lag issues. I may now be able to play this game properly at last!

Had a quick dick about and one thing that strikes me is the amount of retuning needed for the songs. Fucking E standard A451? When you have a guitar with a floating bridge it's a fucking nightmare to retune and I don't fancy having to constantly get my allen key out to retune the guitar by half a note every time I want to play a different song, even though it's in E standard like the previous song. Fucking musos, learn to tune your shit! It's very inconsiderate when idiots like me try and play your songs.

[Neil]

Yeah I had a nightmare tuning down half a step for Weezer. Have you found that forum and tried any of the customs yet?

Kinect voice controls might actually be useful here, in terms of not having to pick up a controller all the time. And I love how you can bring up Riff Repeater in the middle of songs, and even lessons, now.

[BeardFaceMan]

I don't mind tuning to E flat as there's a couple of songs on Rocksmith you can play with that tuning. I've got my semi-acoustic permanently tuned to E flat, it's a great tuning. It's when you have to tune inbetween E and E flat that it's a pain, cos it's generally only that one song that uses the tuning, so it's constant fucking about.

I'm loving how much better this sounds than when I used to play it on the xbox. All I need to do now is get over the pain you get after not playing for ages. I went through Thunderkiss '65 twice and Blitzkreig Bop once before my wrist felt like it had been set on fire. Next step now will be looking to see if I can use DLC and custom songs without fucking up my game.

[Neil]

These lighter strings seemed to have made e flat a nightmare to keep in tune, must look into adjusting the bridge.

Have you tried Guitarcade yet? Harmonic Heist is seriously addictive, and good to retreat to until your fingers toughen up again. And they've definitely paid attention to proven memory systems for stuff like Chordead. They're brilliantly done.

I'm really glad you've got the sound issues sorted now, and can enjoy this properly. Tried Session Mode yet?

Edit: Nonstop Play and sorting the songs by tuning should get rid of having to retune for each song.

[BeardFaceMan]

Yeah I was slightly out of sync when I first started but I adjusted the latency option and had it running perfectly, and it sounds great too. I'm so out of practice, my stamina is shit, gonna have to ease my way back into this, if I just go daft on the songs I'll end up hurting myself like I did with the first Rocksmith. So those arcade games may be the way to go to warm up a bit, not tried any of those yet, or the band thing, just had a quick run through a few songs. It seems to me that you level up the songs very slowly compared to the first game. Played Thunderkiss 65 through, hardly any notes showing up for me to play, got 100% accuracy but the song was still only at something like 18% so there were hardly any new notes to play on the next playthrough. I'm pretty sure if you did well playing the song through the first time on the first game you could have the majority, if not all of proper notes and chords revealed by the end of the song.

[Neil]

Go to Riff Repeater at the start of the song, select the whole thing, then set the difficulty to 100%.

No need to level them up anymore!

[BeardFaceMan]

Ooh that's fucking ace! Now if these custom songs end up working I'm gonna be as happy as a guitar playing pig in musical shit.

I wouldn't really mind the retuning at all if it wasn't for the floating bridge. retuning is a piece of piss and can be done in seconds on a regular guitar but the fucking floating bridge makes everything a nightmare, you have to keep fucking about with the allen key, you retune one string and it make the others go out of tune.....urrgh it makes me angry just thinking about it.

[Neil]

Yeah, it took me fucking ages to retune for Weezer so I'm leaving that for now.

Some really good stuff in Tone Designer, was just playing with the pitch and way pedals. Then you can assign them to hot keys as in the first game, and switch on the fly while playing songs and sessions and stuff. Really, really impressed at how great an update this is.

[Neil]

Did you try Guitarcade yet Beardy? I really hope they go ahead with the proposed DLC for it! String-Skip Saloon is working absolute wonders on my string-skipping - muscle memory is really kicking in, and I'm shocked at my ability to keep up with the absolutely manic pace at times. I love how you can even use the custom tones in Guitarcade!

By the way, Uplay has a free song to unlock, and bonus arrangements.

www.theriffrepeater.com is a great site for DLC news and reviews. They also cover BandFuse.

I do miss having you on the leaderboards!

[BeardFaceMan]

Yeah it's always good fun to have friends on the leaderboards, spur you on a bit. Hehe we'll just have to post all our scores here.

I think I'm done with the learning songs for a bit, that's all I've been doing really. There are not that many songs that I'm interested in playing and the majority of the ones I want to play need to be retuned. So I'll be giving the Guitarcade a go next.

Oh and custom songs aren't available for the 2014 edition yet but people are working on how to do it. They need to learn how the songs are made for this new edition first to be able to make custom ones. Not sure about getting DLC for free either. And it looks like when you pay to import all the songs from the first Rocksmith you don't actually import the songs, but download reworked versions of the songs so they work in Rocksmith 2014. But it's still very early days, the game has only just been released so I'm sure some solutions will start popping up soon.

[Neil]

Can't tell you the last time I've sat playing guitar for HOURS like this!

The original songs have been reworked to take advantage of the new techniques and engine, so it's something I'll be doing as soon as I can. Only five have been left out as they couldn't get them re-licensed, and sadly, Sunshine Of Your Love is one of them:

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

The lessons are sooooo much better this time around, especially with the inclusion of the now monstrously powerful riff repeater.

I wish I'd known the Tame Impala song was in an alternate tuning before I bought it, but that site I linked is great for info like that. Hopefully get a new electric for Xmas, as I love playing with alternate tunings, but yeah, more hassle than its worth with a floating bridge.

Techniques like slides and bends are so much better in this version. I LOVE IT.

[Neil]

Session Mode is just flat-out amazing, loving it so much. Really makes you feel like a much better guitarist than you are! Playing around with the Electric Blues band, and ideas are just coming out. Little song fragments are starting to appear. Never had this much fun or success with backing tracks.

This will really improve my improvisation and ability to play lead. Can feel it working already, despite years of being stuck in a rut.

[Neil]

Alright, let's see those high scores!

String-Skip Saloon: 8,824,151
Ducks: 3,780,000
Star Chords: 6,830000
Harmonic Heist: 3,012,000

[Neil]

2,340,100 in Scale Racer!

Eat it. Eat it, ya cunt. :-) I expect you'll clean my clock at the tremolo picking one.

Edit: 5-pack of Iron Maiden songs getting released tomorrow, Beardy...

[BeardFaceMan]

The only guitarcade game I've done so far is Ducks Redux, got a score of 29,911,500. Hehe now you've posted your scores though I'm gonna have to try the other games. I just hope the scoring system is the same across the platforms.

Also, pro tip - don't try and warm up by playing War Ensemble by Slayer at full speed. Fuck me.

Looking forward to some nice DLC as I'm not hugely impressed with the songs this time around, Iron Maiden do nothing for me though sadly. I really miss the songs from the first game, that was a much better selection and there was some great DLC too. I hope they bring out a way for you to get the songs from the first game if you don't already own it.

[Neil]

29 mil? You bast.

Ah right, just realised you probably can't import the first games songs due to the format change, doh. Looked on eBay for a cheap copy? Surely you could grab one for a fiver at some point. Have you tried the import dialogue and the Xbox disc anyway?

[BeardFaceMan]

No, it says to use the import tool I need to own Rocksmith on Steam. I bought the physical copy of the game but never even used the disc for installation, I just entered the code into Steam and downloaded everything through there so having the Xbox disc won't help. So yeah, picking up a cheap copy might be an option. I can't take my DLC that I bought on the 360 with me either. I'm really gonna miss those Pantera songs.

That's what I mean about scoring being the same across platforms, I'll have to see if I can find anything on it. I'm a pretty shit guitarist and haven't played for a while so it doesn't make sense to me that I can score 29 mil while your only get 4.

[kngen]

Never knew something like this existed - would it be any use for someone who's been playing for a long time? Been playing for 20-odd years but my lead playing is pretty rudimentary. This sounds like it might be good for me ...

[mook]

Never knew something like this existed - would it be any use for someone who's been playing for a long time? Been playing for 20-odd years but my lead playing is pretty rudimentary. This sounds like it might be good for me ...

i bought the xbox version* awhile back out of curiosity more than anything else, if you've been playing a while i doubt you'll get much from that version. but my girlfriend is a complete beginner on guitar (been taking group lessons as an evening class for 6 weeks or so) and she finds it helpful. whenever i tried it i could never remember what all the little symbols were meant to be. but that's probably my fault and not the games. i see that it could have been fun/helpful to me nigh on thirty years ago mind.






* the version before this one i should add.

[kngen]

i bought the xbox version* awhile back out of curiosity more than anything else, if you've been playing a while i doubt you'll get much from that version. but my girlfriend is a complete beginner on guitar (been taking group lessons as an evening class for 6 weeks or so) and she finds it helpful. whenever i tried it i could never remember what all the little symbols were meant to be. but that's probably my fault and not the games. i see that it could have been fun/helpful to me nigh on thirty years ago mind.
* the version before this one i should add.

Ta - good to know. The missus has been talking about learning, and I have absolutely no patience in trying to convince her over her howls of anguish that trying to contort her fingers into an F shaping will pay dividends in the end. But if the new one has something that works for me as well, this could be a worthwhile purchase - and the first step on a path to what the world absolutely doesn't need: another husband-and-wife avant-garde doom metal band.