Rocksmith 2014 - Improve your guitar and bass playing

[Neil]

RS 2014 is astounding. Worth the price for Sesseion Mode alone!  Many, many hours to be spent in there, playing with the different kits. You can zoom out the fretboard diagram, and see whichever scale you're playing for the whole length of the neck, and it'll helpfully highlight the current chord tones. And the AI band adjusts itself to your playing on fly. Do you play to backing tracks? Aye, well fuck 'em. I've been more creative, and learnt more, in the past few days, than I have in years.

The games are brilliant. There's tons of songs to learn, and weekly DLC. You will play your guitar more than you have in years.

There's local multiplayer, so buy another cable and you and the missus can play a bass or second guitar in, and play together.

BUY IT! (I recommend Amazon for such purchases. Even Asdas has it though, if you can't wait.)

Here's you: "here, I'll shag you in a minute, just ONE more go of Scale Racer first."

[kngen]

Here's you: "here, I'll shag you in a minute, just ONE more go of Scale Racer first."

Which is a marked improvement on: "Here, I'll shag you in a minute .... Zzzzzzzzz ... '

[Neil]

Haha.

Rocksmith 2014 really is a compulsory companion for any guitarist. mook, it improves on the original ten-fold.

One note, if you're Xboax/PS3 or PC into telly, then you need the audio running on its own channel to the stereo, as the HDMI will cause lag. Easily done.

Oh, and the fun you'll have with the amp modelling! Loads of authentic song tones to be used and edited and saved. A shit-ton of effects to add. The modelling really is great.

[Neil]

Ducks Redux: 44,471,200

Worth signing into rocksmith.com with your Uplay account, and signing up for the 60 day challenge. Only way to get comprehensive stats, for now.

[BeardFaceMan]

I was thinking we should post our scores here, make our own leaderboard. And we could do our own challenge of the week too. Like we use Say It Ain't So on hard mode and we have a week to get our best score, we could take it turns to come up with the challenge.

[BeardFaceMan]

Some scores for you, some OK, some shit.

String Skip Salon - 2,508,161
Hurtlin' Hurdles - 1,107,000
Scale Racer - 2,568,440

And of course the more you play the higher you score gets as you do little challenges to increase your multiplier so hopefully these will improve soon.

[Neil]

Yeah I spent hours last night drinking cider and doing Guitarcade missions. Kept giving me Ninja SlideN, good fingers work out. Im up for weekly challenges btw.

Scale Racer - 3,505,704
Harmonic Heist - 3,796,800
Hurdles - 1,140,000
Ninja Slide N - 4,700,000
String skip saloon - 8,824,151

Been back on the original all day, need to finish the stuff there. Feel sooo much more comfortable playing lead now, session mode has been a godsend.

Edit: Star Chords now at 12,420,000

[BeardFaceMan]

Christ, I nearly sliced the tips of my fingers off playing Ninja Slide, all my hard skin is gone! Building that back up is gonna be painful.

Scale Racer - 4,970,800
Hurtlin' Hurdles - 2,912,000
String Skip Saloon - 3,356,157

[Paaaaul]

I've just got this.
I had a dozen guitar lessons over twenty years ago, so I'll see how much I can remember

I'll put my marker down here: Star Chords  - 60,000

[Paaaaul]

OK, I'm whizzing along now. This is really good fun.

I've got to 44.3% on La Sera's Love That's Gone, but can't find any other easy songs to try so I'm hammering that one at the moment. Any recommendations for a n00b?

[BeardFaceMan]

I dunno, the more I play this game, the less impressed I am, mainly cos of the songs. I think the choice of songs is pretty awful, there are hardly any songs I want to play and the ones I do are in a different tuning than E standard, so that's a pain. Having trouble finding a cheap copy of the first game on the PC (it's 30 fucking quid on Steam) so I can import the songs so I'm trying to keep a look out for that. Hopefully people will work out how to make custom songs soon.

The mini-games are generally better than in the first game but I don't like this level up system. You can be pretty shit at the game but still get a good score just by playing it a lot and getting a big multiplyer. Also by increasing your multiplyer all the time it's hard to gauge if you're getting better at a game and if your guitar skills are improving because your score will improve over time by just playing it, never mind how far you get in the game or how much better you string bending gets. So that's a bit crap.

Speaking of things that are a bit crap, non-stop mode. This was executed much better in the first game, where you played to a crowd, you played in clubs and arenas, you had a set-list which you rehearsed and needed to get a certain score on to be able to play the songs at a gig (great idea there, I think), playing encores when you did well etc. What do you have in the new game? Select an amount of time to play for and then play songs. And that's it. As basic as it can be, a real step back I think. It's nowhere near as much fun for me now to play songs I don't like/know.

I don't like the "easy, medium, hard" system for getting scores on songs, the leveling system in the first game was much better. If I select 'easy' then even if I play the song perfect I'm not gonna be playing all the notes by the end of the song. But if medium and hard are a bit difficult you're stuck in the middle. The first game was more a more flexible system so the song stayed at your skill level. If you played the song crap the difficulty went down, you played well and it went up. I'm not as fussed on the new static system, it keeps you tied at a skill level which is a bit limiting.

The riff repeater is a much more powerful and useful tool now, and session mode is pretty cool but I've never really liked playing lead, I like rhythm guitar so playing endless scales doesn't interest me that much. Maybe I'll get into it more if I play it more. Bah, so disappointed.

OK, I'm whizzing along now. This is really good fun.

I've got to 44.3% on La Sera's Love That's Gone, but can't find any other easy songs to try so I'm hammering that one at the moment. Any recommendations for a n00b?

Knocking On Heaven's Door is a good beginners song, it's just light strumming using 4 basic open chords.

[Paaaaul]

Knocking On Heaven's Door is a good beginners song, it's just light strumming using 4 basic open chords.

Thanks, will give that a go later.

I dunno, the more I play this game, the less impressed I am, mainly cos of the songs. I think the choice of songs is pretty awful, there are hardly any songs I want to play and the ones I do are in a different tuning than E standard, so that's a pain. Having trouble finding a cheap copy of the first game on the PC (it's 30 fucking quid on Steam) so I can import the songs so I'm trying to keep a look out for that. Hopefully people will work out how to make custom songs soon.

I made the mistake of looking at the tracklist of the first game last night, and I have to agree with you. I'm hunting down an Xbox copy now - and it seems a much better value purchase (even with the licence transfer fee) than buying the DLC stuff.

[radarange]

Can anyone with experience with this game help me with a few questions I have?

1. When I tune the guitar the final (thinnest) e string is always a pain and very hard to tune, I get it on the line but the little circle won't go all around so I usually end up leaving it and the rest of the game identifies the string fine. I've setup all my sound settings according to the guide (DVD quality, etc) but it still struggles with that final string. I haven't changed these strings for ages so perhaps I need new ones. My regular tuner works fine with them though.

2. When tuning (or when playing in isolation without a backing track) I can hear a hiss noise in the background when I hit a note, the hiss stops immediately when I mute the strings and isn't noticeable when I'm playing along with a song but I'm wondering if this hiss noise is normal and perhaps the cause of the tuning issues. It's not hugely distracting but it's definitely noticeable when I was expecting a clean sound when tuning or playing scales.

3. As someone used to tab and chord diagrams, the display for this appears backwards. The neck notes and chord box displays appear as if you're looking through the back of the guitar neck. I found the option to invert this display in the options, but since it wasn't the default I was wondering if most people play it the standard way without inverting the display. I find it easier to read the notes/chords when it's inverted but I'm worried this might be a crutch and stop me from learning correctly.

Apart from these relatively minor issues I love the game so far. It's definitely got me to dust off the guitar and made practising fun (even scales!). Time flies when you're playing it and I can't remember the last time I had the old hurty fingertips thing from playing too much.

[small_world]

2. When tuning (or when playing in isolation without a backing track) I can hear a hiss noise in the background when I hit a note, the hiss stops immediately when I mute the strings and isn't noticeable when I'm playing along with a song but I'm wondering if this hiss noise is normal and perhaps the cause of the tuning issues. It's not hugely distracting but it's definitely noticeable when I was expecting a clean sound when tuning or playing scales.

Sounds like an earth problem.
Professional recording equipment is often earthed in a way to minimise this.
It can be a bit distracting if you're playing along to stuff and if you were recording things, you may want to try to find a way to minimise it. But for this, it won't cause yo any issues other than being a mild distraction.
Does it get worse when you use an overdrive effect?

Can I ask, I'm an ok guitarer.. https://soundcloud.com/torslanda[nb]I would benefit from some recording/producing lessons though[/nb]
Would I benefit from this, or would I be better off spending my time writing songs and recording my own stuff?
I currently have very little time to play, so try to ensure any time is spend productively, with something to show at the end. But I still like to muck about and do some solo improvisation.
Would this be worth it just to buy to hammer for 20mins on an evening every now and again?

I downloaded a ripped PC copy, but I'm yet to try it.
Has anyone done this?

[Neil]

OK, I'm whizzing along now. This is really good fun.

I've got to 44.3% on La Sera's Love That's Gone, but can't find any other easy songs to try so I'm hammering that one at the moment. Any recommendations for a n00b?

Blitzkrieg Bop is the easiest on on there. Plus, weirdly, switching your path to lead gets you the power-chord arrangements for songs like that. I've really enjoyed switching to the lead path. Even though a lot of the songs aren't to my taste, you can learn a lot from them anyway.

Pour Some Sugar On Me is easy too.

small_world, yes it's worth it just for session mode.

[radarange]

Does it get worse when you use an overdrive effect?

It seems constant and unaffected by anything else and I can't even hear it at all when effects like overdrive are used. I might just be nitpicking but it definitely has that recorded-on-an-answering-machine hiss in the background when playing without effects/backing songs.

[Paaaaul]

Blitzkrieg Bop is the easiest on on there. Plus, weirdly, switching your path to lead gets you the power-chord arrangements for songs like that. I've really enjoyed switching to the lead path. Even though a lot of the songs aren't to my taste, you can learn a lot from them anyway.

Pour Some Sugar On Me is easy too.

Thanks Neil. Blitzkreig Bop was the first song I tried because I knew the chords, but it's a bit brutal at the moment for someone with delicate fingers like me. I'm sure I'll be up to it in a couple of days when I've toughened up.
Will give the Leps a spin tonight.

[Paaaaul]

Pour Some Sugar On Me is easy too.

Damn right. I'm a sore-handed talentless fuck, and I hit a 117 note streak on my first run, and I'm up to 38% on my second playthrough.

[Paaaaul]

I had my first stab at Score Attack today (Knockin' On Heaven's Door, on Easy) and went straight onto the Leaderboard at #17. I'm pretty much a guitar god after 3 days, I reckon.

[mook]

...sorted it...

[Neil]

Enjoying it, mook?

Blitzkrieg Bop is soooo much fun to play. Good job I enjoy it, as the missions keep pushing me to beat my Master Score Attack!  Gonna have to start playing it with all down-strokes.

[mook]

Enjoying it, mook?


.

somethings up with the version i "bought",  i have to play the note a fraction of a second earlier than the timeline suggests for it to register as on time, which makes it a pain in the hole. i only grabbed it for the missus so she could practice with a laptop in another room, rather than using the xbox which is currently strictly for gtaV.

[Neil]

Should be fixable with a slider in the visual options.

[radarange]

1. When I tune the guitar the final (thinnest) e string is always a pain and very hard to tune, I get it on the line but the little circle won't go all around so I usually end up leaving it and the rest of the game identifies the string fine. I've setup all my sound settings according to the guide (DVD quality, etc) but it still struggles with that final string. I haven't changed these strings for ages so perhaps I need new ones. My regular tuner works fine with them though.

2. When tuning (or when playing in isolation without a backing track) I can hear a hiss noise in the background when I hit a note, the hiss stops immediately when I mute the strings and isn't noticeable when I'm playing along with a song but I'm wondering if this hiss noise is normal and perhaps the cause of the tuning issues. It's not hugely distracting but it's definitely noticeable when I was expecting a clean sound when tuning or playing scales.

I found the solution to both of these problems in case other PC users are having the same issues. I found some forum posts which mentioned that Rocksmith automatically forces the microphone recording level on the USB cable to 17% when it starts up. Sure enough I checked and mine was set at 17% even though I'd changed it to 100%. I'm not sure if this is a bug in the PC version or if they do this for a reason but it turns out that this was the cause and my volume level was just too low. This explains why the tuner was so hard to use and the hissing noise.

I alt-tabbed out of the game, set the volume to 100% and then recalibrated/retuned. Now the tuner works perfectly on all strings and the sound is clean, no hiss! I imagine the rest of the game will work better now as I was also having issues with some notes/chords not getting recognised.

[Neil]

This weeks DLC is a fucking Green Day 3-pack. I'm not even gonna have electric tomorrow so I should be glad they've saved me money, but god damn. I will happily play the sort of song I'm not interested in on-disc, as they can be fun, and it's all learning, but I wish they'd whack out something amazing like Liz Phair, Big Star or Yo La Tengo.

BandFuse gets released tomorrow, too, will be interested to see the reviews for that.

[Paaaaul]

That Green Day track on the disc is fucking hideous. I'm happy playing stuff I don't particularly like if it's improving my techniques, but that track's staying with a play count of one.
I would be surprised if the DLC gets any more niche than Smashing Pumpkins. The more interesting stuff will be on the game discs 'cos they're not having to gamble so much on licensing those tracks.

[Neil]

Yeah. I was happy with the choice of Pumpkins songs (less happy at not finding a Cherub Rock voucher in my copy of the game), and wouldn't mind buying the Alice In Chains pack, and some other stuff. And yes, the sad reality is that the DLC is always going to be fairly unadveturous, so all you can do is hope for decent classic rock songs and the like.

Perhaps the further releases of Japanese DLC will turn up some decent songs, too, but it's not like they're gonna have Ghost or whoever. Shonen Knife, maybe.

[BeardFaceMan]

Yeah the DLC so far has been as crap and uninspiring as the song selection for the game itself. And not only did the first game have a better selection of songs but it had some pretty great DLC too. I really miss my Pantera DLC song pack. God I hope they manage to work out how to make customs for RS2014 soon.

[Neil]

I'm glad all my old DLC transferred over. Couldn't do without The Cure pack, My Sharona, Surrender and Ballroom Blitz. Did you get any Paaaaul? Saw you in the shop last week.

The others I've grabbed are: American Woman, Blister In The Sun, Cliffs Of Dover (hehehe), Elephant, 25 or 6 to 4, Free Bird, Give Up The Funk, Here Comes Your Man, The Man Who Sold The World, No Rain, Space Oddity, Super Freak, What's Going On, White Wedding and the Clash pack. Would love to get some more. God I wish I could get Black Mountain and Blonde Redhead and stuff. Let me know when the customs start coming out, Beardy.

Also, does anyone play the bass arrangements? The Rocksmith blokes reckon they're a lot of the most fun arrangements. I started on the bass journey on RS1, but really need to put every spare minute into trying to improve guitar.

[Paaaaul]

I've only bought Freebird so far.
I've done a couple of promo trials on the Xbox recently which will net me £25 in free credit in the Xbox store, so I'll probably hold off on DLC until I've got that through.
Smashing Pumpkins pack (& Cherub Rock) and the Classic Rock pack are probably top of my shopping list.

I've not tried the bass path. I feel I'm getting enough doing rhythm so far.
The last couple of days, I've been largely playing the Guitarcade games. I've pushed most of my scores from the thousands into the millions which proves that I'm either (a)getting better or (b) playing the games too much.