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Rocksmith 2014 - Improve your guitar and bass playing

Started by Neil, October 31, 2013, 09:46:47 PM

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Paaaaul

I got all that Xbox credit through yesterday so I bought the Smashing Pumpkins pack, and Cherub Rock, and have had loads of fun with them.
All the Melon Collie songs are in E flat, so I've been playing a lot of them, as well as Say It Ain't So and Red Fang's Wires.
A slight warning though: the Cherub Rock tone sounds really off to my ears. It doesn't ruin it, but it does sound quite disarming to start with.

I can definitely see that I'm improving. Phrases that I struggled with last week are coming pretty naturally now, and any new tracks I'm playing, I'm usually hitting between 30% and 50% mastery on my first run through, with a few even in the 70s, compared to the 5% to 20% marks I was hitting last week.

Neil

It really does help, doesn't it?

A Radiohead five-pack for the next DLC, will try and pick that up at some point. I guess. Wouldn't mind getting the Black Keys pack at some point, too. Dunno if they're any good, but they're meant to be easy and a lot of fun to play.

buntyman

The new one's £25 on Amazon on their Black Friday offers at the moment. Was tempted but barely played the old one so can't really justify it.

radarange

#63
I'm crossing my fingers that the DLC (and hopefully RS1 and the song importer) will be part of the Steam xmas sale coming up. Having said that I'm in no rush as there are a lot of songs to work through on RS2 which should keep me busy for a good while at the level I'm at.

Neil

1,273,441 on Blitzkrieg Bop Master. I'm suspended again until I give Microsoft more money, so I hope the scores upload when I can get back on.

My missions have been shit for ages now, that's the 3rd or 4th time have had to beat BB, and I already had it over a million, so it wasn't easy. The info I get for beating each mission is the same now, too : you can arrange by tunings, check the chord book etc. Not a big deal, but would have preferred them to put some guitar trivia in or something so you continue to get unique rewards.

Unlocked the jukebox as gear, not gonna check the list again, but should be nearly done with the unlocks now.

Neil

Apparently the original is going for 7.50 on Amazon at the minute. Well worth it just so you can import the original songs for a tenner, plus you get different Guitarcade games and the campaign to play.

Neil

All (edit: legacy) Rocksmith DLC is currently 50% off...on Steam. Tempted to pick up the RS 1 download while it's cheap, see if I can get it running on my laptop, so I can play all the custom songs. Can't imagine it's playable on a laptop screen though, and spent enough bloody money as is. Might hold off and hope for a console DLC Xmas sale, before getting the Black Keys and Radiohead packs. Are BK any good? The on-disc songs are quite fun to play.  Really want Santana too.

Paaaaul

Don't really know Black Keys. I've heard loads of their songs but they don't seem to make any kind of impression on my brain.
Not that bothered about Radiohead either. I went off them circa OK Computer.
I would probably be happiest with more Pixies songs in the DLC.

Neil

Quote from: Paaaaul on November 30, 2013, 01:05:08 AM
Not that bothered about Radiohead either. I went off them circa OK Computer.
I would probably be happiest with more Pixies songs in the DLC.

Ha ditto to all that, but a girl I was dating forced me to listen to recent Radiohead, and I was pleasantly surprised. Black Keys DLC is meant to be easy and really fun to play, so will likely get it at some point. Oh if only Yo La Tengo, or Liz Phair.

Neil

Ooh, back online and the bastard is still showing my Blitzkrieg Bop high score, but doesn't seem to want to upload it. That'd put me in 8th place or thereabouts, grr.

35 times I've played that song now, no way I'd have eve played that song so much in this space of time without Rocksmith and score attack. Working on properly muting the low E when playing the D5 power chord now, always been a bit sloppy and lazy with that.

I really recommend using the precision tuner once a day or so, too. The standard tuner can be a bit imprecise.

Edit: I keep forgetting to say that the lead arrangement for American Woman is great, the tones sound ace when you're playing sustained notes up above the 12th fret. The rhythm arrangement was always a little bit shit on RS1, and I've not played it enough on RS2014 to say if it's been recharted and improved upon, but yeah, the lead arrangement is all kinds of satisfying.

Edit: ooh, Black Magic by Magic Wands is nice. Very easy to play, if anyone still needs the cheevo for mastering a song, or is working on the one for doing ten of the fuckers.

Really back into Ballroom Blitz, too, man that's fun. Those five-fret stretches give your wee finger a good workout. We should post up some of our favourite tones for session mode and stuff - I'm gonna try the Balleoom Blitz one as it sounded great with some open chords there. Other than that I've been using the high gain Cherub Rock one, fuzz tone from I Want Some More and the distortion from Breed. 25 or 6 to 4 has some nice, odd tones in it iirc.

(Remember that you can also use different tones in the Guitarcade games.)

Lee Van Cleef

I'm debating whether to get this to get back into learning bass. Just can't decide whether to get it for PC or Xbox, been sorely temped to sell my Xbox lately and the lag thing with the HDMI is a bit off putting.

daffs

I've gone and bought this for myself as a treat. I almost never buy games (other than GTA5/various FIFA iterations I have about 4 games), so I'm hoping this is going to be as good as it looks. Having looked at a couple of youtube videos, the ability to jam with a computer band on the fly is virtually unfathomable to me, it's fucking witchcraft. Might also see about getting the first version because I prefer that tracklist.

Neil

You're gonna love Session Mode, it's brilliant. You can turn off the bands desire to keep tempo by turning tempo slew off, sometimes sounds better. And as mentioned, go to Tone Designer, create or load tones, then you can apply them to the right analogue stick, and hit it whenever you want a different guitar sound. Have fun!

daffs

Is it possible to play a diverse range of genres with SM? All I can find on youtube is metal players and blues players (which are admittedly at least bearable compared to the metal players). I want to play lo-fi ambient post-rock damnit!

kngen

alright - just ordered the fucker. If I can't beat some 16-year-old shredder at Mastodon on my second go, it's going oot the fucking windae!

Neil

Quote from: daffs on December 01, 2013, 06:19:33 PM
Is it possible to play a diverse range of genres with SM? All I can find on youtube is metal players and blues players (which are admittedly at least bearable compared to the metal players). I want to play lo-fi ambient post-rock damnit!

You can have very diverse setting for jamming in session mode, certainly. Fucking kazoos and all sorts. The on-disc and DLC songs do a decent job at trying to cover a lot of bases. Could do with more classic rock, and non-shit indie. But aye, you learn a lot from playing stuff you don't really like, anyway.

kngen

Ok, this is fucking brilliant - spent the first hour learning the bits from Spirit of Radio and The Trooper than I never bothered to 'IRL' - and then have had an extended wankathon in Session Mode. Earthless better watch their backs, cos my avant-garde sludge band (70bpm, hard driven bass, grand piano, 'progressive') shits all over them (or at least would be equally dull to me if it wasn't me playing it)!

Neil

It's a bit good, innit? I fancy that DLC 5-pack of songs byThe Who now, and all.

Paaaaul

I'm not a big Who fan, but 4 out of 5 of those would be my own choices, so I may be tempted when I've got some spare Xbox cash.

I just had a go at Blitzkrieg Bop(lead) for the first time since I allowed my hands to heal and shot up from 23% to 86%. I'll start having a go at your high scores soon, Neil ;)

daffs

how expensive is the DLC? Just so I know what to expect. I want a lot of it.

Neil

Quote from: Paaaaul on December 03, 2013, 07:06:46 PM
I just had a go at Blitzkrieg Bop(lead) for the first time since I allowed my hands to heal and shot up from 23% to 86%. I'll start having a go at your high scores soon, Neil ;)

Ha, good! See you on there, will be glad of some competition. How were you getting free Xbox points btw? Surveys and that?

daffs, usually about a tenner for a five-pack.

Paaaaul

Quote from: Neil on December 03, 2013, 07:30:19 PM
Ha, good! See you on there, will be glad of some competition. How were you getting free Xbox points btw? Surveys and that?
Free trials of Now TV and Wuaki TV on Xbox. One came with a £10 voucher, the other with a £15 voucher.

edit to add: I spent my last £6.00 on Dark Souls and 'Here Comes Your Man' yesterday.

Quote from: daffs on December 03, 2013, 07:19:47 PM
how expensive is the DLC? Just so I know what to expect. I want a lot of it.

£2.39 for most individual songs, £1.99 for a few others.
£6.39 for packs of three songs, and £9.59 for five song packs.
There are a few larger packs (originally for the first Rocksmith game) for £19.99 that have something like thirteen or fourteen songs in each.

Also, if you get a copy of the original Rocksmith, the licence to move the old songs into the new game is something like £6.70, which will get you an extra 50-odd songs, so is well worth doing.

Paaaaul

Neil, your Blitzkrieg Bop -Easy- score is in tatters!

Medium next...

Neil

Ha, master and hard is where I focus my efforts. Are you on lead path? Not really done rhythm. Just you wait I've finished being bored shitless by I'm A Celeb, sir.

Had forgotten how good the distorted tone in White Wedding Part 1 is!

Paaaaul

Quote from: Neil on December 03, 2013, 08:34:25 PM
Ha, master and hard is where I focus my efforts. Are you on lead path? Not really done rhythm. Just you wait I've finished being bored shitless by I'm A Celeb, sir.

Had forgotten how good the distorted tone in White Wedding Part 1 is!

I took your Medium score down first attempt (lead path) but I'm struggling to get anywhere near your Hard score.
I'm pretty sure the rhythm arrangement of this is exactly the same.

I'm playing a mixture of rhythm and lead now so that I'm not just continually strumming C-A-G-E chords for four minutes.

Neil

As I recall, the rhythm uses barre chords rather than power chords, which is the proper way to play it.

We should do Satch Boogie. Beardy and I got Cliffs Of Dover on RS1 for a laugh, but it's also fun to try and play really, really fucking hard songs, and you'll learn more when you're competing like this.

Paaaaul

Just tried Satch Boogie on Easy and had to bail after 90 seconds. I think I de-learned everything I knew. [old man]That shit's not music[/old man] - it's closer to high speed secretarial typing than any music in my collection.  With other songs on Rocksmith I can learn the finger movements by learning the song at the same time, and the movements come naturally with the melody, but with something like Satch Boogie where the notes come seemingly randomly, it's gonna take me a lot longer to get into. I'll give it a real try tomorrow, but I won't be first in line when the Steve Vai DLC is available.

BeardFaceMan

So I ended up getting Rocksmith 1 for the PC, got it for 15 quid in the Steam sale. I have to say I'm loving these custom songs. Piss of piss getting them to work and there's some great ones out there. Along with custom songs and DLC I've now got around 200 songs to play with. Looks like they're pretty close to getting customs to work on RS2014 too.

God, Cliffs of Dover was fucking insane. Not been playing this as much as I'd like so I'm still making a mess of my fingertips building up my callouses again but as soon as my little digit ends are rock hard I'll give Satch Boogie a go.

Do you know what I've found helpful lately? Playing in the dark, by which I mean just having the light from the monitor or TV and having the room light off. I can't really see what I'm doing so it forces me to play by feel a lot more which is something I've never really done but really want to. Helps a lot with a game like this too so you can concentrate on the tab or sheet music or whatever without having to keep looking where you're putting you're fretting hand. Nothing worse than following a song, looking down to see where your hands are and looking up and losing your place in the tab. Only really good for songs I know how to play though, I need to see what I'm doing to learn a song, what with me being shit and everything.

Neil

Reclaimed easy and medium on Blitzkrieg Bop, and pushed my Hard score to just over a million! Yaaassss. In 17th place on that now.

That's great you're having fun with it again Beardy. I'm also working a lot more on not looking at the fretboard, something I've always wanted to do. Makes sight-reading a lot easier, obviously, and it's incredibly gratifying to be able to play stuff the first time you see it, or just to be able to play it well at all.

Neil

Fucking love this game so much.

My brew was in today, so I went a bit mental on DLC. Behind Blue Eyes is wild amounts of fun to play, really works your string-skipping and arpeggios in parts, and you get to sing Bill Hicks' "hooligans" over the top. One of my all time fave bits.

Got Battle Without Honour And Humanity, too, ie the Kill Bill song. Should be fun.

Really need to work on mastering more songs, as I tend to jump around a lot instead of working the hard, satisfying bits in Riff Repeater.