Decided that I wanted to learn to play guitar... bought this new game called Rocksmith that teaches you how.. Think of it a bit like guitar hero, but with a real guitar.
I got it for my Birthday this year and loved it at first, but found the difficulty ramps up too quickly. The game itself is really fun and I was surprised at how quickly I was improving, but I "hit the wall" as soon as I was expected to perform full on chords, hammer-ons, etc. I discovered that simply restarting my career again really helped as it gave me an opportunity to perfect the basics, so to speak. My problems could stem from the fact I have fat fingers and suck at playing guitar, but I am going to go ahead and blame the game.
Great tool for learning the actual mechanics of playing. Been using it for about 8 months or so, and I'm perfecting some difficult songs in it. The only issue I'm having is that I'm not actually remembering any of the songs I'm playing.
Thinking about getting a guitar and giving the new version of Rocksmith 2014 a shot. Curious how the first one worked out for new guitar players.
Also what do people think about this guitar? I'll be honest I don't want to spend a bunch of money on a guitar if the hobby doesn't stick. Basically it needs to sound not terrible and all the pieces should stay on.
Thinking about getting a guitar and giving the new version of Rocksmith 2014 a shot. Curious how the first one worked out for new guitar players.
Also what do people think about this guitar? I'll be honest I don't want to spend a bunch of money on a guitar if the hobby doesn't stick. Basically it needs to sound not terrible and all the pieces should stay on.
Curious about this game too... thinking about it.
Anyone know if there is a similar one for keyboards as well.
Thinking about getting a guitar and giving the new version of Rocksmith 2014 a shot. Curious how the first one worked out for new guitar players.
Also what do people think about this guitar? I'll be honest I don't want to spend a bunch of money on a guitar if the hobby doesn't stick. Basically it needs to sound not terrible and all the pieces should stay on.
I have both Rocksmiths.
The downsides of learning through rocksmith:
1) You don't learn anything about theory.
2) You don't memorize your songs....well unless you make an effort to.
That being said, for working on technique the games are fantastic. You are forced to practice techniques you might not otherwise practice. You are forced to play at full speed.
The new Rocksmith is more orientated towards learning to play guitar. They've added finger positioning. The only issue I have with the new game is that many of the songs require funny non-standard tunnings. This could be specially troubling on a cheaper guitar, that will be more difficult to tune.
As far as the guitar you've suggested goes, it's not a bad buy for beginners. It's entry level, and after a while you will find it is holding your back. However, the re-sale value on that guitar is descent for the price. Worst case scenario, you can sell it in a year for $125-150 and get most of your investment back. Just make sure you keep the body in prestine condition.
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I was one of the rare people who could "play" the guitar (i.e. I'm terrible), but still loved guitar hero/rock band. Many asked why you'd play a guitar game when you could just learn to play yourself. The answer to me has always been incredibly obvious: learning to play the guitar takes hard work and dedication while the games are just pure fun.
Perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I found my opinion didn't change after I picked up Rocksmith. It just isn't all that much fun. That being said, I really, really like it.
It's practice, and it's kinda hard, but it works. I found for the first time in years I was actually sitting down and working at something until I got it perfect. As somebody who isn't 100% serious about learning the guitar, my issue is always that I don't try very hard. This game actually got a lot more out of me than I expected.
There were complaints about latency, but truthfully I never noticed. I could play just as easy looking at the guitar as I could looking at the screen (assuming I knew what was coming of course).
2014 looks super cool, but I just have such a wild backlog of games right now that I'll wait until it's heavily discounted.
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I got this for Christmas and I've been trying to learn how to play for a number of years and motivation and frustration have run hand in hand to sabotage me in not getting there. I've found in the 3.5 weeks I've found the game when I've taken the time to play the frustration still comes out but now instead of getting discouraged like I would in the past I've gotten that "I'm going to get this" attitude and I'm quite happy with the game so far
I've played for 11 years, am a part time music teacher and recommend not getting it. There are programs like guitarpro that are vastly superior to rocksmith, my biggest problem with rocksmith is it presents the music in the least logical way possible trying to imitate guitar hero and in effect fails hard as a teacher of guitar.
The problem is all music is written in sheet music or, more commonly for guitar, in tablature. Rocksmith doesn't follow either and makes simple things vastly more difficult than they should be. If you want to play a videogame it's kind of cool, if you want to learn guitar get guitarpro and download some tabs because you can actually see the song structure and patterns in a logical manner. Rocksmith is simply a bad teacher. You won't get the fancy graphics with guitarpro (or any similar program) but you actually learn how music works and you'll remember how to play the songs infinitely easier due to the logical, symmetric and geometric patterns of tablature as opposed to the ridiculously fast and hard to follow prompts in Rocksmith. The brain is incredibly good at remembering patterns and structure and Rocksmith just throws all of that out the window.
Last edited by AcGold; 01-19-2014 at 10:53 PM.
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I've played for 11 years, am a part time music teacher and recommend not getting it. There are programs like guitarpro that are vastly superior to rocksmith, my biggest problem with rocksmith is it presents the music in the least logical way possible trying to imitate guitar hero and in effect fails hard as a teacher of guitar.
The problem is all music is written in sheet music or, more commonly for guitar, in tablature. Rocksmith doesn't follow either and makes simple things vastly more difficult than they should be. If you want to play a videogame it's kind of cool, if you want to learn guitar get guitarpro and download some tabs because you can actually see the song structure and patterns in a logical manner. Rocksmith is simply a bad teacher. You won't get the fancy graphics with guitarpro (or any similar program) but you actually learn how music works and you'll remember how to play the songs infinitely easier due to the logical, symmetric and geometric patterns of tablature as opposed to the ridiculously fast and hard to follow prompts in Rocksmith. The brain is incredibly good at remembering patterns and structure and Rocksmith just throws all of that out the window.
While I do like Rocksmith, I can't help but agree here. The picking part in Radiohead's High and Dry is a good example. Not overly difficult, but I found after doing it for about 20 straight minutes, I wasn't really retaining anything. I think had I been looking off a tab or something it would have "clicked" a lot sooner.
The problem is all music is written in sheet music or, more commonly for guitar, in tablature. Rocksmith doesn't follow either and makes simple things vastly more difficult than they should be.
GuitarPro with the proper backing tracks that Rocksmith has would be money. GuitarPro is (usually) a very good and quick way to learn a song (or, if you're too lazy to download/buy the program, Songsterr.com has tabs in the same manner as GP), but the TOOTTLE TOOT BEEP BEPP POP sound effects are awful.
It sounds like you are memorizing how to play a song note for note, without understanding at all how the song comes together. Knowing the theory behind a song opens it up for you to play it in your own style.
While I do like Rocksmith, I can't help but agree here. The picking part in Radiohead's High and Dry is a good example. Not overly difficult, but I found after doing it for about 20 straight minutes, I wasn't really retaining anything. I think had I been looking off a tab or something it would have "clicked" a lot sooner.
Yeah I find Rocksmith creates a disconnect between "hearing" what you're playing and "seeing" what your playing if that makes sense. When plugged in I find I'm trying to keep up with what my eyes are seeing on the screen, rather than a hearing a connection between my hands and ears.
I find QOSTA Go with the Flow to be much harder playing with Rocksmith than just playing along with the CD, and that's a pretty basic 3 chord riff really.
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I use Rocksmith as what it is - a videogame. It's basically guitar/bass karaoke to me. If there's a song I like but I'm too lazy to actually learn it, I'll kick off Rocksmith and give it a whirl for fun.
As a teaching tool, I wouldn't enjoy it because it's just too slow. So much loading and so many segments where you can't repeat something without waiting for the song to finish, etc. You also have to play exactly as the game prescribes. If you miss a note or miss a beat you might not be able to progress. This is in staunch opposition to real music which is often played with a spirit of improvisation and because of this, the music lacks a personal touch.
It's good replacement for the abomination that is Guitar Hero though. I haven't tried two-player mode (with guitar and bass). I think that would be fun. When I first started playing bass in a band, I tried to use Rocksmith to learn songs but that was a total fail because of how much longer it took to play the game, to navigate the menus, etc. It was much, much faster to simply be reading a tab, learning a song by ear, watching tutorials on Youtube, or using Guitar Pro. Those encourage retention and understanding of song progression. With Rocksmith, your brain stores the music in a different place and it becomes more like muscle memory without the music.
This sounds negative but if you are a new player, this isn't a bad place to start because there are a lot of good tutorials and fundamental exercises and good songs in this game. It needs to be supplemented by other sources like I mentioned or even a real-life teacher (I have too much ADD for real teachers).
Rocksmith
