toblix

Rocksmith

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The Most Important Question: does it have Smoke on the Water? Because I see no reason to learn how to play guitar if it does not involve playing that sweet, sweet riff.

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You have convinced me to pick this up and I am stoked! As a self taught guy with 15 years experience playing I found the first version a little too hard and laggy. FYI I will be talking the 360 version

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The Most Important Question: does it have Smoke on the Water? Because I see no reason to learn how to play guitar if it does not involve playing that sweet, sweet riff.

 

Can't tell if you're kidding, but if you want to pay $2.99, it's DLC for the first game. DLC from Rocksmith transfers to Rocksmith 2014, so it's been in there since before launch.

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Excellent. So long as Smoke on the Water is available, that's what's important.

 

(I was not joking, that is literally the reason I would learn to play guitar. It was one of the early songs in Guitar Hero 1 for a reason. I would be all 'I got this video game that teaches me how to play guitar' and the first thing several people I know would ask to hear is Smoke on the Water.)

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So I know no one cares, but I am less than a week from hitting 100 hours played in Rocksmith 2014. Add that to the 90-ish in the original, and I'm creeping up on 200 hours of playing this stuff. Like the 72 hour thing that I was proud of back in September, it feels odd to be proud of this, but fuck it, I now consider myself a guitar player. I noodle around when I'm lying in bed, I look up whatever I want to play, I've started trying to write my own stuff, I spent a third of my tax refund on a Gretsch (and I did end up buying that bass back around Christmas as well) and I'm practicing pretty much whenever I have a free second. Somehow, on top of that, I am still coming back to Rocksmith almost daily for that extra practice, if only because it's nice to hear the rest of a band playing along with me. I have probably put at least this much time into the Rock Band franchise over the years, and learned some basic drumming techniques (that I would be continuing with to this day if it weren't for the fact that I moved to a place with a baby upstairs), but this actually means something beyond that. Before Rocksmith, I was a lapsed guitar player who was competent in high school, gave it up around the start of university, and hadn't played in 8 years. Now I am actually a guitarist, and I don't know if I would have had the willpower to stick to it if it hadn't been for this game. I'm practicing far more now, and have become a far better player than back when I was a teen who just thought it was cool to play guitar and wanted to be cool.

 

I realize I've spent a lot of time on this forum evangelizing this game to the void since picking it up, but I'm gonna make one last try here: EVERYONE WHO HAS THOUGHT ABOUT LEARNING AN INSTRUMENT SOMEWHAT SERIOUSLY SHOULD TRY THIS. It is actually a video game that has, without hyperbole, changed my life.

 

Welp, back to occasionally commenting on things when I feel witty.

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I'm constantly on the fence with this one, I do like my finger tips. Also, i'm learning one instrument at the moment, and I'm saving for a piano, so I'm not sure adding guitar would help. Pretty sweet that you are a rad guitar player now muffy. Post us some sick youtubes.

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Hmm, maybe it's time to buy my wife Rocksmith 2014. She kinda stalled out on the first one, but the new way that chord teaching works might do the trick.

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I'm constantly on the fence with this one, I do like my finger tips. Also, i'm learning one instrument at the moment, and I'm saving for a piano, so I'm not sure adding guitar would help. Pretty sweet that you are a rad guitar player now muffy. Post us some sick youtubes.

Just play guitar with thimbles on all your fingers and you'll be fine.

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I picked this up to try out based on a bunch of peoples' recommendations. I really like it, but my biggest gripe is that it does basically nothing to teach you how to properly finger what you're playing. Especially once the early lessons throw multiple strings at you, it just leaves you on your own to stumble though fingering the phrases it's asking you to play. Unless I'm missing something.

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e: oh new page. Re: fingering.

It's sort of implicit in the scales exercise which is really hard if you don't do the one finger per fret thing.

Besides that for the chords at least I believe there's numbers indicating which finger to use on which string.

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I bought Rocksmith 2014 back in November, having never played a guitar in my life. I absolutely love it! I also bought the 2011 version for extra songs. RS2014 was bundled with a righty guitar that I played just to see if it was something I was interested in keeping up. Since I am still going strong, I bought a left 2013 Gibson Les Paul LPJ, which is roughly a gazillion times better and easier for me to play.

 

I also found out about justinguitar.com which has some really good lessons on the site and on YouTube... donations are welcome but voluntary. I have been going through the beginner courses, and picked up a few chords and how to play them well so far. Highly recommended for anyone learning with Rocksmith like I  am :)

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e: oh new page. Re: fingering.

It's sort of implicit in the scales exercise which is really hard if you don't do the one finger per fret thing.

Besides that for the chords at least I believe there's numbers indicating which finger to use on which string.

 

Where is that scales exercise? That's basically what I was hoping it'd start with. Instead it seems to want to jump into stuff like slides, which get way too advanced immediately given that I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing with my fingers to play basic notes. Or I can jump into songs I guess, but I'd kind of like to learn more basics before doing that.

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The Most Important Question: does it have Smoke on the Water? Because I see no reason to learn how to play guitar if it does not involve playing that sweet, sweet riff.

It's actuallly very easy... I just learned it from watching an advert on one of the guitar tutorials that I watch on youtube.

 

-You're on the middle two strings

- open string / 3rd fret / 5th fret

- open / 3 / 6 /5 

- open / 3/ 5 / 3/ open

 

Use the same finger for both strings

:)

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Where is that scales exercise? That's basically what I was hoping it'd start with.

It's called Scale Warriors I believe. It's under games.

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Sean brought Rocksmith up on the podcast yesterday, so I remembered that I was kind of interested in this game. I used to play guitar pretty frequently a few years ago, but then grad school and other things made me put it aside for a while. Rocksmith seems like a good enough way to get back into it.

 

I was wondering if anyone had thoughts on the best way to get the game at the moment. I was originally looking to just buy the cable on its own and then order it on Steam, but the cable is $30 on its own, and the game on Steam is still $60. Amazon sells the game and cable for $40, which seems alright, but it's on a disc, so that's unfortunate (my PC doesn't have an optical drive, but I could probably borrow a USB DVD drive from somewhere). Am I missing a smarter way to get a hold of the game?

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I bought it on steam when it was like $15 on a sale, then when the second came out I already had the cable and just shelled out the $60 for it. I'd say that, with the summer sale apparently happening next week, you should see if it gets cheap enough there and grab the cable on its own. If it doesn't, then go for that amazon route you mentioned. Either way, get the fucker. It's so good.

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I ended up grabbing a copy of the first game and the cable as it was going for as much as the cable was by itself. I'm really enjoying it so far. I played guitar pretty regularly about 5 years or so ago, but have been steadily falling off since. This seems like a good semi-structured way to get back into it now that I'm not 17 and in a shitty punk band anymore. 

 

About the 2014 edition, how much better is it? I'm thinking I'll grab it if it goes on a Steam sale, but I'm just wondering how much it would be worth since I'm just getting started with the original.

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I find the 2014 edition to be a gigantic upgrade as a learning tool, as well as enjoying many quality of life upgrades such as being able to decide that I want to practice a particular riff on the fly. The menus and inflexibility of the original drove me batty after a while (though I still loved it).

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SO MUCH BETTER. And for a cheap licensing fee you can import the whole RS1 tracklist (except for the tracks that feature Eric Clapton for some reason. He must not have re-upped his signature). I loved the first game so, so much (as should be obvious from this thread), but the sequel is such a crazy step up that I can't imagine ever going back.

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So I was having a random conversation with someone in the Idle Thumbs IRC channel today... and I ended up buying my first guitar. I bought an Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus with Rocksmith 2014 and they should be here in a few days. It'll be my first time with a guitar so I'm interested in seeing how Rocksmith's pedagogy plays out for complete beginners. It sounds like everyone in this thread was able to learn with it, though!

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Hello, I am the random person from the IRC channel

 

I'll get back on the Rocksmith horse as well and try to post some updates on the regular; maybe I will make a few videos and whatnot as well. It will be an adventure!

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So I was having a random conversation with someone in the Idle Thumbs IRC channel today... and I ended up buying my first guitar. I bought an Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus with Rocksmith 2014 and they should be here in a few days. It'll be my first time with a guitar so I'm interested in seeing how Rocksmith's pedagogy plays out for complete beginners. It sounds like everyone in this thread was able to learn with it, though!

I'm curious to see how it goes for you, since I did almost exactly the same thing. I actually found it problematic right off the bat and had to fall back to some other online tutorials, and haven't really been back to it since.

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I received my guitar from Sweetwater! I've attached a picture of it at the bottom of this post. I've practiced on Rocksmith for 8-10 hours so far, and while it is a wonderful tool I'm definitely finding the supplemental material of JustinGuitar.com to be just as helpful. I've been struggling with the Chords 102 lesson in Rocksmith (switching from one chord to another) for the past three or so hours, but I imagine that's pretty common for newcomers. It's not a frustrating struggle though, as I can see myself markedly improving.

 

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