A review of Rocksmith 2014 for PC
One of my 2021 New Years resolutions is to play 300 hours of guitar. I have been spending time in Rocksmith, a friend had seen me online, and inquired about my opinion of Rocksmith.
Overall I think Rocksmith 2014 is a useful tool for guitar practice but falls short in many areas and cannot be your sole learning tool.
I took up playing guitar. I am learning from basically nothing. However, I do have some background in music theory from playing in the high school band. I have found my prior music theory knowledge a nice head-start but not useful for guitar technique.
You can become proficient in guitar with 0 music theory. Steve Vai in "Vaideology" states: "If you are not interested in having a basic understanding of the academics of music, then throw this book away and move on..." I think he means this sincerely: It is not necessary, especially at first.
One book I have found especially helpful in my study of guitar is: "Guitar Fretboard Workbook" by Barrett Tagliarino. It is a series of short lessons and exercises for navigating the guitar fretboard. It will also bring you up to speed on some basic music theory: Root notes, scales, chords. I highly recommend this book! I have found the process of constructing chords and scales in exercises from this book a great tool for solidifying things in my memory.
I have a guitar teacher, Forest Bailey. He is really nice and cool, and extremely professional and responsive.
My current practice schedule is:
I do a mixture of using Ultimate Guitar tabs and Rocksmith for practicing these songs.
My current setup is a desktop PC, a Focusrite 2i2 audio interface, a SuperTight guitar tuner, and a Ibanez Ex1700. Originally I had used the Rocksmith Real Tone cable.
I regret the purchase of the Focusrite 2i2. For the stage I am at in guitar, it is overkill and takes up more space than the real tone cable and I cannot use my razer headset with the 2i2. It does eliminate any lag, however. Stick with the Realtone cable!
I think the main draw of Rocksmith is how little commitment it takes to get started playing guitar. You can play without an amp or any additional equipment other than the RealTone cable and a copy of Rocksmith.
I use Rocksmith for two purposes: Gamified guitar karaoke, and practicing scales and timing in "Session Mode" with a nice little virtual band.
In general I think the UI of Rocksmith needs a re-do. This should be a clean and quick interface. Instead the game emulates the UI of a 10 year old fad game nobody cares about anymore.
The UI is sluggish. The intro takes forever, and transitioning between parts of the game is slow. These things could run faster but they just HAVE to pack as many pointless animations into their UI as possible.
A few general thoughts:
The game seriously needs to shut up, get out of my way, and let me practice guitar without all the filler.
Session mode is one of the highlights. The UI is a bit crappy but not unsolvable.
You do not need an amp, or a metronome, or a book of scales. You can drop into Session mode, choose your scale and root, add a metronome, and you are able to play your guitar through your computer. You can even just open another window and use it as a learning environment.
I find it fun to have the AI drummer play along with me, but I find the other instruments annoying. I also think the digital metronome instrument is quite good.
Rocksmith is a poor way to learn a new song, but is a decent way to play along with a song you already kind-of know.
The Rocksmith "playing" interface is broken at a basic level and inferior to other ways of presenting music. Compare the information density of a guitar tab to the Rocksmith playing interface. The Rocksmith playing interface is just not information dense enough.
"Learn a Song" mode is decent. I often find myself practicing very small phrases in a song, smaller than what the "Riff Repeater" offers. In "Learn a Song", I can't read the entire phrase at once. Instead, I have to go into the "Riff repeater" and practice the section. I now have to listen to the beginning of the "section" to read the phrase I actually want to iterate on.
Every step of this process takes longer than it should, which is the theme of the entire game.
Additionally, the "intelligent" difficulty scaling just gets in the way. It prevents me from meaningfully iterating on a song and drops to "baby easy" every time I make a mistake.
However, once I have the hang of a song "Learn a Song" is a nice environment to run through and re-try large sections.
I also enjoy using "Score Attack Mode" to test my mastery of a song. The numbies go up! There are combos and I get a rating at the end!
Overall, I think this is the biggest value the game brings: It has a library of songs that can be purchased cheaply. You can play along to these songs with the guitar part removed, and your guitar swapped in.
You could also do this with the "actual" song WITHOUT Rocksmith, but the mixing isn't as nice.
The technique games are mini-games played with the guitar as a controller built into Rocksmith. They are all terrible.
I love the idea of the technique games. Scored, randomly generated exercises that test and gamify your ability of basic guitar skills? That is an amazing idea! It removes some of the toil around deciding what to practice and how.
Unfortunately the execution is terrible. The introductions take forever, the UIs suck and the theming is annoying and actively harmful to the experience.
I want to practice string skipping. I go to "String Skipping Saloon." I go through the mandatory tuning menu AGAIN. Grating primitive music starts playing. I hit enter. I watch a robot clean a bar for 3 seconds. Then a countdown begins, and I can actually play the game.
I want to practice chords. I choose "Chords of the Dead". A confusing menu appears. I am now in a poorly rendered graveyard with zombies coming at me, on a "House of the Dead" ( but terrible ) style adventure.
All of the games are like this. Several layers of menus and bad theming between you and the content you are actually interested in. Again, every step takes longer than it should.
And even if the theming and interface was good, the exercises are of questionable usefulness.
I just want to do guided exercises. Why do we need all of this ugly, noisy, annoying bullshit?
Just watch youtube videos instead.