Rocksmith does not use standard notation and is actually fairly confusing to sight-read when coming from reading tab. Yousician starts with basics and actually teaches all of the fundamentals of playing guitar, with tabulature, correct fingerings, chords, etc.
Yeah, what Vesper said. Essentially, Yousician is designed with a primary focus on teaching you to play. Rocksmith helps you with learning, but it’s not really the primary focus. Rocksmith has some starting lessons, but doesn’t do lots to push to along in your skill when you know nothing. Yousician has songs specifically tailored towards teaching you skills. It also teaches you music theory and other useful things. It also has a nice feature that lets you build a song from youtube videos or local music. It’s not perfect at recognizing what you are supposed to play, although you can tweak it. This is really nice for letting you play the music you are really interested in. That said, Rocksmith is fantastic. Play both, but I’d start with Yousician.
This statement is either confusing, or possibly wrong. Rocksmith does standard tablature just fine…? Yes, by default it is upside-down, but you just fix that in the options.
It’s still not the same. Your eyes have to jump around and guesstimate “uh… 18th fret?” rather than it progressing on a line staff with fret numbers. At least I had a lot of trouble with it. I always wished Rocksmith had a “real” tab mode.
I use the AI jam band and tones in Rocksmith. Its even replaced my POD as i can set up guitar and Rocksmith in seconds and i dont have a room with my amp and POD so its shelved. I have a set of studio monitors as my PC speakers. I wish I had the opportunity to use it more. One thing to blame is my own laziness, I have to reach past the acoustic for my electric, and dig out the USB lead so end up picking up the acoustic instead.
I will check out yousician. I still need something to push me past the hopeless amateur stage.
LOL, I don’t play Rocksmith as much anymore for the same reason. I often only get 20-30 minutes/day to play guitar and it’s quicker/easier to pick up the acoustic and start playing instead of having to find my cable, plug the guitar in and wait for Rocksmith to load up.
I leave my old Jackson plugged in to the real cable so I can just pick it up whenever… I have to make most things easy otherwise I don’t get around to it.
I have to keep my stuff put away because I have a 2 year old that won’t leave my guitar stuff alone if it’s out where he can get to it, otherwise I would totally leave a guitar plugged in at all times ready to go.
Yousician starts up fast, and supports recognition via the built-in mic…
I ended up buying a Yamaha PAC012 from a local music store. It was between that and a Squire Bullet or Affinity. My friend owns the music store and gave me a really good deal - $135.That made it cheaper than the Squire Bullet another local store sold. In my friend’s opinion the Yamaha is made better. I no nothing about guitars and the price seemed very good.
Have fun. The Yamaha is a good value for the money.
Okay, that’s fair. I’m okay with being able to read the note highway, so that never bothered me. I’m not exactly a good guitar player either.
Well damn, I lucked out. The soonest Amazon could get Rocksmith to me was on Tuesday. At 8:40PM on a whim I search the Gamestop website for Rocksmith PC and it looks like they have the PC version for $20. I call my local store and they have it. I fly out of the house and make it there before the 9PM closing time. Downloading now.
I just had a lot of fun playing the Ramone’s song that’s included in the game, slowly getting more notes to play. I never played it well, but I did make some progress. I also looked at some of the basic lessons.
One thing I didn’t see that would be helpful is finger positioning for notes / which fingers to use. Does Rocksmith cover that? They have me sliding up the frets, but I never know when I should be using my pointer finger vs. another, or when I should be sliding my hand vs. reaching with another finger.I did the basic sliding lesson, but they didn’t cover that.
No. But to be fair normal tab for guitar doesn’t either. As you get better you will get a feel for it based on what is coming up in the song. If you end up trying Yousician, they have suggested fingers for every note to ease you into it.
Boy, I haven’t played recently apparently because my mind is fuzzy but there is some indication of fingering. Either the notes themselves will have numbers on them (more frequent in chords), or the note highway will have 4 frets highlighted a lighter blue than the surrounding frets - typically, you align your fingers with the highlighted frets (ie., if frets 5-8 are lit, index finger goes on fret 5, pinky on 8).
Do realize that these are guidelines though. Some chords can be done with alternate fingerings, and certain songs may be more playable if you don’t slavishly follow what Rocksmith says. As Vesper hinted, this may be where the jump from a “game” like rocksmith and real lessons would make a difference. I’m firmly in the “game” camp so I’m okay if my style isn’t quite perfect. Most professionals don’t do it perfect either.
I just noticed the highlights on the note highway for the hand position on the fret, so that is helpful.
I think I’ll have to try Yousician or something to learn the basics of playing so I get into good habits.
There is a spike in difficulty, somewhere around the 16-20% mark in the songs I tried where I go from happily playing a handful of notes and getting a high grade to watching 50% of the notes go whipping by me. The game doesn’t seem to automatically slow down when I’m struggling, so it looks like I’ll have to adjust the speed manually when learning a song. It will change speeds automatically in lessons and practicing a riff I think.
There is a contingent of folks that believe dynamic difficult is more of a hindrance to learning than a help. Many will argue that you are better off learning songs at 100% difficulty, but playing sections over and over in the riff repeater at slowly increasing speed until mastered.
As with most of it though, are you playing for fun or to learn? That might sway your decisions. I play for fun, but still tend to run at 100% difficulty. For most songs without crazy solos, I can usually (eventually) hit 80-94% scores, which is ‘good enough’ for basement play. If I actually practiced and used the riff repeater, I could potentially do much better.
I’m playing for fun with the goal of also not sucking. I kinda like the dynamic difficulty because it makes me feel like I’m actually contributing to the song, but maybe when it gets too hard I’ll have to manually slow the time down until I get better at it. I’d rather go slowly and hit a high percentage of notes instead of fast and screw up constantly.
I’ve used the riff repeater to practice some sections of songs.
Is it worth it to buy the digital version on PS4 without the cable? The info online is so convoluted.