should i buy it?

[dunlopdonut]

i never played a guitar ,personally just want enjoy the game and learn some song thats just my goal,
an electric guitar and the real tone cable is all i need?
any suggestions for begginers

[Lextek]

I've owned a nice Jackson DX6 for years and never really tried to play much of anything except for a few notes and riffs from my favorite band. The wife got the first Rocksmith, which was ok and did help me learn an entire song, then she got me the 2014 Rocksmith. I've learned alot of songs and quite a few techniques; not saying it is a perfect teacher, but it did help tremendously. On a side note, avoid cheap guitars they simply dont work well. We've found that a decent guitar around $300 to $500 seems to work well with my two teenagers; we tried a $100 and $200 guitar; big mistake. Hope this helps.

Please note: I owned the Rocksmith games on Playstation 3 before recently getting it for PC.

[905]

Originally posted by yousaf:

i never played a guitar ,personally just want enjoy the game and learn some song thats just my goal,
an electric guitar and the real tone cable is all i need?
any suggestions for begginers

I would say buy it, I am at around 500 hours combined on RS 1 and RS 2014. But I have one word of caution. It makes practice more fun, but it is still practice. At first your fingers won't work right. Also, your fingers will become very sore. Be careful, I wore a hole in my finger and had to take about a week off when I first started using RS.

As long as you don't expect this thing to be gamey for you, you know be easier than really playing guitar. Because in the end, you are really learning to play songs on guitar, there is no shortcut.

[tullaian]

As above. It is a tool to help you learn more than a game so whether or not you get much out of it will come down to what you put into it. For pure beginners it also takes a different approach to say justinguitar.com as RS starts with single notes rather than chords.

I am a total beginner and so far found that you can get about 10% completion on the easier songs and that's about when they start going from single notes to chords at which point it gets too hard as the chords come way to fast for you to play them and the game doesn't really guide you to beginner songs so some of the chords you can run into very quickly are way beyond your ability.

I saw on the justinguitar forum that people were advising not to get RS as a beginner till you are around at least level 5 on his beginner program. That would mean you know at least from a chord point of view D,A,E , Am, Em, Dm G, C, G7, C7, B7, FMaj7, A7, D7, E7 and can play them reasonably quickly. (1 chord change per second).

Quick example, the Chords 101 lesson in Rocksmith is E, Em & E7 so the very first lesson has a chord from justinguitar's level 5 (E7) etc. Similarly you can find depending on the song you pick that it quickly uses techniques you won't know.

I do the drills on the justin site learning the chords and fingering exercises as well as his 'easy' rated songs and then use Rocksmith for fun at the end of the practice time to put some more time in and do some different sort of drills.

I think if you are a total beginner though using just RS and nothing else might get frustrating quickly.

[905]

Originally posted by tullaian:

Quick example, the Chords 101 lesson in Rocksmith is E, Em & E7 so the very first lesson has a chord from justinguitar's level 5 (E7) etc. Similarly you can find depending on the song you pick that it quickly uses techniques you won't know.

I do the drills on the justin site learning the chords and fingering exercises as well as his 'easy' rated songs and then use Rocksmith for fun at the end of the practice time to put some more time in and do some different sort of drills.

I think if you are a total beginner though using just RS and nothing else might get frustrating quickly.

Hi tullaian, are you doing the lead or rythm guitar. Lead should be less chordlike. That is where I have spent the majority of my time so I can't be sure. Blitzkreig Bop has essentially just 5th chords (more rightly interval). That is probably the easiest song for most people to get really good on.

I agree that a beginner should do justin guitar. It is also proably good to go to youtube to see how others teach a song you are working on int rocksmith. They might have tips for chord changes or something.

If chords are getting you down right now, try the simulated bass. That is almost always single notes. You can work on chords outside the game. But playing bass in the game would get you more used to the interface and help with your sense of rythm. On youtube, check out Marty Schwartz and Rob Chapman. They both are fairly entertaining. Rob Chapman has a great video of the scales.

[905]

PS Knocking on Heaven's Door is a really good chord song. I think there are only 4 chords in it.

[tullaian]

I'm doing lead. So yes, it is basically single notes to start with till you get to about 10% difficulty then you start getting chords. It isn't that they get me down just that in RS they come pretty fast especially as still learning them outside the game too. You can slow them down with Riff Repeater which helps learn them.

The issue is more as a total beginner , what chords and sequences you get in a song doesn't have much to do with your skill if you pick a song that is hard. :)

I mostly just do at the moment the chord change drills (justin's 1 min changes exercise) and the chord drills in RS and then mess around with a song or two. I also find as a beginner I get levelled up in RS mid song and then it starts throwing notation at me I don't recognise which is annoying , then you fail the song and go find the lesson that teaches you what you missed.

(i've only had RS for a few days and a guitar for only 2 weeks so extreme beginner comments0.

I'll give Blitzkrieg Bop a go though thanks for the suggestion !

[You Next]

To answer the guy's question: Yes, all you need is the real tone cable and an electric guitar. I wouldn't discourage you from jumping right into RockSmith (never heard of this justin fellow), just keep in mind it may take a while for you to get used to the color-coding RockSmith uses.

If you follow the lessons at a moderate pace and maybe play a few of them a couple times to get the practice tracks down, you should be fine.

The Guitarcade games are good practice also.

[905]

Originally posted by tullaian:

I'm doing lead. So yes, it is basically single notes to start with till you get to about 10% difficulty then you start getting chords. It isn't that they get me down just that in RS they come pretty fast especially as still learning them outside the game too. You can slow them down with Riff Repeater which helps learn them.

The issue is more as a total beginner , what chords and sequences you get in a song doesn't have much to do with your skill if you pick a song that is hard. :)

I mostly just do at the moment the chord change drills (justin's 1 min changes exercise) and the chord drills in RS and then mess around with a song or two. I also find as a beginner I get levelled up in RS mid song and then it starts throwing notation at me I don't recognise which is annoying , then you fail the song and go find the lesson that teaches you what you missed.

(i've only had RS for a few days and a guitar for only 2 weeks so extreme beginner comments0.

I'll give Blitzkrieg Bop a go though thanks for the suggestion !

I was lucky, in that I already knew the basic chords. You are right that chord changes are hard at first and depending on the chord, they are still hard or impossible for me. Generally speaking you will want to stay away from the heavy metal. You might try sorting by difficulty. I don't know how well that actually works.

I just thought of another song that you might find easy. Its called Brand New Kind of Blue. It has a lot of single notes, some double stops (two notes played together) that are a little more challenging and then a bar chord that you use at 4 frets (4, 6, 8 and 9 if I remember right).

I understand how you feel about RS throwing new notes at you. It can be a little startling. I often mess up when new notes are thown at me. On the other hand, sometimes if you don't get enough notes, it is harder to play because there is no rythm to what you are given. Each song is different, but sometimes I've found it easier to play a part of a song on a higher setting. So keep that in mind as you progress through the songs.

You will be amazed at your progress at the 100 hour mark. Actually you will probably find yourself improving a little each day.

[You Next]

One thing that is very, very important: make sure to use the fret-finger Rocksmith tells you. Most of the time, if you do that on low difficulty, once those new notes start popping up, its just a matter of dropping one of your other fingers down and picking the string. This is how veteran guitar players can play crazy stuff without looking at the fretboard.

The ducks game and ninja slide are good for practicing fret-hand position changes.

[Mummelnase]

Originally posted by yousaf:

an electric guitar and the real tone cable is all i need?

Yes, that's basically all.
My wive bought me a Rocktile for xmas 2012, and I used to play it with RS2012, which left me quite frustrated since the level of the songs progressed way too fast (chords etc as stated above).
RS2014, which I bought around June 2014, made HUGE progress in choosing the right level for you, it's way more motivating and t he lessons and mini-games are far better in showing you the 101 of playing.
Since then, I bought my second guitar (some very very cheap used beginners model for 40 bucks) to have one on E standard and one on droppped D, and I'm still entertained by this game, motivated and I'm actually making real progress :-)

Originally posted by yousaf:

any suggestions for begginers

Buy the game. Seriously. And a reasonably good guitar. I'd also recommend to buy RS2012 to get a load of songs, some of the very easy to master, to have a good base in RS2014.
Do the lessons and play the recommended songs and you won't regret you bought this game (and learn to play ;) )

[mikedavies]

My advice would be what have you got to loose and what have you got to gain.

You might find you ain't too motivated to play, your fingers hurt, the songs are too difficult and you have to sell on a cheap guitar.

One the other hand this could be the start of an amazing journey into the world of music which leaves you thiniking why haven't I done this before. We all have to start somewhere and Rocksmith is just as good as anything else. If your journey continues it won't provide all the answers but by that point you will know where you need to go to find them.

[Bobifle]

When I started RS I had one year and a half of guitar lessons with a real teacher, with no previous experience of any instrument (me not the teacher :p ).

This one year helped a lot to deal with RS.

I'm not sure I would have sticked to it without this minimal background, the difficulty would have been overwhelming.

It would be very intersting to get the testimony of someone who successfuly played RS without any previous background.

[Rad]

Originally posted by tullaian:

I am a total beginner and so far found that you can get about 10% completion on the easier songs and that's about when they start going from single notes to chords at which point it gets too hard as the chords come way to fast for you to play

I've been playing for years but I have plenty of problems when sight-reading RS notation in the faster songs. So as someone already said, the way to really learn a song is to get stuck in with Riff Repeater - set the start and end points, slow the song down, set the difficulty where you want it and then play that 2/4/8 bar section until you have got it, then move the start/end along and do the next bit.

For me I just put the difficulty straight up to 100%, because it's much easier for me (I'm playing mostly rhythm), to play the full chords than it is to play the fragmented notes that you get at lower difficulty, plus if I'm trying to learn the final riff, I don't really want the notation to be missing any details. I can then slow the speed down to 85-90%, get my head (and hands) around the riff and then have a go at playing the entire song once I have a reasonable chance of not falling to pieces on the first tricky turnaround.

And I second the choices of beginner songs that people have suggested here (Blitzkrieg Bop is a particularly good one that will let you concentrate on timing as it has a very simple structure).

[garfy]

DO not buy this game, it has horrible lag if you connect it to tv, or amp even with analog cable, it sucks and is highly innacurate

[-RobKorV-]

Originally posted by Peepin' Seer:

One thing that is very, very important: make sure to use the fret-finger Rocksmith tells you.

How does it tell me to use which finger?