Using Rocksmith 2014 Remastered for practice

I feel the same way I purchased this for my PlayStation and the instruction part which is what I was looking for was lacking, I tried a few songs but without doing proper fretting and fingering technique I felt more confused rather than feeling I was progressing. MIght be worth revisting after I am done B2B…

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Hmmm. Maybe it came with the “Remastered” version but if you want to learn proper technique there were videos in a sequence that makes sense and rocksmith also recommends specific tutorial videos for specific songs. Like when a slide comes up in a song it recommends to you to look at the slide tutorial video. Same for Hammer-ons and stuff like that.

That being said: In order to learn the instrument my top choice is B2B anyway and after that comes yousician and rocksmith might be fun but the only unique selling point it has compared to yousician is multiplayer mode. (And different pricing model, not a subscription)

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Perhaps once I am done B2B I will take a second look…

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One other plus for Rocksmith. It’s just plain fun. You can add thousands of CDLC songs easily. And if you’re having fun and playing music you like, you’ll just spend more time with a bass in your hands.

You also end up with little unintended benefits: plenty of songs I like in Drop D or E flat tuning… So Rocksmith helpfully throws a tuner on the screen when you change to a song with new tuning and before you know it you can change tuning in 30 or 35 seconds no problem.

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Thanks for your take on rocksmith, but have you tried yousician?
Because none of the arguments you made is, to me, a unique selling point of rocksmith that yousician does not have. The other way around there are plenty of things I miss in rocksmith that yousician has. The most obvious and glaring difference is that I can actually practice sightreading with actual sheetmusic.

Granted, I am not sure how yousician handles drop tunings but I am confident that it also handles it well.

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I also see this tuning problem with the E-string, it seems that it will track the note, but when the string rings out, it suddenly detects a much lower frequency (or higher? I don’t quite remember). The trick is to pluck the E string again and again while tuning. In any case, I don’t have the feeling that the tuner is very precise, so was thinking if I just add a “real” tuner in between the bass and the computer.

I played Rocksmith with the original cable and had different results with latency: Most of the time, it was just fine, and sometimes it was quite noticable (aka: unplayable). This was usually fixed with a restart of my PC.

Now, I am using the Rocksmith ASIO driver with a Focusrite Scarlett Solo. Here, I never had problems with latency. I think it is a bit better as the cable, but that might just be placebo effect because everyone says that.

There will always be some latency, that is just how sound input with computers works, but it should be somewhere below 50ms with an ASIO interface (a good CPU helps, all the audio stuff and USB stuff basically happens on the CPU)

My gripe with Rocksmith is that there are some songs that have one or two tab errors in them. And one of the DLC songs even has sound-problems, it skips for a moment (More Human Than Human by White Zombie, but could also be possible there is something wrong with my installation.

I tried yousician on my phone, but the recognition on the phone mic was just terrible on my phone. I only just now realised that they also have a desktop app with ASIO support. I guess I will give that a try.

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@juli0r It’s all about why you want to use Yousician or Rocksmith. I’m not looking for a training tool - so the features you find compelling just don’t matter to me. I’m looking for a fun way to play along with great songs which makes me pick up the bass over and over. But if I’m being honest the most compelling argument is control and cost.

For $29 on Amazon, I got Rocksmith remastered with the realtone cable (with no latency issues), and free access to thousands of songs via a still thriving community that is making content. Songs I actually want to play. $29 total forever. Yep, there are some tab errors - and not all user generated CDLC is great - but in general, for just having fun, this works great, it’s cheap, and I have full control: no one can take it away, or charge me more, or alter what songs I can play, etc. The unintended benefits I’ve found from Rocksmith have nothing to do with the software. Its because I’m logging hours with the bass in my hands - period. It’s not because Rocksmith shows me a tuner when I switch to Eb that made me faster at tuning- its because I tune down and back up lots of times - just putting in the time.

With Yousician, if you want to play songs by popular musicians, by all accounts you need the Monthly Premium Plus plan: $29.99 or Yearly Premium Plus: $179.99 ($14.99 per month). In order to push people to the Premium Plus model, Yousician eliminated user generated content a while back. Yousician claims this was to increase overall quality by removing user generated content with errors and they are correct in that - but that didn’t seem to worry them until they decided to have a Premium Plus tier. So it’s definitely a slick system, but it’s pretty expensive and at any time they can change prices, revoke songs from their catalog (or just never add that song I really want to play) or alter the user experience in any way they see fit. For my use case - having fun playing along to great songs - it just doesn’t make sense.

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For me that was the selling point. Being able to do sightreading. There’s also drop D tuning songs. Before the Drop D song is played a tuner comes out and let’s you tune your bass to drop D. Then when you go back to standard tuning the screen comes back on to tune back to EADG tuning. To me to knowing all the notes on fretboard and knowing the cord progression is essential to learning bass. But if doing Tabs is your thing power to you. Just as long as your having fun and progressing.

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@KenKnight I thought Ubisoft was no longer developing content not that it matters I think they have plenty currently but it’s what I heard…

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You’re correct - Ubisoft stopped releasing any new downloadable content (songs) this spring ('21). But you can still download any previous content they’ve made.

The community at CustomsForge is still making new content and there are already >5000 songs in their library. You can also get the tools to make your own content there - although that’s a pretty ambitious undertaking.

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@KenKnight nice never heard of CustomsForge will have to check it out thanks!

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If there were such a function this post Using Rocksmith 2014 Remastered for practice - #28 by Mao should probably set to sticky or something…

It’s important information for bassists checking out rocksmith :slight_smile:

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I’ve been playing it on Xbox for a few years and never noticed the delay issue but I route my sound via optical to speakers. I don’t have the luxury of the CDLC but there are 1500 DLC songs, so it’s not a big deal.

Like others I play through my amp and the amp routes it to the Xbox, so I get to hear how good/bad I am, lol. I saw the comment from 2019 about not being able to remove the recorded bass but all you do is go to options and turn the bass all the way down.

I mainly just play the songs I like and not the mini games. What it has helped me with is just overall playing and getting used to moving around the fret board. It’s fun and some songs will really help with endurance like White Wedding by Billy Idol. Gotta love playing over 1k notes in a song.

Has it taught me to play? Kinda. I have a couple of songs I can play from memory and I have no problems using 4 fingers to fret and alternating my plucking. Can I groove or jam on my own? Heck no, but that’s my own limitation. I just have no idea how to go about that and having it sound okay, lol.

I’m starting B2B to learn how to play and RS has made it much easier so far. I know I’ll hit a wall soon enough but that’s fine.

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Nothing builds finger speed like Punk - Ramones, Clash, Pistols. I love playing The Ramones cover of What a Wonderful World!

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Anything based on 16th note (or high BPM 8th note) chugging, yeah. Punk actually is easier in some ways here because the songs are usually short :slight_smile:

For rock, Muse is tough to beat for endurance challenges. Wolstenholme is a chugging machine.

A lot of post punk and new wave is good for this too.

Working on a couple good chugging workout examples now as partially finished cover songs, in fact. For new wave, I definitely did not do this one in (even close to) one take:

that one’s a workout. I think Berlin originally did it with a synth.

For punk, I did do this one almost all the way through in one take (though I later punched in and fixed a bunch of stuff):

I did kind of nail the SVT-driven sound Social D uses there, pretty happy with that.

Thats another great selling point.
Transcribing is a huge part of learning bass, that I have yet to tackle, and with other benefits to help with technique and practice in the mix, and just keeping a bass around your neck for extended periods of time, the transcription part is another plus.

That said, I have not yet tried either RS or Yousician.
I dont have any trouble with keeping the bass around my neck for extended periods, daily, and even twice or thrice daily.
If I needed motivation, that sounds great.

Even so, I might look to add this, as my other courses wind down, and I look for more content, and especially as I start transcribing, it might be something I look more into.

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Rocksmith is fun. I found it tricky to set up well (for the Steam version). In the end I never really got in to it though.

Still, fun for what it is and there’s tons of songs out there by users.

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I actually saw an ad on YouTube today for Closed Beta Testers for the New Rocksmith.
I don’t plan to try to get in, but I thought it may be of interest to some, that they are working on a new version.

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The new version sounds interesting, I went ahead and signed up for the closed beta. Today was the first day and you can sign up until July 22nd (I think). No cables required, so I’ll bet I could DI through my Motu M2 and still hear my amp. Hopefully it’s that smart, but they say you can just use your PC microphone, so I should work. But the mic wouldn’t be horrible until my dog sounds off, LOL.

Looks like the new version will be a subscription service. Which could be ok if it grows at the pace they make it sound like. Worst case, if it I don’t like it I can cancel it. Depends on the price and what I get out of it.

L8r
Chris

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Oh I like! Looks like a better interface than the old one.

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