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@@Shiroo v1.2 looks good to me. Thanks again! :)

Just tried out the new version. Sync issues I was having seem to be resolved, thanks :). The tone is a lot better as well, but I still got quite a bit of distortion just lightly resting my fingers on the strings. So I tried dropping the amp's gain setting down to 40 (from 100) and the tone balance from "auto" to +1 to boost the overall volume. I'm not sure how it sounds to other people's ears/on different steups, but it's a significant improvement for me. It also looks like the sync adjustments you made threw the sections off a little bit (maybe phrases too, I'm not sure). It seemed like the section changes came maybe a bar or so early compared to the previous version.

I really like the song, but I just haven't had as much time for practicing this week. The one day I had a chance to dig into it was spent mostly in RR getting the mechanics of the ho/po rhythm down. Once you get a feel for it, I find it's so much easier to play than the way the custom is charted. It just doesn't feel nearly as fast and overwhelming for some reason. I think someone mentioned it earlier already, but I feel that the tone is kind of over the top. It's close to the original sound at its core, but there's just way too much distortion going on. I tried tweaking it in tone designer briefly, but I wasn't really able to fix it (presumably because I'm just awful with tone designer). One last thing that I only noticed in RR was that the section spanning the 12th to 19th fret seems a little out of sync at 50% speed. I haven't had a chance to try sections past that in RR unfortunately, so I'm not sure if it's isolated to the one section or not. I did practice the 12-8-12-8-11-11-12 part the same way a couple sections earlier though, and it seemed fine. I'm not sure if it's actually out of sync or if the game is just not great at slowing stuff down that much. It's also not something I notice at all at full speed, so it's probably good enough as is regardless. It did make it tough to practice that section in game though. Anyway, longer post than I was planning on writing. Hopefully I can find enough time and motivation to dig into it again this weekend before the cutoff. My best score attack results so far: http://i.imgur.com/PasfR9e.jpg

This is probably the best I'm going to do for tonight: http://i.imgur.com/cdUaZSk.jpg Getting into that range where I can count missed notes on one hand is always rough for some reason. It's harder to just relax and focus on playing when I'm thinking (maybe obsessing a little :lol:) about improving the score that last bit.

I usually just avoid the issue by only placing sections (not phrases) when I'm working in EOF. It's probably not the right way to go about it, but because I eventually end up using DDC in the toolkit anyway, I just let that figure out the phrases automatically. Not having phrases doesn't seem to prevent anything from working in the game (RR only appears to need need sections to function), so I've been able to just ignore phrases entirely until I run the custom through DDC. Unfortunately, I don't know what the "proper" way of dealing with that warning is either.

I poked at it a bit and wasn't able to get it working (it actually crashes the game for me) or notice anything obviously wrong with the package or eof project. EOF did complain about the count and end phrases, as well has hand position stuff, but those issues don't usually crash the game. I did delete all sections and phrases just to check, but that didn't resolve anything (other than getting rid of eof's warnings about count/end phrases). Something I didn't have a chance to try that you might want to check is saving with different builds of EOF. There could be some weird bug that causes it to export to xml incorrectly in this specific track that either wasn't present in an earlier build, or has been fixed in a more recent one. For reference, I've been using r1428, and I'm pretty sure there have been updates that I just haven't bothered downloading. Oh, and something else just occurred to me (that I should've thought of earlier). You can try generating the psarc with just the bass or rhythm arrangement alone to see if it's something specific to one or the other that's causing the problem. If it is isolated to just one of the arrangements, it might help in tracking down whatever is causing the crash/freeze.

@@avsrick There are three different hacks for PC in the linked thread (2 DLLs and an executable patcher), have you tried both of the DLLs? It's been a while since I've had set it up, but I think I ended up having to use the second DLL (marked as "Updated version ->" under PC alternative 1). If that doesn't fix it, can you try downloading one of the customs from this week's championship here. While it's unlikely that you've stumbled across three different customs that are broken, this would rule it out for sure (since multiple people have been playing these songs without any issues). As far as choppiness goes, it's hard to say what the issue might be. You can try going into options and turning down/off all the graphics options, but there's no guarantee that is the issue. You may also want to check for anything running in the background that's taking up resources while you're playing, such as antivirus, software updates, or backup/cloud sync services. Beyond that, the only thing I can suggest is to make sure your graphics and audio drivers are up to date.

Here's my current progress on Cross-Eyed Mary: http://i.imgur.com/NvczSpG.jpg The sync or rhythm in the very beginning (only the first section or two) feels kind of weird in places, but because I can't really hear the bass in the audio, I can't tell if I'm just imagining it or not. It seems perfect everywhere else in the song though, so it's entirely possible (likely even) that it's all in my head. Overall it's a lot of fun to play and the quality of the custom as a whole is pretty high. The end of the track always seems to sneak up on me too (time flies and all). It does feel like it's a bit on the easy side though. Once you get the handful of fast licks into muscle memory, the rest isn't particularly difficult. That said, I still have trouble consistently stringing it all together :)

I didn't really have anything specific in mind, more just whatever topic you're interested in or feel is missing from the game's stock lessons. If you go to their respective websites (Bass and Guitar), they break their videos up into general topics, and in JustinGuitar's case, more structured lesson plans it looks like. Both I think have a lot of videos that may not translate easily to a rocksmith custom (music theory, improv, general gear discussions), but there's plenty of other material. There's a lot of "here's a cool riff/groove to learn" and finger exercise/scale/arpeggio type stuff if you want to do more one-off type customs. The former may limit you to making customs for either bass or guitar, but the latter should be pretty easy to adapt to either instrument. The youtube channels do have playlists that group the videos by topic as well, but the websites I think do a better job breaking it all up in a way that's easier to parse.

@@DeadlyPower The two big ones that come to mind are Scott's Base Lessons and JustinGuitar, which get recommended a lot when people ask for online lessons.

There are tons of youtube channels that focus on guitar and bass lessons. You could probably get in touch with at least one of them to get tabs and backing tracks to build customs from (if they don't already provide those resources in the video descriptions). Rather than having to sit down and design a curriculum from scratch, you could make a set of customs to augment a specific youtube channel that's already released a bunch of structured lessons. And when I say "you", I mean in the general sense -- whoever might be interested in such a project. I'm not trying to force the idea on @@Laro or @DeadlyPower ;) I'd be really cool if we could make custom lessons (with videos and all that), but I'm not sure anyone's looked into modifying the etudes.psarc file (I assume lessons are all stored in there). It's probably not too different from normal dlc packs, but messing with that may just be outside the scope of things the toolkit devs want to work on. The game may not even be setup to parse additional lessons beyond what it was shipped with, which would explain why there haven't been any official lesson expansions.

My score for Muffin Man http://i.imgur.com/8gORAdz.jpg The bass part is fun to play, but there are definitely some issues. For one, the sync is pretty far off in places. It could just be inaccurate rhythms in the tab too, since the sync is fine elsewhere and I've no idea how the guitar tracks look as far as sync goes. Another issue, maybe more of a personal preference, is that all (or almost all) the variations that follow the main riff should be played from the 4th fret position. Rather than playing the main riff sometimes from 1st fet, sometimes from 2nd, it would make more sense and feel more natural to always play it from the 2nd fret, and then shift to play the riff that varies each repetition. As it is now, it's just really inconsistent and awkward to play. I think most of the difficulty stems from this, otherwise I'd say it's not much harder than last week's intermediate track. Also, the 90 seconds of story time to start every run gets annoying pretty quick :lol: I can skip it in RR obviously, but I'm not sure I have the patience to try improving my results in score attack very much this week.

If you check the steam store page for games, it should list which platforms are supported (see here). Rocksmith won't run on linux, but there are a fair number on steam that will, represented by the SteamOS logo (Kerbal Space Program for example).

@@then3verend Yeah, I figure it should be less stressful with more experience, once hitting 100% isn't a huge deal anymore. For now though, it's still pretty nerve wracking :) And since I was retuning to Eb anyway, I ran though This Will Never End a few times. Left hand isn't too complicated, but man... I can't really play the 16th notes up to speed except in a few places. I'd either need to get comfortable with three finger plucking or learn to use a pick I think, neither of which is likely to happen this week. Also have to admit, not really my genre, so I'm not super motivated to invest a ton of time into it with it being out of my class anyway. http://i.imgur.com/tuvynpq.jpg

This week's intermediate bass track is great. I enjoyed playing it immensely, so thanks @ for charting and suggesting it :) I had more runs than I'd care to admit where I only missed 2 or 3 notes after a 600 note streak. Nerves always seem to get to me once I'm actively trying for 100% for some reason. After getting past any slightly tricky parts without issue, the realization hits me that I've definitely got it this time. And then the adrenaline kicks in, and I slip up :lol: Anyway, my score: http://i.imgur.com/nAturen.jpg

As cool as it'd be, synchronous online play just doesn't seem realistic to me. Beyond just the network latency, you still need to somehow transmit audio to and from the clients. Maybe someday we can have network latency down to sub-10ms for nearly everyone, which you would think would be playable. But then you account for the fact that the clients need to compress and encode their audio and stream it up to a server (or other clients in a p2p setup) somewhere, which traditionally involves a buffer in the hundreds of millisecond to a couple seconds range. There are also various audio and video delays on a hardware or OS level that may not match for all clients and will also contribute to the total latency. Unfortunately, real-time, online jam sessions probably just aren't feasible. What I think would be doable and still add a cool social aspect to the game would be asynchronous collaboration. I'm sure everyone has seen the youtube covers of several people playing different parts of a song, and then compiling and mixing them. A future feature of rocksmith could help facilitate that type of play. I could imagine it as a sort of expansion of session mode, where you can program or import a drum and/or keyboard track, setup tempo/time signature, chord progression, etc, and then share that template online with your friends. Everyone plays their part, uploads it, and then you can mix the various tracks together and publish it somewhere. Another feature I'd really like to see is an expansion of its lessons to actual music theory. Teach people how to read what you might find on sheet or in a book. Cover counting rhythms out, notes on the fretboard, chords and progressions, modern song structures, etc. Give people the tools they'd need to understand stuff outside of the framework of the game if they want. Along with that, a more modular/customizable set of exercises where you can practice scales/arpeggios/whatever in various keys would be really nice. They could maybe even combine a few into a sort of personalized etude. Or even better, build these exercises around songs in the game, sourcing the key, chord progression, some complex rhythms from the song itself. There's a lot of untapped potential in rocksmith as a teaching tool that I hope they take advantage of in the next version.

You can try turning the gain down on the cable in the windows sound settings, or (probably better) run through the in-game calibration routine, which would do the same thing and make sure the game can still recognize notes. The signal coming into rocksmith might just be too loud causing it to sound bad when the tones are applied. If it's only happening on some customs but not all, and not with official songs, just turning your volume down on the guitar itself may be enough. If after turning the cable down, you have a hard time hearing yourself over the music, you can adjust the level of the game audio vs your own playing from the mixer in game. While in a song, the mixer is right in the escape menu, but I don't remember where exactly it is if you're at the menu or in song selection.

If I had to guess, changing the note blocks to letters is just not possible. Even if someone knows how to replace the textures or models used, I doubt the game tracks what the actual note value is when it renders the blocks. This would almost certainly need to be a new feature added by the developers in the next version (fingers crossed). There definitely are custom inlays people have made though. This site has the templates to create custom inlays, including some with notes on them, as well as tutorials on how to generate the dlc package and install it. The tutorial thread here looks to have an alternate method as well as a bunch of custom inlays.

Published Kuchibashi ni Cherry to ignition. No changes since the last update (v1.6). I guess that's my first official release on CF. Killer Tune was farther along than I'd remembered. Last time I'd worked on it, I had already finished laying down the vocal and bass tracks, and about 20% of the guitar. So I just sat down and finished the guitar part this week. Everything is still very much WIP though. Download link is under the yellow headline in the first post, but here it is again for convenience. Bass is Eb standard. Guitar is E Standard with capo on the 1st fret. A quick run through the bass part told me the tab needs some serious work as far as optimizing playing position at the very least. I also still need to break it all down to make sure the tab is reasonably accurate and the sync isn't off anywhere. But technically, it's playable. If anyone wants to check it out, I could use tone suggestions. For now, I just left the default tone from the toolkit. I'm thinking I may use the tone from Give Up the Funk as a starting point for bass. For guitar though, the tab I used just called the tones Crunch and Distortion, which is pretty generic. So I'm not really sure what official tone might come close. Not having a guitar to at least test with is kind of a pain :lol:

@@albatross213 Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. It's nice to have another set of eyes to keep my second guessing in check. Unless you know someone who'd be willing to give the rhythm track a once over, I think I may just push it up to ignition for better visibility. I can't blame people who wander into this thread for not being super interested in testing a pretty obscure song by rocksmith standards :) I can't take credit for transcribing the original tab that's linked in the first post, so if its bass tab is accurate and my sync is good, the guitar part be reasonably close. I expect the issues are mostly position/chord fingerings, which I can just fix if anyone points them out. As for the Tokyo Jihen track, it's been ages since I've worked on it, but I think I finished the beatmap and at least started, if not finished, the bass and vocal arrangements. I'll need to go over everything again to refresh my memory though. It's not too far out from a playable state if memory serves, but I need to find time to work on it.

@@ultimoteimoso There are a couple different versions of the DLL in the linked guide. Have you tried the alternatives? It's been a while, but I seem to recall the first one I tried not working for me. In my case I think the game just crashed outright, but it's worth a shot. If that doesn't work, I'd try grabbing some different customs too. Look for one with a decent number of downloads and no comments complaining about it not working properly. The game hanging right after tuning kind of sounds like what happens when a custom doesn't have tones setup properly, but it could be some other issue too.

Ahhhh... That would be so much easier to play. The jump from G 6th to E 6th is a spot that I still only manage to play cleanly a little more than half the time for some reason. I was confused since the custom has it as E 6th in that first bar of the verse 1. Is that how the actual song is played, or should it be D 8th? I don't have the game loaded right now, and I can't really tell from the youtube video which octave it's supposed to be. The way you've written the part under the second verse heading (3rd and 4th lines in your image) are definitely an octave higher than the audio though :)

@frippchen Hm, I'm not sure which A# you're referring to then. The only time I changed playing A# on D8 is to play it on G3 instead, and that's only at the beginning of sections 6 and 13. Anything I didn't write down stays as is in the original. Did I copy something down wrong maybe?

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying it should be an octave higher? Or a different note maybe? Because D8 and G3 are definitely the same note and same octave. A# an octave higher than D8 would be on G15 or D20.

@@albatross213 Awesome, thanks! :)