1ndy

Am still on Mavericks and have been resisting the upgrade as it seems it causes problems with the RSTK. I found that much CDLC wasn't working when available as _m.psarc file, so am simply downloading the _p.psarc files & converting which provides a better success rate, but still a few still cause RS to freeze and few more get to the start of the highway from which I can escape back to other CDLC. For me having a non-functional RSTK would pretty much mean a freeze on new content working. The problems seem to increase as the volume of CDLC increases. From time to time I have moved the downloaded CDLC back up the file system and somewhat started afresh if I feel that the failure rate is getting too high, or I particularly want to play a CLDC that has failed consistently. It adds a bit of a surprise with regards to the content that works. The first load of RS is a bit more stable than a load, then escaping back to the start screen (so not completely exiting), but the 2nd start may provide access to much more CDLC than the 1st load. In short, I think Yosemite adds another variable to a bit of a wobbly stack on the CDLC side. For the time being I'm considering Yosemite a bit of the bleeding edge.

(nods head in approving manner...focus is good...that we can each have our own optimal level of focus makes me happy). I attempt to play every instrument like a bass, though it can be nice to understand how other instruments are played, ultimately they are a distraction.

Thanks for the info. I was considering doing the upgrade, but if it breaks the toolkit, then it kinda limits the amount of CDLC usable because many tracks don't have a version for OSX, or if a version for OSX is provided it doesn't tend to work for me, so I convert CDLC from PC to OSX. Anyone else finding that much of the OSX CDLC doesn't work until you've converted it yourself?

Thanks for the response. Those videos were great, though they look to be using the keyboard as instrument rather than as midi controller, but I suspect this why you suggest the 2nd computer workaround. That guy playing along to the session accompaniment is the best video I've seen of someone smoothly using that aspect of RS....which when I try to use it with bass or guitar, it seems very disjointed and produces a less than pleasurable musical output. The Fishman Tripleplay looks to be Witchcraft. It looks to let the user's imagination be the limit to their musical creativity. I suppose it encourages mastery of a single instrument, but seems to have much potential for abuse. eg now even a guitarist can make all those bad noises that previously were limited to users of synthesizers. A solution to Problem #1 might pop-up at some stage, which may allow other aspects of using a midi controller to be explored. If I get anywhere I'll post some updates.

I happened to wonder what happens if I attempted to use a midi controller instead of a guitar-like instrument. (think left of hand of piano as playing similar tones as bass) Previously I had updated the my settings to allow the use of an Apogee Jam rather than the Realtone cable and had much success with this method via Aggregate Device Settings on OSX...This is a simple preference update, no kludge. (though you need to understand the frequency range you are operating in or suddenly out of range notes are not detected). However when I look at the Audio Devices window in Audio Midi Setup, I can't see my midi controller (as an Audio Device), though it is present in the Midi Devices window. This seems to mean that I can't add the midi controller to a new Aggregate (Audio) Device. I'll call this Problem #1. If I could get past problem #1, I think it would expose Problem #2, being... I suspect there is a gap between what the midi controller outputs and the input expected. Typically to use the midi controller, software is required to determine which frequency the midi controller is currently mimicking and that RS2014 does not fulfil this role. (or perhaps if you specified the frequency range tightly/accurately enough the low value corresponds to C if your midi controller's lowest note is C)....enhancement request for Ubisoft perhaps? I'm not sure of how easily we transpose tab to keyboard, seems like it could be confusing to translate tab back to note and there's a limitation regarding the number of keys the midi controller has, particularly if you're using a microkey device with much fewer keys than normal keyboard. Perhaps I should email Neil Young requesting an update to Crime in the City for the Rocksmith generation. "No vocal, no song, no audio device, no midi output processing, possibly missing keys". Anyone else tried the midi path, or similar lunacy and care to share their insights?

I saw this video from New Scientist demo-ing the impact of "gamification" on learning the piano. Seems to have many ideas/features that are perhaps familiar to people using this forum. I wonder how they encode whichever music notation is supported for use?

I happened to tune-up and play a little using a USB webcam as the interface last week. It was a pretty bad experience (distortion/echo), but noted when messing around in the audio settings of my macbook, that I could have selected the inbuilt webcam as the interface. The next step would have been to play a video, or audio of the requisite tuning to see if RS would consider the instrument as tuned in a scenario where I didn't have cable/electric instrument to pass tune-up with. The settings required also appear haunted/unreliable, in that sometimes they work, sometimes they don't for no apparent reason, but if you really just have to play that ukelele, or horn...you might even be better off just playing along to a playthrough video.

I have no such distortion with the mic (ECM-719) I got years ago for bootlegging, but it plugs into the socket on my other interface, rather than being a single unit that almost everyone has.

Last night I managed to get a webcam set-up as the Real Tone cable. I did this for 2 reasons. 1. Many instruments are entirely acoustic and would be just as cool to play in RS and think people who have instruments that are not already officially available in RS should be telling Ubisoft, they want to play & pay to play too. 2. I wanted to see if could get multiplayer mode to run, to display a second highway and I needed to pass the tuning screen on a 2nd instrument. The steps that I took were based on what I did to get an Apogee Jam interface set-up as the Real Tone Cable on my Macbook. (I already had the Jam before I got RS). No mucking around on RS side either. The Jam is shipped with 2 cables, 1 is for OSX/Macbook, the 2nd is for the IPad, IPad users usally being one of the more exciting demographics for software sales. Perhaps a good addition to the platforms that RS is made available upon?...but not my call, I've satisfied my curiosity. When using the (Logitech, so not a built in one) webcam as interface, I was able to tune up on Classic guitar and also had ukelele notes successfully recognised by RS, but RS grumbled a bit about being too loud and calibration was not happy either. Much echo, distortion before actually starting to play, then it settles down.

Thanks for the info. I'll have a look at editing the guitar tuning, I didn't have much success with any values other than positive integers yesterday, but I'll check it again. This stuff is really quite extraordinarily painful as I'm using a Macbook. Not much works smoothly, EOF has no mp3, support, setting a delay, Wwise, which is why after initially learning the basics, I had put CDLC development at a lower priority than learning to play more competently. I'll have a look at it in the morning, because I'm curious about how the turnings have been modelled in the software and it helps me gain an appreciation of music theory that I am otherwise blissfully unaware of.

Thanks for the help and info about the tuning screen. Rocksmith is awesome and I want people to enjoy it and I want others to understand what good value it is and how it could help them have fun and improve in their music practice for which they need to pay Ubisoft money. I'm absolutely not advocating any unauthorised changes under the hood of RS and would like Ubisoft to understand that the ukelele market is pretty close from their existing product and appears a pretty lucrative addition to their product...perhaps even people are saying "shut-up and take my money"...but at the end of the day it is their (Ubisoft) call.

@@firekorn What do you know about the Tuning Screen in RS itself? Can it be reached if the is no RS-cable detected? Is their a shortcut to the "tuning failed" prompt, or does the user have to fail "X" number of times before getting the option to continue anyway? I would like to be able to use 2 player mode without a second cable. So a friend can play along as lead, or rhythm, with no interest in score and no need for RS to amplify their instrument. It would be quite a nice way of being able to compare what the various instruments are up to at the same time. eg adding a fill here, or there, or doubling up on the lead to give a phrase a bit more emphasis. I also just improvise playing an amplified bass, whilst the RS is showing me the lead guitar, just to have an indication of the timing & (typically high or low) notes expected, so I can then try to suit them a bit better. It also means that for tracks that I like that don't have a bass, I can play along in a not completely tuneless manner...mostly tuneless tho ;-)

So I've just uploaded a bunch of files to https://www.mediafire.com/folder/9a0ld1d2nuqdr/uke_test The original audio is here https://soundcloud.com/blinky-bagger/ukelele-test-for-rs And was simply A ---------------------2,3,2----------------------- E --------------- 3,5--------5,3------------------- C ---------2,4,5------------------5,4,2----------- G --2,4,5---------------------------------5,4,2--- Though in EOF I added a powerchord that doesn't exist in the audio file...just for the hell of it at the end.

Just been looking at that diagram of the relative ranges. When I was testing my mic' to see if RS would identify the tones from the ukelele, I had been thinking about what would the diagram of the ukelele register mapped to the guitar register look like. The following is supposed to represent the neck of a guitar. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 (25) e -U--K--E--L--E--L--E---"E"---S-T-R-I-N-G-| ---U--K--E--L--E--L--E---"G "----S-T-R-I-N-G (a guess) B *** |--U--K--E--L--E--L--E--"C"--S-T-R-I-N-G-| --U--K--E--L--E--L--E----"A"-----S-T-R-I-N-G- - - - - - - G----------------------------| transposed ukelele C string = guiar B +6 frets| transposed ukelele A string = guitar B + 6 frets D------------------------------------------------| transposed ukelele C string = guiar B +11 frets| transp ukel A string = guitar B + 11 frets A-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| transposed ukelele C string = guitar B +16 frets E ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| transposed ukelele C string = guiar B +21 frets I think this tells me that if any ukelele players are masters of transposing guitar to ukelele tab on the fly, it's kinda possible to have RS recognise the notes played on a ukelele (using RS's e & B guitar strings as mapped above)....but I could be totally wrong. ;-)

So if the note/chord evaluation part of Rocksmith for ukelele is initially ignored (until such time as the special tuning part is overcome...and by this I mean one, other, or perhaps both of the following. Ubisoft make a change to add the ukelele tuning to the RS front-end, that the RSTK also has a ukelele tunings (& appropriately specified in Hz) added), the ukelele players are dependent on using their ears to evaluate how they are playing. This would enable to the ukelele fiends to: - have the fun of playing along - learn the notes - get the timing - transpose notes across the strings If people are into ukelele content in terms of community response, it may provide some pressure/commercial motivation for the proper tunings to be developed, released. The other factors that I see in this kludge, are: - making it easy to complete whatever irrelevant tuning-screen on a real instrument needs to occur (or enabling a quick way to gain access to the "tuning failed" screen with it's handy "continue anyway" bypass) - allowing ukelele CDLC to be made as easily as possible, both manually & by importing a gp file (which may involve trans-bastardising another instrument's gp file....and I think the people that have done lots of CDLC will understand this best). Bearing that in mind. What decisions/changes should be avoided so as to eliminate unnecessary complications for potential ukelele CDLC makers and players? eg just accept standard bass tuning, which can be emulated on guitar, but unless the total bypass of tuning-screen can occur won't allow people to proceed without the presence of a guitar, or bass (a bit shit if you've only taken your RS running laptop & ukelele with you).

@@firekorn Before seeing your response I tried to just keep going, as it's been a good 5 or 6 months since I last tried any of the EOF, WWise and CustomToolKit-creator stuff....which has refreshed my memory about how painful I found this process on a Mac. I got as far as attempting to add the Arrangement/Song XML file, which seems to hang, but at least I think I can see the boxes to specify the tuning information...I'm getting a stack overflow about being unable to get the arrangement XML and prompt whether the EOF version is up to date. The "Arrangement Information" area has a drop-down of tunings populated and by the looks of it a file picker. The "Tuning Pitch" has a Frequency value that by the looks of it, I can update, but unsure if edit is provided to other items in this box. I'll get back onto this in the morning.

Sadly I'm unable to either refute, or confirm what you've said, as it's outside my understanding. How to proceed isn't clear to me, but perhaps you know what I should try...Is it one of the following? - Try a non-standard ukelele tuning...though I am wary that this may significantly reduce the value to ukelele people. - Set the track to "real_guitar", update the number of strings to 4 via the "Track > Pro Guitar > Set number of fret/strings" menu? - the mapping of notes to strings may be really a bit odd from a RS recognising the note. - The notes tabbed are an indication to the player of what should be played, not what RS will recognise for some strings.

So I've recorded a small audio file (9 seconds with a few notes on each string), which has been imported in EOF as an ogg file. Initially I've selected "real_bass", because it has the correct number of strings and that is what I have done most frequently in the past. I have viewed the waveform and it looks as I think it should. Looking at the EOF manual, it seems the tuning data is contained in the "Pro Guitar > Set Tuning" menu? The "Edit guitar tuning" pop-up begins as: String 1 0 G String 2 0 D String 3 0 A String 4 0 E I've updated to the following values as it nominally seems to meet my expectations regarding standard ukelele tuning...and I suspect there might be a gap between getting the string labels more than nominally correct and being on the right register. String 1 2 A String 2 2 E String 3 3 C String 4 3 G Currently the Tuning is identified as "unknown". Ideas? Anyway as I've got to head out, I've pushed the mp3 file up to Soundcloud. https://soundcloud.com/blinky-bagger/ukelele-test-for-rs I think it was the following A ---------------------2,3,2----------------------- E --------------- 3,5--------5,3------------------- C ---------2,4,5------------------5,4,2----------- G --2,4,5---------------------------------5,4,2---

Yeah I guessed that notation you are using for string tuning was not a fret value...How should I be specifying the string & fret value pair? Is there a common way eg E-22 being the 22nd fret on the A String? Messing around first with the classic guitar (to get dialed-in) and then the ukelele, I found that the mic and interface seems to be suitably sensitive for Rocksmith and noted the following in terms of RS detecting the notes I played on the ukelele. The guitar e-string seems to match the uekelele E-string...as far as the uekele frets exist. The guitar B-string from fret 1 matches the ukelele C-string. The guitar G-string from frets 12-24 seems to match ukelele G-string. and the Ukelele A string seemed to match the guitar B-string from frets 12-24. Rocksmith didn't seem to detect me transposing notes from one string to the next, though at times the reliability of Rocksmith to determine that a note was successfully played was perhaps a bit lover than normal, but part of this could simply be bass player fingers not quite being nimble enough. My intent was not to simply just try to make ukelele work against RS, beginning to understand (through hands-on experience) the likes of how the various instruments register's are related/overlap is for me something that I really happy to gain further comprehension of. So I think the next steps are for me to see if EOF still runs, then to look at the way tuning is configured and tab a small series of notes on the ukelele, make an audio recording of that sequence , convert the audio and package. Is Squid's "How to make CDLC" video still an OK way to guide oneself through the process, or has it been superseded?...As I recall the difference in volume between the instructions (quiet) and the track being packaged (loud) made it a bit confortable to watch.

@@firekorn. OK/cool. It seems there is a bit of a knowledge gap on my part about this, as much of what you indicated is currently outside what I immediately understand. But from my experience gathered in playing bass as lead, where I tune up playing (E12, A12, D12, G12, G16, G21 (uh I think)) as Standard tuning, I think I should be make some progress. A tuned instrument should play the right note, it's a question of how high or low that instrument's register(?) is....it seems there is a notation, but not (yet) known to me. I think my first task before trying to work out how to run & possibly seek the latest versions of any of the software needed to tab & package, will be to see if I can get an existing track to correctly detect some transposed notes (high & low) played from ukelele via the mic I have. If I can't get my hardware to do this, then there is no point attempting to re-wrangle all that software into some form of working order, as it was a bit painful last time for reasons of OSX. (Is there an overlap between the register of a ukelele and those of guitar, or bass?) I might even have a go at following down the violin path, to what observations can be made, before the EOF steps for ukelele (&/or brass).

After seeing that there looks to be violin and cello CDLC, I was having a bit of a think about what could be done by curious fans of Rockmith. I've got an Apogee Jam interface that I use because my use predates my purchase of Rocksmith2014, so I have an easy method to attach a microphone and have played along using a Classic guitar (which is entirely acoustic). I never purchased the required "RockSmith" cable because I already had a good interface, hence I have one interface. Frequently I find that it would be useful to be able to play 2-up, so any 2 player combination of Lead, Rhythm & Bass could at least show both sets of tabs, regardless of anyone actually I'm bass player and don't play complex chords well, so a lot of the Lead & Rhythm guitar chords beyond my interest, apart from tracks where single notes are played, then the fingering & progressions are quite interesting even if outside the range of the instrument. (eg Francoise Hardy's Le Temps de l'Amour) I have played my bass on Rocksmith as Lead, though the tune-up screen can be a bit of pain, particularly if there is a weird tuning for a track. I did this out of curiosity, to see if could be done in a scenario where I'm not playing at home, with mic's and other instruments within reach...and because some people playing may have only a bass, or another single instrument. My SO has a violin and a ukelele that I am frequently left alone with. The ukelele tuning is a bit special as I recall it. The strings are not linear in progression, meaning they don't range from high to low, they go highest, lowest, lower, higher. Is this the problem for RS, in that the range of acceptable tunings, it kinda expects an ordered string progression?...which kinda locks out the ukelele until such time as a Ukelele tuning is configured by Ubisoft?

I note that some psarc files are significantly larger than others. I understand that to some degree the quality of the original audio, duration of the track, number of instruments & number of notes tabbed may be a significant determinant of the psarc file size, but I wonder if isome custom developers just packing using the full audio file (again) instead of a shorter intro/sample file?...All of which leads to a bit of bloat. Some tracks for example play 30 secs worth of the track if you happen to be scrolling through the tracklist in RS2014, others seem to play the whole track.

Am similarly pained by the presence of a few tracks that I cannot stand, but they were RockSmith original content. Being able to create add user defined views of the content available might help. So I create a view containing "Blues", "Sexy-time", or whatever represents my current interests/playing abilities. The other features that I think would useful are: A shortcut to maximise the track difficulty...eg pressing 'M' to put the levels up for the whole track. The ability to apparently play 2-up without the presence of a 2nd cable, good if you've got someone with another guitar or bass, but no additional cable. (which I think would also require the following). A hotkey to bypass the tuning screen, for all those times you aren't actually playing the instrument you say you are, but want to see the notes & timing of other instruments. This allows retuning to be avoided when I've got my bass plugged into an amp and I can avoid any trickery related to RS thinking I'm playing Lead or Rhythm guitar, particularly if one doesn't have an e-guitar to connect.

So I just tried to transcribe Johnny Cash's Cocaine Blues up the neck a bit, to reduce the stress/strain on my fretting hand while playing bass as an experiment....and because we shouldn't be afraid to try different tunings, or to make things easier (as part of proficiency as musician). Sometimes we can be a bit locked-in to what we are told is the right way, or what an application tells us we need to do. Also kinda handy if you're trying to make it easier for someone with smaller hands to play. If you can make it efficient for you to play, chances are you will be able to focus on reaching the next step on that ladder of muscianship. Cocaine Blues in the psarc file that Sirandok kindly made available is played (on EADG tuning) between the 1st and 4th frets, so on the stretchy side for song that could be played with the fretting hand in a single/static position. By using a capo on 4th fret before tuning up, Rocksmith will let me play it between 5th (as 1st) & 8th (as 4th) frets. Tuning up with the capo on, is a little bit more involved, as each time you loosen the tuning peg, you need to release the tension held by the capo, but it didn't seem to be a big deal. (Are there any problems that one should look out for when (false) tuning with a capo on?...it may be better if you can initially tune without the capo to the tone required eg E becomes C, A becomes F..., then add the capo and you should be back to EADG, or close enough so that only very little further tuning is required with the capo on) When playing along, you can keep the capo on if you like as a physical reminder of where the nut should be, or you can remove the capo if you don't need that reminder of the new virtual location of the nut (at 4th fret)...The only real difference is if you are playing a track with an open note. If the capo has been removed, the open note has to be fretted/fingered instead of the fretting hand doing nothing. Actually this technique seems make a surprising difference to my fretting hand, which is a lot more relaxed on tracks that were stretchy, or needed some lateral movement despite the range of frets being 4 (a handspan). The downsides to this action is that songs were comfortably in the middle on the fretboard, are more compressed, so if you've previously found that things get a bit tight playing around the 15th fret, it's gonna be much worse because you'll need to play those notes around the 20th fret.

Do you know how the files are iterated? I assume that there is list of .psarc files created by the enumeration process, perhaps by the likes of 'ls -tr'. Is there some documentation?