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Guitar Techniques through learn a song


kiren

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Hey,

 

A random thought came up while i was going through the chord book on RS2014

 

But before i go into that a quick brief what why i got there.

 

I picked up RS2014 for the xbox and PC a year ago, but i never really go a chance to sit with it till about a month ago, ive made some kick ass progress and all but something thats really holding me back is i feel; is me not being able to play the guitar without having to have rocksmith up and running.

 

For example, after spending hours on learn a song, playing it solo without rocksmith being on is a bit of a turn off, its almost come to a point where i do not feel confident touching a guitar thats not connected to rocksmith to even practice basic stuff.

 

Now to my thought:-

 

Rocksmith has some kick ass technique guides that help build muscle memory and get a player become familiar with the guitar. 

 

On you tube and from various books, there are a ton of random sets of notes put together that when played sound decent (like one of the practice tracks from our rocksmith lessons)

 

Now if we could take advantage of the fact that one can make custom tracks for the PC.

 

An example of a custom track for technique:- all the important chords with random switching between them, a bit of scales, some lead notes here and there, basically random riffing that sounds decent.

 

These tracks can be between 10-15 minutes long and with riff repeater it would be a god send, i tried my hand at creating custom tracks but im having issues thats im not able to solve, hence i ask here. Are there already such tracks on customs forge? I really dint know what to look for in case they did exist.

 

Do you think riffs like this created for learn a song would help newbies?

 

Thanks

 

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For example, after spending hours on learn a song, playing it solo without rocksmith being on is a bit of a turn off, its almost come to a point where i do not feel confident touching a guitar thats not connected to rocksmith to even practice basic stuff.

 

I think I know exactly how you feel! I, too, realized that I wasn't able to play stuff on my very own that I felt comfortable with inside Rocksmith.

But I came to some sort of explanation to comfort me:

There are a lot of steps in between practising a song for the first time and beeing able to rock it on your own like a guitar god:

  1. You have to learn all the techniques, the hand and finger positions
  2. You have to build up your speed
  3. You have to memorize the whole song
  4. You have to keep up the tempo / beat when you play on your own
  5. You have to not only hit the notes right, but also give it the right "sound"

...maybe even more steps...

 

If you were to learn without Rocksmith, I think you would have to master all 5 steps until you feel confident about a song.

Now the difference is that Rocksmith gives you a rewarding learning experience after every step, because it shows you your progress.

But in the way Rocksmith works currently, you are kind of "stuck" after step 3. You may be able to play a song with 110% Mastery Level and nail it completely, but you still lack some steps to play it on your own.

The point is that there is no progression / feedback inside Rocksmith for steps 4 and 5. So this is where you have to continue on your own and practise, instead of thinking you are done learing the song and then being frustrated in the "real world".

But if you were to learn without Rocksmith, it would have probably taken much longer to even reach that point :)

 

 

This is a great place for another advertisement of mine: The Metronome Bonus Arrangements!

With Metronome Bonus Arrangements, I am confident that you can master steps 4 and 5 inside Rocksmith, too.

This tutorial will show you how to add an automatically generated metronome sound to any CDLC of your choice. It works really fast and enables you to play a song completely solo. Mute the original music, play only with the metronome and find out how good you really sound!

 

Having a metronome acompany you throughout the song (instead of silence) enables you to keep up the tempo (4.), even if you make mistakes. Without background music or a metronome I notice that I "stumble" if I make mistakes and thus loose the tempo. Having a metronome helps you to keep going.

And not having the original music (even if you lower the volume) cover your mistakes, but instead muting it completely will show you if you make the right "sound" (5.)

 

See my signature for more links ;-)

 

There are not yet many CLDCs with this feature and it doesn't work perfectly with all of them, because a lot of charters screw up the sync of the bars (see the tutorial), but I hope this can get some more attention! If a charting is done properly it's a work of a couple of seconds: ticking a box in the Toolkit - and it's free and brings Rocksmith to a whole new level!

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Check out my easy tutorial on how to add a metronome to your CDLC: Mute the original music, play only with the metronome and find out how good you really sound! Also: Find CDLCs that have the metronome enabled!

 

Want a USB-Footswitch that you can use to control the tone selection and all the menus in Rocksmith? Check out Rodman's Tutorial and my additions to that!  Footswitch_Logo.png

My CDLCs: Devin Townsend - Life, Deep Peace, Ih-Ah!, Deadhead; Farin Urlaub - Ok

My ideas for new features in Ignition, e.g. filters for Multitrack CDLC and Metronome CDLC.

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This may sound obvious, but I watch the track a couple times through and try to visualize the hand movements before actually trying to play the song.  I'm not as surprised when a weird chord or strange bend shows up out of nowhere. 

 

"Be the ball, Danny.  Na na na na na na na na na na." -Ty Webb

 

You're welcome, @@kiren.

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kiren, I think most guitarist prefer playing along with other musicians, and Rocksmith offers it. My son got interested in the guitar because of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, so I paid for lessons. From what I noticed was beginner guitarist are less motivated and tend to stop after awhile, because all they do is go home practice and play by themselves. But once they are in a band they practice more. My son was lucky enough to have taken  lessons where the school offer recitals and opportunity to meet other musicians and get in to a band. So I understand your point without Rocksmith you don't feel like playing the guitar. You should try to find people that are musician and and just jam. 

 

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^ absolutely. I played for years and was just stuck in a rut. When I finally started playing with PEOPLE I improved dramatically. And don't worry. Tell them up front you are just starting, most everyone I've ever played with totally gets it. They were there once too.

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 I'm Allergic To Stupidity. I Break Out In Sarcasm.

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try taking the guitar away from rocksmith, 

 

I record the screen of a rocksmith song onto my smartphone. grab my acoustic guitar and head to the park or somewhere. 

 

playing back the vid of the rocksmith screen (a bit of bluetack to help it sit on top of your acoustic. gives me the prompts for the chords/notes but no sound means i am on my own.

 

with practice you slowly don;t need the prompts and then song by song you start getting together a collection that you have virtually forced yourself to remember.

 

if you only have electric then do the same (except not in park) and play with out RS but on a amp.

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I tried the video recording to play away from RS, and to stop / rewind the tabs. But with low obvious improvements.

 

But lately I'm currently completely amazed how easy I start to memorize tabs, and keep them memorized for a longer period.

It's songs that don't exceed 3 minutes.

 

It came as a surprising evolution,

I started to play a sector of tabs slowly in Riffrepeator.

Then I  played it without looking, until I got 0 errors in Riffrepeator, kind of self-made Mastermode 

Then I moved to the next sector.

Then I played both sectors without looking, until I got the beat right, and so on.

 

I also repeat the notes on an amp, without RS's stress of the real track .

It really feels different, it's more direct, you hear the slightest errors in finger positioning and string picking.

 

A learning software called "Guitar Scales Method" gave me the obvious idea.

The author explains learning guitar is like building a wall,

you can't build the second row, until the first row is dry.

You can't build on wet concrete.

 

That's however what RS14 offers : playing mostly on wet slippery ground, and that's why progression is limited.

In the future, we can always hope to be able to hide known notes, this way memorizing will be faster.

 

I still have a problem with speed, I just can't pass the 90%, but I'm sure, next year, I'll have that surprising evolution too.

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This might be useful: http://onehourmethod.com/best-method-for-learning-to-build-the-guitar-chords/

 

Haven't tried it yet, but on the weekend I'll borrow an iPad and take a look at it.

 

I usually use Rocksmith to have the right tone and then I look at tabs and listen to the song to get the right beat. I'll practice the riffs a couple of times before even starting to play the song in riff repeater. I find that even the most slow riff repeater is too fast for learning complex sweeps, tapping, or some chord progression. It's much simpler when seen in Youtube being played by someone and then by looking at the tabs and learning it in your own time. After you have a general idea how to play the song, I play it in rocksmith 'cause then I can basically rock the song right away.

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