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How to play a song?


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In my opinion it's better to learn a song with slow speed and full difficulty. When you learn it with increasing difficulty you may have to correct your left hand fingers from time to time, because a part is playable better with another finger set. Doing this you will learn the song more than once.

 

My hint: Take Riff Repeater, select a slow tempo that fits your abilities and use full difficulty. It's the way i learn best.

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Definitely slow speed and 100% difficulty, I prefer to learn the first part first. Then play the first and learn the second. Then the first and second and learn the third etc etc.

 

That way by the time you get to the last part of the song you'll have most of the song committed to memory.  :cool:

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I hate 100% at slow speed just doesn't work for me at all, 100% at 100% otherwise hammer on's and pull off's just don't work bends are horrific to get right I hate slow speed seems stupid to learn a song at a slow rate and have no idea about the rhythm to it.

I will tell you what's wrong and you will accept this information.

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Slow it down in the beginning and increase tempo when you are ready. There is no point in rushing through a song only hitting every 2nd note and still playing sloppy as hell. You will have a very hard time nailing a song.

Apart from RS that's how you always should approach a song/lick or whatever you want to learn, play it slowly to begin with and get it clean. Learn the chords/notes and the changes you are supposed to do and play them as clean as possible. In fact playing it clean and slowly will sound much better than fast and sloppy. Its pretty easy to increase mere tempo after you nailed a phrase at slower speed.

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I hate 100% at slow speed just doesn't work for me at all, 100% at 100% otherwise hammer on's and pull off's just don't work bends are horrific to get right I hate slow speed seems stupid to learn a song at a slow rate and have no idea about the rhythm to it.

 

Slow doesn't necessarily mean 50%. I prefer to learn at 80-90%. That's not really slow enough to make playing difficult, but that small decrease in tempo is usually enough for me to see and hit all the notes properly.

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Slow doesn't necessarily mean 50%. I prefer to learn at 80-90%. That's not really slow enough to make playing difficult, but that small decrease in tempo is usually enough for me to see and hit all the notes properly.

Same to me. I just begin with 40%-50% without playing just to get an idea what to play. Then i increase the tempo to about 70% an begin to learn until my fingers know what to do. Then i increase the tempo depending on the difficulty of the song for 5% to 10%.
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nothing new to say - slow is always better.

Steve Vai said once something like "if you learn something new best speed is so slow that you can say "Mississippi" between two tones"

 

I really hate it to play that slow and also tried the other way in the beginning (full speed and increasing difficulty) but since I changed my mind (which I did because I'm on the point where I really really want to learn playing the guitar after so many years) I had a huge improvement in my play.

 

Now I do a lot of practice at ~60BPM (finger exercises, scales, etc.) and increase slowly when I make no mistakes for 3 attempts.

Same on Rocksmith - I've to play a phrase 3 times without any mistakes to increase the speed for 5%. If 5% are to much (mostly when I reach 90%), I increase the speed by just 2%.

Maybe (or for sure) it's not that much fun in the practise phase but the satisfaction and learning effect are much bigger at the end!

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I use a mixture of both difficulty and speed, though it really depends on the song (some are strictly speed only at 100% diff). It's all good for the fingers!  :)

 

I also find it useful to avoid looking at the Rocksmith screen when playing sections in RR - when you know them quite well...

It helps commit it to memory and also helps listening skills.

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Yeah I have found 100% notes and I use accelerator starting at 60% I will probably go back a few times to that section if I am not hitting it every time at 100%.

 

Use your space bar and look at the preview before starting, the section to get your head round it.

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Another Thing Beside Slowing Down to 70% 80%, Pause the riff repeater and play the memorized phrase you've learned and watch your fingers.play several times and then start the riff repeater again.That should help a lot.

 

I concur.

 

In the beginning I used dynamic difficulty because it helps you learn to play the guitar, which is what I wanted to focus on. Now that my hands know what they are doing, Max difficulty is the way to go, otherwise you are only seeing part of the song, which then makes you have to learn a part multiple times (granted each additional time shouldn't take as long to learn as the initial couple levels but it still seems inefficient time wise). I think the best way to learn a song is to do as abteen suggested or find tab of the song you wish to learn and run through a section of the song a couple times, then play it from memory. It will cause you to memorize it faster because rather than RS's easy sight reading holding your hand, your brain has to actually do work.

 

But everyone is different, experiment with each way and use what works best for you :)

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100% difficulty and slow speed is the best,

I have learned this way over 100 songs :)

 

 

btw: I start usually with 70%, then going from 80 to 90 and then to 100 :)

of course with crazy hard fast tracks hardly to see even notes I start with 40% :lol: :lol:

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I would love to be able to default every song to 100%, I'm sick of manually having to do it each new song I attempt. I really don't like DD, it doesn't help you play the song at all throwing in a few notes here and there. The finger positions you've learned for those few notes change once they start adding more notes. Best to learn the proper way from get go.

 

I have a few gripes with RR though, sometimes you want to slow down a song to see a tricky part but because its at the end of a long section that you can already play, you have to listen to the entire section first at super slow speed just to get to the point that you want to learn. Only to once again miss what was going on because you can't pause it and continue on from that point and then have to repeat the whole process again. I would love something like a manual scroll system so that I can scroll to the point I want to learn and easily see what is going on, practice in my own time, then scroll on to the next section. Then play along once I've figured it out properly. Or even a tab view, switch between tab and rocksmith style, just so you can see more clearly what you are trying to play. Some of the fast solos, all these purple, green, orange and blue squares in fast succession is ridiculously hard to determine what is going on.

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DD is not completely useless. In songs with DD I use riff repeater to max out sections, and I feel a sense of accomplishment when I have that aha moment and truly understand a paticular fingering. It really burns it in.

 

That being said I prefer to see everything the first time and slow it down to 80% if needed. You will find a system that works for you.

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I have a few gripes with RR though, sometimes you want to slow down a song to see a tricky part but because its at the end of a long section that you can already play, you have to listen to the entire section first at super slow speed just to get to the point that you want to learn. Only to once again miss what was going on because you can't pause it and continue on from that point

I would love to be able to hit space bar a second time to resume RR for this exact reason
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I usually just start off at 100 speed 100 difficulty and play the song 2 or 3 times like that (I hear "Bad Performance" a lot haha). Then, when I hit the hard stuff I go back and slow down and riff repeat those parts.

 

Turning down the difficulty however kinda makes it harder for me when more notes are added later.

 

The high speed solo's are what I have the most trouble with.  Well honestly even the medium tempo'd ones.  I also have trouble with the chord riffs like "Ratt - Round and Round"  and also the stuff like "Lynyrd Skynyrd - Simple Man" with the single note strumming.

 

I played guitar for about 15 years doin mostly nothing but power chords only really learning easy main riffs and intros to songs so anything that actually requires talent I tend to struggle with.

 

However in the 30 or so hours I've played the game I have seen a huge improvement and I'm a lot happier guitarist because of it!

 

I have 104.7% in "Breaking The Law" and 93.5% in Pour Some Sugar on Me"  But only between 50-60% in the harder stuff like "The Trooper" , "Round and Round" and "Symphony of Destruction".

 

Oh and "Cliffs of Dover" I have 4.4% ROFL!

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Here's my somewhat radical opinion (well, not so radical - I agree that playing slowly is essential):

 

The first 2-3 times, use LAS and play through at low difficulty normal speed. Listen to the song, focus on the hand positions -- the highlighted frets.

 

Let LAS bump you up in difficulty a couple of times. At one point, it will become too difficult to play at full-speed.

 

Switch to Riff Repeater, raise the difficulty to 100% for the each section - one section at a time. Then slow it down -- as slow as you need to go in order to play all the notes with a mistake. That may be 20%. You may have to stop playback and play a section even more slowly.

 

I have the RR set to increase speed after I've a couple of passes without mistakes. After that it'll raise speed every time you can complete the section with no mistakes.

 

Note: Dynamic Difficulty doesn't work as well with customs. It almost never seems to work in  LAS.

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I like the 100% difficulty myself at slower speeds. I don't like to go too slow so I will start at 75 to 80% if that's too fast which it usually isn't I will slow it down more just for certain sections till I can hit it. I also like to learn the songs section by section which the riff repeater is great for in most cases and I do that until the muscle memory is there. I have noticed the longer I'm playing the easier that becomes. I'm also learning my scales and theory as I go along which is making it even easier now.

 

DD was great when I first started but now it causes more confusion then anything. I learn something and then find that my fingering position is wrong or how I was playing it at one level is hampering playing it at the next and then I have to relearn it.

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It's good to know that everyone I idolize at one time or another in their career was where I am right now.

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