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Anyone here take Guitar Lessons?


Sid

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I've been playing Rocksmith for bout a year and 4 months now, roughly 11 months as there are week breaks I stupidly took. 

 

I'm pretty decent, but I don't think I'm as good as I could be had I had lessons. I met a guy who is 40 2 years ago and he is absolutely insane at guitar, I'm talking slash style.. he played everything I said and it made me sick, especially Soothsayer by Buckethead.. he is a graded guitar teacher and bassist as well so after 2 years of contemplating this i decided the sooner I go up the sooner I learn more stuff, he gave me bargain lessons.

 

I had my first lesson and he was expecting me to know jack-shit, I forget in my head how much rocksmith can improve you. I think he was surprised although i only know how to play some basic bands. Ramones, Radiohead, Blur, David Bowie, T.Rex, Green Day, Nirvana etc.. but we jammed on a lot, it was an hour lesson and he ended up keeping me an hour and a half as he was enjoying it (usually his students are children or older men, I think he liked jamming with a younger dude) I'm hoping to be in a band this summer. For anyone here contemplating giving up rocksmith, don't... I can't believe the parts i knew even with taking breaks but guitar lessons will motivate me to play weekly even more.

 

Sorry about blabbing, pretty excited. Does anyone else here take lessons on top of Rocksmith? Are the lessons proving beneficial? What taught you more? 

 

I learned a fair bit and got shaped up on some bad habits.

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No lessons here, but had tried a few times.  I just did not want to travel an hour for a lesson.  I have not found anybody local yet.  Between Rocksmith, guitar courses, books and videos, I am coming along, but like you have a ways to go yet.  My wife thinks Rocksmith is hindering my learning.  It is difficult to resist and does offer lots of options.  It is not perfect on its ability to detect your notes and one guitar seems to play better than another with Rocksmith.  Could be a setup issue.

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While Rocksmith did help me with guitar technique and playing existing songs, after more than a year it did not really help me with getting creative with my guitar. At first I was fine with that, but at some point I wanted to go beyond just replaying existing songs. Rocksmith's session mode helped me to get a start on improvising, but there is just some theory and knowledge that you need to know that goes beyond what session mode can offer.

 

So I took weekly one-on-one lessons for about 10 months and it was a great thing. I just moved to a different city and haven't looked for a new teacher yet, but that time has helped me a lot. I can know come up with songs of my own - something I did not think could be possible one or two years ago. I am not the most creative person in general, which is part of way I am not yet satisfied with my songwriting. But learing more technique helps with that.

 

All in all: Taking lessons helped me to go beyond where Rocksmith could ever take me. I still use Rocksmith on a daily basis to learn songs I like, and when I feel "lazy" (as in: just want to play without having to think much).

Thus, I can recommend the combination of Rocksmith and a real teacher to anyone :-)

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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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  • Rocksmith Championship Organizer

Like Arzrael said the best is a combination of both, RS and a real teacher if you want to learn more than just playing songs from screen.

More important for learnig is a good teacher, but RS is a great tool and motivator. I also combine sometimes my lessons with RS, also sometimes I create cdlcs especially for that, but RS cannot react if you do something wrong.

 YouTube                                                           The Phantastic 3                                                       Facebook

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  • 1 month later...

I think the difference between a teacher and Rocksmith is that the teacher stays on a topic as long as required, while with Rocksmith you jump from one song to another, with eventually very different techniques, so yes, a teacher will give your more profound sustainable education. But Rocksmith can do that to, if you manage to stay with a particular song for two weeks, that's what I do now, currently with 2 Die 4, a song I would never have dreamed of being able to play

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I took lessons from a teacher that was also a working musician. I learned a lot over about a year of weekly lessons, however I reached a plateau. I really needed my teacher to go beyond the basics but it was easier for him to teach new players that didn't really require him to do anything except write out some tab and play songs. I stopped taking lessons and looked for a new teacher. My next teach was a total flop from my perspective.

 

I started using online lessons like JustinGuitar, Marty, etc. I played pretty much every day until I eventual got bored and frustrated and then I stopped playing completely. After several months of not playing, I started picking up the guitar and playing parts of songs that I could remember and I learned a could of new songs on Guitartricks, but I still wasn't really satisfied.

 

I decided to give Rocksmith a try, at this point I've had the game open for 43 hours. I'm still learning how to learn using Rocksmith but I think it is keeping my motivated and it is keeping me playing. The interactive nature and the riff repeater is much better than watching a video, stopping, rewinding, watching over and over again because you can't tell what the guy is doing.

 

I think that CustomForge has made Rocksmith much better for me for two reasons. First, there are a lot of songs available to download. My first thought about CustomForge was that I could download songs that I like and see if Rocksmith is really for me. I found something even better however, and that is the second reason the Rocksmith Championships. This is only my second week and the Championship challenge not only gets me learning new songs and songs that are new to me, but it gives me a bit of a purpose to continue learning songs and to learn the songs using better technique and accuracy.

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  • 1 month later...

When I got my first guitar I also bought a book called The Guitar Handbook by Ralph Denyer. It's a great book and I used it to learn open chords and scales and bar chords. After that I didn't know what to do so I found a teacher. I was sitting outside his studio at the guitar store waiting for my first lesson and I overheard the young student who had just entered the studio tell the teacher that he needed to learn the solo to Stairway to Heaven by the coming Saturday, The teacher said OK, do you know any scales? Kid replied no so that's where he started. When it was my turn I walked in and told him that I needed to learn the solo to Stairway to heaven by Saturday. We had a good laugh and then asked me if I knew any scales. I knew the Pentatonic and Aeolian pretty well but only the first positions, not even aware that scales extended to more positions. His focus was to teach me to play a song. I learned Hideaway by Freddie King and spent time at my teachers house playing his Les Paul. Bottom line is that I learned a lot from having a teacher. He helped me put my skills in order and actually play a song. I also had a great relationship with my teacher and had a great time taking lessons but I was young and undisciplined and got lazy so I stopped taking lessons. I always remember that he taught people to play songs. So does Rocksmith.

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  • 1 year later...

I took lessons for only a few weeks. I was living in Oakland at the time and they were expensive for half an hour. I'm not sure if I had the best experience. My teacher had me practicing sheet music, classic short jingles. I understood the importance. It was hard, I was not a person who could read music. As I played, he sat behind a computer, I think playing online poker. When I made mistakes he would hit the correct note on a keyboard to let me know. This was it during the duration of my lessons. Do teachers incorporate a bit more to beginners in their lessons? 

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I took lessons for only a few weeks. I was living in Oakland at the time and they were expensive for half an hour. I'm not sure if I had the best experience. My teacher had me practicing sheet music, classic short jingles. I understood the importance. It was hard, I was not a person who could read music. As I played, he sat behind a computer, I think playing online poker. When I made mistakes he would hit the correct note on a keyboard to let me know. This was it during the duration of my lessons. Do teachers incorporate a bit more to beginners in their lessons? 

 

I'm having beginner lessons at the moment. My teacher sits in front of me and look at me. Hands positioning, how I press the notes (he notices when I don't press near the fret), upstrokes/downstrokes and why in that particular time... He is there for me and not the opposite. From what you say I think you were unlucky with your teacher. About the money, playing and learning music is not that cheap. Here in Italy music lessons usually cost a bit more than lessons to help school boys with their homework, to give you a clue.

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