Am I on the right path?

[Rosewhisper]

Hi everyone :)

 

Thanks for taking the time to read my topic, I'd like to say hello to you all and to introduce myself a little and ask if I'm doing the right thing. My name is Casey on the discord, you may have seen me there :)

 

I've had Rocksmith 2014 for little over a month now. I bought it at the same time as my guitar. Honestly I don't think I'd had even touched a guitar before so I don't think it's really possible to be more of an amateur than I was.. 

 

I feel that I've definitely gotten better in the time I've spent with it. Although it's very hard for me to quantify so I'm really not sure how much better. I just know that doing some of the practice tracks from the lessons started feeling impossible and eventually I could work up to fully completing them.

 

The main thing I've been doing with rocksmith is following the lessons and trying to 100% the practice tracks. So far I've got to the hammer ons and pull offs. I am fine with the amount of time it takes me to progress through each practice track but what I've found very frustrating is after I have done it it can take me a long time before I can 100% it again and I can't yet do any of them consistently. I'm always really close though, only missing one or two notes. 

I think I am way too much of a perfectionist to my discredit though because I've been treating a 98% as a failure (at least when it comes to the practice tracks) and I'm not sure if that's a healthy way of looking at it or not or if I should even be expecting that level of nailing it at this stage.

I also don't know how hard those practice tracks are, they do feel quite challenging but should they feel that way? Do you find you can nail them without much effort?

I've also been doing the string skipping game and the duck game too, I don't really know if I'm doing any better with those, I suspect I probably am but a high score seems like a bit of an abstract way of tracking things especially since the multiplier keeps changing. 

 

Recently I had to take a break for a few days because my partner wasn't very well, I started it up again today and I was feeling kinda demotivated so I thought I'd try out some songs instead and play some nice custom tracks. It felt quite nice to play but I do wonder if its teaching me doing that. I mean, I guess it is in as much as it's getting me to actually play the guitar.

 

What I think I'm really missing is some kind of syllabus which seems to be the only thing rocksmith doesn't really offer. I guess the idea is to be open ended to allow you to find your own way of learning which I think is really cool but I do wonder if what I'm doing is learning efficiently by what I'm doing.

 

Is rocksmith the only thing you use to learn or do you supplement it with something else? I'm considering buying a teach yourself book. Sadly I can't afford lessons at the moment. I've heard that music can be taught in grades and maybe finding a grade compliant book could give me a syllabus to follow?

 

Thanks for your time, I appreciate that my head might sound all over the place here, I am having a lot of fun with rocksmith and I do intend to keep going I just want to make sure I am doing things right :)

 

Take care and have a great week! x

 

Edit: P.S. I picked lead when it asked me, although I'm wondering if maybe I would have been better picking rhythm instead?

[firekorn]

Note that even the best that are touring all around the world still can make mistake even when they've put thousands after thousands of hours into practicing what they play. Expecting to be able to be perfect all the time is insane. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't aim for it but you also got to set your expectation accordingly to what we are capable as human.

 

It took me a very long time to be able to get consistent with many technique and i still struggle with others and that's after 6 years with 1 hour of practice everyday (on average). It's a never ending learning process and you are only in the very early stage of it.

 

I'm not sure if you have much idea how long does it took someone to learn a language but we are talking about years of constant exposure and it's regarding kids that are known to be largely more efficient at learning than adult!

 

I personnally learned solely with RS but i also have a heavy musical bakcground (played a lot of classical music with orchestra and learn music theory very early on) but it also end up with that (i'm the guy with the ibanez doing much of the solo work) :

and i have other show that are getting booked with that band.

 

It's just a tool, if you feel it's not enough, don't hesitate to look in other places either or even see if you can find a teacher that will help you use RS alongside his own exercise. Don't just lock yourself into RS alone, if you want more, go for it!

 

But do note that any practice is good to take, not every session has to be serious exercise and playing song do have benefits as long as you actually play.

 

Regarding path, try all of them! Even bass in emulated mode is worth to try, you'll have different things and it'll make you more versatile as a player which can only be good.

[Motorheadbanger]

The only way to get better at playing guitar (meaning the mechanical skill) is something called 'ass-hours' in Russian - when you sit and play your ass off for hours and hours. It's usually recommended to try to play anything you play perfectly at whatever slow tempo you need to do it and increase tempo gradually. Rocksmith isn't really a good tool for this, because it judges your playing, and it does so quite bad at times. The best way to determine if you're doing good or not in the absence of a tutor is to record yourself and listen and look for mistakes. On the other hand, Rocksmith is a fun thing to do, and if you are like me and don't have a lot of incentive to play guitar at all, Rocksmith is a godsend.

 

Regarding the Lead path - I'm not entirely sure why you would want to pick Rhythm at all. Just because lead parts usually have rhythm stuff, and rhythm parts usually don't have solos.

[firekorn]

@@Motorheadbanger RS doe get you to put the hour in it and RR is a great way to slowly work your way up a riff though.

[Motorheadbanger]

@@firekorn Yes, but it's great only to an extent. While sometimes it detects a mistake when there isn't one, which is fine, more often it doesn't detect a mistake when there is one. That is concerning a lot of things, from playing correctly rhythmically-wise to alternate picking instead of downstrokes to sometimes outright cheating by not playing palm mutes when it's required. There was a Reddit post the other day where one person commented something along the lines of 'you know, you can play slides instead of bends', and this broke my heart.

 

So yeah, Rocksmith is great, but it should be used with caution.

[firekorn]

@@Motorheadbanger That's a limitation of how RS detection is done but if the player prefer to cheat, i doubt he is in a mindset where he wants to really nail that riff perfectly either. I know that try to follow indication as closely as possible and RS does a great job of evaluating my playing.

 

What other do with the game don't alter my own expericen with it and i won't adjust the way i use just because some prefer to do something else with it.

[Toni-Wan Kenobi]

Hi, I'm gonna add my two cent's if that's okay. 

 

I like you had no clue when I first tried RS, struggled a lot to play lead or rhythm. I bought a Bass, it seemed more managable for me, I played a hell of a lot (I don't use the lessons mode or riff repeater, though I hear that helps a lot of people) With a lot of hours of Bass playing under my belt. I deiced to go back to 6-strings. I found it much easier having getting to know the bass first. Maybe you can consider this as a way to improve your abilities? 

Also don't worry right now about trying to 100% anything, just concentrate on finding your way around your strings and fretboard. Maybe try scale lessons? 

 

And one last thing, check out Rocksmith Champinionship We host a weekly event for people who want to improve their skills with a little friendly competition. But don't let the word competition scare you off, there are category's, Beginner, Intermediate, Advance and Masterclass. So you'd probably fall into Beginner! We rank the songs in difficulty so in beginner you'll only find songs with a max difficulty of 3. So it's a way to find relatively easy songs for you to try to.  It's a great community, a friendly bunch and  people are always around to offer any help or tips you might need  :) 

 

Best of luck on your music highway!

[Berzoo]

I too had no idea what I was doing when starting out and two years later I am pretty confident with where I am. I am just playing whatever songs I feel like it 99% of the time and have been that way the whole time. I have definitely learned quite a lot and would consider myself at or near an intermediate level (I can do most rhythm parts with little to no problem and can do some less shreddy solos with adequate success). I really never really considered myself to follow any sort of syllabus. I always just hop on, play and have fun, then stop when I feel like it. If you feel like you need one though, I would recommend just aim to play a certain song/section to a level you deem satisfactory. Some of the best RS advice I have heard is to disregard the percentage and shoot for a sound that you like. If you get a 98 but it sounded good to you, then I would count that as a win. There really isn't much of a right way to do it, just do it to your standards. If you're on PC, I would highly recommend downloading OBS or some other free recording software and recording yourself when you play. It's really fun to hear yourself playing after the fact and can better help you judge where you are and if you're happy with where you are or if you want to practice a certain part more. I would also recommend just playing what you want to play. In the early days for me it was fun to play the songs I liked regardless of how low of a difficulty I had it set to. Lastly, do try out rhythm mode because sometimes the chart is different and a new experience and it usually doesn't force you to sit out a solo if you aren't up to it yet. Maybe give bass a go too whether it's the simulated bass or on a cheap bass because that too is really fun and can help build you up.