How to learn a Song?

[mikejl]

 

I haven't really learned to play any songs yet. I have just played along to songs at lower difficulty levels, so I can just play the song through, so never really learned how to play any songs. I would like to crack down and learn at least one song through 100%.

Would it be best to learn with highest difficulty settings at lower speed, and slowly increase the speed, or full speed at lower difficulty, and slowly increase the difficulty?

 

[coldrampage]

3 hours ago, mikejl said:

I haven't really learned to play any songs yet. I have just played along to songs at lower difficulty levels, so I can just play the song through, so never really learned how to play any songs. I would like to crack down and learn at least one song through 100%.

Would it be best to learn with no lower difficulty settings at lower speed, and slowly increase the speed, or full speed at lower difficulty, and slowly decrease the difficulty?

Full difficulty lower speed would probably be the better option, otherwise you'd have to learn each section a dozen times and if you try to play along to the song outside of rocksmith before fully learning the section it'd sound weird.

I can't learn songs very well through rocksmith though and I think most people just sightread from it, so using tabs might be a better idea.
Otherwise, riff repeater and master mode will probably help.

[mikejl]

21 minutes ago, coldrampage said:

Full difficulty lower speed would probably be the better option, otherwise you'd have to learn each section a dozen times and if you try to play along to the song outside of rocksmith before fully learning the section it'd sound weird.

I can't learn songs very well through rocksmith though and I think most people just sightread from it, so using tabs might be a better idea.
Otherwise, riff repeater and master mode will probably help.

Thanks,

That makes sense, best to learn the full song,  Then the trick would be to memorize the song with out the note highway. So maybe get it down so you can play every note easily at full speed, then start to memorize the notes with out the note highway. That might be the tough part.

[Shroud]

What does it mean to learn a song for you? 

I don't feel I need to memorize anything until I need to perform the song to an audience. Even when I was in bands, I went to rehearsals with my notes and transcriptions, as long as I could play with them whole songs without falter, it didn't matter if I were using visual clues. So I wouldn't really worry much about memorization. 

What I am busy with when learning covers, is technically becoming proficient at each song in all its parts. That means, no dynamic difficulties allowed, only 100% full charts. But whenever a section of the songs I cannot immediately pkay, I slow it down and practice it at that speed before gradually increasing. The most difficult parts I even practice at no speed first, with the transcription in front of me but no background audio. Having a metronome is not always a good idea.

Otherwise, songs can also be improvised instead of played note by note, in which case even a reduced difficulty is ok. That's not so typical of rock however, it's more for blues and jazz. 

[mikejl]

1 hour ago, Shroud said:

What does it mean to learn a song for you? 

 

For me, it would mean to be able to play along to the song with out any visual help. Listen to the song and play the bass guitar along to the song.

[Shroud]

If that's really what you want, then just keep playing the songs over and over until you remember all notes without watching. 

Master mode is an option but I don't think it's the best one because it chooses when to hide notes, instead you should choose yourself. It might be that Master Mode chooses to hide notes you previously played accurately and to show those you previously didn't, but remembering the notes and playing them accurately are not the same thing. 

A better way is turn off master mode and choose to look away from the screen whenever you feel you can, and look back as soon as you don't remember. 

Keep playing while looking less and less until you don't need to look anymore. There are no shortcuts.