Do you make good use of the different lead/rhythm guitar paths?

[Shroud]

This is not a technical question, but just a curiosity about how do you all feel about Rocksmith having a distinction between lead and rhythm guitar. Note that I mostly use Rocksmith with the bass actually  but as a long-time guitarist I have always found the "lead vs rhythm" distinction bogus. I didn't go to "lead guitar" lessons when I was young, I went to just guitar lessons. As a guitar student, you study pretty much everything, and everything is just guitar.

The distinction is in my opinion a relic of certain old rock bands, but it kicks in only if you happen to join a band where there is more than a guitarist, and (in the good cases) the two or more guitarists decide to split responsibilities or (in the bad cases) social pressure within the band force the supposedly least skilled/experienced guitarist to avoid solos.

Anyway, going back to Rocksmith, I don't think it was a great idea to separate lead and rhythm paths. It's confusing at best, and teaching a bad concept at worse. There's plenty of songs with a single guitar track, but it could be anything, including strumming chords or riffing rhythms. Conversely, there's another plenty of songs with multiple guitar tracks, but where neither has a solo (supposedly a feature that qualifies it as "lead"), or where both tracks have a solo... especially in the heavy metal genre, there's bands with two or three guitarists taking turns to solo within the same song, would you expect all the solos to be condensed in the same lead path (sometimes impossible when the solos overlap) or would you expect each path to wholly cover a separate guitar track in the original song? Either way, confusing... many ways what you find in one path is not what you would expect.

I wish Rocksmith simply had only one guitar path and one bass path, and then allow to choose from multiple guitar parts if the song has more than one, without having to switch path, just like it does when you have alternate charts, only with more visibility or explanation about what each part includes.

I don't know if it's just me, but do you think... are separate lead and rhythm paths that useful to you?

[coldrampage]

Guess I've never really thought about it. Kinda just gotten used to the split and what to expect for a lead/rhythm chart. The main downside with the system is that most of the time you only get one rhythm and bass track and 3 lead ones playing all the lead/synth/other stuff since you try to keep the rhythm track in the rhythm territory. And if there's only one guitar track most of the time it's marked as "lead" so it could really be playing anything. For bands like iron maiden with 3 guitarists it's also pretty weird getting a solo on the rhythm track though since I play rhythm to avoid them lol.

2 hours ago, Shroud said:

I wish Rocksmith simply had only one guitar path and one bass path, and then allow to choose from multiple guitar parts if the song has more than one, without having to switch path, just like it does when you have alternate charts, only with more visibility or explanation about what each part includes.

At that point you've basically got a guitar pro file with each part tabbed out that you'll have to swap between. The flexibility would be nice but I feel it'd be too cumbersome in practice, unless it's something like the multiplayer display where it shows both at once and you can just swap whenever without any input.

More info on the paths would be nice though, I feel you get some info based on lead vs rhythm but once you get into 4 lead tracks and one rhythm track you can only really go off the author notes which you can't check in-game which probably puts off some people trying them over the standard tracks.

[Sniper Reload3d]

Hesitant to put thoughts down, as it is difficult to express most of the thoughts without it being twisted, omitting something pertinent, over generalizing, or just meandering into a rabbit hole.

It is more than a theoretical existential philosophical question(s) that you bring up. I am not negating the conversation or your questions, but the point of the question is merely that, theoretical because unless Ubi for their next iteration or another game designer, i.e. someone here has the ability to code and market and publish a new better learning tool, reads your / our input and implements it, it is all just theoretical speak meaning not much. You can't change the game that is dying and no longer being serviced.

I stepped back to take a couple hours to try collect a cohesive thought, this was something I was very much so stewing over how Rocksmith butchered this starting about a month ago. I haven't picked up a bass but twice in at least 6 weeks, as I have been focusing on "Lead Guitar". Ya really need to stay outta my head, Shroud. It is a scary place.

You have to keep in mind that the original game was released back in 2011, and I am not sure how long it was in development before the release. As it was a multi platform release, they needed to keep in mind limitations of consoles at the time. Also you have to keep in mind that it is a game. While some of us use it as a practice medium, others as a learning tool, it really is just a game even though it was marketed as "the fastest way to learn guitar".

I think Coldrampage really hits close to the bulls eye. Some people do not have any interest in solos, or soloing. I know I don't. Discovering the bass was the best thing for me. You can fall down yet another rabbit hole of troupes of "lead guitarists and their egos" if you wanted to while thinking about it, how the rest of the band has to try and keep some resemblance of time structure while some limelight glory hog who thinks that what the masses want to hear is them spazzing out on a bunch of pick sweeping and screaming 24th fret pinch harmonics.

A friend of mine a little over a month ago started learning "Youth Gone WIld" for his band, after I myself had gone back and started to learn (all 3 tracks) of that song already a week or so before he had. We had many a discussion about the band and the songs. In my friend's band, and it is humorous when they start the night, the singer introduces the band members, and introduces the guitarists as "the lead guitarist, and other lead guitarist".

I went from Youth Gone Wild to Monkey Business. Skid Row was my favorite band in my youth. When they and Gn'R released their material in the late 80s, the sound of both bands were very new sounds. Gn'R follows more of what you described as one member holding down the chords (Izzy Stradlin) while Slash did all of his flashy stuff.

In Skid Row, Dave and Scotti both switch or swap back in forth. In a lot of the songs, while Dave Sabo is the lead guitarist, and the lead guitarist of the band. Many, if not most of Scotti's tracks contain solos. Scotti Hill is an accomplished guitarist of and in his own right and in my opinion often overlooked, just as Izzy is overlooked as he was the primary song writer. Dave went back over in the studio and added many layering of fills to the songs that you will not find in the DLC of the rocksmith tracks. In the Rocksmith DLC, they took Scotti's solos and put them on Dave's lead track. Often Dave will then resume the rhythm. This does actually make the lead tracks more unnecessarily difficult, as most of Dave's solos end up near the 20th fret or higher, and Scotti takes over and starts near the 4th or second fret. It makes for a hell of a jump.

Many Rocksmith tracks are splices of multiple tracks so that there are not huge gaps of dead boring space. That is another thing to consider as there for 3rd or 4th tracks while duplicating much of the rhythm track or just be fills. I don't think many people would want to cue up a track to play just a bar or 2 of fills although if done properly, fills add that certain je ne sais quoi that makes an extraordinary track that much more extraordinary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0TwmP0lA2Y in this performance of I Remember You, Scotti plays the solos and lead. During most of the song, he is just wandering the stage not playing anything. Dave does the rhythm on the 12 string, Additionally interesting, much like as in Gn' R's Patience, the bassist, Rachel plays another track of rhythm on a 6 string acoustic, and switches to bass after the solo as Dave switches to a 6 string for a bit before closing back on the 12 string. When they preformed this here a couple years ago, they completely ditched all of the acoustics and played the entire song on "electrics". (It was a rather disappointing performance. It was not the same show I saw in '92.) Unfortunately I can not remember how they preformed the song at the Seattle Center in '92 when I was stationed there in the military.

I guess if they can be flexible with their own songs, We have to keep in mind the limitations of technology of the time, and limitations of the game. Stuff to keep in mind if we make our own learning tools.