I have read guitar pro tabs just fine, but I feel dyslexic with the way Rock smith shows the notes. Also its quite annoying how the fretboard zooms in/out and there are flashing lights with the crowd.

Is there anything I can change to make it doable to sight read?

1 hour ago, rounddos said:

I have read guitar pro tabs just fine, but I feel dyslexic with the way Rock smith shows the notes. Also its quite annoying how the fretboard zooms in/out and there are flashing lights with the crowd.

Is there anything I can change to make it doable to sight read?

You can turn off venue mode in the options to disable the crowd and the lights and there's an option to invert the strings to be more like tabs, but other than that it just takes some getting used to.

I have sometimes found the RS display to be distracting because I find myself getting too hung up on the visual element and forgetting to focus on what I'm hearing, which is the most important aspect to remain focused on in relation to what you're playing. It gets better the more you play in RS, but I have found that it helps to learn the song parts enough to somewhat remember them and then intentionally make sure to focus on your playing & listening to the drum beat - if you have to, look away from the screen entirely. 

I use RS as a tool at this point because despite the fact its a game, its does certain things extremely well that no other guitar software really matches up with yet. I entirely disregard the game aspect and just use RS to play songs because the ability to quickly load songs, go to specific sections, easily/quickly loop, etc. You can do all that without even looking at the screen and its still an excellent tool for learning & playing songs.

Looking at the tabs for songs and playing outside of RS helps to get started as well. If you have two monitors, you could keep a tab open on monitor 2 while you're playing

TLDR - experiment with using RS as a playback device and play like the old days, forget the screen exists

On 1/28/2023 at 11:12 AM, rounddos said:

Is there anything I can change to make it doable to sight read?

Not much room there to make it easier, but I definitely had to invert the string to make it look more like TABs.

I always had serious issues with RS "notation" since the start, and I still have them when playing guitar charts. In fact, I mostly use RS with the bass instead, simply because there are less strings, less notes, and very few chords or solos 🙂 I am not a fan of dynamic difficulties at all, but obviously you can use them to decrease the notes on the screen.

Even with bass charts, there are still cases where the 3D graphics make it hard for me to figure out the exact timing of the notes, because two consecutive notes on different strings appear at a spatial distance which doesn't correspond to the time distance. What helps me there usually, is to try and look more at the tempo lines below the notes, instead of just at the notes (but be aware that there are CDLCs with pretty messy tempo lines).

Open strings also confuse me a lot, and I wish there was an option to show them as a "zero fret" notes instead of the whole string highlighted.

To top it all, sometimes the visuals don't seem to sync well with the audio... I tend to think this is a problem with my GPU or CPU because it seems to happen a bit random, but anyway when it happens I also noticed that my scores are better if I follow the audio instead of the video (meaning, if I don't try to "hit" the notes when they reach the bottom of the screen, but if I play them according to the audio), so I second arrov's recommendation to use your ears more than your eyes 🙂 

20 minutes ago, Shroud said:

To top it all, sometimes the visuals don't seem to sync well with the audio... I tend to think this is a problem with my GPU or CPU because it seems to happen a bit random, but anyway when it happens I also noticed that my scores are better if I follow the audio instead of the video (meaning, if I don't try to "hit" the notes when they reach the bottom of the screen, but if I play them according to the audio)

It may depend on the individual but I have noticed that sometimes the note highway doesn't seem to quite sync up with the audio, in terms of how my brain is interpreting it all. When I notice this on a chart I've created, I go back to check and see if the tempo/beatmap is properly in sync & if it is, then its just an issue with visual interpretation. I find its usually a problem when there is a long string of repeated notes for several bars/measures. Maybe changing the scroll speed of the note highway would help. Again, I just try to remember to remain focused on the beat & my internal timing and using the screen only as a guidepost as to what is being played

3 hours ago, Shroud said:

make it hard for me to figure out the exact timing of the notes

One of my gripes about Rocksmith. My personal thought is that they should have the tab with actual sheet music notation below or above the note highway scrolling sideways to see the tempo, the timing, and more importantly the the note duration. I am sure that would be a visual mess, but As Shroud said, it can be difficult to visually see the spacial differences.

FWIW regarding timing on the note highway (and you all may already know this) - the horizontal blue bars across the floor of the note highway correspond with the song measures. The start of a new measure is "highlighted" and the intermittent beats are of lesser prominence. If a chart is properly constructed (Official DLC/Charts and good CDLC), the "tab" should be match up with the note highway measure markers as appropriate and be in sync with the drums. I find that referencing the measure markers on the floor of the note highway can help with staying in time, recognizing note length, odd strum patterns, etc. (particularly on unfamiliar songs). If the chart isn't properly constructed, then all bets are off. Hope that helps.