Love it or hate it,Guitar Heroshowed countless gamers how fun it can be to rock out to their favorite songs while pretending to play an instrument. Playing a song to the roar of a crowd is an undeniable rush, and while those plastic five-button guitar controllers were useful for pretending to be a rock star, there wasn’t much crossover to the real thing. It was only a matter of time until game developers decided to introduce real guitars to games, which was seen over a decade ago in games likeRocksmithandBandFuse.Part of what madeGuitar Heroand similar games popular is how easy they made playing guitar seem. The real deal requires a lot more time and effort to get good, butRocksmith+is designed to help wannabe rock stars make their dream a reality.
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Are You Ready to Rock?
Rocksmith+is the latest iteration of Ubisoft’s guitar instructional software. Calling it a game is a bit of a misnomer as it’s really more like educational software cosplaying as a game. There aren’t any competitive aspects or high score leaderboards, though the player will increase their rank and the game does keep track of a player’s mastery of a song, which is calculated based on how accurately they play a song on its various adaptive difficulties.Rocksmith+is filled with numerous tutorial videos and several thousand songs of multiple genres in which to build up one’s chops on guitar, bass or keyboard.
The tutorial videos cover a wide variety of techniques, ranging from beginner techniques such as basic fingering and strumming to more advanced techniques such as artificial harmonics and tapping. The videos do a good job of explaining and demonstrating the technique in question, and are typically followed by an opportunity for the player to try to put the technique into action over a riff. If someone is a real beginner, as if they’ve only had an instrument for a couple of months and are learning these techniques for the first time, playing these tutorial riffs at 100 percent speed can be an exercise in frustration. The guitar is not an easy instrument. The greats make it look easy because they’ve spent thousands of hours honing their craft. No one is going to watch a couple videos on lead guitar techniques and will suddenly be able to play like Alexi Laiho.
This is where the Riff Repeater feature comes in handy. If someone is trying to learn tapping patterns, they aren’t going to instantly be able to do the six note pattern at maximum speed. The Riff Repeater lets the player isolate a specific riff from a song or exercise and play it over and over again at a slower speed. Trying to sightread the solos in a song likeHangar 18can be daunting at maximum speed, especially for someone who has never attempted to play that song before. Using the Riff Repeater, that high speed blur of numbers becomes a lot more manageable, allowing the player to focus on developing the muscle memory and proper technique while allowing each note to ring out how it is supposed to. Once mastered at a slow speed, it just takes practice to build it up to the proper speed. It’s not the most fun process, but it can make the difference between nailing a face melting solo or sounding like a bunch of cats getting tortured.
The default display for musical notation is the Noteway. The Noteway is a display that is unique toRocksmith,and it’s something that will appeal to some people, but others will likely hate it. The Noteway has a diagram featuring the strings and the notes come to the player on a display that looks like a cross between guitar tablature and the note highway in games likeGuitar HeroandRock Band. It’s similar to the system that was in older versions ofRocksmith.This system seems like it’s the perfect gateway to playing real music for people who became interested in playing guitar from the aforementioned plastic instrument games as it shows them where to play the notes on the neck, but the display is similar to the games in which they’ve played before. People who are already familiar with the guitar may prefer the traditional guitar tab, which is also available inRocksmith+and two notation styles can be switched whenever the player desires.
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Rocksmith+boasts a library of thousands of songs and it continues to grow. The library is one of the weirder aspects. It cannot be said that it’s hurting in variety as there are sixteen different genres: Rock, Metal, R&B, Pop, Folk, Jazz, Country, Blues, Latin, Electronic, Reggae, Hip-Hop, New Age, Classical, Regional and Other. In other words, whatever someone’s musical tastes may be there, it’s safe to say there’s probably something for everyone here. But when it comes to trying to please people, not all genres are represented equally. Blues has 188 songs, Country has 727 songs and Pop has 2411 songs to give a few examples. And just by the nature of different styles of music, the guitar is not at the forefront in some of the selections.
The library gets even weirder with who is actually included. I’m going to stick to rock and metal here as those are the genres in which I have the most expertise. There are some bands that seem like they would be no-brainers for inclusion in a guitar-centric game, such as Iron Maiden, Alice in Chains or Nirvana, all of which are either absent or extremely underrepresented. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised to see Katatonia, Bloodbath and Type O Negative included. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on all genres, but would imagine similar reactions to fans of other styles wondering why some seemingly obvious artist is absent, but finding a more obscure band’s inclusion to be a nice surprise. The current song library is available on theRocksmith+website, so anyone on the fence about this based on their favorite bands being included can check it out.
Playing it Just Like the Recording
To ease players into the songs,Rocksmith+has adaptive difficulty. On lower difficulty levels, the player might be required to strum a three note chord instead of a full one, or there may be one strum for every four that are heard in the song. The solos will look like skeletal remains, where they might be one note for every ten that is played. This is designed to ease beginners into playing songs or even help advanced players get a feel for the basic structure of more complex and challenging songs.
Players can set the difficulty prior to playing, but the difficulty will adjust itself mid song based on performance. The song will simplify itself if the player is having difficulty or may become closer to the actual recorded version if the player is nailing it. Easier settings can be good to give an idea of what the chord progression is and the structure of the song, but can be difficult if the player is already familiar with the song as they will have a tendency to want to strum in the pattern they’re hearing. InRocksmith+the only person the player is competing against is how well they previously played a song, so it’s best to just set the difficulty level to whichever is most comfortable at the time, though mastery at 100 percent should always be the goal.
There are two ways to playRocksmith+.One is with theRocksmithReal Tone cable, which connects the guitar to the PlayStation. The other is with theRocksmithmobile app, which allows the player to play their rig and the app will transmit the sound to the console. I know people love using apps for everything, but using the cable is just a better experience overall. Using the cable fromRocksmith 2014did have a slight delay from strumming the guitar and hearing the sound from the game, but it was still a smoother experience than trying to use the app. The app works well enough if one does not have the appropriate cable, but if someone is planning on investing a significant amount of time onRocksmith+,the cable is a worthwhile investment.
As one may have guessed, when dealing with thousands of songs there are going to be several different tunings. In a perfect world, every guitarist playing this will have a guitar set up and ready to go all the different tunings. For those of us not fortunate enough to have enough guitars to cover the range from drop A to E standard, there are a couple of options. One option is to use the in-game tuner to tune to the proper notes before each song. This is the preferred method for ear training, but it gets old quickly to constantly switch from drop C to E standard to D#.
There’s an option to pitch-shift, which allows the player to keep their guitar tuned to whatever tuning they’re currently in and the game will transpose the tone to what the song calls for. The downside to this is hearing the dissonance in what is being strummed, and the pitch shifted notes coming out of the game isn’t doing any favors for ear training, but it works if one wishes to cater to their laziness.Rocksmith+only supports 6-string guitars and 4-string basses. Having instruments with a greater number of strings than that could be played is helpful, but the player would have to either stick to playing on the strings covered in the tabs or just be good at transposing on the fly.
But Will it Make Me a Guitar God?
If someone wants to master guitar, they need to practice. A lot. Practice until they are bored with what they are playing. Practice until their fingers hurt and then practice some more.Rocksmith+isn’t a miracle device that’s going to make someone a great guitarist without practice, but having a vast library of songs to play can help encourage someone to practice, because everyone who picks up a guitar would rather jam on their favorite songs than practice scales. The lessons are helpful because they do provide detailed instruction on how to do numerous techniques, which can be beneficial for everyone, whether they are picking up a guitar for the first time or need just a little help in mimicking John Petrucci’s legato phrasing. Regardless of an individual’s skill level, there’s something that can be learned or improved upon with the assistance ofRocksmith+,making it a valuable learning tool. The Riff Repeater and the adaptive difficulty of learning songs are some of the elements that make this helpful in improving one’s musicianship.
While there are a lot of positives toRocksmith+,it does have its limits. The main benefit of taking guitar lessons is getting feedback from the instructor. Having an expert watch your playing can point out bad techniques or explain why the pinch harmonics aren’t squealing or why the strumming pattern is off. The practice riffs after a lot of the videos include the techniques being discussed, but trying to run through them at top speed while incorporating the new technique is going to be difficult for beginners. A better approach, that would come with live instruction, would be becoming proficient with say harmonics or palm muting and then trying to incorporate them into a riff.
Rocksmith+‘svideo lessons are helpful, but don’t differ greatly from what one can find on YouTube or countless other instructional DVDs. The subscription model is not one that is popular. The originalRocksmithwas a one-time purchase, but expanding the song library could get expensive from the vast amount of paid DLC songs. The subscription model here avoids that problem, but whether it is worthwhile is contingent on how well the song library grows in relation to one’s musical tastes. Subscription plans start at $19.99 a month, which gets cheaper with longer subscriptions. Even on the most expensive plan, a monthly subscription is still cheaper than a half-hour in-person lesson. With the availability of free videos online that cover the same information, however, it might be difficult to consider the subscription a worthwhile investment.
Closing Comments:
IsRocksmith+the perfect substitute for guitar lessons? Absolutely not, but it is a good tool for learning some techniques and songs. The comprehensive library of video lessons covers a wide variety of techniques; from beginner to advanced, to whatever technique a player is struggling with, there’s a video to help show them the way to improve. Unfortunately, unlike actual lessons, the videos are one-way communications, so there’s no constructive feedback to cater to the individual’s needs. The song library numbers in the thousands, and while there’s likely something for everyone, many favorites are omitted. Even with its limitations, however, video instruction can be an effective means to learning an instrument.Rocksmith+does have all these limitations, but with its vast song library and comprehensive video lessons, it is one of the better options for learning how to play guitar without taking actual lessons.
Rocksmith+
PlayStation 5
Rocksmith+ is software designed to help players gain mastery of guitar, bass or keyboard. Rocksmith+ includes thousands of songs to play along to as well of numerous video lessons and exercises.
