Tale of an Amateur Guitarist: More Rocksmith… and the Issues With it
My journey with Rocksmith continues!
Rocksmith remains to be a great teaching tool, and an encouraging one. I’m still having a lot of fun learning, and I must say that I’ve learned a lot. In the lessons so far, I’ve gotten half of them done, and I’ve gotten high scores on some of the games. The more I play my guitar, the easier it becomes.
Ehh.. with some exceptions…
I’ve found where Rocksmith can fall flat (and of course, cannot compare to the tutoring of an actual teacher). While I have learned ten times more about guitars in the past week than I have my whole life, I’m starting to wonder if I’m learning all I can be. I like to broaden my horizons, so in the time to come, I might try various other tools to aid me along. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the flaws Rocksmith can fall victim to.
Your save file can become corrupted.
Ohhh yes.
One fateful morning a few days ago, I opened my Rocksmith profile only to find the chilling message that the save file was “damaged” and thus could not be opened. As my heart steadily plummeted into my stomach, I realized that I had lost all of my progress. I would have to do all of the lessons over again. I would have to level up in the Guitarcade again. I would have to play those damn starter songs again (that I never heard prior to playing this game).
Thankfully, I didn’t have months worth of progress lost, as some others have! Since I had already known how to do everything from my first time around, I plowed through the lessons quicker a second time, and thankfully my high scores were saved on my Uplay profile, rather than my Rocksmith one, so my name is still on the leaderboards.
My message to ALL Rocksmith players: back up your profile for the love of all that is loud and rocking.
Rocksmith tracks “correct notes” better than it tracks “correct technique.”
Rocksmith does track your technique, but it is most useful in the songs and practice rounds of lessons, where it tells you your technique accuracy percentage. Where it isn’t useful is the lessons themselves. I’m pretty sure if you hit all of the right notes, even accidentally as I have on a couple of occasions, Mr. Proud Guy will gush “EXCELLENT” anyway. As I said, it’s not that big of an issue, since the lessons are more of forerunners to the bigger projects, but sometimes when passing a lesson, it actually shocked me that I got it right, because I knew I didn’t.
Chords.
I “get” chords… but the game seems to think I don’t. It will tell me to press my fingers on the frets… I do so. It will tell me to only strum those strings and no others. I do that. I strum it, it sounds fine. The game tells me I might be holding my fingers in the wrong place, or that I’m missing a string. I check my hand. Yeah, my fingers are on the right frets. I’m moving them around to make sure I’m not touching other strings. I strum each string individually to make sure they sound right. They do. Strum the chord. In so many words, the game keeps telling me “you’re doing it wrong.” This is extremely frustrating, as you can imagine, because without an actual player or teacher telling me EXACTLY what I’m doing wrong, I have no idea what it is. I’m doing my best to do whatever the computer asks me, and it doesn’t like the way I’m doing it, for whatever reason.
The ironic thing is that when I play those same chords during songs, they’re apparently perfect. I hit every one. Maybe the detection of the chords is more lenient in the tracks and riffs, but when trying to play them during particularly the second chord lesson, it doesn’t work. The problem is that I can’t tell if this is human error or just a bug– another problem with using a game to learn.
Bends.
I might need to toughen my fingers for this… but holy HELL does it ever hurt. I mean, it kills. Mostly because whenever I do bends, the game tells me I’m wrong, then I have to bend again… and again, and again, again, again until my fingers are nearly bleeding. I’ll push that damn string up to where it wants and it says “miss” a lot of the time. So I keep trying and miss even more because my fingers are falling off. Again, this is where a teacher would come in handy, to tell you if you’re too low or too high on your bend. Oh, and the bends are always on those thinner strings, which you have to push against the thicker ones. I wonder if working my arms this hard counts as exercise (probably not).
Tremolo.
Eh, this one just sort of requires practice right now, but I find it challenging to angle my pick just right to do it correctly. It’s all a matter of doing it repeatedly, of course, but I can’t help but tense my arm when trying to do it. They tell you not to, but it’s sort of something that can’t be helped. My picks are medium thickness, and I heard lighter picks are ideal for tremolo, but mine aren’t that heavy. I managed to do it properly for the lesson… and then, I could never get it right again. It was like a miracle that occurred out of nowhere to help me pass it so I could move on.
So… do I feel like a rockstar yet?
Not quite… but I can tell you honestly that when holding my guitar, I feel great. It’s satisfying to learn new things, to challenge yourself, to rise above something that before has been holding you back from achieving certain goals. Onward, to conquering rock!
Stay in tune!
