Diary of a Guitar Noob: ‘Rocksmith’ Day 1

You’ve seen our preview from the perspective of a guitar player. Now, VGW turns its attention to Rocksmith from the perspective of someone who has never picked up a guitar. 

[UPDATE: Day 2 is now posted.] One of the most common questions that comes with Rocksmith is “Can it teach someone who has never picked up a guitar how to play one?” Our founder decided to test that theory, with me volunteering as the guinea pig. I’ve wanted to learn how to play guitar most of my life, but the prospect of lessons has always fallen through. My parents even bought me a guitar before going away to college, but sadly it has sat in its case for the better part of 6 years.

Let’s establish a frame of reference: I do have some music credentials. I started singing in choirs at age 5, started playing the piano at around 8, played percussion in bands for about 10 years, and I can read music. However, learning the guitar has always been just out of my grasp.

This is why I was really excited when I found out that we were going to be reviewing Rocksmith. I had heard from both Jason and Jen how awesome the game was when they saw it at E3. Jason has always been elusive about teaching me to play guitar, so perhaps this Rocksmith was the answer.

Standards & Practices

When Jason first handed me the beautiful, cherry red Epiphone, I was excited. My first thought was “Holy crap! This thing is heavy.” I highly recommend having a good strap and/or sitting down when you play. Right away I ran into a problem. I had no idea how to hook up the guitar (Guitar noob, remember?).  Sure Rocksmith showed you to plug the special dongle into the Xbox 360 and the guitar, but I didn’t know where it would plug into the guitar. Most guitarists seem to plug it into the side, but our guitar didn’t have a side plugin. Jason kindly (while laughing at me) explained that our guitar plugged into the front. First problem solved. I probably would’ve figured it out on my own if I wasn’t so scared to break the nice guitar.

The helpful man on the screen demonstrated how you should hold the guitar and the pick. It’s not that easy, however. After trying to play a few notes, I noticed that my fingers couldn’t reach the frets like they should, and the pick kept slipping out of my fingers. That’s where my frustration started. The game can show you how to hold the guitar, but until the Xbox grows some arms, it can’t fix how you’re holding it. It took me asking Jason to hold the guitar to see where I was going wrong. My wrist was at an odd angle and I was holding the pick too high up. Problem fixed, but with human intervention.

Ubisoft did a really nice job with the interface, especially the tuner. I’ve used a lot of different tuners in my life, and surprisingly, this one was the best. It was easy to read and quickly responded to any changes in the string’s frequency. When I tightened it instead of loosening it, it let me know. When it comes to actually playing, the guitar tablature on the screen is opposite of the one that printed music has. As a noob, it was great. It reflected the way the guitar is built, lowest on top- highest on bottom. They also brought in the idea of a scrolling note highway, which makes it familiar to those of us that have rocked out on a plastic guitar.

Satisfaction?

First time, first song: “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling stones: 66% accuracy. Pretty decent, I thought, for someone who has never played guitar before. Thanks for using a well known song, Rocksmith devs. They start you out on just a few frets and only 2 strings. It seemed easy enough, but I since I didn’t know where the frets were I constantly found myself looking down at the guitar and missing the notes, because I can’t look at the screen and the guitar at the same time. There was very little feedback while playing the song to tell me if I was doing well or sucking.

Afterward, Rocksmith recommended that I try Ducks, a mini game that teaches you how to switch between frets. It was very useful and fun. It helped me get a feel for the distance between certain frets that I was using in the previous song.

I decided to give “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” another try. I did decently until all of a sudden, the blue string appeared and flustered me. Rocksmith was trying to reward my decent playing by stepping it up a notch. It’s innovative, but throwing new things at people in the middle of what seems like a test is kind of crazy. They do explain things after you see them in songs (like how to do a slide or sustains). It’s frustrating when you’re just getting one part to get thrown another without checking to see if you truly mastered it. If I could’ve played the whole song through on just what I had learned at first (without the sustains and blue string), I probably would’ve felt better about myself. Instead, I felt worse because I received a lower score with no real indication that the lower score was cause by a harder difficulty. [This is part of Rocksmith's dynamic difficulty -- if you miss what they throw your way, the next iteration of the phrase will be less difficult. ~Ed.]

Jason kept reassuring me that I was picking up the basics well, but I didn’t feel as if I was. However, I can pick up that guitar and play the riff that it taught me on that level (just the basic one). I did learn something, even if I felt frustrated at the time.

While I feel that some human interaction is needed to learn (the game can only correct you so much), I have learned how to hold the guitar and pick, how to tune the guitar with a tuner, how to (somewhat) navigate the first few frets and a few notes on the guitar. Pretty good for one session.

Jason and I both share a concern about the game that has nothing to do with learning. It’s inconvenient to have to pick up the controller constantly to deal with the menus. Integration with the Kinect would have been great for navigating the menus. Apparently there is a foot pedal coming that will help with this problem.

Stay tuned to VGW to track Samantha’s progress with Rocksmith, day-by-day. 

Written by Samantha Bigger  (36 Posts)

Sam’s first gaming experience was with a View-Master Interactive Vision and “Magic on Sesame Street”. Realizing this was only a half-assed video game, she moved onto the NES and Game Gear for the “educational” experience. They must’ve been somewhat educational because you’ll mostly find her writing in our Braincandy section, making you think about the games you play.

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