Being a clever bastard, I thought I'd combine video games and guitars and buy him Rocksmith 2014 for Christmas. I saw the reviews, looked through their claims to teach non-players to play in two months, and figured that it would be a nice tool for someone who already plays to learn some new songs. If nothing else, I figured it would dovetail with his two main interests of video games and guitars.
Christmas came and he played it a little. I borrowed it, just to try it out, and it hasn't left my office since. Basically, Rocksmith is the best learning tool I have ever found for guitar players. Hands down. And, if you are under the age of thirty and have access to it, I hate you. Profoundly. Because you will have a much easier time learning guitar than I did.
The system is simple: a proprietary cable connects your standard 1/4" guitar jack to the USB input on the Xbox. It's as simple as that. You start the game, it asks a few questions about what you play and what you want to play, and it takes over. You can choose between lead guitar, rhythm guitar and bass, and are free to swap between them. The main menu gives you all the options you could need to learn and/or improve. You can learn a song from the thirty or so that come with it; you can work through guided lessons on technique, theory, chords, scales, or even just how to take care of your guitar; you can play silly little mini-games, designed to look like retro arcade games, where you use guitar skills to kill zombies and ninjas (one favorite of mine has you play chords to shoot zombies: quick, Amin! E5! Vampire bats, strum F#min! Stupid, but fun practice).
Anyone who already plays will want to jump straight into the songs, and here's where the game really shines. The default selection ranges from Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop to Slayer's War Ensemble with plenty of middle ground between: Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Rush, Police, KISS. You pick a song, and the game assumes you have no idea how to plays it, so it starts you off with actually playing maybe ten percent of the actual song as it scrolls through. For example, on Blitzkrieg Bop, it starts you with playing an A on the first beat of each bar. Once it sees you can handle that (even mid-song), it'll add the E. If you nail that, it adds the D, then the quick D -- A, until you work up to the actual A5-D5-E5 power chords. It adapts quickly to how well you're playing the song.
But let's say you're getting your ass kicked. There's an option called Riff Repeater where you select part of the song, and it loops through that part continuously so you can practice just the tricky parts. Within Riff Repeater, you can slow it down a manageable speed and, as you get better, the game will speed up until you've got the riff nailed.
The adaptability is what really amazes me. I quickly tried Iron Maiden's The Trooper, it being an old favorite of mine on bass. It started with the standard one-note-per-measure, and it actually threw me off, because I'm used to playing Steve Harris' galloping triplets. I got annoyed, and just started playing the song the way I know it, and the game responded within a single verse, and was throwing the real-deal transcription at me, full-speed.
I got a little obsessive, and immediately downloaded the Police and Iron Maiden DLC song packs. They're a little pricey, about $12 for four or five songs, but the intoxication of finally learning all these songs the right way on bass and finally having access to learning them on guitar as well was more than I could resist.
The game also has in-depth lessons for chords, picking techniques, vibrato, simple tuning, you name it. It's pretty friggin amazing.
So, I've been playing for thirty years, and I think it's an invaluable tool for anyone looking to .improve their playing or learn more songs. My sixteen year old is using it as a tool to quickly boost him to the next level in his playing. My eleven year-old tried it using his brother's Telecaster, and learned three chords in about thirty minutes and was shooting zombies using the Power of His Rockin'.
I am totally pissed off that nothing like this existed in 1985.
