Will Rocksmith teach you to play guitar?
Monday, March 6th, 2017 | Music
If you have ever wanted a real-world version of Guitar Hero, Rocksmith may be for you. However, learning guitar still takes a lot of practice.
Guitar Hero has proved to be a very popular game, and it was only a matter of time until people started asking “is there any way this could be done with a real guitar?”
The answer was yes, in the form of Ubisoft’s Rocksmith. You plug a guitar into your games console using a USB to 1/4” jack cable and then play a Guitar Hero-style game, with the idea of it teaching you to play a real guitar.
But does it actually work? I took Ubisoft up on their 60 day challenge: put in an hour per day and you will play guitar for life, or so they say.
Did it work? Sort of. On the positive side, I can indeed play guitar. Within a year or so of first picking it up I was good enough to join a band, if only to hold down some chords while the real guitarists played the fancy stuff.
On the flip side, it really takes practice. I played for two hours per day, instead of one. I also acquired a guitar teacher for one-to-one lessons and still it was really six months before I could play a simple song.
That ignores the fun I had using Rocksmith though. You are playing your favourite tunes, even if it is just the occasional note at first, and while the adaptive difficulty can be annoying at times, it does make it accessible to everyone. Even if it doesn’t turn you into a guitar player for life, you may find you have just as much fun playing it as any other video game.
If you have ever wanted a real-world version of Guitar Hero, Rocksmith may be for you. However, learning guitar still takes a lot of practice.
Guitar Hero has proved to be a very popular game, and it was only a matter of time until people started asking “is there any way this could be done with a real guitar?”
The answer was yes, in the form of Ubisoft’s Rocksmith. You plug a guitar into your games console using a USB to 1/4” jack cable and then play a Guitar Hero-style game, with the idea of it teaching you to play a real guitar.
But does it actually work? I took Ubisoft up on their 60 day challenge: put in an hour per day and you will play guitar for life, or so they say.
Did it work? Sort of. On the positive side, I can indeed play guitar. Within a year or so of first picking it up I was good enough to join a band, if only to hold down some chords while the real guitarists played the fancy stuff.
On the flip side, it really takes practice. I played for two hours per day, instead of one. I also acquired a guitar teacher for one-to-one lessons and still it was really six months before I could play a simple song.
That ignores the fun I had using Rocksmith though. You are playing your favourite tunes, even if it is just the occasional note at first, and while the adaptive difficulty can be annoying at times, it does make it accessible to everyone. Even if it doesn’t turn you into a guitar player for life, you may find you have just as much fun playing it as any other video game.