playing with a real guitar?

[Dentata]

Agreed. It took me a few hours to adjust to the feel and fret spacing but I'm used to it now. The biggest challenge for me is reading the note waves or whatever they call their representation of chords. It's not always easy to make an on the fly call about how many fret difference it is.

On the off chance you don't know about it, give chord numbering (an option) a try. If you are talking about the arpeggio waves though, that was just a HMX brainfart that is a real pain to read on the fly and chord numbering doesn't fix those.

I like the Mustang as well and don't agree with the hate on it. It isn't a real guitar but for most folks it is a more precise RB3 controller than the Squier. I think the folks who prefer the Squier are in general folks who already play guitar well.

[peterock2007]

If you are talking about the arpeggio waves though, that was just a HMX brainfart that is a real pain to read on the fly and chord numbering doesn't fix those.

I agree. I've said many times that Rocksmith's display is more intuative for me that RB, and this is one of the reasons.

Of course someone's going to come along and tell me how wrong I am, and how my years of experience reading tab is completely forfeit because I don't prefer Rockband's chart.

[agentnnc]

On the off chance you don't know about it, give chord numbering (an option) a try. If you are talking about the arpeggio waves though, that was just a HMX brainfart that is a real pain to read on the fly and chord numbering doesn't fix those.

I like the Mustang as well and don't agree with the hate on it. It isn't a real guitar but for most folks it is a more precise RB3 controller than the Squier. I think the folks who prefer the Squier are in general folks who already play guitar well.

I'll check out that option. I don't know which is what. I'm talking about the power chord wave things where you have a number on the first string and then either a flat or a bump to denote how much higher the note on the next string(s) is/are.

I can see where you're coming from on those that hate it. A buddy came over who has been playing real guitar for 4 years (he picked it up because of Rock Band/Guitar Hero) and he wasn't so thrilled about it, but he did agree that with a little bit of time it would be tolerable and fun.

[Iceman71421]

The chord numbering is great for starting out. It made it so much easier.

[raynebc]

People here were saying that Rocksmith wouldn't be able to pick up multiple notes before it came out.

That wasn't the problem. Rock Band REQUIRES knowing that the player is hitting the correct fret on the correct string, which is why both the Mustang and Squier controllers are designed for this. Rocksmith goes the other route and does regular pitch detection, so you can play the correct notes on any string and it will count.

So as I said, this application won't be very suitable for Rock Band 3's needs. All decent third party solutions so far that involve using a normal guitar in Rock Band 3 involve a hexaphonic pickup for the above reasons.

well, rocksmith doesn't really pick up multiple notes either. i believe it works by comparing the audio waveform as a whole coming from your guitar to what the chart for the song is expecting, and gives you credit if they are close enough. it's also pretty easy to fool RS's chord detection.

I doubt it, and have never heard such a thing from Ubisoft or Rocksmith developers. Rocksmith doesn't have guitar stems to compare the incoming audio with, so I can't imagine the results would be very good, especially for bass detection.

[tnevaker]

I doubt it, and have never heard such a thing from Ubisoft or Rocksmith developers. Rocksmith doesn't have guitar stems to compare the incoming audio with, so I can't imagine the results would be very good, especially for bass detection.

you don't need the stems, they would be useless anyway since the audio stem would be unique and specific to whatever guitar and processing was used on the individual track. the software has a template of what the waveform of each chord, for example, an Am chord, would look like, then the audio input of the player's guitar is sampled and compared to that, and if they're close enough (within whatever tolerances the software employs to account for the wide variety of guitars a player might use) you get credit for hitting the chord. you don't need the original audio stem to create those chord templates since they need to be universal enough to match any guitar that players could use. the point was, the software doesn't pick out the individual notes of the chord the player is playing and score based on that, it scores based on the chord waveform as a whole. i'm pretty sure i remember an article describing that was the way the RS tech worked, though i can't remember when or where.

[raynebc]

I still disagree with your perception of how the game works, but if you can find evidence from a first party, I'll be able to change my opinion. The internal charts for Rocksmith store information about the guitar's tuning and the fret numbers of each string used for each note, so while it may be possible to build synth waveforms at the start of each song to compare against the player's guitar input, it makes more sense from a system resources standpoint to just detect that all expected pitches are present. Adding to that, Rocksmith tries to identify when your playing is off by a string or a fret, so that means that by your expectations, they'd have to build several waveforms and compare several for each note instead of just one waveform.

[kim666]

@raynebc

Did you found time to test the midiguitar beta?

[Boognish]

While I do have the Squier, I have found that I have more fun playing through an amp and just ignoring the fact that I won't be scored. I use the game as scrolling sheet music and for the backup band. This allows me to really hear how well I am doing (sometimes RB just doesn't register right, and other times it lets me get away with really sloppy playing). Also, I can use a real bass to play the bass parts instead of faking it with the Squier. My dream is to get more people together and have everyone playing real instruments with just the game for the extra backing stuff. I have it all set up (keyboards and drums, too!), and my son can play bass.

I highly recommend looking into this route, especially if you could also use Rocksmith to learn the basics and you don't care about scoring or achievements. It will teach you enough to make losing the feedback from the Squier not a big loss.

[tnevaker]

I still disagree with your perception of how the game works, but if you can find evidence from a first party, I'll be able to change my opinion. The internal charts for Rocksmith store information about the guitar's tuning and the fret numbers of each string used for each note, so while it may be possible to build synth waveforms at the start of each song to compare against the player's guitar input, it makes more sense from a system resources standpoint to just detect that all expected pitches are present. Adding to that, Rocksmith tries to identify when your playing is off by a string or a fret, so that means that by your expectations, they'd have to build several waveforms and compare several for each note instead of just one waveform.

i wish i could remember where i read that, i don't remember if it was an UBIsoft person or someone writing about them. and they could have been simplifying things. it's possible they break down the waveform and analyze individual pitches, though i don't see how that's less resource-intensive. audio processing algorithms that can analyze individual pitches within a complex waveform such as a chord (and especially when it's a non-pristine signal coming from a guitar, with all the extraneous finger and string noise, overtones and harmonics, etc, as opposed to a pure synth signal) are pretty resource-heavy, and doing it on the fly in real time even moreso. i don't know that it's so resouce-heavy as to be impossible though. whereas the method that was described is more like fingerprint-matching.... if you imagine the chord waveform like a fingerprint, each one would have a unique set of points that you can match against, and if enough of those points match up, you get a match. much less processing involved when you don't have to break it down into its individual components.

also, as far as Rocksmith "trying" to identify if you're playing off by a fret or string... well, "tries" is the right word. first of all, i've only noticed it ever doing that on single pitches, not chords, which if so it's not relevant when we're talking about chords (maybe it does that for simple power chords? i don't remember, but when it comes to full on chords, i haven't seen that little arrow). and when the arrow does show up, on single notes, it only tells you to play a higher or lower pitch. it can't tell what string you're on, a C note on the 3rd fret A string will register the same as a C played on the 8th fret low E string. if the chart shows 3rd fret A string and you play 7th fret low E string, you'll still see the arrow pointed up, not down. it's purely pitch-based and has nothing to do with fret-string combo like in RB.

i do know that i've played a few songs where you can really fudge the chords and still get a successful hit. roxanne comes to mind, those sus4 chords you can play as simple minor barre chords and still get scored as a hit. if it's processing individual pitches, wouldn't it notice the sus4 note was missing?