The Rocksmith Experiment (Xbox 360 Version)

Hello everyone. You may or may not have heard of this little title from Ubisoft that came out late last year. You also may or may not have seen the marketing campaign for it. This game is advertised to be a tool as well as it is a game. In order to play it, you plug in any 1/4" jack electric guitar (you heard that right, a REAL electric guitar!!!) and play right from the get-go, whether you're an expert or beginner.

Despite what some friends of mine will tell you (who think that Guitar Hero and Rock Band were the extent of my music "experience"), I actually do have a little past experience playing guitar. It's not much, but it's enough to play most classic rock (minus tricky solos) and punk with little difficulty. I'm about as average as average gets.

So what is it about this game that got me curious enough to give it a try, especially after the failure that was "Power Gig: Rise of the Six String?" Well, for one thing, I actually liked what I saw of the set up for this title. The notes come at you in a way similar to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band set up of the past, except that you're hitting actual notes on your six-string. Instead of difficulty settings, they start you off with a few notes of a song, and as you get progressively better, it will track that and add more difficulty to the notes you're playing, up until you are finally playing all the actual notes of the song. The promise of having the ability to get to that point, as well as gain some actual skill at the same time was too much for me to pass up. Also, I got it on sale, so that was the nail in the coffin.

What I'd like to here is play the game at least a few nights each week if I can, in order to showcase my progress and determine once and for all if this product really can help me get any better without the help of an actual teacher. I'd love to get better at hand-shifting, hammer-ons and pull-offs, fast-picking, and all sorts of other awesome techniques that I never felt attainable in the past. I'll be happy to post my results on all of these things, as well as my overall thoughts on the game itself as I learn more. Keep reading each week (as well as whenever I put out another awesome blog post about something unrelated :P) for more on what I hope to be an interesting experiment all-around.