So I've just began playing Rocksmith 2014 on Steam having almost zero experience with a guitar, well except for the plastic kind. However I was given an okay guitar from a friend about six years ago and literally did nothing with it except put it in the back of my cupboard. So whilst I was thinking about jumping back onto the plastic guitar bandwagon with either Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live I decided screw it, let's give Rocksmith a bash. I'd heard some real positive impressions of the tools and techniques taught by the game.

Now I'm not stupid, I know learning the guitar can take forever (it's one of the reasons I'm asking for some tips) however the beginner lessons themselves have stumped me. Right now I'm still trying to figure out how to best memorize the strings without having to look at the guitar and chords are lost of me right now. I'm actually spending a lot of time in the guitarcade with the saloon game which is helping me get use to the specific strings. But I'd appreciate some beginner tips that might help me get the hang of memorizing chords and strings. While I appreciate the lessons I do feel like they jump in difficulty a little to far from one lesson to another.

So what can I do to help me get better at memorizing the guitar and any other tips that you think I might find useful,
Thanks.

What I did for the longest time was play in front of a mirror, but honestly Rocksmith will help with that, just from playing simple tunes and such. I understand how frustrating it is, but alot of learning guitar is just figuring out how to hold it in your lap or stand with it and be comfortable, and then teaching your fingers to interact with strings can take some time.

Everyone learns differently, but for most people, pure repetition will do it. Have you spent much time in Learn a Song or have you just stuck to the lessons and Guitarcade? First thing I'd suggest is starting on an easy song like Black Magic or R U Mine? I find that it just registers with me better when there's some reason to skipping around and actually making music, even if it's one note at a time.

I'm primarily a bass player (going on about four years now), so I'll still string/fret watch when I'm switching to guitar since higher notes seem to blend together for me. It's just one of those things.

Practice. There's really no major tips or secrets. Just good ole fashioned practice. Eventually muscle memory will kick in.

Which guitar are you using?

It really is pratice. Everytime you are playing, you are getting a little better and better. By the way, I went into Rocksmith with almost no guitar knowledge.

I also focused on a lot of the arcade games in the beginning. I loved playing them and think they are a great way to get you up and going. I loved Ducks and the saloon game. Chord of the Dead is great to hammer a chord progression into you, also.

The lessons itself I found a bit all over the place. I would try out a few, stop when I couldn't get them down and would go back to it eventually. I kinda build myself a gameplay loop of Rocksmith: first the arcade games then some songs, to keep me going.

I find the best practice is the one you enjoy. If you're using Rocksmith to learn and you're not enjoying it or getting any benefit, try learning away from it for a couple of months and then go back.

Pick a song/riff you like and learn that. First riffs I learned was Smoke on the water and Sweet Dreams (Marilyn Manson version). I must've played those for weeks, getting them down before moving onto something else lol.

I'd recommend picking a decently easy song that you like and learning it. It has good tools to break down and play specific sections at varying speeds and difficulty, so you can really hammer it in. As for chords, you'll kinda just start seeing the same ones pop up over and over in the different songs you learn. I believe strongly in learning songs because otherwise you don't really have much to show from your time spent practicing and it can be pretty discouraging.

I was going to be snarky and say play a bass instead, then give actual advice but:

Took the words right out of my mouth.

make sure to switch the string layout at the bottom of the screen so it has E (red) at the very bottom if you chord with left hand

Like most of the people here said, practice. But practice smart, don't practice hard.

Practicing 1 hour a day consistently everyday is more beneficial and faster than practicing for 6 hours straight every few days. Muscle memory is a blessing and curse. It will remember every movement you do, including the incorrect ones. Do everything as slowly as you need to in order to do it right the first time and every time. Speed will come naturally, it's the least important thing you need to work on. If you start messing up, either slow down or take a break and come back. Don't keep at it if you're slipping up, because those slip ups will be ingrained into your muscle memory, whether you want them or not.

Rocksmith is a good tool for learning songs, but it doesn't emphasize the importance of nailing down the fundamentals first. Without prior experience with guitar, I recommend looking up extra-curricular material online and slowly work on that. Learn how to properly hold the guitar and pick, or how to properly fingerpick. Learn the open chords and then work up to major and minor bar chords, that will cover most of the chords in the game. By that time, you'll be comfortable enough with the guitar to not have to look at it and play mostly from the on-screen charts.

LOOOOVE Rocksmith.

The key first thing you that you are learning right now, if you play the game, is to move your hands around the guitar. That's step 1. Most guitar players who never exceed beyond basic levels despite poking at the concept for years are the people who built up a "home" and never leave it. Either they have problems moving their hands up and down the neck, or they stick to the same 3 chords they first learned.

Just become comfortable moving your hands around the guitar and a weird phenomenon takes place. The guitar seems to shrink. When you first look at an instrument, it looks like it's a sea buttons, strings or keys. But once you become more and more comfortable with it, and learn to know what it is that you are actually looking at, you suddenly realize that it's not really that big. It's like moving to a new town. It seems huge at first, but within a few days, suddenly everything seems much smaller.

Wow, thanks for the replies. I'm taking everything said into account. I've also started looking into some external teaching lessons that might be helpful as some of you as said, Rocksmith is interesting but I feel like it misses out on some techniques I think I need help on. I have asked around and one tip I keep hearing is to practice daily but not for many hours straight but to practice for about one to two hours per day.

I'm using a cheap Benson guitar (similar to that one) which seems okay for the job right now, plus I believe it was pretty new when it was given to me (mate ended up upgrading to a more substantial guitar) so I'm happy with what I've got so far, plus he gave it me for free anyway. I don't want to really go down the expense route just yet. Right now I'm happy with just the basics, I'm sure I'll be told to get a better guitar at some point. I think a lot of it comes down to getting use to things, which is the challenge ahead of me. I personally call BS on there so called 60 day challenge though, unless I'm just that stupid at guitar :D which is possible.

Also have a side question, how are Steam/Ubisoft with the use of custom songs? Have they ever banned anyone online for using them as that seems like one of the really cool features of Rocksmith, though I have heard that the dynamic difficulty feature (which I love about Rocksmith) isn't always great with custom songs.

The Benson looks like the dime-a-dozen guitar starter kits, especially Fender's Starcaster. Even though the tone and setup from those are terrible, it's worth it to stick to them until you are absolutely sure you want to pursue guitar as a hobby. It's a very expensive hobby, but it's also the most rewarding thing I've experienced so far.

If you have friends who know what they're doing, you can ask them to set up the guitar for you. It involves adjusting the action (height of the strings from the fretboard), intonation (length of the strings), and truss rod adjustment (how much the fretboard bows or curves). Doing those things can make most cheap starter guitars play like a dream, and helps alleviate some issues beginners run into with horrible and cheap guitars. If you plan on practicing regularly, but don't want to invest in new strings every week or so, buy some bore oil, put some on an old T-shirt or piece of cloth and clean off each string after you play. Clean strings helps you play smoother and cleans up your tone and sustain.

I haven't seen any case of people getting banned from Steam or Uplay for using custom songs. Just don't talk about them or share them, and you'll be fine.

The simplest way to memorize the strings (assuming youre in standard tuning) is the acronym "Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie". This image will help explain what that means

there are 6 strings, the closest one to your face, and the thickest is the 6th string, or the low E. This is where the acronym begins. The one farthest from your face, and the thinnest is the 1st string, or high e. This is where the acronym ends.

YouTube is a great source for guitar basics, so I recommend searching there and finding a channel with the least annoying instructor.

I couldn't agree more.

I think Rocksmith uses a very counterproductive approach to learning guitar and I wouldn't reccommend it for an absolute beginner at all - I think it's likely to do more harm than good. The absolute worst thing you can do when you're starting is learn 'quickly' but badly. You'll inevitably pick up bad habits with Rocksmith as it puts all the emphasis on rushing you to keep up, whereas it should be encouraging you to play 'cleanly' no matter how slowly you have to go.

When you reach the point where you want to be able to play well (rather than just play something which sounds vaguely like the song it's supposed to be) you will need to unlearn those bad habits, and believe me, trying to override your 'wrong' muscle memory is a lot harder than just learning correctly from a blank slate in the first place.

If I were you I'd put down Rocksmith for the first couple of months and check out the Beginners Course on justinguitar.com. He's a fantastic teacher, his videos are consistently enjoyable and it's free.

If you feel Rocksmith isn't really giving you what you want, I'd recommend justinguitar.com. As someone who has used both to learn the basics of guitar, Justin was a much better teacher than Rocksmith was (for me).

I actually don't like the approach Rocksmith uses. I started learning off internet tabs over a dozen years ago, but I found that physically being in a room with someone that has experience works wonders. They can show you the basics of proper technique that you wouldn't notice otherwise.

I'd say make a list of questions, then get guitar lessons for a month with a reputable teacher. Rocksmith is flashy, but whenever someone mentions it I go "let me stop by and teach you some things to get started." Then afterwards you may have a better idea of what they're trying to teach you.

As someone who doesn't know how to play a guitar, but messed around with Rocksmith 2014 for a few months, here are my tips:

• The beginning is rough. Like, it's really bad. You will hit the wrong chord, your fingers will be in the wrong place, and if you do hit it, it's not going to sound that great. Just about everything you could do wrong you will probably end up doing.
• Take it slow. This includes playing the easiest songs on one of the lower difficulties and replaying lessons. The way the game works is once you get better, the game add more notes or goes from one note to a chord. So take some baby steps until you get up to speed on the fundamentals of what you are doing, which at the beginning is hitting one note by itself enough times to the point where you can hit incredibly simply chords.
• Seek outside help. For me, I had trouble with doing some of the things you mentioned, but I learned how to do the things the game wanted me to do. Eventually you will get a feel for which string is which. Eventually you know which fret is which, or you will at least be maybe quicker to adjust when you realize "Oh snap, I need to go over one". Rocksmith was fun and it is a good feeling to see those notes fill in. I made progress when it came to starting out one song with 8% of the notes there and eventually worked my way up to 80%. However, I felt like I hit a roadblock.

I could have stuck with it and got better at the game to the point where I could have increased the difficulty on Toxicity from 75% to 85%, but something also didn't feel quite right. On one hand I was learning things about playing a guitar, but they were kind of unnatural things. When you start off the game is still like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, where you see notes coming down the track and think to yourself "Ok, I have to hit Red and Orange 9 and Blue 10". I know later on those notes disappear and the game tells you to play a chord based on the notes, but in the beginning your knowledge is very much tied to how to play Rocksmith and less so how to play a guitar. The other hurdle I personally had was some stuff didn't sound so good. Honestly, I'm not sure if that was me, my guitar, or the game. Whatever it was, those two things combined made me think "I could be doing this better" and never sought out 1-on-1 training.

As a game, Rocksmith is pretty cool. As a learning tool, it is effective. As the only learning tool for how to play a guitar, I don't think it's there. If you do stick with it, some of the things you mentioned like memorizing strings you will get. The more experience with a guitar, the better you will become, even if your actual playing is still not great or you don't know what to do besides "Hit the red thing".

Have you actually played Rocksmith 2014? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just saying that Rocksmith 2014 was a phenomenal leap above what Rocksmith (original) was offering.

I can understand someone, like the person after you, suggesting that being in a room with someone is better than Rocksmith, but recommending another internet site with videos vs. rocksmith seems like something I cannot agree with since not only are Rocksmith's videos top quality, they feature the "Game" portion which allows the game to play with you and dynamically illustrate what you are suppose to be doing. Watching other videos forces you to try to reconstruct what the player is doing and mirror it on your own guitar, which is cumbersome.

Yes I've played it; I should have made it clearer I was referring specifically to Rocksmith 2014 throughout.

It's the song learning 'game' part which is the pitfall. The emphasis for a beginner (assuming their intention is to become good at some point) should be on learning the fundamentals cleanly, not on 'learning' songs quickly but sloppily. Most capable guitar teachers / teaching sites adopt the former approach because they are trying to teach you a skill and they realise it pays off in the long run. Rocksmith adopts the latter approach because it's an entertainment product which is primarily trying to be fun. If you're only playing the game for the sake of having fun with the game then ofc it doesn't matter.

If you already have a couple months of disciplined practice under your belt before playing the game then you can likely avoid the potential pitfalls, as you will recognise for yourself -much better than the game can- when you are playing badly and adapt so that it doesn't become a habit you later have to unlearn.

Starting from scratch, 60 days (say an hour a day) with justinguitar.com etc may not teach you to fumble through as many songs as Rocksmith will, but if you have the required self discipline I'm 100% confident it will give a better foundation for going on to play well eventually.

I started playing guitar with Rocksmith and yes, the beginning is overwhelming and I had the same issues as you do regarding strings and chords and thought it was impossible to actually do the 60-day challenge - but I managed to 100% a song by the end of it (god, do I sound like an ad). Anyway, this is what has helped me:

Try playing bass for a bit. Yes, you can play bass with a guitar (enable Bass Emulation in the options), its usually a bit slower paced and has more single notes and less chords, also a lot of songs have repetitive bass patterns which helps to get into a groove. Also two strings less to worry about.

Play the easy songs and don't be ashamed. "Angela" and "Next Girl" were the two songs I was able to 100% relatively quickly, they're both RS1 imports though. Especially "Next Girl" is a great beginner songs, it only uses three strings, no chords and doesn't even have a solo.

And as everyone already said: Practice, practice, practice. The human brain is a weird thing. You'll find yourself completely failing at a song, then go to sleep and whoops, next day you're doing much better.

Edit: And yeah, chords were kind of a brick wall for me for the longest time. Then they just happened and I was able to do them without issue.

Ohh another thing. Don't use old strings. Replace them. If you don't want to do it yourself then I am sure there's a music shop that will gladly do it for you.

@mordukai: Oh, yeah, I second this. The stock strings on my old guitar were complete crap. I thought they were fine until I had to replace them because one string snapped. It was a revelation.

New strings, have a music shop do it, they'll prob suggest a tuning as well.
Think of some songs you really like and look up their guitar tabs.
Guitar tabs (in case you're not aware) tell you what strings and frets to be using (and more), which will make your hands familiar with the fretboard.
If a song looks too complicated, save it for later and search for an easier song you enjoy.
You'll most definitely only be able to play certain parts of songs through tablature (unless you're the second coming of Jimi Hendrix) but that's fine as long as you're playing.
Practice
Look up a few chords here and there, or learn some you discover playing tabs.
Finger placement and and movement will start making more sense and feel more comfortable.
Practice
I haven't tried Rocksmith yet but that's how I started playing guitar in a nutshell.
Best of luck!

I've also played Rocksmith 2014. When I say Rocksmith, I'm referring to the Rocksmith series as a whole, since Rocksmith 2014 only offers incremental improvements and peripheral changes to the core gameplay.

Rocksmith's approach to teaching theory and technique aren't any different from Internet sites with videos; they both present new material in the form of educational videos. Sure Rocksmith offers interactive gameplay with the basic techniques (bends, slides, hammer-ons/pulls-offs), but doing that with only pitch detection is very rudimentary, and leaves a lot of room for new learners to make small but costly mistakes early on.

Even though learning the fundamentals might seem very basic, there's a lot of nuance and minutia in those techniques that guitar sites and videos can provide that Rocksmith can't. Learning to be economic with your movements, how to prevent repetitive stress injuries while developing finger strength, the proper way to develop muscle memory, the importance of maintaining your guitar so it doesn't go out of tune every few minutes and remains playable, the relationships between the different chord shapes and positions and alternative ways to them, how to train your ear as you play, etc. are just some of the minor but still important things that Internet videos and sites can provide new players that Rocksmith currently cannot.

Rocksmith only provides basic technique videos that only outlines the how to play them and glosses over most other things. This instills the mindset that spending time to develop technique and proper practice isn't important, and new players need to immediately jump into learning songs. If you take any formal guitar lessons, you don't start learning full songs until at least a month of developing the basics first. For good reason, because rushing your fingers to do something that's still mostly alien to them makes new players frustrated and loss interest, or play sloppily. Musicians learn songs in free-tempo at first and very, very slowly. While Rocksmith thrusts new players into at-tempo songs, and only slows them down after the mistakes have been placed into their muscle memory, and they're forced to learn the song at slower and slower tempos as they try to unlearn their mistakes and develop proper techniques. Contrast to others, who learned how to play properly first, and then speed comes naturally and easily for them.

That's my core criticism of Rocksmith, and it is for a lot of people. It glosses over something that's very simple but the most important thing that new players should focus on. After they've gotten down the fundamentals, Rocksmith is a good tool for learning songs.

I will also throw my coin in with the people that are saying that the way rocksmith goes about thing is ultimately a flawed way to teach.
It is very good in keeping people motivated in the beginning, and it easier to come back to. And in a way time spend playing is always good, but just imprinting some bad habbits early on is a real pain. But depending on what you are aiming for that is not the biggest deal.

I still think that ny money put towards rocksmith is better spend towards something like guitar pro. (Or snag powertab for free)

JustinGuitar was mentioned already, but it's worth saying again. There's a reason why it's the default thing people say in reddit when it comes to questions like this. If you really want to learn guitar, instead of just learning Rocksmith, the beginner course on that site is golden.

I'll echo what other people are saying. Skip Rocksmith, learn the fundamentals from books or online guides or whatever, and then go from there. Maybe consider Rocksmith in a few months or a year, after you are completely comfortable with playing guitar and can do chords correctly. Trying to keep up with Rocksmith when your technique is not even remotely developed will do much more harm than good.

Learn the basic chords, build muscle memorization for both hands. Focus on learning to use the pick correctly. Become comfortable using your pinky finger. Don't be a three fingered guitar player. Use a metronome to practice scales and songs. USE A METRONOME. USE A METRONOME!!!! It's important if you hadn't noticed. It helps so much. Not using one when practicing songs or scales will get you nowhere (you'll be playing easy passages too fast and difficult ones too slow or at an inconsistent speed. I was guilty of this for a while before I saw the light). There's no excuse not to have or use one, since you can get metronome apps on your phone that are more powerful than metronomes that cost over $100 10 year ago. Likewise, always tune your guitar. Don't get lazy and play out of tune. You can get apps for that too now that seem pretty decent.

Trying to rush things when learning guitar tends to end poorly. It's much better to go slower and learn in a more thorough way. I've been playing guitar for about 12 years and one thing I've observed about a lot of newer players is that they seem to emphasize speed over everything else. Playing fast but sloppy sounds bad and will not help you become a better player. You might be able to wow a couple of non-guitarists but you'll hit a wall in your ability to play fairly quickly and be stuck there.

Finally, be patient. You won't be Paul Gilbert or Slash or whoever in a month. Not even in a year, or two years, or three. Most of the people that get idolized as guitarists had to practice for a long time to get where they are.

Ok, so I played guitar for years before trying out Rocksmith but one thing Rocksmith does better than any other learning tool is it motivates you to play. When the original post mentions their guitar sitting in a cupboard, telling them to stop Rocksmith & try some other form of guitar tutorial seems like the wrong thing to say. Since you have a friend who plays, how about getting them to make sure your hands are in the right positions & then play around in Rocksmith. A couple of guitar lessons might help, but initially they just give you exercises which exactly cover what you're having issues with & the solution to those is practicing chord changing, a couple at a time, along with finger exercises, like going over scales (but initially just playing up and down frets is more beneficial). Both chords & finger placement come over time.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm a bass guitarist, but I just disagree with what you are saying. I think Rocksmith teaches many of those skills just fine, and many you simply pick up in the process. Things like economy of motion,for example, you simply pick up as a means of having to play to the tempo of the song. If you want a higher score, you have to hit the notes. you want to hit the notes? You have to be faster. It works itself out.

Rocksmith certainly doesn't teach you EVERYthing, and it doesn't claim to.

Telling the original poster to drop Rocksmith for now and work on basic techniques and developing good musicianship is sound advice for a beginner. As you said, you've played guitar for years prior to picking up Rocksmith, so you've already done the recommended prerequisites, the original poster hasn't.

Getting unmotivated to play guitar because you're not improving as a player is far more detrimental than already having basic theory and techniques down and just being bored of practicing. Which is where Rocksmith comes in, it's a good tool for learning songs.