Are you excited yet fellow Rocksmith fans?
It is just a few days now until the Rocksmith Remastered update lands and we have finally been shown some of the most anticipated improvements, Riff Repeater.
We have written about the other improvements already, but with the changes to the Riff Repeater we get to see something beyond User Interface tweaks (although a few of those pop up in the Riff Repeater as well).
First up – TheRiffRepeater.com reached out to Dan to get an answer to a question that was missed on the live stream; “Just how big is this update likely to be?” – “Under 200 megabytes” is the answer.
So come October 4th, assuming there are no hiccups – it shouldn’t take long at all, even for people on poor internet connections to get the update downloaded.
Woah – finally being able to see when an alternate arrangement is available and making it easy to select? Such a simple tweak that it really makes you question why it wasn’t this way from the release day of Rocksmith 2014. Letting us also instantly see what the mastery % of each path is as well is a neat touch. Screen caps of 100% on all paths may become the new bragging rights proof of choice to those players that care enough to post them.
Bohemian Rhapsody was selected for this demo because it has 5 total arrangements. If the track doesn’t have any alternates, then the option for Alternates doesn’t even show, as you can see below from this shot of another song.
Standard lead is as always, the top choice when selected on the Lead Path. But with just a few hits of the arrow keys you can now select the rhythm, bass or alternate paths without having to remember what track has alternates, or use the clunky menu via the CTRL key to change the path.
So let’s select the Lead chart, let it load up and then enter the Riff Repeater.
There are 4 big changes that can be seen in this screen shot;
- Changed key bindings to modify the selected part of the song
The handles for selecting what you Riff Repeat have been modified. On PC/Mac they are mouse selectable, or they can be highlighted and moved with the arrow keys. But the default keys you use have also been tweaked. The left hand handle – or start of selection, is modifiable now via the – and + keys and the right hand handle is now altered with the [ and ] keys. Similar changes have been made to the console controls, the L1 and L2 buttons will always move something left and the R1 and R2 buttons will move something to the right.
- Made the menu much smaller
This was achieved mainly because they,
- Moved a bunch of menu items into a sub menu
The kinds of things you set once and leave alone so that Riff Repeater is setup how YOU want to use it, have been moved into the Advanced Settings. (more on this later)
- Changed how small a chunk of the song can be selected
Below is the same song, but showing the smallest selectable chunk from the beginning of the song for use in Riff Repeater as we currently have it for comparison. *note the difference in width of the black bars making it easier to see the section breaks probably has more to do with screen resolution differences than any remastered changes.
As Rocksmith 2014 originally shipped, the size of the section within Riff Repeater was determined by the size of the grey bars below the level indicators (purple bars in these shots, orange if not at 100%). In remastered, we will be able to select “chunks” the same size as the individual levelling bars themselves. You’ll notice that if you compare the grey and purple bars in these 2 shots, that the remastered ones are split up more. Even to the point that there are existing sections split into smaller ones – see the long low purple bar at approximately 1/3 of the way into this song as an example.
This should mean that some of the older DLC and On Disc songs no longer have the insanely long minimum Riff Repeater sections that they shipped with.
No, you can’t customize the start and end points to the extent that a lot of people were hoping for – this is still a significant improvement however and another addition mentioned later may be enough to pacify the people that wanted extreme control over their Riff Repeater experience.
Here we have the Advanced Settings menu as mentioned earlier;
The biggest addition here is the ability to disable the rewind animation, but the option to define how much of a Speed Increment you get after a successful run in Riff Repeater shouldn’t be ignored.
The Riff Repeater itself now has a pause option.
It is accessed via the ESCAPE key on PC while SPACE is used for the settings menu. Personally I think these 2 controls should be reversed – every PC based media system I’ve ever used has the SPACE bar as the play/pause button – but semantics aside, the features it brings are interesting;
A tuner in the lower left – handy for a few reasons; think you’re nailing that bend but Riff Repeater says otherwise? Try it a few times while looking at the tuner to see if you are in tune to begin with and if you are bending it far enough, or too far to help you get the bend just right. As well as the obvious reason to have it – just to make sure you are in tune.
You can now scrub through the track while being able to see the notes!
The Left and Right arrows will rewind or advance the track in small parts. Page up / Page Down can be used to jump to the start of the previous/next section, but the arrows allow you to rewind or advance the notetrack bit by bit. One press of an arrow doesn’t appear to jump to the next/previous note, it actually works like ffwd or rwnd controls on a tape deck – so you actually have a lot of control over how far it scrubs – and therefore what is on the screen while you are paused. Again, the tuner in the corner should come in handy for practising some very complex licks that you are now able to display statically.
These scrubbing controls also work in regular Learn A Song, while the pause menu within Learn A Song has been tweaked to show you more of the note highway as well. The below screenshot is the Light Weight Pause Menu accessed by the ESCAPE key while in Learn A Song mode.
It wasn’t mentioned during the stream, but presumably the Chords option – opens something similar to the Chord Book that we’ve always been able to access from the tools menu.
There has also been a bunch of other tweaks and bug fixes.
You’ll no longer get into a situation where you have to wait 20+ seconds after every attempt to be able to try again – the lead in time has been capped at 4 seconds, regardless of what the playback rate is set to.
Bugs like the 65% – 100% – 75% – 100% – 85%- 100% Riff Repeater speed one have been squashed amongst many others.
The Shop is seeing a host of fixes as well, all the sorting options that are coming to Learn A Song – are also appearing in the Shop, so you won’t “have” to use your platforms store instead of in the in game one, because the in game store was, simply put – abysmal.
Page Up / Page Down to jump to top or bottom of the Learn A Song list
Is there some other BIG thing you feel should have been included?
What little niggles do you hope have been sorted out, but maybe haven’t seen mentioned yet? Let us know!
And none of the new songs are available – they haven’t downloaded onto my machine with the Steam update.
This is a giant cluster-f**k!
I’m sure they’ll get it sorted, and hopefully soon, but it’s very frustrating.
Just downloaded on PS3 and gotta say when is the patch coming out to fix this. Lots of bugs and freezes but hey it’s free hooray for shitty update
And this f**king this won’t allow me turn f**king master mode off. You’d think they’d have tested that one setting.
Gah! Would be more excited, but I’ve tried 3 songs, and 2 of them have crashed the system… :/
How do i make song lists now that i have gotten the update??
I particularly like the changes to Riff Repeater. I would really like to be able to custom select the section to repeat but it looks like that is not going to happen. Often there is just a few notes I have have difficulty with and I just want to play 4 or 5 notes. Still a very good improvement.
Here is my list of features that I would like to see in future releases:
• Have a large bank of backing tracks in various genres. Have ability to choose soloing in various styles over the backing tracks. Start out simple using pentatonic scale soloing patterns and build up complexity as the player gets more proficient. Include soloing in the style of some of the great guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Randy Rhoades, Dicky Betts, Mike Bloomfield, etc.
• Have a module that creates practice sessions. For example enter the amount of time for the practice session and have Rocksmith create a practice session based on the player’s ability. The session could include scales, stretching exercises, arpeggios, slides, hammer ons, pull offs bends, string skipping, etc. Rocksmith could recommend a practice session that you have the ability to modify. Suggest this be done in a musical setting with backing tracks combining several of the various techniques. The practice sessions will gradually increase in difficulty matching the player’s ability.
• Scale practice could start with a single pentatonic pattern and expand on that to include other modes up and down the fretboard. Learn a single pattern and then have it applied in a musical way with multiple riffs in a variety of genres.
• Include a module for teaching country blues in the style of Robert Johnson, Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Lighting Hopkins, Blind Boy Fuller, Rev Gary Davis, Blind Blake, sonny Boy Williamson, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, etc. This could apply to other genres as well.
• Ear training: start with notes in the 1st 5 frets where the audio for notes are played and you need to play by ear. Start with individual notes then expand to riffs and chords. Work up the fretboard in sections and then finally combine the entire fretboard.
• Fretboard memorization training.
• Include a module for voice training that includes voice lessons. Be able to turn off the guitar and focus on singing only or both guitar and singing. Have Rocksmith provide feedback on the singing and provide instruction on how to improve.
• Have the ability to select/create a tone and then minimize the screen to allow the player to play along with other music/tab that the person has on their computer.
• Slide Guitar lessons
• Video replay of Riff Repeater that can be slowed down to show specifically where mistakes are made. This would be really useful for sections with bends. I originally really struggled with bends and though I have improved quite a bit I still struggle with bends in quick succession. The bends in Paint it Black look fairly simple and yet in this song I struggle. With a slow motion video replay I can analyse my playing and zero in on how to correct my mistakes.
• Provide lessons that includes music theory
These songs weren’t to be free ?
Only if you buy remastered
Ok, thanks for the answer.
I’m probably wrong but on a screen shot from one of the streams I thought I saw a rocksmith recommends item ,,learn a scale I just wanna learn scales not kill ninja,s or evade cop cars but with no improvements to guitarcade I suppose it’s not gonna happen
I’m hoping chords means it shows u all the chords in the song so u can practice them before they crop up’ a chord suddenly appearing in song that I’m not familiar with kills my accura
For ps3 ?
Yes
also in Europe?
because there are often permission issues :/
If SCEE doesn’t mess it up then the patch should come on October 5th at the latest
Being able to buy original rocksmith dlc for rocksmith 2014 without having to own og rocksmith would be nice
You can already do this. I now play on steam, which I never had the original Rocksmith on and i buy DLC from the first game. First song I can think of from the top of my head is Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth, it was an original dlc but I bought for Rocksmith 2014.
I think he might mean the songs that came with the original game disc, not the DLC.
Ah good point. This is frustrating for me too actually, as I had the original game on Xbox 360, and then have had 2014 on 360, Xbox One, and now Steam. I am hoping the old game just goes on sale for 5 or 10 bucks at some point and then I’ll buy the import pack, so for a total of $20 or so I’ll get all those songs again…well worth it.
Yeah, I have seen it on sale a lot of times… I always recommend doing that (getting RS2012 on sale, I mean), because it is such a great price for that many songs.
They fixed that steam restriction in February. If you mean being able to import the songs without owning RS1 then that is never going to happen. Music Licensing
Great improvements! I was hoping to see a story mode, similar to original rocksmith, I don’t like missions that it has now….
Pretty solid overhaul. Only big addition left is the online multiplayer. Online jam session.
I thought these songs were going to be free?
Only to new purchasers of Rocksmith 2014
I’m very happy with the improvements…was definitely hoping for some new guitarcade features and more in depth session mode.
Maybe the first time Ive liked every single song in the pack.
there was the feature in the first RS that would stop if you got the note wrong until you played it right. When I was first playing I absolutely thought that was worthless, trying to learn solos now and I can’t tell you how much I miss that.. I can’t remember what it was called but I wish they’d bring it back.
Free Speed
Loving these riff repeater changes. I gave up on Sweet Home Alabama because I had to play a mind numbing 30 second phrase just to get to a small fill at the end of it.
Not being able to sort songs based on speed, a stat that is already in the game no less, is bizarre. A non-musician wouldn’t think to include such a statistic. So how can someone include the statistic but not share it with the player? Baffling. If it’s in the game then why not advertise it? Every other feature from small to large is being advertised, why not something so central to music?
Speed increment and rewind animation are good features that I expect to use.
I wish we could sort songs based on our current mood with options like “joyful”, “moderately groovy”, “just don’t care anymore” and “fucking pissed”. Lol
Actually a genre sort would work for that…. Joyful (funk/soul), moderately groovy (rock/pop), just don’t care anymore (alternative/emo) and fucking pissed (punk/metal). Lol
Love to see those stats. They could hand out achievements too.
“THERMO NUCULAR : Played 1000 FUCKING PISSED songs…….”
The ability to play alternate arrangements in score attack would have been nice. To be honest I’m bummed because I thought the remastered dlc was going to be IN ADDITION to the regular weekly dlc, not instead of it. The dlc was the only thing I really cared about as far as remastered goes but now I see that it might as well just be regular weekly dlc (that I have to buy) and we’re not getting anything “extra”.
I guess the only option here is to change your perception and instead higher hopes just say yaaay for easier menus!
That and the new launch will bring heaps of new players that will be contributing waay more cash towards ubisoft which in turn will help them strike DLC deals for all those pain in the ass bands you’d like to see. So more customers, better music choices (hopefully).
You are right. I appreciate that they even included ps3 in the update and I’m glad that they’re still committed to the game I love so much. My only real complaint is that I wish there were more songs to buy. Lol
Time to own all 903
Hopefully the update will make the game tell me how many songs I have. I’m too lazy to count them manually but I must be getting up there. Lol
I really don’t want to see how much $ I’ve dropped so far.
Lololol…. Good point!
May I suggest you go back and look at the “Player Stats” post? The 3rd screenshot will show you the info you desire – https://theriffrepeater.com/rocksmith-remastered-screenshots-player-stats/
The jury’s in…….. 822. Thank you update. :). Lol
Hahaha yeh, that thought crossed my mind last night too! Lol