Reading a book today

Nothing playwise to report today on actual playing, went on the road down south to visit family, but I'm starting to read Absolute Essentials Of Music Theory For Guitar as written by Don Maclean and can be located here

I keep seeing over and over on the Rocksmith forums that theory is very overlooked in the game and it's one of the bigger critiques amongst those that are detractors of the game. On a recent trip to my local Guitar Center I asked several instructors about the necessity of learning theory and was told identical answers which when boiled down is best answered as follows "If you are going to be playing alone, it isn't necessary. If you are going to be playing with a band or with other people then yes it is absolutely essential."

When used with that particular logic, it rings true. The point of Rocksmith is to teach YOU guitar, not to teach you to play with a band. Yes, session mode does exist, but it's not really that well fleshed out. I expect that this will be addressed in the next update of the title.

So another thing about the Rocksmith community that needs to be addressed is the Guitar Hero/Rock band variation of notation vs. sheet music/tablature. Anytime you are crossing two worlds (video games and whatever real world might exist) there's going to be some grinding of gears in adaptation.

Rocksmith uses the "Guitar Hero" note highway where the notes scroll down the screen at you and you strike the note/chord at the moment it hits said line. It's metaphorically like walking through a song as if it were 3 dimensional changing lanes and what have you.

Traditional music and tablature scroll from left to right and for individuals that learned to play utilizing this method of playing it's a very uncomfortable change like trying to learn to read text in a Chinese format (up and down).

The other big divide is that by default, rocksmith comes with the low E string at the top of the list where as music (sheet and tab) list the notes low in pitch to high in pitch top to bottom.

So what ultimately we have going on here is this: two schools going head to head for similar end games, but unwilling to budge on the manner of writing. I get it. Musical notation and tablature are the way they are and have been for decades, while Rocksmith is the relative new kid on the block that is tapping into what was at one point a gaming phenom in pop culture. While so long as the music is accessable through Rocksmith via licensing, this is great news. However, when you want to learn something from a songbook, it's all literally upside down and sideways.

In the options menu, the notes can be flipped from the low E being on top to being on the bottom which is serviceable for the most part, but there's no setup to make the notes appear like tablature/sheet music. For something like that you'd need to hopefully wait for the next rocksmith or some other type of music game.

So when it comes to this back and forth if you're truly going to just play to sit around the house and fart on the guitar from time to time then by all means stick with just rocksmith. But if you are truly wanting to learn how to play then you need to learn some theory.

The first thing that this book works on is reading musical notation and the various signs that are used in sheet music. I'm also attempting to learn to memorize the fretboard. The other thing that I enjoy about this book is that each chapter comes with a test at the end so I'll be working on that as well as I go.

So, all that being said, I'm out for the day. I'll see you guys tomorrow, best wishes, and keep shredding.