Rocksmith arrangements and licensed songs | Forums

[Rocksmith-Matt]

This is mainly in response to the "complaints about download songs aka only one version, and length" and "Over a minute cut from The Thrill is Gone" thread, but since we want your feedback too, I'm creating a new thread.

For all of our songs included on disc and as DLC, we use the exact recording our licensors hand us. Unfortunately, for The Thrill is Gone, this may not have been what most of you are used to listening to. We apologize for this, and are constantly negotiating with music licensors to include the best guitar music we can for you.

Regarding the number of arrangements, we only include arrangements for each guitar track there is in the song. While we do like the suggestion for including chord progressions to help become more engrossed with the music, we are currently only going to include arrangements that are played by a guitar in the recording.

Sometimes though, there is an additional guitar part that plays for very infrequent portions of a song. In these cases, we let our notetrackers take creative control and decide what is best for the game. We strive to be authentic, but also fun. It isn't fun to have an arrangement that is full of rests. Similarly, we feel it isn't very fun to suddenly jump down 10 frets to play a completely different guitar part halfway through a phrase.

We would love to hear from you guys. Do you guys like the harmonix approach where they include as much as they can into one guitar arrangement? Or do you prefer the current style where we separate arrangements per guitar? Do you want chord progressions even if there is no rhythm guitar?

[ForkofBone]

I prefer having separate arrangements for each guitar part, however it might be a good idea to have additional arrangements for the more known parts of the songs.

That's a crappy way of saying it but as an example, Judas Priest's guitarists trade back and forth during solo's sometimes, having both solos in one arrangement would be what I'm talking about.

I hope I don't sound completely insane.

[bradiam]

I like having different tracks for the guitar parts. I think you guys have done a good job of incorporating combo tracks where it makes sense. Sometimes it just may not make sense to have the second guitar in there, or to combine certain parts. I think it's good to combine parts when it makes the song more playable outside of the game on one guitar, but I don't think things should be combined just because it's there, and there's a brief pause.

One thing that I noticed early on though, is that the consistency of note tracking between songs seems a little loose at times. When I noticed this escapes me at the moment, but I remember playing two songs and thinking "These must have been transcribed by two different people". Both were well done, but the charting seemed a little inconsistent between the two. I like what's been done so far in this department, but would like to see the formula for creating the tracks become a little more uniform and standardized.

[skytt]

Personally, since you're only capable of charting what's there, I'd love to see several mixes of the charts. Something along the lines of:

1. The lead guitar part
2. The rhythm guitar part
3. The most recognizable parts, so that if you were to play this chart, it'd sound as much like the song a band with only 1 guitarist would play. Something you could play to your friends with no backing track and they'd go "hey, it's that song!"
4. Mixes based on being fun or instructive to teach different techniques


If there's only 1-3 guitars present in the song, and you're going to chart pretty much all of each of those parts to use in 1 or 2 mixes of charts anyway, I'd love to see many variations made from those charts, even if there were long pauses in some of them. If you want to play the lead part, and only the lead part, and they play 15 secs, 30 sec of waiting, play 30 sec, 60 sec of waiting, play 30 sec, then no need to stop me, especially if those are going to be charted anyway for "combo 1" or "combo 5," so no harm in building "lead 1" by segmenting out those and only those pieces. I'd love to see 5-10 arrangements in a song, with each of the parts the individual guitars play isolated into their own, one or two "recognizable" pieces, and then additional "fun" or "instructive/learning/technique-based" arrangements, even if there's all kinds of overlap between them. I think that's something Rocksmith has a leg-up on the competition with, the ability to have all these different kinds of arrangements per song, and something that could be exploited to great awesomeness.

[jlombardi]

I think what you guys have done so far is incredible and you should keep doing what you are.

Though i do believe the chord progression idea has some merit and would be helpful.

[bradiam]

Oh, one more thing I just remembered that would go along with a chord progression charting. One arrangement I would like to see would be an acoustic arrangement. Not a whole new version, but certain songs like Jeremy by Pearl Jam, Boys Don't Cry by The Cure, or the upcoming Foster the People song Pumped Up Kicks, all translate really well to acoustic, but can still be played along with the main track. I would love to see something like this that would allow us to take certain songs outside of the game and play unplugged.

[MrKev1n]

It would be nice to have unplugged/chord versions of some of the songs. I realize that would be differant than the way they are normally heard, but if it could be done that would be great.

Other than that, I think you guys are doing great.

Edit: Great idea bradium, you must have posted it while I was typing

[ForkofBone]

Oh, one more thing I just remembered that would go along with a chord progression charting. One arrangement I would like to see would be an acoustic arrangement. Not a whole new version, but certain songs like Jeremy by Pearl Jam, Boys Don't Cry by The Cure, or the upcoming Foster the People song Pumped Up Kicks, all translate really well to acoustic, but can still be played along with the main track. I would love to see something like this that would allow us to take certain songs outside of the game and play unplugged.

That's a cool idea.

[Funk-n-Stein]

Awesome post Matt and thanks for the explanation of how things work. Personally, I'm pretty happy with having each distinct part separate, but for those fleeting parts that only appear here and there it would be great to have those incorporated somehow if it doesn't disrupt the flow of the chart. One example that has a lot of us scratching our heads is the slide part that is missing from Freebird. I understand that it's played with a slide, but it's possible to play that part without a slide, and it's a huge part of an iconic guitar song. Overall, I think you guys are doing a fantastic job though.

[b_lex]

Love what you guys are doing now, but I would welcome change.

Thanks for all your work, Rocksmith Team.