Working the Riff Repeater

I'm wrapping up my second month with Rocksmith and here's where things stand:

National Support Act with a score of about 3,800,000 points. 5 events, 26 songs played (including one of the Christmas downloads).

I guess that means I'm about halfway through the "game," except that they've added a bunch of DLC over the past months. Not sure what happens when I played all of the songs and reach Rocksmith status. I guess at that point I can start working on all the new DLC! But, I'm changing my approach and slowing things way down to put that day off for a long while. Not that I was moving all that fast. So far I've only unlocked one song at Master Level.

Instead of whizzing through everything and playing events as soon as I qualify all the songs on the setlists, I'm not playing any event until I have at least 70,000 on every song in that setlist. This includes going back and bringing some previously played songs, including encores, up to that standard.

Doing this has already paid off. On a lot of songs, I just couldn't seem to improve or level up. That's because I was just playing through them from start to finish. I got to a certain point and then just couldn't get any better. Some songs I don't even like, so it doesn't really matter to me if I can play them or not. But, on songs I like I really want to be able to play them right and from memory. So, I started going to the Riff Repeater. This has been really helpful. And really frustrating.

Turns out I've been playing some things wrong - which would explain why I couldn't level up in some songs! And, some sections are just freaking hard for me to play. So, I've had to work my a55 off to get those right. Instead of, you know, just slopping through certain sections like I've been doing.

My strategy is this: Pick a song that I want to improve. I usually pick the one that I've got the lowest current score on. Go to the Riff Repeater. Scroll through all the sections of that song and note which sections are weak. As each section scrolls into view, a progress bar to the left shows how close you are to mastering that one part of the song (or how far away). I pick the weakest section and start working it.

RS presents the three Riff Repeater components in this order: Freespeed, Leveler, and Accelerator. I don't use them in that order. I go Leveler, Accelerator, Freespeed. At least that's my current strategy.

Going to the Leveler first lets me play through a section like I've been playing it without having to play the whole song. Leveler tells me how close or how bad I am. I guess that's based on how well or how badly I play that section when I play the whole song. For most sections of most songs, I start out around 78% to 85%. That means I'm playing up to 85% of the notes in the actual song and just have a little more to work on in that section. RS gives you 30 lives to Max out each section at 100%. Sometimes I actually level up one or two notches on my first 30 tries. Sometimes I don't level up at all. A couple of times I've actually levelled up twice in a row! Rare.

Seems like each time you level up, you get about 7% more on your next try. In other words, if I get all the way through the 78% level, the Leveler bumps me up to 85%, then 92%, 95%, and then 100%. But, sometimes when I Level Up it seems like I'm only playing one or two more notes than I was playing at the lower level.

Once I've done 30 iterations of the riff in Leveler, if I don't Max it I go to the Accelerator. I play through the first time realllll slow. That way the Riff Repeater lets me build up my accuracy before it speeds things up. Accuracy first. Then speed. That works for just about everything in life that you'll ever learn. Like walking before you run. No point speeding up if you're playing it wrong. Anyway. Once I've got my starting speed set, I work my current level up to 100% speed.

If I can't get to 100% speed in Accelerator after 30 tries, I go to Freespeed. I don't like Freespeed very much, but I think it works really well. Usually when I have trouble it's because I'm not playing at the right tempo or I'm playing the wrong rhythm. Takes a while to get used to Freespeed because it forces you to play everything right instead of how you've been playing it. That can be very frustrating. But, it helps. You can play one note at a time until you learn the riff. So, the key is to be patient with yourself and work through it note by note. Don't get in a hurry.

Once I get up to 100% speed on Accelerator, I go back to Leveler and work the section again. Usually I can Max out the section within 30 more tries. Or at least Level Up. Which gives me something new to work on and I may end up going back through Accelerator or even Freespeed again with the added notes.

I just keep repeating this cycle until I Max out the levels at 100% speed. To keep it from getting really, really painful and boring I usually play through the whole song between cycles. It's fun to see how much I've improved after working certain sections over and over until I get them right. Last night I worked a section of Outshined and then went back and played through the song. I added over 25,000 points to my score on that song. Big difference.

Leveled Up to National Support Act, 6

Last night I moved up to Level 6, which is still "National Support Act" status. That happens when your total score reaches 3,500,000. (Level 6 is apparently the same status as Level 5; only the number in the little black circle changes when you reach 6.)

I qualified the final song in my Event 6 setlist (High and Dry, by Radiohead) last night. I qualified on the first play-through (no riff repeater) and it only took 4 plays to get over 70,000. Pretty easy song except for an unexpected/unfamiliar F#-something chord.


Event 6

Are You Gonna Go My Way - Lenny Kravitz
Rebel, Rebel -                            David Bowie
Mean Bitch -                              Taddy Porter
High and Dry -                          Radiohead

I'm going to hold off playing this event until I get all 4 songs over 70,000. I might even go higher - partly because I don't want to rush through the Journey but mostly because I just don't have these songs down like I'd actually play them on a real stage.

Somewhere in this set list I found a couple of chimed harmonics so I ran through the recommended harmonics technique challenge a few times last night. Not too hard to gold medal on, but I've been able to play harmonics for a long, long time. If they're new to you, it could take a little while to work your way through this challenge - but not too long. This unlocked the harmonics game in the Guitarcade. Haven't tried that one yet.

I'm working on the Christmas pack songs so that hopefully by Christmas I'll be able to play all three of them from memory. I'm starting with God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. So far I've run through it several times and feel like I'm getting the hang of it. Score is right around 30,000.

I also like running through Surf Hell every night just because it's pretty quick and has a 4-fret stretch in the riff. Good exercise and fun to play. For some reason it's still tough for me to remember exactly how it goes without hearing it, but I've got my score on this one over 80,000. Biggest rough spots seem to be the transitions - I just need to keep working it so I can pull my head out and get the overall structure down.

Unnatural Selection continues to give me a hard time and I cannot figure out why. I have the Drop-D tuning issue pretty well figured out and I checked and tweaked the intonation so I'm not missing notes due to tuning. Just can't seem to get over 41,000 on this one. It pisses me off because I'm not willing to just give up - but it's VERY long so every time I run through it is like 6 minutes of my life spent playing something I don't even like!

I've run through a couple of the alternate arrangements on songs I've already played in past Events: Higher Ground, Outshined, and a few others. This is a good way to get some extra points. That's not why I did it, but if that's what you're into it's an easy way to inflate your score. Now I know how to play the parts of some songs where I used to be resting (like the long rest in Outshined before the big open sustained D. . . ). Can't wait to play some of these with my son in multiplayer mode.

Issues:
The only problem I'm having with Rocksmith itself right now is that they supposedly released some Pearl Jam songs as DLC the other day and they still aren't showing up in my Download Store. Anybody know anything about that?

Guitars for Rocksmith - A Lesson in How Far Cheap Can Take You

One of the coolest things about Rocksmith is that, while you do need a real guitar to play it, you don't need an expensive guitar. You can play Rocksmith with a cheap, no-name knock-off just well as a hand-made custom. With one caveat: Make sure you've got good strings.

[WARNING: If you think Epiphone guitars aren't worth playing simply because they aren't Gibsons, read no further. This blog is not for you. The Gibson/Epiphone argument won't be entertained here. If Epiphone guitars were good enough for Les Paul himself to use in the studio, they're good enough for me. End of discussion.]

A few years ago I decided to get electric guitars for my kids for Christmas. My kids were only 8and 10 years old at the time, so I got some really, really cheap guitars. They cost maybe $40 each. Somebody was selling a bunch of blemished guitars on-line - really cheap and perfect for my purpose. If the kids tore them up, I wasn't out much.

I doubt those guitars had been played in the past 3 years. But, I put down my Epiphone Les Paul this weekend and grabbed my son's old guitar just to see what it would do. As cheap as it was, this guitar worked just fine with Rocksmith. To my surprise, it was still pretty close to being in tune after many months of lying around in a gig bag (even though it's got the same strings on it that came on it over 3 years ago). The ability of a guitar to stay in tune is probably one of the most important things to look for in a Rocksmith interface - or, really, any student guitar. Sustains may be a little weak on a cheap axe and this might cost you a few bonus points when playing, but crappy sustain won't actually hurt your score in most Rocksmith songs. The most important thing is that when you play a G on your guitar, Rocksmith "hears" a G and not a G-flat.

Plenty of wanna-be rock stars on Internet forums will tell you that you absolutely must spend at least $300 on a student guitar, but that's a load of crap. My son's $40 thrasher is easy to play, doesn't buzz, and stays in tune. For playing Rocksmith, that's all you need. Unless you plan to play in front of other people for money, that's probably all you'll ever need. Period. (Plus, my son's $40 thrasher weighs about half as much as my Epiphone Les Paul, which is lighter than a Gibson Les Paul by about 3 pounds; a cheapie is much easier for my son to handle. A 12 lb. guitar gets very heavy after a while, even for a grown man.)

You don't need a great guitar to play Rocksmith, but there's a limit to how far you can take the cheap road. For example, don't buy your guitar strings at Wal-Mart.

Because I had been playing my guitar a LOT lately, I decided to restring my Les Paul this weekend. I had ten sets of strings lying around so I grabbed a set, put them on, and fired up Rocksmith for another session. And, suddenly, instead of getting better, my scores on songs that I've been playing for a few weeks started dropping. I couldn't get a Phrase Level Up no matter what I tried. And, just about every note I played was either sharp or flat. There were more yellow arrows and Phrase Level Down and Late and Missed Pull-off messages on the screen than notes. Didn't take long to guess what the problem was.

A year or two ago I found a bunch of guitar strings on sale for a really, really good price. Now, I have a pretty good understanding of both metallurgy and economics and I'm not generally a betting man. But, when I find something marked down to give-away prices - in this case, full sets of brand new guitar strings for $1.00 - I'm almost always willing to take a chance. So, I bought 10 sets. Since I'm not really a guitar player, don't play a lot, and rarely change strings, 10 sets represented a virtual lifetime supply of guitar strings for me. And, ten bucks is roughly what I'd normally spend on one set of strings. So, I think I can be forgiven for ignoring the fact that these were First Act brand strings on the clearance aisle at Wal-Mart. What I had were toy strings for toy guitars. Apparently they're made of recycled beer cans because they sound like crap right after tuning and then they go out of tune and sound worse.

Lesson: Do NOT use cheap guitar strings, not even on a cheap guitar! Cough up ten bucks for some decent strings.

Before I tanked my progress on Rocksmith, I had to make an emergency run to my local big-box music retailer to buy some real guitar strings. I actually found a promo 3-pack from a very well-known guitar maker on sale for less than $7.00. It was hard to believe the difference in sound and the effect on my Rocksmith scores. In a way, this makes sense. On an electric guitar, the strings are really the only things making sound; there's no guitar body to resonate that sound, just some electrical pick-ups to translate the sound into electrical signals. Of course you can spend more money and get nicer sustains and better intonation, but keep things in perspective. Most of the songs in Rocksmith (and rock in general) use considerable amounts of distortion and reverb; a $40 cheap-o guitar is going to sound just as good as a 1952 Gibson Les Paul Custom. And, if you're playing Rocksmith, you probably aren't going to pay $1000 for a guitar anyway. The good news is you don't need to!

So, don't even let the fact that you don't own an electric guitar keep you from checking out Rocksmith. Go buy a cheap guitar and play! Just make sure you get some good strings.

(Rocksmith and Epiphone also offer an official bundle which includes Rocksmith and an Epiphone guitar. Not a bad option for anyone who doesn't already have a guitar lying around.)

A Rocksmith Review by a Drummer

As a drummer who has owned a guitar for nearly 35 years, I love Rocksmith. I bought an XBox 360 just so we could play Rocksmith at our house. That's how much I love Rocksmith. My kids, neither of whom have ever had a music lesson, also love Rocksmith. It's an absolute blast for a wide range of ages and skill levels. Even if you're already a Professional Guitar Player, this game could be good fun.

And, contrary to what a lot of know-it-all's have spouted on forums all over the Internet, you WILL learn something. No, Rocksmith will not show you how to finger pick or teach you music theory. Yes, Rocksmith gives you the latitude to pick up bad habits. But, if you want to major in guitar performance at Julliard or Berklee, you should be taking lessons from Joe Satriani or Stevie Vai. The rest of us can relax and enjoy playing, knowing that guitar greats like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn taught themselves to play by listening to records. Rocksmith is like playing along with a record (CD for those of you under 30, MP3 for those of you under 20) with tablature - or something like it - streaming simultaneously across your TV.

My kids played Rocksmith at a music retailer before we bought it. When we got home that night, my 11-year old son picked up his guitar for the first time in over a year and played exactly what he had learned from playing RS at the store (Satisfaction by the Stones). When we got our own set-up, I picked up my guitar and - for the first time in over 30 years of guitar ownership - actually learned a song from beginning to end. In about a month, I've learned 15 songs. A few of them I'd be comfortable playing on stage from memory. Anyone who says you won't or can't learn to play guitar from playing Rocksmith is just being an ass.

The premise of the Rocksmith game is that you are starting out on your Journey to become a rock star. Rocksmith creates editable Setlists of three to five songs each for you to learn from a library of about 50 songs. Once you reach a minimum qualifying score on each song in a Setlist, Rocksmith unlocks an Event for you to play at some fictional venue. You start your Journey as an Amateur and advance by increasing your overall score. Venues get bigger as you climb toward the 11th and highest level of achievement - Rocksmith. (I'm currently a Local Headliner, the 4th level, in Rocksmith Land; in the real world I'm still pretty much a hack. But, I'm getting better every day.) 

If you just want to play some songs on a your guitar, you can do that. The entire song library is stored in a big alphabetized list under the main menu and new DLC is added to the on-line Store all the time. You don't have go on "the Journey" at all, but I personally find that the scoring system and unlock incentives make it challenging and fun to practice.
Scoring 70,000 or higher on a song will unlock a new effects pedal which you can actually use to modify your guitar's sound within the Amp portion of the software. (You can also unlock new guitars, but these are nothing more than achievement "badges," which - unlike the armor upgrades in Halo - you can't even actually see in the game itself.)

I've played more guitar in the past month than probably the previous 3 years put together. I continually find myself saying, "OK. Once more through this song and I'm quitting for the night." And, then I play that song again. And again. And again. The Riff Repeater lets you learn songs piece by piece before you ever try playing through the entire song, or you can use Riff Repeater to drill the hard parts of any song. There are Technique Challenges with olympic-medal style incentives. And, there are Guitar-Cade games to which make boring stuff like scales more fun. So, there's a considerable amount of flexibility in how you use Rocksmith. Much more fun than sitting in a room by yourself running scales for hours at a time.

Qualifying a song for an Event is often pretty easy, but really getting it down is a different story. When you do get good enough, there's a Master Level where it's just you, the backup band, and a thousand screaming fans. You have to play the songs from memory. To unlock the Master Level, you have to score at least 100,000 on a song and max each phrase or section of the song. As of today, I still haven't made it there.

There's a multiplayer feature which lets two people play at the same time - without being on the same skill level. My son and I can play at the same time, either playing the same part or splitting rhythm and lead. Doing something creative with your kids or friends rather than sitting on your ass shooting aliens? That alone makes Rocksmith worth every bit of $79.99 - even if you DO have to read the set-up instructions and run analog audio cables. (For multi-player mode, you will need an extra Real-Tone cable which will cost you another $30. Still well worth the price.)

There are some things about the design that I'd change if I had the smarts to write game software but overall it works fine like it is. Most of the songs that come with Rocksmith are pretty good. There's only one or two that I would delete. You can download new songs for about $2.00 each through XBox Live. Not sure how DLC works for PS users. At Christmas, the folks at Ubisoft gave away three free Christmas songs.

To play, you need a guitar (just about any guitar with a pick-up on it will do) and a game console, currently either an XBox or PS. A release for PCs is due out this Spring. You don't need an expensive guitar, but it's helpful if your guitar will at least stay in tune. Otherwise, it'll be very hard for you to make any progress in the game and you'll sound horrible.

You'll also need some way to run analog audio from your game console to some speakers or headphones - through a home theatre receiver, for example. This game is unplayable if you insist on ignoring the very clear on-screen directions for hooking up your system. The audio delay that you'll get using HDMI cabling or your TV speakers makes Rocksmith virtually impossible to play. This issue is already widely known and Rocksmith addresses the issue right on the screen before you ever play the first note. As with most things in life, if you read the directions first you'll have no problems with audio latency.

Overall, Rocksmith rocks. The detractors are entitled to their opinions, of course, but I wouldn't give their opinions much weight. Unless you already think you are some kind of guitar god, you will really, really enjoy Rocksmith and also learn quite a lot from playing it, kids included. Best $110.00 (with extra cable) I've spent in a long, long time. And, when you consider that you can use Rocksmith as a practice amp - with a whole bunch of effects pedals built-in - even the additional $299 I spent on an XBox makes Rocksmith look like a very, very good buy.

First Month of Rocksmith - Events 1 - 4

Exactly one month has passed since Santa Clause left a new XBox and Rocksmith game under our Christmas tree, but we've really only had access for a few weeks. First, we went out of town for a week the day after Christmas. Then there was the latency issue, now mostly resolved. So, we've really only been playing Rocksmith for something like two weeks.

We may still have some minor adjustment to do on the audio-to-video latency. If I watch the video while playing, I seem to be "off" just a bit. If I don't watch the video part too closely and just listen to the back-up music and vocals, I do fine. Of course, I can't do that until I've learned the song somewhat. I'm sure we can tweak this using the adjustment provided within the game, but it's livable as is.

I've got an industrial-strength callous on the tip of my left index finger that goes down to the subdermal layer. I've even got a pretty good callous on my left pinky finger. In short, I've played more guitar since Christmas than I've played in the combined 35 years since I bought my first guitar. Say what you like about whether Rocksmith is an effective teaching tool. It's a darn fine motivator to pick up a guitar and play, which is ironically what many detrators of Rocksmith advocate as "the only way" to learn.

In 35 years, I've never been able to do much more than strum a rather limited selection of chords. As of today, I've worked my way pretty well through a dozen whole songs - chords AND single notes - to a point where I'd play them in front of people. As I indicated, I've owned and played at the guitar for many years. But, my son has not and he's also learning (with a few often ill-received pointers from me). So, it works for young beginners as well as adult learners who half-way know their way around the frets.

Bottom line: Rocksmith is a ton of fun and will teach you to play songs on your guitar. Will it prepare you for Julliard? Probably not. But, keep in mind that most successful rock musicians never formally studied music - at Julliard or anywhere else.


Here's the status so far:

Local Support Act (Level 4) with roughly 1,600,000+ RSP (Rocksmith points, I assume).

Played 4 Events so far, two with 2 songs each plus an encore or two and two with 5 songs plus another couple of encores.

Quite a few of the fifty or so songs that come with Rocksmith are songs I've never heard before. For that matter, most of the artists represented on Rocksmith were completely new to me (indicated with *'s below). Artists shown in italics are ones I'd never heard of, either. Before you say, "There's no way he's never heard of The Black Keys," keep in mind that I'm well over 30. I haven't even heard of most of the artists on RS's song library. I still think of Green Day as a new band.

Event 1: The Mouse Hole

Satisfaction - Rolling Stones
My Next Girl - The Black Keys *
Go With the Flow (encore) - Queens of the Stone Age *

Event 2:

In Bloom - Nirvana
Higher Ground - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Boys Don't Cry (encore) - The Cure

Event 3:

Vasoline - Stone Temple Pilots
Slow Hands - Interpol*
I Can't Hear You - The Dead Weather*
Surf Hell - Little Barrie*
Use Somebody - Kings of Leon*
Angela (encore) - some guy with a vaguely familiar last name *

Event 4: The Red Velvet Room

Unnatural Selection - Muse*
Outshined - Soundgarden
Number Thirteen - Red Fang *
Playing with Fire - Rolling Stones
Where is My Mind - Pixies *
I Want Some More (encore) - a dude who looks to be about my age *

Encores are sort of like bonus songs that get thrown at you at the end of an Event if you don't totally suck. In my case at least, the encores were songs I'd never played - or even heard - before, so my encores didn't add much to my Event scores.

Which brings me to my first major gripe with Rocksmith. It's not a deal-breaker, but it does tie into the navigation issues I have with the game.

There is no E-stop. No way to quit something once you've started it. No do-overs. Once you hit Perform, you're on it. No turning back - no matter how bad you screw up the intro!

This week I was presented with my fourth set-list (above). By some twist of fate, I managed to qualify two of these songs for my 4th Event on my very first play. In fact, these were not just the first time I'd played these songs but the very first time I'd ever heard them. I qualified the remaining 3 songs within 3-6 plays. Qualifying is one thing. Actually knowing the song and being able to play it well is another thing altogether.

So it was that I ended up accidentally playing Event 4 (The Red Velvet Room) after having played - and heard - about half of my setlist only once in my whole life. As I've pointed out previously, once you qualify a song for an Event, it no longer appears under that event. In order to practice it, you have to scroll through the whole song library in the main menu. I don't like this quirk. All songs on a setlist should stay in the Event until the event is done. On top of that, I'd prefer it if the game at least kept a record of your Events, setlists, and scores. I do this myself in a notebook, but it would be nice to have that feature in the game.

Somehow while attempting to practice for Event 4, I accidentally clicked on my Event when I just wanted to look at the songs in the setlist. Once I clicked A, the show was going down. There is simply no way short of a cold shut-down to stop an event or even a practice run through a song once it begins. Thus, as you can imagine and since I didn't play at all Wednesday night, Event 4 did not go too well for me. Frankly, the fact that I got an encore song makes me suspect that you ALWAYS get at least one encore no matter how bad you suck. Maybe not, but I wasn't exactly shredding it and I still got an encore. Just makes me wonder. Sort of like my wife telling me that I'm a good looking guy.

Rocksmith Audio Latency Problem Solved!

Done!

My XBox came with just the plain, old composite AV cable (not HDMI), so that part of the audio delay issue was resolved for me. I never had an HDMI output from my XBox console to cause a delay. Still, the latency issue in my setup was so bad that we pretty much abandoned Rocksmith for a week or so. It was just unplayable.

Fortunately, this is really easy to fix. In a perfect world, you could buy Rocksmith, load it on your XBox (or whatever console you have), plug in a guitar and go to town. But, it would appear that this latency issue is unavoidable. It's just physics; electrons can only move so fast and sound is slower than light. That's just how it is. The audio output is addressed right in the "game," so I have no beef with Ubisoft/Rocksmith about this and neither should you. They could perhaps include some actual written documentation with Rocksmith that explains this and includes some specific setup tips, but apparently I'm the last person in the world who still prefers hardcopy manuals/directions over "readme" files and online help.

After consulting the many forums already addressing this issue, I tried a few of the most commonly posted solutions, including setting my TV to "game mode" or the closest audio setting I could find in the setup menu. My Hitachi LCD TV doesn't really have a "game" setting for audio, and my next best guess at the equivalent setting didn't really help the audio latency issue at all. I was a bit discouraged at that point, but I still had the option of running my audio out to some computer speakers.

Instead of doing that, I replaced my already dead home theatre receiver with a new one and ran my XBox outputs - all of them - through that. I fully expected that the delay might actually become worse. But, using no effects and just the regular stereo setting got Rocksmith working great. There is probably still some latency because it simply takes a certain amount of time for the electrons to get from my guitar pickups to my TV screen after passing through all those wires, cables, the XBox console, and an amplifier (not to mention the time it takes vibrations to get from my guitar string to the pickups). But, humans perceive anything which happens in less than about .3 seconds as "instant," so I'd say I've got my electron travel time down below .3 seconds. If I've got some latency left in my setup, I can't tell it. And, based on the dramatic improvement in my scores, neither can Rocksmith.

Probably due to the specific model and make of receiver, I also had to run a composite video (RCA) cable from my receiver's video output to the TV even though I have an HDMI cable running from the receiver to the TV for everything else. Apparently my receiver is not able to upconvert an analog composite signal to HDMI, so any analog inputs to the receiver require an analog output to the TV. No biggie. Just something to be aware of.

So, we're back to thinking Rocksmith is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I've got 70,000+ on at least a couple of songs so far and the blisters on my fingertips to show for it! So, now I guess I'll join in the nationwide snivel-fest over what songs should be included next. My vote would be for some Eagles (specifically Hotel California and Life in the Fast Lane) and possibly some Pink Floyd. But, it's not like I've mastered any of the songs that came with the original release, so no rush!

Rock on.

Rocksmith Update - Audio Delay Agony

Got the Xbox set up and installed Rocksmith on it Christmas Day. I have to say, for all its promise, we are a little disappointed. Not in Rocksmith itself. I still think it's great but the delay between hitting a string and having the tone actually register/play through Rocksmith makes it virtually unplayable on our console/TV system. We have to hit a note at least one full beat ahead of what we're hearing to get "points." Eddie VanHalen might be able to handle that, but I can't.

There are some proposed solutions, one of which we tried to no avail. Apparently using HDMI cables is not a good idea, especially for the audio signals. Using RCA-style AV cables didn't help at all.

Apparently our TV is the problem. Too much audio signal processing. So, the goal is to pump the audio signal straight out of the Xbox console. I understand the physics of why this would eliminate the delay between the guitar and my ear, but I don't see how this will improve or even affect the delay between the guitar and Rocksmith's algorithm.

Many posters on various boards have suggested running the audio signal through the cheapest possible speakers (the theory being that cheap speakers are "dumb" and won't provide ANY signal processing to slow the audio signal down). I haven't tried it yet. But, given what I've observed - that every note played on the guitar also seems to be delayed in showing up on the TV screen - I don't see how this would help. Which then makes it seem like the problem is either in the XBox console or the "special" cable that Ubisoft provides for plugging a guitar into the console.

I have tried adjusting the lag adjustment within Rocksmith from 0 to the maximum adjustment of 300. No help at all. I'm not even sure what that is supposed to do. I'd think sliding it 300 units would do something but it doesn't seem to affect anything.

I stopped by The Guitar Center when we had initially played Rocksmith (and where it seemed to work perfectly), but they had already taken down their set-up. No help there. Despite the fact that our Rocksmith game seems to have a commercial tie-in to The Guitar Center built into the game, the guy I talked to at the local store said he wasn't even sure they were going to carry Rocksmith now that Christmas is over. So, no hope of local support.

The Ubisoft website is not impressive, either, in terms of help or tech support with this product. They have a discussion board with a thread for this very problem, but their boards were down when I went to look for answers.

So, like many Christmas toys that look great in the box, this one is sort of just sitting in the corner largely forgotten by my kids and only in my mind because I paid $80 for the damn thing. Hopefully I'll get it working soon and hopefully that will entice the kids to play with it again.