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I recently wrote down my thoughts on Yousician as a reply to a question on Reddit. I'll repeat it here since you guys might find it useful. I think a lot of it also applies to Rocksmith, but maybe you will correct me:

I've been using yousician for almost two years now (Level 9) so here are my takeways:

Upsides:

  1. I.M.O. the single most important benefit of Yousician is that it takes away your worries on what to practice. Have ten minutes to play, but not sure what? Just fire up Yousician and do whatever your next task is.

  2. I think that it makes you a more well-rounded guitarist in the sense that progressing will require you to play some music that you don't like. Want to get to Level 9? Well guess what, you're going to have to rock that fingerstyle version of Waltzing Matilda or you're going nowhere.

  3. If you have the type of personality that "gamification" works on, or are inherently competitive, I think Yousician will work for you. I've caught myself doing a bunch of extra work on songs I don't really like just to get all gold stars or whatever.

  4. The amount of songs that are already tabbed for yousician is good, and importing guitarpro works pretty well, so once you are used to reading the scrolly tabs (after about Level 5 or so) playing new songs is pretty effortless (provided your fingers can do the work). Many of the songs are user-submitted though, so the quality varies.

Downsides:

  1. I.M.O the major downside to Yousician is that it doesn't train your memory at all, I find my song retention is absolute rubbish. There are 100s of songs that I can play (i.e. my fingers can do the work), but if I can't see the tab scrolling by I wouldn't even know a single bar from memory. It would be cool if they could add a mode where they blank out more notes the more you play the song in order to train your brain.

  2. Towards the later stages (Level 7,8,9 in my case) I find I have to do a lot of practice outside of Yousician in order the train the really rote stuff. At the moment my practice time is about 50/50 exercises/Yousician. There just aren't enough rudiments in Yousician to get you through the harder stages without adding significant non-Yousician practice time.

Wow, great timing. I was just suggested Yousician by @AllysonR

I haven't tried it yet but what looks good is, like you say, it makes you more well-rounded. It also seems to help you with theory as you go along.

You're spot on, @klaasvakie, some of this definitely applies to Rocksmith. One of my biggest pet-peeves with RS was the same as yours — it does nothing for your memory.

At one point, I was playing for an hour every day. But if I picked up the guitar without those notes flying past my face? I wouldn't have a clue what to do.

To be fair, RS has a "master" mode where less and less notes fly past you as you progress in a song. But until the recent guitar duel, I didn't really feel compelled to use that.

In a way, I feel like these tools are AWESOME as long as you also practice without them. For me, with the recent challenge, knowing I had to record myself really motivated me to learn the parts. To the point now where I "know" both songs, even with Rocksmith closed.

So, yes, you definitely need focused practise outside of these games, IMO. Otherwise the skills you learn don't translate well to the real world.

klaasvakie I.M.O the major downside to Yousician is that it doesn't train your memory at all, I find my song retention is absolute rubbish.

I think this is weird - I mean you've learnt the song, the muscle memory is there if your fingers can follow in real time?

Perhaps it depends on how you are used to learning - I'm used to tab only. Now though, I try to combine tab w/ears - The tab gives me a mental picture of the notes, I use that to figure out where my fingers need to be and my ears to get the rhythm/feel. When the tune is internalized (E.g. I can hum the tune at will), then I can put away the crutches and jam to drum loops until I'm happy.

One huge caveat...If I don't maintain what I've learnt, it'll likely be forgotten. There's much riffage I've forgotten because I didn't maintain it after learning. It's not uncommon - my mate teaches at COPA, he can play the paint off a classical - but maintaining his repertoire of classical pieces to performance level is around 3hr/day...before he learns anything new!

In the last band, I put in around 4+hrs/week (minimum) just re-playing our 35m set. And then there'd be a 2hr practice 1/week too.

I think we underestimate how long it takes to internalize something and how much effort is needed to maintain our internal jukebox? I like to work on something for around a month, I don't spend a lot of time per session, maybe 5-15m each time. Occasionally I might get into a jam/technique and I'll go longer. But if I can put in one or two short sessions in a day, I'm really happy.

    NorioDS

    NorioDS In a way, I feel like these tools are AWESOME as long as you also practice without them.

    I think this is the most important thing to keep in mind. These are tools that can be part of your toolbox, but they cannot be your entire toolbox.

        V8

        V8 I think this is weird - I mean you've learnt the song, the muscle memory is there if your fingers can follow in real time?

        It is really weird, but I think I can explain it. When you are learning a song from a normal tab, you are forced to feel the song more since the timing of each note/chord is entirely up to you. With Yousician, you get the note/chord and its exact timing fed to you visually. This means that your brain can pretty much turn off - its only your fingers that need to keep up.

        When I learn a song from a normal/paper tab I retain it much better than with the Yousician scrolly-tabs.

        V8 One huge caveat...If I don't maintain what I've learnt, it'll likely be forgotten. There's much riffage I've forgotten because I didn't maintain it after learning. It's not uncommon - my mate teaches at COPA, he can play the paint off a classical - but maintaining his repertoire of classical pieces to performance level is around 3hr/day...before he learns anything new!

        This is very true, maintenance is key. My brain is mush so if I don't repeat things regularly they go right to the recycle bin.

              I've actually downloaded yousician as I still suck at playing(it's really bad) and have been battling or 2 years just to get the stupid thing to work and have actually given up trying to get it to work and I still suck at playing the guitar

              Mark_H Not saying I can help, but its working for me on Windows, Linux and Android. Where are you having problems?

                  Actually got it to work and had my firt practice session last night

                    5 days later

                    So Yousician pushed a pretty terrible update to me this morning, see here:

                    https://app.yousician.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3008

                    Basically they removed all songs that have a copyrighted backing track which is most of what I used to play (outside of the lessons). I'll see how their "we're adding songs, promise" thing works out, but unless the manage to add a massive catalogue in record time I just don't see how they are going to replace the thousands of user-submitted songs. I guess this means I won't renew my subscription when it rolls around again.

                      7 days later
                      5 days later

                      OK so after the weekends discussion on whats-app.. I have a question..

                      I have Rocksmith both steam and Xbox, I can connect easily connect my electrics directly into my Pc's so some the connection issues I do not have.. is then Yousician better than rocksmith? and if so in what way.

                      I need to give yousician another go. I didnt taje the time to properly do the initial config.. and as a result.. found the lessons eye wateringly boring. But i acknowledge it was my rushing through the initial setup.. and not yousician. I will give it another whirl

                      a year later

                      Hola. What is the sub on Yousician? For me, at this point, I’d look at using it really as an additional practice tool.

                        Hola. What is the sub on Yousician? For me, at this point, I’d look at using it really as an additional practice tool.

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