Script:
It seems like two years ago, all of the music YouTubers such as Stevie T were throwing out sponsored ads for a bit of an app called Yousician. I see many reviews on how good it is on the guitar and that it’s the best on the guitar. That’s good and all, but what about the rest of the instruments. Well, that’s where I come in. I will be playing through Yousician on each instrument for sixty days to see how much I progress on each instrument. Yes, that includes guitar as well. What’s going on, everybody! My name is Jack Jenkins, and welcome to my channel. Let’s get rocking for Yousician bass.
[Intro]
Let’s start off with my background on this instrument for my new viewers. The only history I have on bass is playing the original Rocksmith and Rocksmith 2014 for sixty days each. That means I’ve been playing the instrument for a little less than half a year total. Meaning that I am very new to this instrument and am a perfect candidate to learn from. The bass I own and am currently using is the Ibanez Talman TMB100. As you can see from the picture, I got it from amazon, and I’ll put the link to buy it below. It is a pretty excellent starter bass and works wonderfully with both Rocksmith and Yousician.
To start off, I was using just the free trial, but the constant interruptions basically forced me to use the paid version. The total comes out to a hundred and forty dollars on sale or a hundred and eighty dollars regularly for all instrument access. That is on the more expensive side, but I thought it would include many more features than it actually did. Funny enough, the songs before I paid took half a minute to load up. Once I spent, though, they basically come in an instant. The free version is timed for ten minutes per session, so I think they pad out the load times, so you play less. It’s a little trick that kind of pissed me off at first, but I understand that it’s just part of the business plan.
Once you sign up on the Yousician site, you get prompted to download the Windows application, which I primarily played on. You can also download it from the App Store or Google Play store as well. I tried using my mobile devices, but I found that using my big 4k monitor is a much better viewing experience… not to brag or anything. You can use a microphone, or you can plug it in straight with your Rocksmith cable. I tried the microphone. There were a few detection issues, so I switched to playing exclusively with the Rocksmith cable. It works so much better. The downside to that is you can’t record audio using this cable which is why none of my footage has my bass sounds. It’s a big disappointment and a considerable blowback against the app. I should say that Yousician and Rocksmith are in a legal battle, so maybe the feature will be added once all that blows over.
The application is immaculate and pleasing to the eyes using a dark theme. Once you open the application, it displays all the new songs from the artists and suggests songs. It lets you know where you left off in the different paths or allows you to take a timed guided lesson if you only have like ten minutes to play. The interface is done exceptionally, so the designers deserve a big round of applause.
From the home menu, you can choose two other options from the top. You can continue learning through your paths, or you can go through the weekly challenge. The weekly challenge is two songs with two different versions, one easier and one harder. You then have a week to get as high of a score as possible, and it will tell you your rank. I have to say that the weekly challenge is a great concept and it had some fantastic songs picked recorded by the Yousician staff. I have to say that I actually prefer these songs over the covered license ones that are so heavily advertised. I believe these songs that pop up are the new ones recorded by the Yousician staff, meaning you get three new pieces per week which isn’t bad.
The songs themselves, as you can see, are graphed with this side-scrolling game. The numbers are the frets you should hit, and their location on the board will be their string. The color of the fretting numbers shows what finger you should use, with yellow being your index and red being your little pinky. The background changes from green if you are doing good to ad dark red if you are doing bad. If you play the note on time and you get a rating from late to perfect. The better the rating, the more points you get at the top of the page. Get high enough points, and you become the king of the leaderboards. It’s pretty standard for this type of interactive music app, and it works great. I do notice a slight slowdown when so many notes come in at once. I think the app is only thirty-two bit, but so is Visual Studio 2019, and that app runs like crap as well. It could be my computer, or it could be something else, but the slow down is there. And I got a pretty good gaming computer, Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB of ram… you know, the whole gaming rig.
Now let’s get to the meat of the software, the learning path. The learning path is broken down into different subjects. For example, one issue will focus on other plucking techniques while another will focus on playing vertical basslines. Each subject will have videos, songs to play, or different technique playthroughs. Once you play through it, you will get a star ranking from one to three. If you played through the song without missing it, then you get the convened gold star. Once you beat all the subjects, you unlock the challenge to put what you learned to the test. Complete it, and you will continue onto the next one. For bass, there are nine levels to go through and complete. The game says that they go up to level fifteen, so I assume they are still working on creating the rest of the levels. I was able to hit the level ten mark halfway through playing, so my goal was to strike gold on all the subjects. To get gold for the subject, you have to gold all the songs and challenges. As I was able to reach level nine, that was my challenge to myself. Let me tell you, it’s easy to beat the game with just one star for each song but to go for gold… you got to be a bass god. I was able to get up to level four before the sixty days are up. It was difficult.
One thing I really like about this program is that it actually teaches you music theory. The path system is broken down into playing and knowledge. Playing… believe it or not… has you playing the bass. Knowledge does have some playing in it and focuses more on understanding what you are playing with topics such as understanding arpeggios, understanding scales, and more. They take the form of different videos and these fun little puzzles where you have to match the tone. One big complaint I see about Rocksmith is that it doesn’t teach you the knowledge of music. That is something Yousician tackles very well, at least to an elementary degree. I took three years of music theory in Highschool ten years ago, so… I’m basically an expert. Fun fact, for our final, we had to teach something music theory related to a group of freshmen, so I made up a rap song about the circle of fifths. I was definitely the cool kid in high school.
While now I do have a pretty decent impression of Yousician, I didn’t have that initially. Let’s see that with my day two impressions.
[Day 2 impressions]
As you can see from my beautifully old footage, I started recording this series like six months ago. It was not a good impression. My main issue is that we pay a lot of money for just a cover version of the songs being used. The program didn’t really feel like it should be worth a hundred and eighty dollars. The software is fantastic at teaching you the basics of the instrument. It should go a little further. I think having some guitar-cade type games that really test your skills would be a significant improvement. That and pretty much double the length of each subject with more songs and challenges. One big gripe I had, as you can see, is the use of cover songs. It’s just that Rocksmith has big names like Nirvana and Iron Maiden, too, and it’s the original songs. Some of these covers are okay, but most of them are pretty bad. Take this cover of She will be loved.
[2021-03-20 38:07]
That sounds bad, and it’s not even the worst cover by far. I feel like you should get the original and not some cover for a hundred and eighty dollars. I know that it’s cheaper from the companies’ side to do this, but as a customer… it does not feel right. Especially since you can get Rocksmith for twenty dollars on sale with the original. I understand Ubisoft has more money to spend on these types of licenses, but it just feels cheap for me. I know I am harping on this, but it was such a significant point in the advertisements by showing off the Red-Hot Chili Peppers and Heart just to wind up with a slow, lousy cover version of the song just rubbed me the wrong way.
Overall, I would say that Yousician is a great learning experience to understand the basics of playing. At the same time, some things are missing on the bass path, such as slapping, that I would like to learn. I still have a very positive outlook. Behind me is me playing on my last day, and as you can see, I started to get competent on some of the more intense basslines. To draw out the final comparison between the two applications, I would say I learned more from Yousician, but I had more fun in Rocksmith. I would say do both if you have the money. If not, I’d say start with Yousician monthly, get to level nine and then cancel your subscription and play Rocksmith to learn more techniques. What they teach you is has a lot more depth in Yousician, but Rocksmith has the breadth.
So that is my impression of Yousician on Bass for sixty days. Here is my sheet for the time playing. I recommend all of you try to play Yousician for sixty days to see how much you learned playing on bass. I will be playing the four other instruments offered by the program continuing with a guitar next time. That video should be coming in about a month. Subscribe to the channel to get notified of that video or the rest of my videos. I do any challenges or reviews in the realm of self-improvement. That can be physical, emotional, or in the case of these music series, knowledge. Learning how to do stuff is probably one of the most underrated self-improvement skills out there. You can watch me transform from this bag of garbage to a much cleaner bag of garbage over time. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment below. I will pretty much do any of them. Follow me on Twitter @truejackjenk. Lastly, have a fantastic day, everyone. All you guys are amazing.