The first question I had was: is this even possible? In short: yes it is! I was watching a streamer have a blast playing bass on RockSmith and it got me wondering if I could use my Kala Rumbler U-bass (a bass built in ukulele size) to play. Since the game was only $10 I figured I’d take a chance and give it a go.
Sorry for the volume difference between the game and my speaking. There’s a bunch of computer work I would need to do to make it better, and well, if you just want to know if you can play Rocksmith 2014 on a Ubass, you sure can!
Installation and setup was pretty straightforward: I bought the game off of Steam, installed it, opened it, skipped registering for a ubisoft account (though I might do that someday to just get rid of the pop up) and ran through the configuration.
I don’t have the RealTone cable, and I’m not using a super common audio interface, so I just used the “microphone” input, and it works pretty well. I don’t have a proper bass amp (sim pedal), so I did have to use another pedal I already owned to boost the output a bit.
I’m gonna be honest: the base content is pretty… not great. Luckily its super easy to unlock the massive library of Custom DLC (cdlc) songs:
https://customsforge.com/topic/901-how-to-use-custom-dlcs-in-rs2014-remastered-updated-for-2023
Basically run the program that lets you use cdlc, sign up on customsforge and go download a ton of songs from your favorite bands! I selected “bass only” in the filter, then typed in the names of bands to go through and download songs to play. The song files are super small, and while its a bit tedious, in a single night I added over 300 songs to my library.
The most popular songs are going to be paid dlc, which I’m waiting for a big sale to pick up. I’ve got plenty to play in the meantime.
Besides the caveat of not having the same amount of frets as a normal bass (which hasn’t been a problem so far) the ubass seems to work just fine for playing most bass cdlc.
I also am at a place musically where I can play most intermediate level songs with a little work, so I turned off dynamic difficulty and just play everything on the “hard” setting. I do use the riff repeat in “learn a song” mode on occasion – wish that they had an option to slow down the tempo but I haven’t found one if it exists just yet. The Pixies are mostly fine on the first playthrough, Interpol is borderline, The Smiths take some time in riff repeat mode but are doable. Part of it is just getting used to the notation format, but also being able to jump from open/2nd position to to frets 7/9/10 plays a lot bigger role than I was expecting.
I probably wont be streaming this game, as configuring it for that seems like a lot of computer work that I’d rather not do. Also, it doesn’t seem like Ukulele is an option for Rocksmith charts, though I don’t see why they couldn’t just ignore the top strings of a guitar if they wanted to.
Maybe Fee[db]ack will incorporate that someday. But honestly, I don’t think it’d really be the best way to learn to play uke, unless you’re really only focusing on instrumentals – and even then, properly learning to read music would be superior. Trying to read chords and strumming patterns in this format seems like a nightmare. It’s great for guitar solos and bass lines, but trying to parse chords out of the blocks falling on frets… yeah idk.
For Bass though, its amazing. I got this UBass a while back because I wanted to learn, but it was so lonely to just play basslines by themselves. Now I can play along with the full tracks and learn a ton of bass lines without having to decode tabs or buy sheet music.
Some questions I had going into this:
Q: Do you need the official RealTone cable?
A: No. You can use your existing audio interface. There is a custom thing you can do to emulate the official realtone cable, but I just opted to use the “microphone” setting and it seems to work sufficiently. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/rocksmith/comments/t83tt7/do_i_need_a_realtone_cable/
Q: Are there packs of Custom DLC (CDLC) to download?
A: No. You have to download each cdlc individually. Its part of the deal they have with ubisoft to allow for customs. Luckily, the files are super small and you can build up a pretty big library fairly quickly.
Q: Is there a way to turn off the sound the game makes when the score multiplier increases?
A: Yes. Select Tools > Options > Mixer and turn “Sound Effects” down to zero.
Q: Does the UBASS work with Fee[dB]ack?
A: Yes. I found the program in a pretty rough state at the moment, and couldn’t obtain any proper song files to test on, but it did recognize the output. I expect that project to develop much more over time. (For those unaware, Slopsmith was an open source Rocksmith clone that got shut down and subsequently evolved into Fee[dB]ack. Check out got-feedback.org)
If you have any other questions or concerns, leave a comment on the YouTube video and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Rock on!