So I Heard You Want To Be A Guitar Hero - A Guide To Becoming a Guitar God 2.0

[metroidhunter777]

So, um, since I'm your friendly neighborhood Guitar Hero Guru, I decided to post a guide to Guitar Hero. Techniques, how to play, all that good stuff.

How To Play (General Information)

We all know that Guitar Hero is for the PS2 and Xbox 360 (eventually PC, Wii, and DS) This guide will focus more on techniques used in GHII and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's, and eventually Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, starting early November.

For now, let's look at how you hold the guitar. Your left hand goes on to the neck of the guitar (right hand if you're lefty). Your index, middle, ring, and pinky are on the green, red, yellow and blue frets, respectively. Your thumb is on the bottom of the neck.

When playing using the orange fret, your hand slides down into "second position", where your fingers are on red, yellow, blue, and orange, rather than green, red, yellow, and blue. Don't worry if it feels odd at first; it becomes a second nature with practice.

Your right hand (left if left) goes over the strum bar. Your thumb should be on top of the strum bar, with the whammy bar at the bottom of the guitar. You strum down, obviously. When alt-strumming (more on that later), you should have two fingers on the strum bar, alternately strumming up and down.

You use the whammy bar on long notes (from now on refered to as "sustains") for fun, or on Star Power sustains to "squeeze" Star Power out of it (more on Star Power and squeezing later).

Techniques

Hammer Ons/Pull Offs

Most useful in supafast solos, these guys are lifesavers. They're when you hit notes without strumming. You activate a HO/PO when you see a note with a black ring in the center followed by a note with a completely white center. You strum the black ringed note, then hit the next note without strumming. Rinse and repeat after that, except you don't have to strum again until you mess up or there's another note with a black ring. For a more in depth description, go to the Advanced Tutorials section in GHII or RT80s.

Alt(ernate)-strumming

As I said earlier, Alt-strumming is when you use two fingers (or limb, whatever) to strum. You use your index finger and thumb to strum up and down. This is pretty important, as Misirlou on Expert is practically impossible without alt-strumming. It can also be used to keep tempo a bit easier, or for parts that are hard on your thumb alone.

Advanced Techniques

Tapping

Tapping is when you use HO/POs to your full advantage. You take your right hand (left if lefty) and bring it up to the frets to assist your left (right if lefty) hand. This technique is most useful in: You Really Got Me, Jordan, Electric Eye, and (eventually) Through the Fire and Flames. It can also be used for show, but more on that later.

Stylish Techniques

Tapping

Well, tapping is usually used on fast parts like in Jordan or Electic Eye. But you can also throw some style into some one hand moves. Let's take parts such as in the Six Bridge for example. Keep your left hand's index finger on green while your right hand presses the others. It's known to impress crowds.

Playing Behind Your Head

This is a bit harder.  All you have to do is put the guitar longways across the back of your head, so that the frets and strum bar are facing away from the back of your head. You do the same things as normal, only it makes it a little harder and crowds love it, especially when used during quick parts of songs.

Headbanging

Simple enough. BANG YOUR HEAD! All you have to do is bang your head up and down. It's hard to see the screen, though, so you better have to part you're headbanging to memorized pretty well. Works great in metal songs, not so much in Free Bird.

Star Power Techniques

Using Star Power to Full Advantage

Using Star Power at the right time is very tricky. As you might not no, A half-full Star Power bar lasts 7 measures. Every whammy fills it 3.33%. Also, it's not how fast you whammy; rather, it's how long you whammy. You get 3.33% of your bar filled every beat. (Note that this is what I believe is correct; if anyone can confirm this, thank you).

Now. Star Power is most useful when used in two situations:
1) Parts with fast/average speed chords
2) Solos.

Star Power charts (found on the ScoreHero.com forums) help you figure out when to use Star Power for maximum score.

Squeezing

Squeezing is when you activate Star Power a tad late to "squeeze" in notes at the end of the activation phrase. How do you do this? You activate in the Star Power window (as seen in a Star Power chart) a bit later than you usually would. When you get to the end of the activation, you strum notes early to squeeze them in to your activation. This is useful when trying to get the highest FC (see Guitar Hero Termology section) score possible, or highest score ever achieved on a site such as ScoreHero or the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock tournaments inevitable to happen here.

Guitar Hero Termology

BNoF (Blue Note of Freedom): The blue sustain at the end of Jordan's Guitar Solo C. If you make it here, you almost always beat Jordan.

FC (Full Combo): Getting 100% on a song with a full note streak.

Gibson Les Paul: This is the guitar you will be playing on, silly! (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 Versions of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock)

Gibson Pacer: This is the guitar you will be playing on, silly! (PS2 Version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock)

Gibson SG: This is the guitar you're playing on, silly! (PS2 Versions)

Gibson XPlorer: This is the guitar you're playing on, silly! (Xbox 360 Version)

Guitar God: When you 5-star every song (including bonus tracks).

The Log: One of the ultimate goals of Guiar Hero II and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's; you acheive it when you get 5-stars on every Expert song (not including bonus tracks).

Please tell me if you have any to add!

[metroidhunter777]

This section is for guides to exceptionally hard songs. Guides to songs that you're having trouble with are available by request and not premade. In fact, I've made everything I've written up to this point in my head.

Song Guides

Jordan

Ok. So, Jordan is the toughest song to beat in the game. If this is your first time attempting to beat it, I highly suggest you master the part before the solo to pick up Star Power.

Ok. For the part, strum and HO/PO strum and HO/PO

As for the next part that has so many posts I won't bother posting them, alt-strum everything. Then repeat until guitar break.

In the guitar break, try to hit as many notes as possible descending notes are much harder than ascending, so practice makes perfect.

Solo A is fairly easy until the end. What I found out what works is to do this (Second position for first six sets of ascending notes, first position for the last six): Move your fingers so that you're playing the notes at the end like this:

Ok. On to Solo B, sometimes refered to as the "HOW THE F*** DO I READ THE NOTES" section.

Well, here's something you must understand to even come close to completing Solo B. Well, two things. First: Make sure you have a full Star Power bar. Activate as soon as the rock meter goes into flashing red. Second: Trills. Trillstrillstrills. You must be taught how to do them properly. Instead of doing for trills, do Do note that you don't have to strum every time. Due to Guitar Hero's life-like system, you can play higher notes without having to release lower notes, chords being exceptions. That's as much help as I can give you there.

Solo C. The solo of death. Two words. Practice. Mode.

Solo D. YOU MADE IT! Simple enough.

Solo E. More simple.

Solo F. Strum up and down for the first part. Second part, good luck. I have a video for it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YtusPIIMyRw - 92%, yay. Hopefully that will help some of you.

Bridge. Practice this a lot. The rythmn is kinda funky, and strum it all. Use the magical trill-chord strategy for this; in short, keep your index on green.

After this, you made it. Good job!

[metroidhunter777]

_GanonMetroid_'s Jordan Guide

NOTE: All methods mentioned should be practiced on slowest, and gradually worked up to full speed.

Ok, so you can beat Jordan. Maybe you can even get 5 stars on it. Wonderful. This guide is for you. Let's start with the main riff:



By now, you can probably get most of this, but maybe it still breaks your streak, killing your score. I suggest hammering the notes as much as you can, keeping your index finger on G. Then, on the scale, slide your finger up to red to play the rest with ease. Practice that until you can do it well.

So that covers it all the way until the shortest score killer in the history of the game: the guitar break.



Yeah, it's intimidating, but it's quite doable with the proper method. All you have do to is use your first three fingers. I strongly advise against the use of the pinky finger here. Just practice hitting a GRY series over and over again until you can get a good rhythm, then start moving it with the notes.

And that brings us to solo A. The beginning isn't too bad, but then you get to the DEATH STREAM YAY! Should look like this:



Yeah, this is tough. Very tough. If you still can't do this to save your life, follow the basic method for this part. If you're okay with the basic part, then try this for more consistency here. Finger it like this:

OBYOBY OBROBR OYROYR BYRBYR BYGBYG BRGBRG YRGYRG
321321   321321   421421  321321  321321   421421  321321

1 = index finger
2 = middle
3 = ring
4 = pinky

That way you don't have to involve your pinky too much and screw up your fingers.

Okay, solos B and C. You probably skipped right to this section hoping I would have some godly tip to help you do this, or make you instantly be able to tap it.

Nope.

I can't tap it myself, so I'm not going anywhere near there. There's a guide on scorehero for that if you really want to try. If you're not a robot, though, here's what I suggest. Take these two sections into practice. Do them on slowest until you can FC them there. Then move up to slower and get it even better faster. If you can FC it there too, that's great. It's possible; I've done it. Being able to FC these two sections, even on slower, should make you so much better at this song.

Okay, so, blah blah, blue note of freedom, blah blah, easy solos. Okay, solo F which I suggest the same method as B and C (though is possible on full speed without tapping). And now...

THE BRIDGE

Hammer it. If you're familiar with swung eighth notes, you're ahead of the game. If you're not, think the Gtr Hook in Rock This Town. It should feel like that. That's how the bridge should feel when you're hammering it. You strum the second swung eighth, then tap the higher note, which should feel like the first in the set of swung eighths.

Oh, and keep your index finger on green. Always.

That's it. Start practicing!

[metroidhunter777]

Space reserved for Six: I'll get on that sometime today.

If it fits, Beast and the Harlot, as well.

[metroidhunter777]

Institutionalized, possibly Misirlou.

[metroidhunter777]

Hangar 18.

[metroidhunter777]

FREE BIRD!

[metroidhunter777]

Anything else.

[metroidhunter777]

Moar anything else.

[sonicdude164]

You really need THAT many edits?

[metroidhunter777]

I answered that question in IM, but yes. I do. The character limit is 20,000 characters. I have to do one link for every one of those fret icons. That takes up a LOT of space.

[sonicdude164]

Oh OK that makes things annoying

[metroidhunter777]

Oh OK that makes things annoying

You're telling me. =\

[_GanonMetroid_]

Mini-flood complete.

Also, there's a yellow note before the last blue in death stream yay, but i'd just get rid of the blue note for the sake of space.

[NOA_ANDY]

Nice guide!  ;D

Do Free Bird next. I can't seem to five star it, however I can reach the score of 300,000+ and get 4 stars.

Oh, and you're many edits are excused, so don't worry about that. :P
but I better see some song guides there or somebody's gonna be in trouble, and I can use "teh bantzing powahs" so I don't think it'll be me.


...j/k. :P

Keep up the good work MetroidHunter777!  <(^_^)^ 


oh,  and 48% on Solo B....dang-it. :P