The ARSON News Guide to Becoming a Guitar Hero: Part One (Basics)

In these times, Guitar Hero is no longer “just a game” — it’s a way of life. Okay, maybe not that much. But it’s definitely gotten to the point where you can ask any person on the street about the game, and nine out of ten times they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about and be able to play on at least medium.

This guide will show you how to go from “that guy who was playing on easy”, to “that crazy guy who FC’d Through the Fire and Flames on expert”. It is sectioned, and goes in order of skill. If you’ve never played the game before, it’s probably best to start immediately below. If you have some experience playing on easy or medium, the third section is a good place to start. If you’re already playing on hard or expert, feel free to skip to the last three sections or this guide will seem very long.

In Part Two of this guide you’ll find information on getting GH3 running on your PC if it throws errors at you, as well as some information on customizing your controller (most of which will almost certainly void your warranty). If you’ve already finished the game on expert and don’t think this guide is worth it, be sure to check it out (yet to be released).

Your Instrument

If you are in existence, chances are you’ve already played Guitar Hero at least once. Nonetheless, I’ve included this step in here for completeness. The Guitar Hero controller (though it should be mentioned that this description applies equally to the Rock Band guitar controller) is composed of two sections, the body and the neck. You probably have a good guess as to which is which, and you’re correct – the body is the main part of the guitar, the neck is the long part extending from it with the colored buttons.

The neck is home to the fret buttons, the colored buttons distinctive to most fake plastic guitar controllers. There are five in total, from top to bottom: Green, red yellow, blue, orange. For the easy difficulty, you’ll only need to know the first three: Green, red, and yellow. The medium difficulty adds blue into the set. You’ll need the orange button only when playing on the hard or expert difficulties. Guitar Hero IV is set to introduce a new difficulty, beginner, which I assume will also use the first three (or fewer!) frets.

The body is home to two things you won’t find on a standard game controller: The strum bar and whammy bar. The whammy bar is the long metal rod which rotates and can be depressed when oriented towards the neck. The strum bar is the other device on the body, and you’ll notice that it can be pressed up or down. Depending on your controller it might make clicking noises when pressing, or strumming, the strum bar.

Take a moment, now, to pick up the guitar and learn the proper placement of your hands. Assuming you’re right-handed, your left hand should be on the top of the neck, with your first four fingers resting on the green, red, yellow, and blue frets. Your thumb should wrap around behind the guitar neck to provide support when pushing the buttons. You’ll notice, at this point, that the orange fret is not covered by any finger. This is one of the added difficulties to playing on the hardest levels.
Your right hand should rest on the body of the guitar, your thumb coming to rest on top of the strum bar and your remaining fingers resting on the whammy bar (not depressing it at this point). Alternatively, some prefer to sandwich the strum bar between their thumb and index finger, leaving only three to depress the whammy bar. If this includes you, go ahead. There aren’t any terrible disadvantages to this method and it certainly makes it easier to strum up and down quickly on higher difficulties.

It sounds overdone, but you’ll eventually need to learn the guitar well enough that you can play with your eyes closed. (That makes no sense, actually, because then you won’t be able to see the screen, but the point is much the same.) On the yellow fret button, there’s a marking to help you, depending on your controller it’s either a ridge or a series of Braille-like bumps. Associate this with the color yellow and your life will be much easier later.
Congratulations, you’ve learned about as much about the guitar controller as there is to learn. So, on to the next step.

The Game

Okay, so you know how the controller works. Now we need to apply that knowledge to the game. When you first start up the game, you’ll see the menu. (Obviously!) Take a moment to notice all the nice artwork. Done? Okay, time to select something. Feel free to use the arrow pad located on the body of the guitar to navigate, however the method preferred by most people is to use the strum bar to navigate up and down through the menus. (The menus are designed to minimize the need to move left or right.) To select, press the green fret, and the red fret acts as your back button.

There are few main options in Guitar Hero, the most important three of which are Career, Quickplay, and Multiplayer. You’ll also notice Training, which is contains useful tutorials (which will cover most of the same information as you’ll read in this guide) and a practice mode, where you can play songs without risk of failing out. Career mode allows you to unlock songs, characters, guitars, and other items that are not immediately available to you in regular play. Quickplay is great when you only want to play one or two songs, and Multiplayer is good for playing against (or in Guitar Hero 3 or higher + Rock Band – with) someone else.

Career and Multiplayer are much the same as the rest of the game, so let’s skip right into a song by selecting Quickplay. Unless you’re playing on the same account as someone else who’s been playing this game for a while, you’ll notice there’s only about eight songs available. Don’t feel inclined to return the game – you can unlock more laterin career mode. Optionally, there’s cheat codes which can be entered in Options -> Cheats to unlock them all, check elsewhere (Google is your friend.)

Go ahead and select the first song. Well, don’t actually. First, let me explain what you’re about to see. On the bottom left corner, there will be a meter which shows you your score and a multiplier. Both go up as you hit notes (we’ll get there in a second). The multiplier resets to 1x any time you miss a note or strum when there are no notes.

In the center you’ll find your fret board. Notes will come towards you while the song is playing and it is your job to hold down the matching fret on the guitar and strum (up or down, but not both) when each note crosses the colored frets at the bottom of the screen. In some cases there may be more than one note crossing at the same time, so hold down all appropriate fret buttons (still only strum once, though).

On the right side, you’ll see a second meter with the word “ROCK” on it. This is your rock meter. It measures rock. If you miss notes (or strum when there aren’t any notes), the meter will go down. When you hit lots of notes, it will go up. It starts in the center. If you’re doing really poorly and slip deep into the red, the meter and fret board will start flashing. If your meter goes much lower, you will be booed off the stage (fail out).

Confused? Select the song with the green fret and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Feel free to pause the game with the start button (it’s to the left of your right hand) to have a second look at the above.
One other thing you will occasionally notice is a note which has a long trail coming off it. These are sustained notes. To play them, strum normally as they cross the frets at the bottom of the screen, but keep the fret buttons held down until the end of the trail. There is no need to keep the strum bar pressed during the remainder of these notes.

One more thing to notice – did you ever notice star-shaped notes? On top of the right meter, you’ll notice a bunch of glowing tubes. Whenever you hit a sequence of star-shaped notes perfectly, this meter will fill up a bit. When you’ve filled three tubes, the glow will change from orange to blue, and three more tubes will be added. This is your cue to deploy star power! Tilt the guitar neck sharply upwards and watch as the guitar turns blue. The croud will go wild, you’ll earn double the points you normally would, and your rock meter will go up much more rapidly. Downside? It only lasts a few minutes, upon which everything will go back to normal.

If you still can’t pass songs, check out the tutorials under Training from the main menu.

Tricks and techniques for higher difficulties

’K, so you’ve got the basic gameplay down now, right? Well, there’s still a bit to learn.
Repeated notes — When you see the same notes over and over, keep the fret buttons for those notes held down. You still need to strum for each note-crossing, but it takes most of the coordination out of the mix. If they’re coming at you fast, you can also strum up and down alternatively. This seems really obvious and easy, but I know people who never picked this up and have more difficulties with certain songs on expert, it’s worth learning early on.

Hold lower frets when playing higher notes — In all cases, you can hold a fret which is closer to the guitar body when playing a higher note. This isn’t particularly exciting, until you get to Hammer-ons and Pull-offs (below), where they’ll make your life much easier. Note that this will NOT work when you’re playing more than one note at once. I don’t play the real guitar, so I may be missing the reasoning for this, but that’s how it works.

Hammer-ons — You’ll notice certain notes have glowing tops. These are hammer-ons. Provided you hit the note directly before the glowing notes, there’s no need to strum for these notes.
Pull-offs — Actually, I just lied. Hammer-ons are when the notes are going up (i.e. Green, red, yellow). Pull-offs are when they’re going down (i.e. Blue, yellow, red). Same idea, you don’t have to strum provided you hit the note before a pull-off-enabled note.

Orange notes — This is, in my experience, either something you get or you don't. I haven't yet met someone who's been able to hit orange notes by practicing, in all cases I've seen it's just by playing at medium for a while and then one day being able to do it. As far as hitting the actual note, there seems to be two techniques: moving your finger and moving your hand. I have some friends who find it easier to reach over further with one finger to hold down the button. This seems to be something which can be picked up more quickly. My preferred technique is to move your whole hand over. This takes some work with moving it fast enough and remembering where your hand is on the guitar, but once you've learned it it seems to make playing on higher difficulties slightly easier. For those of you just learning, though, don't worry about it so much. Sure, you could probably practice and get it eventually, but it will eventually come naturally after playing for a while in all cases I've seen.

Finger tapping — When you have a really long sequence of hammer-ons and pull-offs, there’s no need for the strum bar. For this reason, finger tapping has a use in the game. On some songs (TTFAF and Cliffs of Dover on expert are the only ones I know of), after hitting the first note in a sequence, move your strumming hand to the neck of the guitar and use it to hit the orange note, thus avoiding the need to move your hand and increasing your accuracy. It takes practice, but few people can beat TTFAF on expert without it.

The whammy bar is not your friend — It’s not your enemy either, and don’t be afraid to use it (especially on sustained notes which are star-power enabled – you will gain much more star power). Just don’t use the whammy bar on every single note. If you didn’t notice, it changes the sound of the note and it gets old really fast if it’s overused.

Rock — This is supposed to be fun! Stop taking everything so seriously, and have fun with it, it’s just a game! Act like a real rock star on stage. One thing that’s always caught my attention are those who insist they not be talked to while playing. Unless it’s a special circumstance (i.e. you’ve almost beaten a song you can’t beat, you’re about to FC TTFAF, et cetra), don’t restrain yourself from conversations. If your score drops 1,000 points, big deal!

I have one other bit of advice, specifically for those having difficulty on expert (and hard, to a lesser degree): don’t freak out when long sequences of notes come at you. Strumming up and down when they’re hammer-ons/pull-offs is likely to harm you more than hurt you. Rather, try to hit them like you’re supposed to. If it helps, break them up into chunks mentally. If you miss a chunk, don’t start playing again until the next chunk. Additionally, if you do a section that you find insane in practice mode enough times, you’ll often find it’s actually pretty easy.

Know your enemy!

This section will explain some techniques you can apply to certain songs to pass them. It’s only for Guitar Hero 3 at the moment, because that’s the most recent game released at the moment. Sure, I could make one for Rock Band, too, but what’s next? I’d have to make one for singing and drums, both of which I suck at!

Guitar Battle with Tom Morello — This battle isn’t that hard, but make sure you get the first power up. Assuming you do, it’s easy to use it when he’s about to grab one himself. Eventually, he’ll fail out. Sooner rather than later, actually.

Guitar Battle with Slash — Much of the same advice here. Slash is harder to beat, so it might take you a few extra tries. Using the advice above, I can usually get it within three tries, depending on what powerups I happen to get. If you’re adventurous, don’t worry about him getting powerups, just deploy yours when he’s in a really fast part. You risk him taking you out early, but it’s pretty easy to have him fail out with something like broken string and double notes on the later parts.

Cult of Personality — Basically an easy song, if you ignore the insane second solo. It brings really fast sequences of hammer-ons/pull-offs, so practice these. However, so long as you stay focused on the notes and try not to panic you should do fine. If you’re really having problems, save all your star power for this section.

Cliffs of Dover — The intro is all finger tapping, so practice that. Once you’ve gotten past the intro, it’s basically pretty easy until the outro (which you might want to save your star power for). I find this easier than Cult of Personality by a lot.

Raining Blood — Madness. If you haven’t played this song and don’t believe me, trust me, it's madness. It combines all of the hardest techniques into a bunch of sections. The nice thing about it is that it only tends to be one section people fail out of. The one most people seem to fail at is called “Mosh 1” – be sure to get as much star power before that as possible.

One — Save up all your star power. It’s really, really easy up until the heavy bridge, which brings lots of notes of the same color going really fast. Assuming you can strum quickly, your only problem will be the hammer-ons at the beginning of the solo, which are impossible for most people. Use your star power as soon as you go into the low yellow, then mash the strum and frets and try to get as many notes as possible. Once you get through there it’s not too hard.

Guitar Battle with Lou — Starts out like a normal song, but the powerups come eventually. Not much harder than Slash, but he’ll still probably take you more attempts. He’s got some pretty fast solos, so getting something like broken string or whammy on him at that point guarantees you a win.

Through the Fire and Flames — The single hardest song in existence. (Well, for Guitar Hero, at least.) The intro is all finger tapping, then a lot of fast notes. Finally, endless strings of hammer-ons/pull-offs. If you haven’t unlocked this song yet, imagine Jordan from Guitar Hero 2. Now double the difficulty. That’s a low estimate of the amount of skill you’ll need to get a good score on this song. Good luck at even passing.

To be continued

I’m going to write a second part to this guide that excludes all gameplay, and focuses on the most ridiculous things you can possibly do. Painting your Guitar Hero controller, fret button mods, stuff like that. Be sure to subscribe to the ARSON News feed to make sure you don’t miss it. The awesomeness of the next guide is at least double that of this one.

Thanks to Brother_D at Instructables for his Instructable which had some tips for the songs.