How to Rock Harder Then Ever Before on Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero is the latest gaming craze to take the nation by storm. And no wonder! With an absolutely amazing soundtrack and an innovative controller, its one of the most fun games to come out since Pong. So, you've plunked down the $80 odd dollars(or more, depending on what guitar you got and what system its for) and have been jamming out with your friends to the early hours of the morning. Then, it happens. You hit a wall, and that wall is that song you just CAN'T seem to beat. Well friend, read on! I'll provide you some tips to keep your rockin' hard and rockin' long! While I'm not the greatest Guitar Hero player in the world, I have beaten the games Career in Expert Mode, getting the highest star ranking on some songs.

The Basics
I'm going to assume you already know the basic playing mechanics, but incase you don't, heres a basic rundown. You have your basic Gibson shaped controller. On the neck of your guitar, their are 5 colored buttons, known as the fret buttons. The frets, from left to right(holding the guitar in a right handed playing position) are green, red, yellow, blue, and orange. Green through red are all you need for the Easy mode, green through blue are what you use on Medium mode, and your rock using all 5 frets on Hard and Expert modes. The other button to concern yourself with is the strum bar, located in the dead center of the body of the guitar. You can push it up or down to simulate strumming a real guitar. Finally, there is the whammy bar, which you can freely adjust to your liking. You use this to change the pitch of the long notes.

When you start playing, colored notes will scroll down to the bottom of the screen. At the bottom of the screen, there is an outline of each colored note in the same order as they are on the neck of the guitar. When the scrolling note hits the outline of the note, you need to push the fret that represents that note and strum the guitar. Do it successfully and you will hear the riff. Miss the timing and you will hear a very ugly sounding effect.

The Scoring System and Multiplier Bonus
You are scored in accordance how many notes you hit. Each note is worth 50 points. Each chord(2 or 3 notes together) are worth how ever many notes are in the chord(100 points for 2 note chords, 150 points for 3 note chords). You will recieve a bonus score multiplier upon nailing multiple notes in a row. Once you hit 9 notes in a row, the score of every note will be multiplied by 2. At 19 notes in a row, your score is multiplied by 3. At 29 notes in a row, your score is multiplied by 4. If you are trying to beat your score, try to get a high multiplier and maintain it!

Star Power
At this point, you've no doubt noticed occasionally, notes shaped as stars will come up. If you hit all the notes in a row that are shaped as stars, you will recieve "star power". You must hit all the notes in the series or else you will not get star power. In addition, if there is a star note thats a long note, use the whammy bar to get addition star power from that. Above the ratings gauge, you will see a tank. Each time you obtain star power, the tank will be filled bit by bit. Once you hit the line towards the middle, you can activate star power by tilting the guitar upwards or by pushing the select button. Star power doubles your score for the time period that its activated. That means for every regular note, you now get 100 points instead of 50. In addition, it doubles your multiplier. So if you were at a X4 multiplier, it will be X8 when you deploy star power. That means instead of 200 points, you now get a whopping 400 points! Star Power has two uses. First, you can use it to increase your score. When you get a high multiplier, activate star power and watch your score grow rapidly! Second, you can use it to save yourself from failing the song. If you are in the danger zone and you activate star power, the double score will essentially mean that for every one note you hit, your are getting the points worth of two. This is usually enough to save you from failing, provided that you still hit a few notes. A special thing to note about Star Power is that once its activated, it will run until the tank has no more star power left. There is no way to deactivate star power, so avoid using it before long breaks in a song.

Hand Placement
Where you put your hand on the guitar is actually a very important aspect of the game in the later modes. You've probably realized there are 5 fret buttons but you will only be able to have a finger on four frets at a time. This will become an issue once you hit the Hard and Expert modes. I recommend, once you hit those modes that you shift your default position so that your fingers will always be covering the red, yellow, blue and orange fret, with your index finger pushing the green and red frets. Why do I recommend this? Just think for a moment. Your index finger is MUCH more dexterous then your pinky finger. You use it all the time in every day life for thing such as writing, using tools and utensils, etc. Your pinky, on the other hand, is used pretty rarely. Your index finger will be much more able to cover 2 frets then your pinky will be able to. Mind you, thats not to say you should keep your hand in that position all the time. You have to assess the situation. If there are alot of green, red, yellow, and blue notes coming up, but no oranges, feel free to move your hand up to the default position. The best way is to make use of both positions to handle all the situations.

Alternate Strumming
I'm sure that you, like most people have been hitting the strum button down. But did you know, you can actually strum upwards as well? In some songs on Hard and Expert, you will have to. Some songs will have insanely fast sections where it will be near impossible to just strum downwards and expect to hit all the notes. In this situation, its best to use a technique known as "Alternate Strumming". Alternate Strumming means strumming down, then up, then down, then up. This will allow you to strum faster and nail those blisteringly fast sections. You can even practice so that you alt. strum even the normal sections, but this is not necesary. Its important for you to find your limit where you need to alt. strum to hit notes and what you can take by doing the normal down strum. By knowing your limit, you will never be caught off guard.

Hammer On/Pull Offs
A Hammer on is a playing technique performed by sharply bringing a fretting-hand finger down on the fingerboard behind the fret, causing a note to sound. A pull off is the exact opposite. In Guitar Hero, what this means is, if itheres a quick series of notes, you can just hit the fret button instead of having to hit the strum button for each note. This allows you to play the series quickly without worrying about strumming. If you miss a note in the series, you must hit the strum button again, so don't mess up! You don't see this used much until Hard mode, but there are occasionally two note hammer ons and pull offs in Medium. HO/POs become very prevelant in Hard and Expert, having whole sections where just one strum is needed to clear it. Its best to practice HO/POs once you hit hard mode, it is a technique that will require mastery to pass the majority of advanced Hard songs and most Expert songs. The best way to do this is to use the games practice mode, accessible through the main menu. The best song in my opinion to practice is Wolfmother's "Woman". The guitar solo has alot of HO/POs and the song itself is not too fast, it should make for good practice.

Tapping
Tapping is another guitar technique thats essentially an advanced form of HO/POs. Tapping involves using the right hand(again, assuming you play righty) to tap the fingerboard during HO/POs, instead of using the fretting hand. In Guitar Hero, what this means is using your right hand to hit some notes during HO/PO sections. This is generally only used in the Expert Songs with very, very quick HO/PO sections. It essentially makes them easier by using to hands to overcome akward note patterns. The easiest song to practice(although this technique is very advanced and shouldn't be considered easy at all) tapping on is Van Halen's "You Really Got Me" on guitar solo A

Advanced Hand Positioning
Some songs have note patterns that are considerably easier if you move your hand to a position you might not usually used. For example, in Danzig's "Mother", then intro consists of a green and yellow chord, followed by a blue and red chord, followed by a yellow and orange chord. Ordinarily, you might use your index and ring finger for the first one, your middle and pinky for the second one, and then slide your whole hand down and use the middle and pinky again. In easier way to do this woul be to simply use your index and ring finger for all of them, simply sliding it down one note each chord. Also, in sections that consist of mainly yellow, blue and orange notes, it may be easier to move your whole hand down to cover it with your index, middle, and ring fingers. These advanced hand positions are not something you will be able to immediately see your first time through a song, but its something you might notice after a few play throughs or watching some advanced players on a video of some sorts.

Well, thats about it! If you implement this advice into your playing style, I guarentee you will be able to rock some songs you never dreamed of doing before! I hope this guide helps, and please leave and comments and critisizms you may have. For additional advice, please search internet forums, you can find alot of great advice their, especially at ScoreHero.com.