So you want to go pro in Guitar Hero/Rock Band?

Hello everyone, I am "Mr. Pulsar", currently a pro gamer in Clan h2o (brother clan of Clan PMS) for the Guitar Hero/Rock Band Division. I have been playing since Guitar Hero came out in 2005 and have walked a long path to where I am today.

I will get right to the point with this guide, you want to get better at the game, and I can tell you right now it's not as hard as it seems.

Step 1: www.scorehero.com & rockband.scorehero.com

ScoreHero has been the single greatest resource for all guitar hero and rock band players since the games have come out. Started by a man whose nickname is "JCirri" it allows you to easily browse the top scores for every song, and post your own scores as well.

On top of the score tracking, ScoreHero provides an extensive forum where users have posted many guides to becoming better at the game and the best part is it is all free.

Step 2: Pathing - or, when to use Starpower.

When you're able to FC (or, get 100% on a song and not break combo) songs, that's not all it takes to being the best. Pathing is using your starpower or overdrive in the correct places in the song, places that will get you much more points. Scorehero provides these all over it's forum by users who make them.

There are sites that provide paths either computer generated or submitted by users.

The first site I'm linking is Path Hero. pathhero.codemann8.com/index.php

It is a community based pathing site, people post and rate the paths to find the best one. This is the only pathing site I am aware of for this current generation of rhythm games.

For older rhythm games (Guitar Hero 1-3) there is a site called SlowHero: www.slowhero.com/

SlowHero provides paths for the first three guitar hero games, and then blank note charts of the later guitar hero games to make your own paths. I recommend SlowHero if you're playing the older games because the paths on this site are computer generated, or, "perfect." You will get the highest possible score you can on the song if you follow the path exactly as it is.

Step 3: Practice/Tactics

Ultimately your technical skill comes down to how much you play. Do NOT under any circumstance be afraid or lazy to use the practice mode provided in the games, they're the quickest way to learnin a hard portion of a song and has helped me on many occasions.

On top of practicing, it is good to look in to techniques you can use for hitting harder parts or scoring more points, here is a short list of techniques:

Alt-Strumming: instead of only hitting the strum bar down, you move it up and down, alternating. It is always good to start on a downstrum if you can as you'll find it easier to keep rhythm. Alt-strumming can be hard for some to learn and extremely easy for others. The easiest way is to force yourself to alt-strum. Don't mind failing songs you can pass at first, it may take awhile but if you keep at it, you'll be alt-strumming in no time.

Tapping: this is the technique of using both of your hands to hit the notes on hammer on/pull off segments. This technique became very popular with the song "Jordan" in Guitar Hero 2, and became a necessity on songs such as "Cliffs of Dover" and "Through the Fire and the Flames" in Guitar Hero 3. You can find videos of tapping on youtube, and guides on scorehero.

Squeezing: this technique is very advanced, and it involves stretching the timing window of a song to hit as many notes as you can under a star power segment. To make it simple, when you hit a note in guitar hero, it doesn't have to be 100% precise, you can hit the note a little early or a little late and this doesn't count against your score. When you active star power it's for a set amount of time based on the tempo and time signature of the song. So what you do is, wait for the first note of your path to come up, then purposefully hit it late, activating starpower quickly before hitting the note, if you do this correctly then you can usually "squeeze" in an extra note or two at the end of your path, getting you more points. You can also find videos of this on youtube and guides on scorehero.

Conclusion:

There is a short guide and I hope it assists you in becoming a better guitar hero player. Of course, I am always available on this site as a tutor if you require hands on training.

Thanks!

- Austin "Mr. Pulsar" Throop