Tips for Those Pursuant of Skills on the Strings

It’s time again for another riveting edition of Plastic Rockers. We’ve looked at vocals, drums and in this issue we’ll finish up our tips series by looking at the “instrument” that started this whole music game business … the guitar.

The guitar is that iconic part of a rock band that stands out above all others. You know growing up you pretended to light your guitar on fire like Jimi Hendrix, or put a hat on and pretended you were so cool you didn't have to look at the crowd or your guitar like Slash, or just acted like you didn't give a shit about anything like Robert Plant in your living room.

Almost everyone can name 3-6 great drummers and 3-4 of your favorite vocalists. Guitarists on the other hand you could probably name 25 if not 30 without blinking an eye. Now thanks to Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the silly air guitar antics you acted out as a kid have a little more substance behind them ... kind of ... in a geeked out sort of way. Even if your dreams of becoming a rock god have somewhat come to life, you've probably discovered playing air guitar on top of your bed is a hell of a lot easier than making it through the hard or even expert tours in RB and GH.

Don't worry your pretty little head. We’re here to help. Out of the cosmos with our vast influence and extensive knowledge of the stars, we've summoned two of the sites gnarliest guitar pros to impart some knowledge your way about how you can learn to shred with the best. King Bayman, not only has a near lifetime’s worth of experience playing a real life guitar but also has some of the top leaderboard scores on 2o2p. And just so the geeky kids (who are we kidding, we're all geeks) in the crowd don't get left out, we’ve contacted RagingBull888 to chime in regarding the guitar’s red headed step child -- the bass.

Enough messing about. Lets get to the tips already.

KingBayman:

Rhythm Playing

• Index finger on the red button as the "starting position."
• Get used to moving your hand up and down the "fretboard" to maximize muscle memory as to how far the button are apart. I will on occasion move my index finger all the way to the blue button.
• Play the G/Y, R/B, Y/O chords the way they intended to be played, with you index and ring fingers. Not your middle and pinky fingers. Sometimes they need to be played that way for speed purposes, but playing them with the correct fingers will relieve fatigue. "Surrender" by Cheap Trick on GH2 is an excellent song to practice this on.
• Figure out the way the game designers intended for the chord progression to be played. This can be more difficult for the non-musician to decipher as they wouldn't have the experience of playing the songs on a real guitar and knowing how a basic blues rhythm or chord progression would go. But if you can find the groove the was intended by the person/persons charting the song, it will make life easier.
• Alternate strumming!! I know it seems like it should be obvious by now, but I still plenty of people trying to down strum everything. I don't care how awkward it feels to alternate strum, if you can't do it, you can't play expert effectively. Period. Count notes in the patterns to know when to stop strumming. If you start with down stroke, all even number strums will end with an upstroke, all odds in a down stroke. A good song to practice this with is "Almost Easy" by Avenged Sevenfold and "Chop Suey" by System of a Down.
• Soloing
  
• Their are two basic "tricks" to playing solos. First is know there are basic patterns used over and over in the charting of solos. A couple of commons ones are the runs up and down the fretboard, and the rapid succession of HO/POs alternating between two different buttons. The only thing to really improve on these is practice. It is all about muscle memory. To play some of the solos as fast as they are actually played is done out of habit. Thinking about them will only slow you down and screw you up. It has to come naturally.
• Probably the most important thing about doing solos is knowing the solo inside out, backwards and forwards. If you know what it is supposed to sound like, it makes it easier to follow along and prepare for the more difficult parts. If you are having problems with a song, put it on your mp3 player or burn it to a disc and listen to it over and over until you are hearing the solo in your head as it is playing.

RagingBull888:

• Bass, in a lot of ways, is a lot like playing drums. You get a steady rhythm of the same notes during the verses and then change slightly for the choruses. In most cases, there usually isn't any crazy improvisation, ala a lead guitar solo.
• If you are having trouble moving up to hard guitar from medium, try hard bass first. There are far fewer instances of orange notes and chords are pretty much non existent. You will get used to the speed of a hard chart without the soul crushing that can occur.
• By virtue of the fact that a good number of bass lines repeat the same color for a long stretch of time, you can get excellent practice with your alt-strumming technique. In some cases, you will likely be able to down strum the whole song but switching to alt-strumming gives you a different challenge.
• If you choose to play bass (or even if you don't choose to play bass but are instead stuck with it) in a multiplayer band, do not forget that your multiplier goes to six in Rock Band. With the lack of chords, one missed note can really sink your band's score. It also means you want your overdrive activated at the right moment.
• The ultimate goal for the Rock Band series is to play bass on expert and get gold stars for a song. Because of the x6 multiplier and purported ease of playing bass, you need to play perfectly to get Gold Stars on a lot of lower tier songs. It is not quite so bad on some upper tier songs, but the likelihood of missing more notes is increased.
• If you are looking for some bass lines that add some creativity to the mix, try the two by Flea that come on the Rock Band 2 disc, "Give it Away" and "You Oughta Know." In the last tier of songs on bass, "Panic Attack" and "Carry on Wayward Son" also give your fretting fingers a nice workout.
• For you Guitar Hero: World Tour players, its bass lines add a note to the fret board on some songs on higher difficulty lives; this note is a purple line across the screen much in the same way a bass pedal note is done. If you see this note, it means you strum without depressing any of the fret buttons, in other words, an open strum. This adds an extra degree of difficulty and will more than likely take some getting used to.

As with all the tips our guest writers have provided, you may find some that work better than others. Ultimately, you have to figure out what works best for you and practice practice practice.

If you have more ideas, post up and let us know. Together we can take over the Rock Universe! Or at least the Plastic Rock Universe.