Gh1
Guitar hero 1 is the game that started it. 47 songs, no co op or practice mode.
Gh2
Guitar hero 2 is a big improvement from gh1. It has 64 songs, practice mode (ablility to slow down notes to learn hard songs), pro face-off (2 players against each other on the same difficulty), and co-op (one player plays lead guitar and one player plays rythm or bass) It has a character named Lars Ümlaut.
Gh80s
Guitar hero rocks the 80s is an expansion of gh2. It only has 30 songs when gh2 has 64. It is 80's style with 80's music.
Gh3
Guitar hero 3 is the 4th game in the series & has some new features that weren't in the first 3 games.
The first new feature is battle mode where players use attacks on each other to make them fail. Players have to hit certain notes to get attacks. It has 70 songs and boss battles where the player has to face off against the computer.
The game also has a wider note range than the previous games. This means you have a longer amount of time to hit each note (can hit them a little earlier or later than when they come). Although this makes guitar hero 3 easier than the first 3 games, the songs on it are harder.
GhOt
Guitar Hero: On Tour is a portable version of the game for the Nintendo DS. The controller has 4 buttons and plugs into the gba slot. It has some new songs on it and some from the old games. It also has new battle mode attacks
Gha
Guitar hero Aerosmith is an expansion of gh3. It has 41 songs including aerosmith and bands that influenced or played with them. A few months before the game came out, a free dlc dream on song was released for two days to celebrate the game coming out soon.

World Tour
This game is also known as Guitar hero 4 and came out October 26th. It has 86 songs, 16 pre made songs in the studio, and all the features of guitar hero 3 plus more:
Full band
Up to 4 players can play. This includes lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, and vocals.
Beginner Difficulty
This is a new difficulty that's easier than easy. On guitar, the player only has to strum notes and they show up as bars like the bass notes. On drum, they just need to hit the pedal or a pad. On vocals, everything will be talkies which means the singer just needs to talk when the words appear and pitch doesn't matter.
Controller Features
1. Guitar
  The new guitar has 5 touch buttons higher up on the neck for playing special notes.
2. Drums
  The drums have 3 pads, one pedal, 2 cymbols, and a port for a second pedal. Pedal notes are horizontal bars that go across the screen. With this drum kit, hitting the drums harder makes more sound come out in game.
3. Vocals
  A microphone is used to sing the words that come from the right of the screen to the left. The arrow on the left moves up or down when the singer's voice changes pitch.
Music Creator Studio
There is a music creator in guitar hero world tour where the player can create a guitar or drum song for the game by choosing scales and chords and pressing the fret buttons. The instruments that songs can be made of are lead guitar, bass guitar, rythm guitar, drums, and synthesizer. All of these instruments are playable in game except synth.
1. Basic Working
  To make a song, up to 5 people can press buttons on 4 different guitars and a drum set while up to 5 fret boards are scrolling. When a button is pressed, a fret button appears and a musical note is heard. That's going to be the note in the song that is played when this certain button is pushed. So if the song is set to an A major scale and the screen shows "A" next to the green fret button at the scale screen, every time the green fret button is pushed, a green note will appear on the fretboard and an A will be heard.
  
  The scale can be changed in the middle of the song and you don't need to know anything about music to choose a scale. Even if the green button is an A, tilting the guitar up will make the green button play a higher pitched note. The song that's created is in expert difficulty and the game creates the other difficulties and adds starpower.
2. Guitar Effects
  Different parts of the guitar do different effects to the note sounds. The whammy bar makes the pitch of a note go down. Tilting the guitar changes the pitch of the scale. The slide buttons are used to make trills and do other stuff. The starpower button that is shaped like a bridge is used in music creator to "palm mute" the notes. Palm muting is a technique used on real guitar that mutes the sound.
3. Drums and Synth
  The guitar can be used to make a drum track. Each of the fret buttons makes a different drum note and the strum bar makes a pedal note. The drum kit can also be used. Synthesizer sounds can be made in the studio and are heard in the music, but are unplayable.
4. Different Sounds
  This Music studio uses line 6 pod technology. Line 6 is an amplifier company and since the game uses the technology, many effects can be accomplished. The player can make the guitar of his song have many different sounds from different amps. The sound can be distorted, clean, other different styles, it's like having your game system work as an amp. The other instruments have different sound effects too. The synthesizer has many sounds of different synths from different eras. There are at least 20 drum kits that can be chosen, each with a different sound.
5. Limits
  There are 1200 note and 3 minute limits for songs. Those limits aren't that bad. Some crazy stuff can still be created but there can't be a 10 minute song that's just crazy fast soloing. There are some other limits discovered after playing the game more. One is a 50 song creation limit on the 360, 20 for the wii, 10 for the ps2. Ps3 is most likely 50. There's also download limits. 100 songs for 360, 20 for wii and ps2/ps3 probably have the same amount as they do for creation.

Other Stuff

Characters
Singer Ozzy Osbourne and guitarrist Zakk Wylde are playable characters as well as older characters from the past guitar hero games. There will be a create a character feature and even a create a guitar feature.
Difficulty
The difficulty is between gh2 and gh3 but if it's not hard enough, there's always the music studio to create super hard stuff, although the music studio has limits.
Buying Info
The bundle for this game was released in October and have the drum kit with 3 pads, 2 cymbals and a pedal, the guitar with 5 normal fret buttons and 5 slide fret buttons, the microphone, and the game and will cost $180 for ps2 and wii and $190 for PS3 and Xbox 360. The playstation 3 and xbox versions cost more because they have online features like playing online with an opponent, a partner, a band, playing battle of the bands, or downloading music other people have created.
PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 Exclusive Features
On these consoles, there is a music store where the players can upload the songs they created in the music creator for other people to download them. They can also download all the music that their hard drive can handle. There's also online play and a new battle of the bands feature where two bands (each up to 4 players) can duel.

These are what the instruments look like.

World Tour DLC

DLC stands for "Downloadable Content". DLC is released for Guitar hero World Tour monthly, $1.99(160 microsoft points) per song or $5.49(440 microsoft points) per pack and here's all info of the dlc that's out:

1-27 - Bruce Springsteen pack

Two Bruce Springsteen songs that were free from 1/27 to 2/4. Songs:

Born to Run

My Lucky Day

1-29 - Oasis Dig Out Your Soul album

Songs:

The Turning

I'm Outta Time

(Get Off Your) High Horse Lady

Falling Down

To Be Where There's Life

Ain't Got Nothin

The Nature of Reality

Soldier on

2/12 - Incubus, The Shins, and Ryan Adams

Songs:

"Drive" by Incubus

"New Slang" by The Shins"

"Wonderwall" by Ryan Adams.

Future Games

GhOt:D
Guitar hero on Tour: Decades is the second guitar hero game for the Nintendo DS.
Guitar Hero: Metallica
This game will come out in early 2009. It will be based on the band Metallica just how Gh:Aerosmith is based on Aerosmith.
In September, 08, a metallica dlc pack for gh3 was released to celebrate that a GH:M game would be coming out in 2009. The pack includes 11 songs and is about $25.

Terminology

Difficulties
There are 4 difficulties to play in the game which range from using 3 different buttons with the notes coming towards you slow and not many of them to using all 5 buttons and having the colored notes match the music playing.

From easiest to hardest, the difficulties go Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert.
Fret Buttons
These are the buttons used to play the game while hitting the strum bar at the same time. There's five of them.

From left to right, they go: Green, Red, Yellow, Blue, Orange.

Easy difficulty uses the first three. Medium difficulty uses all but orange and Hard and Expert use all 5.
Strum Bar
This button is pushed up or down while presson down a fret button to play the game
Fretboard
This is the board that comes towards the player with the colored notes.
Sustains
Sustains are long notes with a tail that need to be held. The player gets more points the longer that he holds them. Using the whammy bar makes the tail curve. The tail is the color of the note but if the player lets go, it will turn gray and the player will not get any more points.
Starpower
This is energy collected by hitting certain combos of notes. The notes that have it are star shaped and glow if they're sustains (long notes that need to be held).

Starpower is activated from tilting the guitar straight up or pressing the select button. Using the whammy bar on long notes that have starpower will give the player more starpower.

There's a meter on the right side of the screen and the player needs it to be half full to activate starpower. It doubles the players multiplier and saves him from failing.
Starpower Path
Strategy of activating starpower to get a higher score than normal
Whammy Bar
This is a metal bar with a plastic tip that is next to the strum bar. It can swivel to a comfortable position for the player and is pushed down towards the guitar to change the pitch of sustains. This will also give the player more starpower.
Rock Meter
This is a meter on the left side of the screen that has 3 different areas.

The right side is green and the meter is there when the player is doing a good job, hitting most of the notes and the crowd is cheering him on.

The middle is yellow and the meter is there when the player is doing ok-not failing, not doing really good.

Then there's the left side that turns red when the player is failing. If it turns flashing red, the player will fail if he misses just a few more notes but he can get the meter back in the green if he uses starpower.

If the player fails, he has to start the song at the beginning the next time he plays it.
HO/POs
HO/PO stands for Hammerons/Pullofs which are notes that don't have to be strummed if you hit the note before them. An example of a hammeron is strumming green then playing red without strumming. An example of a pulloff is struming red, then lifting off your second finger to play green without strumming.
Normal notes are a certain color with a white circle in the middle. Around the circle is a black line. Hopos don't have the black line and are usually close together.
Nps (Notes Per Second)
How fast a song or part of a song is.
Fc (Full Combo)
100% notes hit without breaking the streak.
DLC
DLC stands for "Downloadable content". The content that can be downloaded is extra songs for the game. They come in singles or packs of 3.
Trills
Trills are a technique that is also used on real guitar. Trills are made up of 2 alternating hopos which means only the first one needs to be strummed.
Tapping
Using the first or second finger on the strumming hand of a player to hit an orange note that might be hard to hit using the fretting hand. Also used to hit trills that are too fast for 1 hand.
Note Chart
This is the file that has the colored notes and shows up on screen. Custom songs are made by creating one of these in feedback and importing it into the game along with an audio file.
Overcharted
This is when a note chart has more notes than the amount of notes in the audio file.
Undercharted
This is when a note chart has less notes than the amount of notes in the audio file.
Optimal
Optimal is the maximum amount of points available in a song. It takes a very good starpower path when starpower is activated at parts with many notes.
Squeezing
Activating starpower a little after a certain note and hitting that note early to get it in the starpower or when starpower is activated to get a note in a x8 multiplier and strumming early on a note that would be outside of the starpower to get it in the starpower. This helps get optimal
Touch Strip
The World tour guitar has 5 touch buttons higher than the normal fret buttons that are used in certain sections of songs. The sections have purple lines connecting the notes.
Drum Pads
There are three of them on the World tour drums. They're circles and fairly thick.
Drum Cymbals
There are two of them on the World tour drums. They are located above the pads and are thinner, different shaped.
Drum Pedal
This is a pedal on the World tour drums that sits on the floor. It is pressed with the drummers foot when horizontal bars come down the screen
Talkies
These are going to be in Gh:WT vocals. The player just needs to say the words and pitch doesn't matter
lurn2plaereeltarnub!!!!111!!!!111!11
When people say things like this, they don't have a life and are jealous. They think gh players play the game to pretend they're a rockstar and think it means they can play real guitar. They are completely wrong and players of the game can play real guitar. I do. I've been playing it since before the game came out and I got the game because it was about something I like.

Similar Games from Other Companies

Rockband

This game was released in 2007 by harmonix which is the company that made gh1, gh2, and gh80s.

Rock Revolution

This is a full band game knockoff. The graphics are bad and the notecharts look extremely bad and undercharted. Why buy this when there are GH and RB?

Guitar Praise

This is just a cheap knockoff of guitar hero. It has Christian music and "lyrics with positive messages show up on screen so people watching can sing along." The graphics don't look good and the controllers don't look good either. Why buy this game when there's GH and RB?

Band Mashups

This is a rock band knockoff that uses some new attacks in a battle mode.

Scorehero

This is a website for players to submit scores and compare rankings for all 6 games. This website is also for downloading Custom Songs: www.scorehero.com

Custom Songs

Custom songs are a way to play almost any song in guitar hero. For a certain song to be played, someone needs to make the visual notes in a program called Feedback.

Scorehero has an index of Custom Songs and the guide to put them into guitar hero. The only thing they don't tell you is how to mod your ps2.

Only members of the site can download custom songs so register! Remember that this requires a modded ps2 or wii, or the pc version of gh3. Modding an xbox 360 can get you banned from xbox live so it's best to do customs on the ps2, pc, or wii.

My Customs

"Dee" by Randy Rhoads
"Killer Girls" by Quiet Riot (featuring Randy Rhoads)
"Lesson" New Version of "Lesson" by Buckethead
"Android of Notre Dame" by Buckethead
"In Search of Inbred Mountain " by Buckethead
"Warcraft" by Buckethead
"Interlude" by Buckethead

My Future Customs

"Advance to the Summit" by Buckethead
"Escape from Inbred Mountain" by Buckethead
"Who Me?" by Buckethead
"Oh Jeez" by Buckethead
"316" by Van Halen
"Little Guitars" by Van Halen
"Jam Session" by Buckethead
"Jam Session 2" by Buckethead

Insane songs

There are some really crazy songs across the games. Gh2 has Jordan. This is a crazy song by buckethead that gets as fast as 14 nps(notes per second). People used to think this song was impossible until Hellashes from scorehero fced (score 100% without breaking the note streak) it.

Another song people thought was impossible was Through the Fire and Flames from gh3. It is a song by dragonforce that has over 3000 notes and people used to think it was impossible until it was fced by Iamchris4life in june '08. The video on youtube has over 2 million views.

The third "impossible" song and considered hardest by many people is The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Gergorge as it's called was originally played by the Charlie Daniels band but the version in the game is a cover by Steve Ouimette. It has to be downloaded from xbox live or playstation network to be played on GH3. This song has some real fast soloing for a few minutes. It has yet to be fced.

Guitar hero in popular culture

Here's a picture of guitar hero in a southpark episode

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Guitar Hero

Guitar hero

Index

Games

World Tour

World Tour DLC

1-27 - Bruce Springsteen pack

1-29 - Oasis Dig Out Your Soul album

2/12 - Incubus, The Shins, and Ryan Adams

Future Games

Terminology

Similar Games from Other Companies

Rockband

Rock Revolution

Guitar Praise

Band Mashups

Scorehero

Custom Songs

My Customs

My Future Customs

Insane songs

Guitar hero in popular culture

Counter

About Me

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