Guitar Hero Radio

This guide is ou-

tdated! 

This guide is from JetsterDajet at the scorehero forums. If you are a member, LINK: http://www.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24720&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Hi, everyone. I've wanted to write up something like this to give people a good idea on how to make good note choices in their charts. It seems that most people have a pretty decent grip on the situation but most charts still have some odd note choices that don't really correspond to... anything. Here's a guide on how you can make note choices based on relative pitch.

Please keep in mind that there isn't really any "wrong" way to chart notes. There are two basic [i]logical[/i] ways to chart notes and that's either through relative pitch, which is what I'll be discussing here and through relative tablature, which is much more complicated. Here's a definition of each:

Relative Pitch: Each note is selected based on how it relates to the note before it. In order to get a grasp on this, you'll need to have a fairly functional musical ear. You'll need to be able to tell if one pitch is higher or lower than another one. Most people can do this. If you can't, you have a condition known as tone deafness. You can learn more about tone deafness at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_deaf. Also, you can take an online tone deaf test at http://http://jakemandell.com/tonedeaf to see if you are tone deaf or not (My score was 85.3%, which is "Very Good Performance"). If you're tone deaf, you should probably look into relative tablature. Being able to hear intervals between notes and chords can also help in your charting decisions. I believe this is the general way that the original game charts were made and is the reason I think it deserves the most attention.

Relative Tablature: If you're a guitar player by heart, this method will come naturally to you. Basically, you try to match a fingering for a given note or chord on the guitar to a set of frets you can play in GH. There are some difficulties that come hand in hand with this method. Some of the obvious ones are that most guitars have six strings and the GH control only has five frets (one would make the correlation between strings and frets in this case). Another is that there is no way to play an "open" strum in GH. There are ways to compromise and there are also different methods one can use to chart notes this way, but I'm not going to get into it because I don't think this game should be taken too literally. It is, after all, a game.

Note Possibilities and What They Mean

Single Notes
Five possibilities

These are the building blocks of all your non-chordal passages. What you should do is instead of thinking of your fretboard like a fretboard, think of it like a keyboard. In accordance with relative pitch G would be the lowest note and O would be the highest, with everything else in between. Now it's up to you to decide what goes where, but it depends on the context of the passage you're transcribing. This is where recognition of intervals could come in handy. How far apart are the notes? How far does the pitch go in one direction before it goes back in the other? Which notes are the same later on? Let's take my chart of Santana's "Oye Como Va" as an example. Here's a video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUNQVKVLoRg for your reference. The opening lick of the song is:

You first question may be, "Why did you choose R as the first note? The answer is in the context of the passage. Let's say I had started on G instead. Then I might have this:

...now what?

The second to last note in the passage has the lowest pitch out of all the notes. How could I write something lower than G? Well, if I had to, I would make that note O because we would have to pretend that the keys on the keyboard go on forever in each direction and O would be the next logical choice. So, we would finish the passage with:

Which is not a very fun interval to play and doesn't represent the pitches very well because it seems that the pitch is going from up to down when it is actually going from down to up. So, by moving our first note to R we are alleviating this problem. Planning ahead can be crucial to a good note chart. This technique can and be used for all charting to try to keep you passage from "jumping" to the next set of frets. In some situations, we want this to happen, but this is not one of them. Try to keep you basic passages clustered to five notes the best you can.

Two Note Chords
Ten Possibilities

Common:

Uncommon:

Rare:

If you don't already know, a chord is when two or more pitches are played at the same time. Chords are a huge part of guitars because it enables them to become a rhythm instrument, like a piano. This is another reason why it's easy to draw parallels between the guitar and piano.
You'll notice that I've separated the note possibilities into categories. Common notes are used lavishly. You won't have to worry about over using these combinations as long as they are truly chordal notes. Uncommon combinations can be a bit tricky for the novice to perform, but are a good starting point for making more difficult chord patterns. The only rarely seen two-note chord is the GO chord. Obviously, stretching one's index and pinky finger this far may not come easily to some people, but it's definitely do-able and usable in some contexts. This is a good chord to practice to build up to later GO chords that have notes in between.

Three Note Chords
Ten possibilities

Uncommon:

Rare:

Not Used By GH I or II:

This is about the place where using these chords is going to land you some criticism. The problem is that a lot of people have some kind of skewed idea that the chords in GH should be just like or similar to the way you would play a real guitar. This is just ridiculous. Many get so caught up that they forget that it's a game and not a "guitar simulator." If I wanted to play guitar I'd play guitar (and I do a bit) but this is a totally different animal all together. This is a game that tests your rhythm and your dexterity. To throw out any note combination for any reason completely defeats the purpose of the game. With that said, I would just like to say that, as most people at Scorehero have recognized, there is a difficulty level beyond what the game calls "expert." Call it what you like, but some of the charts I make are beyond expert because I want them to be a challenge to those people that go around FCing songs like they're nothing. Try something different, I say. Anyways, here's a breakdown. The uncommon note choices are uncommon in the original game, but still used here and there. Going by the way the original note mappers made them, these are the "power chords" of the game. The rare note choices are only used in a few songs as far as I know, since they are a bit awkward to get out. These note choices can come in handy for those "funky" sounding chords. Finally, the last three chords are not used in the original games. That, by no means, doesn't mean you can't make use of them. In certain contexts they are great note choices, but shouldn't be used in any chart exept an expert or beyond chart.

Four Note Chords
Five possibilities

Not Used By GH I or II:

Apparently, these chords are so unorthodox, they're not supported by scorehero's chord generator. Again, these are advanced chords, especially the GRBO which can take a second or two to set in place. Imagine the Spock hand and you're close. These chord combinations should generally not be used, but in some cases, can make for a challenging -- and fun note chart. See my chart of "King of Kings" for a good example. Also, you can see my chart of "Tribute," for an example of changing between GRYB and GRYO. That chart was more of a joke than a chart, but it's still fun in some places.

Five Note Chord
One possibility

Not Used By GH I or II:

I would recommend staying away from this for any real legit attempt at a note chart. If you can think of a reason why this should exist (I have for a couple things) you shouldn't ever use more than one per chart.

Relative Pitch with Chords

"Chromatic"

"Tonic"

Yes, I know what chromatic and tonic are and I do realize that these are not literal representations of that (although with a few changes we might be able to accomplish it). Essentially, what I'm trying to put fourth here is a way to assign chords the right relative pitch mapping as we do to single notes, as I have already gone over. Of course, we can figure out that G is the lowest and O is the highest, but what about when it comes to chords? What is higher or lower than what? Well, I hope that what I've come up with can give some people an idea of what would be logical. Essentially, the "chromatic" scale is what a scale using every two and three note chord combination would look like, if it were played from lowest to highest. The "tonic" scale is, essentially, what a major/minor/any intervaled scale might look like. Yes, I'm sure it might be possible to assign each note combination a scale degree and then come up with major and minor and all the different musical modes.... but I'm not taking this that seriously. Again, this is just something that I feel would be the most logical way to map notes in this game.

Do's and Don'ts

DO listen to your song many, many times. Hearing it once or twice isn't going to cut it. You're going to miss things -- it's just part of being a human. Heck, I've listened to some songs tens of times and still picked up things I missed later on.

DO get a second opinion. For the same reason you should listen to your song a lot, you should seek a second, third and more opinion. There may be things you just aren't hearing and you need someone else to point them out for you.

DO differentiate between chords and notes. Remember, a note will only have one fret pressed down and a chord will have two or more. It's easy to mistake a note for a chord, since a lot of guitar effects harmonize what you play and make it sound like a chord.

DO check your work. Many times.

DON'T have the same pitched note on a different fret or have a different pitched note on the same fret. This is a big no-no and makes your chart sound like it's inaccurate. There are some exceptions to this rule.

DON'T choose to chart songs that have little or no guitar part. Unless it's some kind of joke. Have you played "The Pylons Are Trap Balls?" Classic.

DON'T settle for mediocre. No one wants to play a mediocre song when they could play a good one.

DON'T be discouraged by bad reviews. Everyone has their own idea about how this should be done. Whether they're right or not, keep on truckin'. You can only get better.

DON'T post your chart unless you specify which album it came off, how long it is and how big it is. There can often be many, many different versions of a song, many of which sound the same (My Sharona, case in point)

DON'T chart under the influence. EG drunk/high/sleepy/blood loss. You'll just make mistakes. (Seems a lot of people chart better when they're trippin' balls... or so they say. If that's the case, knock yourself out. Just make sure you wake up afterwards)

Well, this is all I'm going to provide at this point in time. There are other things that I can cover and go over, but I'll have to think about them and how to put them in a way that makes sense. For now, I hope this can serve as some kind of guide for people who aren't sure where to put their notes. Questions and comments are welcome and I'll do my best to accommodate. Again, please don't take this too seriously and start comparing this and real guitars, it's just going to upset me.