Two Guitar Hero videos! Strutter Expert (GH2 demo), and different playing positions!

Video 1: Guitar Hero II demo – Strutter (expert) with fingering!

This is a video of me playing the KISS song Strutter (expert) on the Guitar Hero II demo. I did this so people (who haven’t bought the demo) could see what expert looks like. It has a lot of three-button-chords, which are new to GH2. At the same time, I decided to show the live-action part of it (frets/strum on the plastic guitar), and put it at the top of the video. I flipped the video so it’s a mirror image, that way the colors match up, making it easier to follow along.

So while this was just meant to show a new song, it’s a pretty good video to send to friends who have never seen the game before, or people who are having trouble with chords and finger positions, and want to see a good shot of it. As I mentioned in the intro, I only got the demo two days ago, so I haven’t had much practice, but I did all right and still got a five star review at the end. Hammer-ons/Pull-offs are much easier now, so I need to actually do them more often. Oh, and if you don’t know what “CAG” is, it’s this.

UPDATE: This video got posted on Kotaku, where I was described as “a strangely listless boychik,” haha. So, sorry for…that. ^_^ I filmed this at 5am, and just how excited should I be over an issue of OPM? :P

UPDATE 2: Things are going crazy over on the YouTube page for this video (lots of comments. Guitarists vs. GHs! Ready? Fight!). Someone asked how many tries it took, and I meant to post that anyway, so I figured I’d add my response here:

Three, I think. I got the demo, played the song twice, went to bed, played it a few times the next day, then the next day played it twice, started filming, and got it on my third try. So it was around my 10th time total playing the song, which is why I tanked on the solo. :\

And by “got it” I mean a “good enough for me” version. I actually did better on the solo on some of my other tries, but my score was higher on this final one, so I quit.

UPDATE 3: On YouTube, this video ended the first day with around 40,000 views, and a bunch of “honors.” Here are a few of them (this is the last I saw, it may have gone higher):

#1 – Most Viewed (Today) – Video Games – All
#1 – Most Discussed (Today) – Video Games – All
#26 – Most Discussed (Today) – All
#17 – Most Viewed (Today) – All
#50 – Top Favorites (Today) – All

After all the negative comments from real guitarists, I wrote an article about why we play Guitar Hero.

Video 2: Guitar Hero Playing Positions

Summary:
A video demonstration of some different playing positions for Guitar Hero. Included are positions such as “flat,” “upright bass,” “cross arm,” and more, all done during a single song (You Got Another Thing Comin’ – Hard)! Finished with a five star review.

Note: In response to some comments, let me state for the record that this isn’t supposed to be really impressive! I know it’s an easy song, it’s meant to show people some new ways to play, if they haven’t done them already.

UPDATE: Now this video has also been posted on Kotaku (it says it’s GH2, but it’s not, as corrected in the comments).

I’ve been obsessed with music games for a long time, and bought Guitar Hero right when it came out. I’m sure many of you who play it as much as I do have gotten tired of playing the same songs over and over again. While we’re patiently waiting for the sequel, here are some different playing positions you can try. You may have tried some of these already. In fact, I believe some people play “flat” exclusively. Some of these aren’t very hard at all — “behind the head” and “upright bass” are pretty much standard, although playing an entire song behind your head gets really tiring, and reaching the whammy bar is a little awkward.

I really haven’t practiced these positions very much, so the video isn’t perfect. Originally I was going to make a separate video for each style, but I realized that would take a while, not be as interesting, and it would be cooler to do them all during a single song, so I completely changed it after I started filming. I actually had to figure out where to switch positions, and what order to go in as I went along! I missed some cues a few times, so I had to restart a bunch. Finally I got a pretty decent run.

I started doing “cross arm” one day because my fingers were really hurting on my left hand from playing so much, but I didn’t want to stop. It’s actually really fun, and my favorite other position. It didn’t take me long to get pretty comfortable with it.

You probably wouldn’t think it at first, but “flat” is (for me anyway) the hardest position to adjust to. The reason is that with the other positions, your index finger is still on green. Flat reverses everything, and your pinky is now on green. Even cross arm is more in line with standard playing, since your index is on green, even though it’s your other hand (same with cross arm flat). In the video I missed a few notes after I switched to flat because I kept strumming down with my thumb at first, whereas (playing flat) I prefer to strum up with my finger. So I switched from thumb to finger, and messed up.

Another obvious thing to do, that isn’t shown in the video, is playing left handed and turning on “lefty flip.” The reason it’s not shown is for that reason — you have to switch options. Oh, and I can also strum with my foot, which is kinda fun, but I didn’t put it in the video.

During “upright bass” I activated star power by hitting the select button. Normally you would just tilt the guitar, but it was already upright!

For the curious:
Yes, both of these videos were filmed “live” with two cameras, so what you’re seeing on the right (or bottom) really is what I was seeing/playing; it’s a direct feed of the video and audio from the PS2. You’re hearing both audio tracks, which is why the music sounds great (direct feed), but you can also hear the clicking of the strum bar (camera mic).