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Guitar Hero Material

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by jamesrl 3 views

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If you read Jay's blogs, you might have seen the fact that I took my son to an event called Fan Expo - in fact you can see the whole list of pictures I took, if you follow the links in the blog.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/geekend/?p=906

Some of the pics depict a Guitar Hero contest held at the event which held my interest for some time.

If you haven't seen Guitar Hero, what hole have you been hiding in? Its a console game (PS2/XBox) where you hold a guitar like controller and play lead guitar. You score points for accuracy and difficulty. In the competition I was at they had human judges, and added a shownmanship scoring catagory as well.

But my challenge with Guitar Hero is the Heavy Metal bias in song selection(and 80s emphasis).

Coincidentally, I've recently been buying up collection CDs at bargoon prices and ripping them for my own and my kids MP3 players. I'm currently listening alot to my Styx collection.

This set my mind to think about "Guitar Hero" and two songs on the Styx collection stand out as excellent "Guitar Hero" material, namely "Blue Collar Man" and "Renegade".

Now I am guessing that some of our favorites don't make Guitar Hero because of licensing, and as I said before, there is a bias towards more recent stuff.

If all of that were removed, what would your pics be for classic "Guitar Hero" material?

Immediately "Smoke on the water" by Deep Purple comes to my mind.

James

41 replies

by tig2

Classical Gas. Heard it on the radio the other day. A beautifully intricate piece of music!

by jamesrl

I know the piece, never thought of an acoustic piece for Guitar Hero.

Mid 70s.....

If you like that, do you have Tubular Bells? I have both the original and the orchestral remake. Mike Oldfield can certainly play guitar, but too many effect pedals for Guitar Hero methinks, and too many long non guitar sections.

James

by tig2

I love acoustic guitar and am essentially clueless about any other style. But love Classical Gas.

I've not heard of Tubular Bells. A gap in my education, sounds like. I shall have to fix that.

If you like good acoustic, I picked up a CD by a local performer. Getting permission from the artist to send would be no problem- he is a friend's uncle and doesn't record under a label. Really wonderful music!

by smorty71

which has a pretty tough acoustic intro, especially on Expert difficulty.

GHIII is supposed to feature The Charlie Daniels Band's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" as the finale. Players will try to match the violin/fiddle parts.

by joer

It was done by Mason Williams. If you like that one, you should listen to the version by Mason Williams with Mannheim Steamroller.

by jamesrl

What got many of us to listen to Tubular Bells is that fact that some of it was used for mood music in the "Exorcist" movie - the opening section of the album.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubular_Bells

I would suggest its a more interesting and significant piece of music than Classical Gas, but you have to be open minded about it - it is an album with two tracks, and the track meanders and changes all over. You can listen to it oevr and over again and pick up something new every time. I recommend the original version to start.

James

My youngest is creeped out by one section even though she has no idea what the "Exorcist" is.

by tig2

I will certainly follow that up.

I find music in general intriguing because of all the ways it can be interpreted. The best example I have ever heard of this is Pink Floyd's "The Wall" as performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.

I vaguely recall the music from the Exorcist. Off to chase a link.

by tony hopkinson

No Quarter

Slash Sweet Child O' Mine

Robert Kray Strong Persuader

Brian May - Brighton Rock

Eric Clapton - The White Room

by Member 25348569

to hear Peter Green of the original Fleetwood Mac play. Another guitarist who rattled my bars was Paul Kossoff of Free.

Kossoff died long before he reached 30 of drugs and Green ended up in a mental institution.

Happy Days!

Let's have "Goin' Down Slow" from Kossoff (woah! cheery, cheery album that was!) and ANYTHING by Green BEFORE his electroconvulsive therapy...

Brits both, of course...

Neil :D

by jamesrl

"The Chain" has some fairly good but straighforward guitar riffs, until that long section of solos and then it goes into fingermelting mode.

Even "Don't stop thinking bout tomorrow" (ruined by association with Clintons) has some cool guitar parts.

James

by gadgetgirl

did you have a back door into my lappie on Sunday?

I only ask because I've fixed the mp3 problem (bleepin' Microsoft under-flippin'-handedness) and have downloaded some more tracks for the player:

Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells. 1,2 & 3!
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk, Everywhere, The Chain

and Smoke on the Water was already on there from last time....

oh - if you do take a peek again, you'll never understand "Home, Newcastle".....!

I even managed to find Jeff Waynes' War of the Worlds in the right format, too!

(Can you tell I'm on my own in this office a lot of the time now?!)

Now to find that link in one of the blogs about books for mp3.... :p

I get bored easy. Hard to tell, innit?! :D

GG

by Member 25348569

We are talking "Albatross", written and played by the man who also wrote "Black Magic Woman" and "Need Your Love So Bad". Carlos Santana says 'gracias' for BMW...

What remained after PG went mental was a good group but they lost their soul. The original group was, after all, justifiably called "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac".

Neil :D

p.s. My nostalgia is older than your nostalgia because I'm old...

by jamesrl

Now thats my kind of thing, probably haven't heard it in 20 years though.

I went through the songlists for Guitar Hero I, II and upcoming III.

Smoke on the water was on the first one.

I'd have to say, its over 50% metal :(.

Tusk was an interesting experiment - Rocking with a marching band.

While everyone seemed to be into metal, I was into Prog Rock - ELP, Jethro Tull (Aqualung for Guitar hero!!!), early Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Supertramp, Chicago, Steely Dan, Styx, Rush etc.

Rush's YYZ is on one of the Guitar Hero tracks.

James

by jaqui

a really, really good mp3 if you can find it, for laughing while listening:
NASA and Alabama by Jeff Foxworthy.
[ Bill Engvall also did this routine ]

My wife thinks I do it better, since I ran it for 3 times the script length without duplicating myself :D

by jamesrl

The DVD is hilarious. The TV series sucked.

Then you can get Foxworthy and Engvall together riffing off each other. Its pretty funny.

James

by jaqui

are both good comedic performers.

and feed off each others acts all the time.
usually improving the material every time, then the other takesthe improved version and improves it again. :D

by jamesrl

It is a similar idea, but with guitar(s), drums and vocals. Featured in this month's "Wired" magazine.

The net of it is that some bands will be releasing whole albums to the game. Some are even re-recording for the game.

Will this make up for losses of sales due to MP3s? Probably not, but it is an interesting note for the music industry.

James

by jamesrl

Bachman Turner Overdrive "Takin Care of Business".

There was a recent public event where they tried to get hundreds of people to a public place to play this song together - the basic cords are dead easy, but the solo is fun.

James

by smorty71

I'm still thinking about which songs I'd like to see included; however, here is a quick list of my favorite songs to play from the current batch of games:

"Turning Japanese" by The Vapors
"Round and Round" by RATT
"No One Like You" by The Scorpions
"Los Angeles" by X
"Salvation" by Rancid
"Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N Roses
"Can You Hear Me Knockin'" by The Stones
"Tattooed Love Boys" by The Pretenders
"Shout at the Devil" by Motley Crue
"Thunder Kiss '65" by White Zombie
"You Got Another Thing Comin'" by Judas Priest
"Take it off" by The Donnas
"No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age
"Killer Queen" by Queen

Of the upcoming GHIII tracks, I am really excited to play:

"Sabotage" by The Beastie Boys
"Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N Roses
"Cherub Rock" by Smashing Pumpkins
"3s & 7s" by Queens of the Stone Age
"Cult of Personality" by Living Colour
"Paint It Black" by The Stones
"One" by Metallica

by jamesrl

Fleetwood Mac at least stayed in the same genre.

Chicago went from jazz rock with long suite songs with long fantastic jazz solos to David Foster crafted sugrary three and a half minute confections filled with air.

To me, 25 or 6 to 4 ranks right up there with Black Magic Woman for cool jazz guitar.

James

by old_ndc

Similarly to FM, Chicago lost its soul with the demise of Terry Kath.
For mind the bste options for Guitar hero would be FM's Green Manalishi (live version). What about some Zappa ? - Get A Little or Orange County Lumber Truck off Weasels would be ideal.

by lpchu

I've always thought "Self-Esteem" by the Offspring would make an excellent opening song. (I should preclude this post by mentioning that my 90's-era adolescence will definitely have give me a different selection of songs from those I've seen thus far.) It's got a pretty easy riff to play, light on the chorus, heavy on the headbanging, and starts out with a loud "la-la" chant to get the player in the mood.

Otherwise, I've always thought "Jimmy Olsen's Blues" by the Spin Doctors would be a great song on GH. The noodling guitar and the jamming should make it a great song for the Expert crowd.

"Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz: a definite classic.

"Susie Q" by CCR for the noodling crowd, again.

And there needs to be a Clash song on there. "Know Your Rights" would be awesome for its alternating between single notes and chords, and "This is a public service announcement...WITH GUITAR!", but the song itself is fairly repetitive. Maybe "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" instead.

by jtorres

Ozzy/Randy's "Crazy Train" and "Metallic Blue" by House of Lords.

Last one is a bit obscure but if you've heard it, agree, agree, it's excellent rhythm guitar.

by smorty71

nearly impossible to perform on "Expert." The run that Vai and Sheehan do together (on the David Lee Roth version of the song) would be fun to try though.

by audiotom

If there is any one person that makes guitar showoffs put down their axe and listen, it's Robert Fripp. In an unusual show of taste, he is the man hired at the expansive sum of $180,000.00 for the 3 opening notes of Vista bootup. Don't let this fool you. With Les Paul in hand sitting quietly on a stool he is a monster without breaking a sweat. There is a large body of work, spanning 4 decades. But here are a few:

Easy Money
21st Century Schizoid Man
Fracture

Tom Maguire

by jamesrl

Though it seems to be predominantly male, at the contest I watched, one of the more interesting players was female. She did "Jessica" by the Allman brothers. She clearly came to the convention for something else, she was dressed as a charecter from Mortal Combat, but she saw the contest and signed up, did a pretty good job.

One of the funniest versions of "Jessica" you will ever hear is from the BBC car show "Top Gear". They have had a cover of Jessica as their opening theme for a while. One episode someone got the idea to record car engine sounds, assign them as notes on a synth and play the theme. The low end notes were from some really old cars, and one bulldozer. They recorded Ferraris and all kinds of vehicles. The result was um, bad, but funny.

James

by johnnymegabyte

Licensing. The artist and/or songwriters have not agreed / given permission to use their song(s). Either the fee isn't big enough for them, or they refuse to associate with a video game. Some artists also do not commercialize their music for commercials, movies, let alone a video game.
Where some artists support the video game, and perhaps develop new fanbase, others just avoid it.

by jamesrl

From ignoring that issue when we make our suggestions.

Everything has its price, ask the Stones about XP.....

Ask the Who about the CSI series....

James

by smorty71

Guitar Hero has gotten big enough (from both business and cultural standpoints) that artists are trying to get into the game. Kind of like how bands lobby to get into Madden.

With GHIII, over 70% of the tracks will be by the original artist. Even Metallica got onboard and they hate everything new :)

by wow > work

I wonder how long until RIAA decides to somehow slither their deviant ways into Guitar Hero games and ruin it for everyone.

by lpchu

It has to be cleared by the RIAA before they can include it in their work, even if it's a cover.

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