I'd Tap That

Tapping is an advanced technique in Guitar Hero that involves the player moving their strumming hand up to the fret buttons to press them.  It's adapted from a technique of the same name for playing real guitar.  What makes this possible is the fact that not every note in a chart needs to be strummed.  For those who have never tried to use them before (and never played the friggin' tutorials), any note in GH3 and newer that's glowing on top doesn't need to be strummed so long as you don't break combo.  They exist in the earlier games too, but they're harder to see, and in GH1 they're almost impossible to use.  The reason a player would want to tap is simple: It makes the section of the song easier.  You only have but so much dexterity in your fretting hand, so breaking a section down into what you hit with your fretting hand and what you tap with your strumming hand allows you to get around that.  The technique is perfectly legal for both ScoreHero and Guinness World Records.

If it sounds difficult to do, well, it is.  I've been trying to learn how to do it for a while now.  I've been doing it all over the place in World Tour, Metallica, and Smash Hits thanks to the slider notes which never need to be strummed even if you break combo, but that doesn't really learn you how to tap the complex stuff since you can just start your combo back up without having to change what you're doing.

The section I've been tapping is in Guitar Hero 3.  The song Impulse has a section called Funkiest Riff In History, which ends with a fast zigzag on red, yellow, and orange that I can't hit with just my left hand.  I'm terrible at zigzags in general.  I've had a fair amount of luck learning how to tap this zigzag, to the point that I've played the entire section, started tapping, and gone back to the strum a mere two notes after the last tap several times now without dropping combo.

Some people share their fingerings for song sections and just imply that "this is THE way to do it", when in reality, different methods will work for different people.  When reading anything suggesting a fingering for a specific section, it should be regarded as "this is what works for me".

So, this is what works for me.  This image is from the chart on SlowHero.

The tricky part about this zigzag is that it speeds up.  When it gets to the last red note in measure 63, I anchor red. This slower part is easy to one-hand while I move into tapping position.  When it begins to speed up I switch over to tapping the orange notes that I circled in red.  Note the chord two notes after the last circled orange note, that has to be strummed.  Speed in moving your strumming arm is everything to tapping.  The major barrier for me is to do it without really thinking about it, which in my case will result in moving my arm faster.  I tend to think about it too much and end up dropping right when I would otherwise begin tapping.  But I just did it without even really thinking about it at all.

So if I were posting about this on ScoreHero, I'd probably just post the zigzag (well, everything starting from the green note in measure 63, and all of measure 64) using their fret icons, with number notation for fingering.  But here, with the black background, the fret icons that I'd have used otherwise won't show up properly, and just putting a random mass of numbers would be confusing.  So even though I really want to post the numbers, I won't.

Rather, I'll explain what the numbers would represent.  I slide my index finger from green to red, then use my index finger on red, middle finger on yellow, and pinky on orange.  As mentioned, when I get to the first red of the zigzag (the last one in measure 63), I hold it down for the rest of the zigzag (anchoring).  Beginning from the third orange note, I tap with my strumming hand.  This is usually my middle finger just because it's longer, but really, anything works as long as it's intuitive.  Hitting the zigzag basically becomes a matter of developing a rhythm between pressing yellow, tapping orange, and releasing yellow.  Then, after the fifth orange, waste no time in getting my strumming hand back down to strum the chord.

I just hit it again in practice mode while verifying that there is indeed no red note at the end of the zigzag.  Sometimes I fail to notice the strangest things about certain charts.  For instance, there's an orange note in Generation Rock that I didn't even know was there, even after FCing the song several times.  I thought it was blue, because it's blue when that pattern comes up earlier in the song.