An estimated 75, 000 people are packed together in one giant venue, all of them screaming your band’s name in unison. The lights dim and you make your last-minute preparation before you finally hit the stage to render your fans some of your greatest hits. You slid the guitar over your shoulder and the crowd’s energy got you all pumped up. No, this isn’t one of many young people’s ultimate fantasy come true. But this could just be the next best thing.

This is RedOctane’s sequel to the astoundingly popular series of the PS2 game, Guitar Hero. In Early 2006, the first Guitar Hero was released which allowed you to plug in a Gibson copy guitar into your PS2 so you can rock like one of the music industry’s legends.

The basic premise of this game is that you plug in your guitar controller that has 5 colored fret buttons and strummer into your unit. Then notes of your chosen rock song will appear on the screen, so you can start strumming your way with the song.

Just like a sequel is supposed to be, RedOctane and Harmonix have enhanced the features of this game. The difficulty mode has been upgraded with 2 new and practical additions: the Co-op mode and the Practice mode.

The new Co-op mode makes this game even more fun as you get to play with a friend wherein one of you play the lead guitar, and the other takes up either the rhythm or bass, depending on the song you’ve selected. Since everything is split between the two players, this mode requires the two of you to work together in building up your score meter. If you want to use the Star Power, simply tilt your guitar at the same time. As you go along, each of your scores will be tallied together thus increasing you star power meter.

Perfecting this game and the songs is now possible with the addition of a Practice mode. For this mode, you can choose to adjust the speed in 3 varying degrees: slow, slower, and slowest. This will enable you to figure out the notes of a song as the parts of the song are sectioned out. You can choose to practice on certain parts of a song where you fail miserably.

The practice mode, however, works best to enhancing your technique rather than speed. This will help you figure out how you should attack a song and perfect the notes.

And with the multiplayer mode, 2 players get to compete playing the same song all the way through. Talk about taking this rocking game experience to the next level! This game is indeed your next best vehicle to being part of a real band.

As compared to the first Guitar Hero, the song list for this one has been upgraded for you to have more choices. There is always something for everyone’s liking whether you’re into Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Franz Ferdinand, Motorhead, and even some of today’s Emo selection.

So if you haven’t purchased one of these yet, you better grab one and be on your way to experiencing music and gaming like never before.

Jason Denszar
http://www.articlesbase.com/video-games-articles/guitar-hero-2-for-the-sony-playstation-2-ps2-246363.html

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A guitar is an amazing instrument. Sometimes hard to play but with easy nice sounding guitar chord secrets everywhere. Let’s explore some easy but nice guitar chords.

Our first guitar chord will be Dmaj7. It is played in this way for example:

Dmaj: 0/4 2/3 2/2 2/1

An explanation of the notation. The first number indicates which fret to press down. The number after the slash which string. 2/3 means, press down the second fret on the third string.

If you lift up your fingers from this chord you will get a very easy guitar chord to play indeed! We can call it an Em7. It will look this way:

Em7: 0/4 0/3 0/2 0/1

This little chord progression makes a nice little intro to a song in D-major. If we write down a little guitar chord sequense it might look like this:

Dmaj7 / / / Em7 / / / Dmaj7 / / / Em7 / / /

We will now spice the second chord a bit by playing a Gm6. It looks like this:

Gm6: 0/4 3/3 3/2 0/1

We can use this guitar chord in an intro with the same function as the one above:

Dmaj7 / / / Gm6 / / / Dmaj7 / / / Gm6 / / /

Let’s introduce a new guitar chord. We can call this chord D11:

D11: 0/4 5/3 5/2 5/1

As you maybe already have figured out you can slide the Dmaj7 chord up a few frets and you will get this chord. We will now create a progression with these three guitar chords:

Dmaj7 / / / D11 / / / Gm6 / / / Gm6 / / /

The next guitar chord is easy to play too. It is a G-minor chord. It is actually the same chord shape as the guitar chord Dmaj7 but on the third fret. It looks like this:

Gm: 0/0 3/3 3/2 3/1

Now we will create a guitar chord progression with these four chords together:

Dmaj7 / / / D11 / / / Gm / / / Gm6 / / /

The art of sliding chords to new frets is an exciting and easy way to find new guitar chords and sounds to use in your playing.

We will end this article on easy guitar chords in D by experimenting a bit with the D-major chord. Here is the most common D-major chord:

D: 0/4 2/3 3/2 2/1

By sliding this guitar chord up three frets up you will get the Dm7 chord or D-minor seventh. It looks like this:

Dm7: 0/4 5/3 6/2 5/1

Slide it up two frets from this position and you will get a G-major chord. It looks like this:

G: 0/4 7/3 8/2 7/1

The last guitar chord to explore will be A-major with D bass, notated A/D. Here it is:

A/D: 0/4 9/3 10/2 9/1

Let’s make an impressive intro with these four chords but with the same chord shape by sliding the D-major chord up:

D / / / Dm7 / / / G / / / A/D / / /

The guitar really is an amazing instrument. Many more chords can be changed in similar ways to create new interesting sounds that will enrich your playing!

Peter Edvinsson
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/guitar-chord-lesson-learn-to-play-nice-sounding-guitar-chords-in-d-114185.html

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Picking out what you want for your very first guitar is a difficult
and tricky choice. You probably do not know a lot about guitars to
begin with, and with the thousands of selections available, it is easy
to be confused.

The first decision involves choosing between either an
electric or acoustic guitar. Once you have made that choice, the next
thing you have to do is to determine the budget that you are
comfortable with. If you are really serious about learning, it is
recommended that you avoid buying a cheap and low-quality instrument,
as such guitars tend to impede your learning. When it comes to
upgrading, you will also find that getting a good price for your guitar
will be difficult.

Typically, acoustic guitars have six strings, are hollow and have a
sound hole. Electric guitars are not hollow, and require a guitar
amplifier. However, electric guitars may be easier for beginners,
because the strings are easier to press down, and do not cause your
fingers to get sore as easily as compared to playing on an acoustic
guitar.

One of the most important factors that you have to consider,
when choosing between an acoustic or an electric, is what kind of music
will you be playing. If you like to learn how to strum your favourite
songs, an acoustic guitar may be better. If you are a great fan of rock
music, then you might like to start off with an electric guitar. This
is important, because if you start off with the wrong kind of guitar,
you will find it much more difficult to find the motivation to play
regularly.

Alvin Poh
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/choosing-your-first-guitar-a-beginners-guide-3040.html

Technorati Tags: acoustic guitar, acoustic guitars, Alvin Poh, Articlesbase, Beginners Guide, Budget, electric guitar, electric guitars, Favourite Songs, Fingers, First Guitar, Guitar Amplifier, Guitar One, Important Factors, Low Quality, Motivation, Music Articles, Quality Instrument, Rock Music, Sound Hole