How to Play Guitar Hero Songs on Electric Guitar

Series Summary

Western popular music of the last 50 years has been largely dominated by one of the most versatile stringed instruments yet produced—the guitar. Specifically, the electric guitar has been the seminal instrument of pop music since the 1960s. Adolph Rickenbacher introduced it to the world in the 1930s…and started a musical revolution.

Electric guitars are usually made with a solid or semi-hollow wood construction. Electromagnetic sensors called “pickups” are mounted on the face of the instrument to collect and transmit vibrations from the strings. From there, the real excitement takes place. The sound waves are interpreted as electrical signals and sent along a path from the guitar to any number of effects that distort, compress, and mutate what is played in real time; the result usually comes out of a very loud amplifier.

With the large array of sounds at its disposal, the electric guitar is almost the perfect vehicle for creative expression. It is no surprise, then, that electric guitars have driven rock and pop music in some very diverse and impactful directions, helping great artists like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, and Eric Clapton develop into icons that are still speaking to entire generations of people.

In this free video series, learn how to play songs from the popular video game, Guitar Hero 1.

Video Transcript

"Hey this is Joe Wiles with the Rock and Roll Conservatory on behalf of Expert Village. Today we're going to talk about some riffs from Guitar Hero I. Now it's not an exhaustive list of all the songs or even all the, all the riffs in order on the songs. I had to pick signature riffs from key songs in the video game. We're going to explore some of those. The first one is "I Love Rock and Roll" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. I'll see you in the next segment."