TAPPING: A Complete Beginner's Guide (UPDATED 12/30/07)

[xgoodxdayx]

Updated 12/30/07: Added 6 more tapping passages to mess around with.
TAPPING: A Complete Beginner's Guide

The definitive guide to learning how to hit buttons with your hands.

*Intro (no actual tapping information!)*

About 2 weeks ago I managed to flail my way through Mosh 1 of Raining Blood and scrape out a 3 star victory over a song that I never thought I would beat; As my heart rate dropped back to normal levels and I finally finished my victory dances (as well as calling all of my relatives to inform them of my triumph – is this why I got so many psychiatric help pamphlets for Christmas?) I sat back down on my couch and wondered to myself “What next?” I had beaten all of the songs in gh3 except Through the Fire and Flames, and I had heard that that required some mythical technique of “tapping” that I had no knowledge of, something I had previously no interest in learning. But I figured that since I had absolutely ungodly amounts of free time, I might as well sit down and learn how to beat this song (If only to impress peers and prospective mates!).
Not having a clue where to start, I hopped on Score Hero and looked around for any guide on Tapping I could find. The first one to leap out at me was a sticky-ed guide by k3v227, which I immediately jumped on to help me out. The problem with this guide, I quickly found, was that it wasn’t so much a guide about learning how to tap as it was a reference guide for tapping some of the hardest solos in the game; And while that was all fine and dandy, I could gleam absolutely no help from it as I had no clue where to even start tapping. I next decided to hop on youtube, where a guy that looked suspiciously like Randy from "my Name is Earl" was heralded as the messiah of TTFaf Tapping. I watched the video, and boy did he make it look easy! I quickly picked out the fingering he used, plopped in front of the television, and booted up TTFAF on slowest fully prepared to do some damage! What I did do is manage an amazing 3 note streak as well as about 2000 points. I could not in any way shape or form make my fingers perform even the simplest of combos in this intro and this left me frustrated and sullen. I knew right then that I would NEVER be able to play DragonForce, turned off my machine and forgot about the game for a week...

... But then it dawned on me; Just as I didn’t start the game off ripping through raining blood on expert, I shouldn’t expect to jump right into a really hard tapping sequence and hope to achieve anything. That’s when I got to work and managed to learn how to tap exactly as I will detail in this easy walkthrough guide, which I am now writing to help the other struggling newbies out there who have just barely now begun to tap. For those that use rubber bands, tape, and teeth to pass the intro to TTFAF, reading this guide might make your life just a bit easier as well!


***Basics***
This guide is intended for those whose ultimate goal is to master the TTFAF intro; while all the information contained therein will of course be useful as you continue tapping beyond that (if you so choose) the main objective is TTFAF; therefore all tips and tricks here will be written with the TTFAFer in mind.

*****HAND POSITION******
The basic idea of tapping is using both hands on the fret buttons of the guitar controller in order to eliminate the need to move your fretting hand (hand on the buttons, “Button Hand”) up and down as well as increase the speed with which one is able to pull of tricky hammer-on sections (mainly solos). While the crazy tapping soloer will frequently move his strumming hand (Hand not on the buttons, it pushes the triangle up and down) from the fret buttons back to the strum bar at lightning quick speeds, since the TTFAF intro throws you straight into the hammer-on section right away there is absolutely no need to ever have your hands anywhere except both at the neck of the guitar.

Picking up your guitar, place your button hand’s index finger (The one that you use to point at things) and strap that sucker on the green fret. This is where this finger will stay; regardless of what you tap, and when you tap it, NEVER move this finger anywhere and ALWAYS press the green button down. Not only do you have to always keep this held down on the TTFAF intro, you can keep it down for absolutely any section you’re tapping (as the green note will not interfere with any of the other hammer-ons and will automatically hammer-on and off as needed) which completely eliminates a button that you have to worry about, making tapping essentially a 4 button task. While you would not be able to get away with this on guitar hero 2 (since you can’t hold down a button and let the engine hammer it on for you) we couldn’t care less about it, since we’re working towards dragonforce.

Once you have your muscular and beefy sausage of a pointer on the green (remember, never let that sucker go) place the middle finger of your button hand (the one right next to the one clamped down on the green) on the red fret. Now, you won’t be pressing the red down eternally, but this finger’s only job is to hit the red button whenever it comes up.

Now the fun begins! Take the index finger of your strumming hand (the hand that normally doesn’t click colored buttons) and plant that baby on the yellow fret. Now the middle finger of the same hand on the blue, and the ring finger of this hand on the orange. CONGRATULATIONS! This is the ONLY place any of your fingers will ever be; all of the other fingers can be completely disregarded and frankly you can amputate them for all I care. While there are other ways to incorporate different fingers in this mix, (such as ring finger of your button hand on the yellow) The other ways are generally geared more towards other solos, and make for a more confusing time for you when you go to tell your button hand exactly what button to press at what time. For TTFAF, this way works just great. Want to do it a different way? Knock yourself out, just make sure to have a finger down on every button.

******STRUMMING******

"But wait, anonymous forum poster! You have my strumming hand on the buttons, how the hell do I strum?!”

The beauty of tapping is that the entire section you will be hitting only requires you to strum once (unless you fuck up). To nail this strum place the elbow of your strumming hand on the strum bar; Feel Uncomfortable? Then you’re doing it right! This is how you will be strumming. Sure it looks like it will never work, but keep in mind that you only have to strum with your elbow ONCE. And it isn’t very hard once you get used to it! To make sure that you are able to strum with your elbow you will have to use the strap on your guitar( if you don’t already) to give the guitar something to brace on as you ram the strum bar down with your elbow. It helps greatly to tighten your strap so that the guitar is very high up on your chest (the top of mine just barely misses my nipple) which allows you a way to elbow strum over and over without messing with your entire hand (which is busy hammering on and such). It is also a great comfort to sit down and brace the guitar against your leg (right leg for righties, left for lefties), which puts you in a weird hunched position but stations your guitar completely and allows you to strum to your heart’s content. Unless you’re incredibly dense, you can figure out that you strum by moving your elbow down and clicking the strum bar once. Take a few tries to do this and get into a comfortable position for doing it often and in a hurry (you’re gonna mess up a lot). If you simply are a whiny ninny who can’t get used to the idea of strumming with your elbow, then figure out a really quick way to move your hand back and forth between the strum bar and the buttons (not advised for learning, as this is an art in of itself).

*****Beginning the Actual Tapping (fucking finally jeez this guy rambles)*****

For the entirety of your tapping lessons here, you will be in this uncomfortable position of both of your hands on the fret buttons and your elbow on the strum bar; Since all of the tapping we will be doing will be select sections of songs, after picking the section in practice mode and as the fret highway flies up on your screen in practice mode move your hand back into the tapping position. You should have plenty of time to do this and will not have to worry about learning how to move your strumming hand back and forth really fast. To go from Tapping Zero to Tapping Hero, simply read along from song section to song section (find the section in the title in practice mode) and read any accompanying notes.

****Monsters****
Bridge C (AKA Wheedly-Wheedly) (Expert Difficulty)

Find the afformentioned song section in practice mode and pick slowest as your speed. You might want to run through the section once normally, just to see what you are in for. This section is amazing for learning how to tap as it only has you tapping with one finger at a time for long strings of notes.
When the notes first fly at you, make sure you are holding down the green key, as well as the red key and blue key. When the first blue key gets close, strum that sucker with your elbow and release the blue key. The note will register the blue strum, and hop over to the red (the green just chills, being useless here but making it a hell of a lot less confusing for you as to what fingers are clicking what). Since you know well in advance that you will just be hitting blue a lot, you should have no problem keeping time and hammering on the blue over and over until it finally reaches the shift in notes. At this point you release the red fret , and instead of hitting the blue over and over, hit the yellow over and over! If you’re really dumb like me, this jump alone will wreak havoc on your fingers as you will be confused as hell as to what finger is on what button, and you might just click the wrong thing. This is perfectly natural! The very first few times I tried tapping I would hit the wrong key over and over and I was still getting used to where my fingers where in relation to the keys.

Remember to follow the “Hammer-on snake” very carefully with your eyes as you go through the section, making sure to pick up any mistakes that you aren’t sure you’re causing (Example: when the song transitions from yellow-green back to blue-red, you might be inclined to hold the red key a tad early as you are already beyond the transition, but in hitting the red early you do not allow the game to hammer on the last green button). Since this is a very easy section that mostly has you working your 2 strongest strumming hand fingers, you should be easily able to peck your way through slowest and up to slower, slow, and full speed in 10 min -1hr (depending on how pro you are!). Do not waste time going back and playing the section over and over on slowest until you get 100%, if you are consistently comboing large chunks on your current speed then move it up a notch! Full coordination will come with time, but just like you don’t try for a 5 star on every single new song until you get it before moving on, don’t get caught up here. I should also mention that the hammer-on section (infact, most of them) end with random strums as the song progresses to something else. I usually try to see if I can click any of them with my elbow for practice, but you can just restart the section at that point to continue practicing. Once you have this on full speed, move on to the next song.
An aside: Whenever you mess up during the tapping, which you certainly will, try your best to get back on track by continuing to move your tapping fingers while getting one elbow strum in to restart the hammer on. If it seems hopeless, just restart the section. YOU HAVE INFINITE TRIES!

****Knights of Cydonia****
Galloping Triplets (Expert difficulty)

This section is very structured in terms of the order of the fret buttons, so you should not get too confused about what finger is hitting what key too much. Since all of the “triplets” end in green hammer-ons, and we are always holding the button down, this section becomes more like a quick jump from a button on your strum hand to the red button, and back and forth (just like monsters!). the transitions between the triplets have a few switch ups (blue to yellow to blue to red) which might give you trouble, but as always you should be able to progress from slowest to full relatively quickly.

**********INTERLUDE (IMPORTANT, LOSERS)*********
The way I learned how to tap was in 30 minute practice sessions every day for about a week; there is absolutely NO NEED to keep hammering at a section you find difficult until you finally get it right every time; infact, it really doesn’t help. All of the people who are able to go from slowest to full speed dragon force intros in a matter of hours astound me, as I am possibly retarded. The main thing you need to remember is that your muscles need to adjust to their new role as tappers, and your brain needs time to figure out exactly how to work your fingers right. Every time I got stuck on a section where I just kept failing to the point of frustration, I would just stop there for the day. When you come back to it the next day you will GUARANTEED-ly (not a word!) have a firmer grasp on the section you are trying, despite doing absolutely nothing different. Your brain simply needs time to mull it all over, as it were. Use this guide section by section, and the second you hit a section you have issues with give it a few tries and then give it a rest, you’ve earned it.

****My Name is Jonas****
My name is Intro (Expert difficulty)

Once you’ve gotten a hang of the sections above at full speeds it’s time to hit the big leagues. This section is different from the others in that there is no clearly visible repeating pattern for your fingers to click, forcing you to think about which finger will be used as the notes scroll through. You might have trouble at first as you attempt to click one color and accidentally click another as you are not sure which finger is exactly where, but this is perfectly normal. Remember the interlude: When it gets difficult, take a break. You don’t need to learn how to tap by 5 pm today, do you? Stick around with this section until you get good at it at full speed, then move on.

****Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll****
Solo 2a (Expert Difficulty)

This section is the first actual hard section that you will more than likely get stuck on at first; not only does this section of 3 note triplets stress your strumming hand ( orange blue yellow triplets) it also shows just how hard it is to really work out which fingers do what when you’re on the wire. I had a lot of trouble with this section at first, as it was difficult to transition from blue yellow red to yellow red green and remember which fingers to use. Whittle away at this passage on slowest and then slower, but do not bother with getting it down on full speed (yet). Also pay careful attention (especially on slower) about going from yellow red green back to the top, as you might go too quickly during this gap and accidentally cut off a green hammer-on, ruining your combo.

**** Cult of Personality****
Song Sections:
Solo! (Hard Difficulty)
Start Soloing! (Hard Difficulty)

Having mastered my name is Jonas intro and slogged through Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll, it’s time for you to try an actual solo with no fun repeating patterns to keep you on track. You know the drill here, fire this baby up on HARD and see if you can follow along with this on slowest (all the way up to slow/full speed) and then skip over to it’s sister section “Start Soloing!” for a taste of pretty much the same thing. Both of these solos have a few introductory strums in the beginning, as well as several strums throughout, which should give you quite a challenge for elbow strumming. Elbow strumming is a great skill to master, as it is what keeps you from failing when you mess up your combo, and these sections are great for letting you master them.

Hopefully you have taken my advice and taken a day breather after attempting the Cult of Personality, as there is a bit of a “skill leap” at this point.

****Through the Fire and Flames ****
“They’re Hammer-Ons” (pick your favorite difficulty, it’s all the same really)

Whoa cowboy, slow down! We won’t be mastering the amazing full speed behemoth here, but simply treating this as another great excerise for your hands. If you’ve worked your way to here from all of the other sections in the guide, you should have little trouble following along with this section ON SLOWEST as you learn the basic repeating pattern and the ins and outs of the intro. The main trouble with this section is that if you mess up, it’s often very difficult to jump back on track as you have to strum the key you are going for then Quickly remove your finger in time for the the green hammer on to register. Just give it time: if you are unable to move from slowest to slow, hit up the previous sections to build more finger dexterity. At this point it’s more or less all about building speed in your hands. Ideally you are able to chug through slowest pretty quickly, and move on to slower. Here you will commonly break combo often, but with more work and constant practice (AS WELL AS BREAKS) you will be able to get it down as well. Seriously, take a break! When I first noticed I could get this song on slower, I moved on to slow only to find that I couldn’t string 2 notes together. The tears welling up in my eyes, cursed the game and went back to practice the other sections, only to come back the next day and find that the notes were now moving too slow and I was outpacing them (allowing me to step up to Slow with relative ease).

****Beyond the easy tapping sections****

At this point you should have a general idea of your skill at tapping, and begin using your practice time to hit dragonforce on the speed you can keep a combo going at in full force. Returning to Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll is a great way to build dexterity (This time do it on full speed) as well speed in your fingers. Another great section to hit up when you aren’t dragonforcing it up is Cult of Personality Solo! as well as “Start Soloing!” and now “ keep soloing!” as well, ALL ON EXPERT DIFFICULTY. You will not be able to master these on full speed (if you do, you have long since been able to tap dragonforce) But moving through these sections on slowest and slower is a great way to learn complex movements with your fingers.
Basically bounce back between these sections and the fastest dragonforce you can do, slowly building up in tempo until you have it all down on full speed. The only difficulty with dragonforce is that as you go from slower to slow the speed of the notes increases to the point where you might get confused as to what to hit and when, but all of this is worked out with more practice.



**UPDATE**
To make tapping a little bit less of a grind for everyone involved, I have ran through and found some more tap-friendly sections that you can hit up as you are building the speed in your hand in order to tap TTFAF. As stated above, you should alternate between the fastest speed of dragonforce you can do and all the other song sections that you find fun/challenging (so as not to go crazy with frustration and boredom) and the following songs are all excellent exercises for you to hit up. If you’ve gotten here after practicing the songs above, most of these sections should be no problem for you on slower after some practice, and are really meant just for your have a good time while mastering this new skill. Under every song section I discuss the basics of what you will play as long as any tips I can offer. These sections are really best tackled after you’ve brushed up on the sections above, as they are generally much harder and less structured than the tutorial ones I used.

The following sections are loosely in order of difficulty to practice on.


****Can’t Be Saved****
Fast Scales (Expert Difficulty)

If you enjoyed playing the Galloping Triplets of KoC, then you will feel very familiar as you stroll through this practice section. The only difference is that these are actual triplets, as the solo “scales” away from the green fret and becomes varying triplets. However, with the notes being evenly spaced and coming at a decidedly slow speed, you should have no problem tackling this on full speed after having tackled “Cities on Flame With Rock And Roll”.

****Cliffs of Dover****
Song Sections:
Intro Solo A (Hard / Expert Difficulty)
Intro solo B (Hard/ Expert Difficulty)

Cliffs of Dover starts off with 2 very meaty hammer-on solos that you can practice to improve your tapping; Both of these sections on hard are very similar to (but a bit easier than) the Cult of Personality
Solos, with a very easy snake of notes to follow (and a few wayward strums in between). Intro Solo A on expert is essentially just a faster hammer-on for you to dig through, but it introduces a very scary passage indeed: Intro Solo B on expert is the doppelganger of the TTFAF intro, but instead of having all of the green buttons as filler between the taps, it has oranges. What this means for you is that the section is essentially a very fast alternation between a random color and the orange ring finger fret, and the heaviest possible stress one can induce on that finger. This section should be tackled on the fastest speed you can continually work through large parts of it on, as after dropping combo it is a very difficult task to regain yourself and continue hammering on.


****The Metal****
Outro (Expert Difficulty)

The outro for “The Metal” is several big hammer-ons, each of which starts off by running down the entire fret (hitting all of the colors) and then spinning out of control into seemingly random notes, with a varation in each of the hammer-ons. This is a great section to practice for learning how to even out the speed with which your fingers hit the buttons, as many people tend to want to jolt down on the hammer on with every finger as fast as possible (which is a big combo breaking issue when tapping TTFAF) and outrun the hammer-on, which causes a combo break. This section is easy enough to tackle at slow and full speed.

****Stricken****
Solo (expert difficulty)

The solo starts off with quite a few strums, which you should sit through in order to hit up the last half of the section, as this solo is well worth running through. The solo itself is a relatively complex pattern which stresses the fingers in your strumming hand (lots of yellow and orange alternating hammerons) before scaling the entire guitar neck all the way to green and repeating again (and again and again). This is a very hard solo which you should sit down and work through on slowest, but as you increase in finger speed you should return to this solo a few times as the orange-yellow section of the hammer-on’s pattern is a very similar motion to that of the TTFAF intro, and learning how to follow this on faster speeds will let you better control yourself during the actually intro runs.


****One****
Song Sections:
Fast Solo A (hard / Expert)
Fast Solo B (expert)

This is the mac daddy of solos to tap, forgoing the formalities of scales or sounding good in favor of raping your hand with incredibly fast triplets that come in an order very uncomfortable for you to play (think “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll, in reverse, on 500% speed). Fast Solo A on hard is one big mass of hammer-on, and is at a very decent pace for you to wrack your fingers against in conjunction with practicing ttfaf. Try to hold down the lowest color in any one of the given triplets, so that you only have to tap 2 keys before the game finishes it for you (similar to why we hold down the green key always), but don’t be disappointed to not be able to claw your way through any higher than “slower” speed. In order to not have to play incredibly slowly through what appears to be a solid mass of notes I suggest turning on hyperspeed as your practice this, to simulate the solo being actual triplets and not what looks like a trill of 3 notes. On expert Solo A is blindingly fast even on “Slowest”, and may require more coordination of you than currently possible at your stage in tapping, but should you be able to pick up decently long strings of notes, don’t forget to tack on Fast Solo B to your practice routine as well, as this is an incredibly fast hammer-on that climbs back and forth between green and red and will be fantastic for building finger coordination.

****Black Sunshine (Building Finger Speed) ****
Song Section: Blown Gasser Madness (Part 1) (Expert Difficulty)

This song is not so much a tapping passage as it is a great way to increase finger speed without having to try to tackle the harder solos in the game (whose difficulty lies not just in tapping them, but reading them and figuring out how to tap them as well!) For those unfamiliar with this section, it is essentially several trills (long strings of Hammer-Ons between 2 colors alternating very fast,) strung together by a few sustained notes. The trills switch up which 2 colors you need to hammer on with every new trill, which allows you to work on building the tempo with which you can tap notes on essentially all of your fingers while maintaining a constant speed. If you have been following this guide and have practiced tapping most of the other song sections, you should have no problem tackling this on Full speed, but a word of caution: DO NOT try to move your hand down and perform the trills with your 2 best fingers. While you will certainly be able to hit them, we’re trying to increase finger strength in your other fingers at the moment.




***THE END?***

If you have read all 1,000,000 or so of these words you are either a moderator who is forced to or really bored at work, but I hope this has given those who thought they could never ever learn to tap a basic and dim guideline to follow in order to be able to cruise through TTFAF at full speed. While I would be sad to see this plummet to the bottom of page 1 and out of sight of anyone forever, hopefully enough people hit this forum up searching specifically for advice similar to this enough to be interested in what I have to say. Questions or Comments? Post them here! Or hit me up on xbl (screen name xgoodxdayx)

[xgoodxdayx]

Updated 12/30/07: Added 6 more tapping passages to mess around with.
TAPPING: A Complete Beginner's Guide

The definitive guide to learning how to hit buttons with your hands.

*Intro (no actual tapping information!)*

About 2 weeks ago I managed to flail my way through Mosh 1 of Raining Blood and scrape out a 3 star victory over a song that I never thought I would beat; As my heart rate dropped back to normal levels and I finally finished my victory dances (as well as calling all of my relatives to inform them of my triumph – is this why I got so many psychiatric help pamphlets for Christmas?) I sat back down on my couch and wondered to myself “What next?” I had beaten all of the songs in gh3 except Through the Fire and Flames, and I had heard that that required some mythical technique of “tapping” that I had no knowledge of, something I had previously no interest in learning. But I figured that since I had absolutely ungodly amounts of free time, I might as well sit down and learn how to beat this song (If only to impress peers and prospective mates!).
Not having a clue where to start, I hopped on Score Hero and looked around for any guide on Tapping I could find. The first one to leap out at me was a sticky-ed guide by k3v227, which I immediately jumped on to help me out. The problem with this guide, I quickly found, was that it wasn’t so much a guide about learning how to tap as it was a reference guide for tapping some of the hardest solos in the game; And while that was all fine and dandy, I could gleam absolutely no help from it as I had no clue where to even start tapping. I next decided to hop on youtube, where a guy that looked suspiciously like Randy from "my Name is Earl" was heralded as the messiah of TTFaf Tapping. I watched the video, and boy did he make it look easy! I quickly picked out the fingering he used, plopped in front of the television, and booted up TTFAF on slowest fully prepared to do some damage! What I did do is manage an amazing 3 note streak as well as about 2000 points. I could not in any way shape or form make my fingers perform even the simplest of combos in this intro and this left me frustrated and sullen. I knew right then that I would NEVER be able to play DragonForce, turned off my machine and forgot about the game for a week...

... But then it dawned on me; Just as I didn’t start the game off ripping through raining blood on expert, I shouldn’t expect to jump right into a really hard tapping sequence and hope to achieve anything. That’s when I got to work and managed to learn how to tap exactly as I will detail in this easy walkthrough guide, which I am now writing to help the other struggling newbies out there who have just barely now begun to tap. For those that use rubber bands, tape, and teeth to pass the intro to TTFAF, reading this guide might make your life just a bit easier as well!


***Basics***
This guide is intended for those whose ultimate goal is to master the TTFAF intro; while all the information contained therein will of course be useful as you continue tapping beyond that (if you so choose) the main objective is TTFAF; therefore all tips and tricks here will be written with the TTFAFer in mind.

*****HAND POSITION******
The basic idea of tapping is using both hands on the fret buttons of the guitar controller in order to eliminate the need to move your fretting hand (hand on the buttons, “Button Hand”) up and down as well as increase the speed with which one is able to pull of tricky hammer-on sections (mainly solos). While the crazy tapping soloer will frequently move his strumming hand (Hand not on the buttons, it pushes the triangle up and down) from the fret buttons back to the strum bar at lightning quick speeds, since the TTFAF intro throws you straight into the hammer-on section right away there is absolutely no need to ever have your hands anywhere except both at the neck of the guitar.

Picking up your guitar, place your button hand’s index finger (The one that you use to point at things) and strap that sucker on the green fret. This is where this finger will stay; regardless of what you tap, and when you tap it, NEVER move this finger anywhere and ALWAYS press the green button down. Not only do you have to always keep this held down on the TTFAF intro, you can keep it down for absolutely any section you’re tapping (as the green note will not interfere with any of the other hammer-ons and will automatically hammer-on and off as needed) which completely eliminates a button that you have to worry about, making tapping essentially a 4 button task. While you would not be able to get away with this on guitar hero 2 (since you can’t hold down a button and let the engine hammer it on for you) we couldn’t care less about it, since we’re working towards dragonforce.

Once you have your muscular and beefy sausage of a pointer on the green (remember, never let that sucker go) place the middle finger of your button hand (the one right next to the one clamped down on the green) on the red fret. Now, you won’t be pressing the red down eternally, but this finger’s only job is to hit the red button whenever it comes up.

Now the fun begins! Take the index finger of your strumming hand (the hand that normally doesn’t click colored buttons) and plant that baby on the yellow fret. Now the middle finger of the same hand on the blue, and the ring finger of this hand on the orange. CONGRATULATIONS! This is the ONLY place any of your fingers will ever be; all of the other fingers can be completely disregarded and frankly you can amputate them for all I care. While there are other ways to incorporate different fingers in this mix, (such as ring finger of your button hand on the yellow) The other ways are generally geared more towards other solos, and make for a more confusing time for you when you go to tell your button hand exactly what button to press at what time. For TTFAF, this way works just great. Want to do it a different way? Knock yourself out, just make sure to have a finger down on every button.

******STRUMMING******

"But wait, anonymous forum poster! You have my strumming hand on the buttons, how the hell do I strum?!”

The beauty of tapping is that the entire section you will be hitting only requires you to strum once (unless you fuck up). To nail this strum place the elbow of your strumming hand on the strum bar; Feel Uncomfortable? Then you’re doing it right! This is how you will be strumming. Sure it looks like it will never work, but keep in mind that you only have to strum with your elbow ONCE. And it isn’t very hard once you get used to it! To make sure that you are able to strum with your elbow you will have to use the strap on your guitar( if you don’t already) to give the guitar something to brace on as you ram the strum bar down with your elbow. It helps greatly to tighten your strap so that the guitar is very high up on your chest (the top of mine just barely misses my nipple) which allows you a way to elbow strum over and over without messing with your entire hand (which is busy hammering on and such). It is also a great comfort to sit down and brace the guitar against your leg (right leg for righties, left for lefties), which puts you in a weird hunched position but stations your guitar completely and allows you to strum to your heart’s content. Unless you’re incredibly dense, you can figure out that you strum by moving your elbow down and clicking the strum bar once. Take a few tries to do this and get into a comfortable position for doing it often and in a hurry (you’re gonna mess up a lot). If you simply are a whiny ninny who can’t get used to the idea of strumming with your elbow, then figure out a really quick way to move your hand back and forth between the strum bar and the buttons (not advised for learning, as this is an art in of itself).

*****Beginning the Actual Tapping (fucking finally jeez this guy rambles)*****

For the entirety of your tapping lessons here, you will be in this uncomfortable position of both of your hands on the fret buttons and your elbow on the strum bar; Since all of the tapping we will be doing will be select sections of songs, after picking the section in practice mode and as the fret highway flies up on your screen in practice mode move your hand back into the tapping position. You should have plenty of time to do this and will not have to worry about learning how to move your strumming hand back and forth really fast. To go from Tapping Zero to Tapping Hero, simply read along from song section to song section (find the section in the title in practice mode) and read any accompanying notes.

****Monsters****
Bridge C (AKA Wheedly-Wheedly) (Expert Difficulty)

Find the afformentioned song section in practice mode and pick slowest as your speed. You might want to run through the section once normally, just to see what you are in for. This section is amazing for learning how to tap as it only has you tapping with one finger at a time for long strings of notes.
When the notes first fly at you, make sure you are holding down the green key, as well as the red key and blue key. When the first blue key gets close, strum that sucker with your elbow and release the blue key. The note will register the blue strum, and hop over to the red (the green just chills, being useless here but making it a hell of a lot less confusing for you as to what fingers are clicking what). Since you know well in advance that you will just be hitting blue a lot, you should have no problem keeping time and hammering on the blue over and over until it finally reaches the shift in notes. At this point you release the red fret , and instead of hitting the blue over and over, hit the yellow over and over! If you’re really dumb like me, this jump alone will wreak havoc on your fingers as you will be confused as hell as to what finger is on what button, and you might just click the wrong thing. This is perfectly natural! The very first few times I tried tapping I would hit the wrong key over and over and I was still getting used to where my fingers where in relation to the keys.

Remember to follow the “Hammer-on snake” very carefully with your eyes as you go through the section, making sure to pick up any mistakes that you aren’t sure you’re causing (Example: when the song transitions from yellow-green back to blue-red, you might be inclined to hold the red key a tad early as you are already beyond the transition, but in hitting the red early you do not allow the game to hammer on the last green button). Since this is a very easy section that mostly has you working your 2 strongest strumming hand fingers, you should be easily able to peck your way through slowest and up to slower, slow, and full speed in 10 min -1hr (depending on how pro you are!). Do not waste time going back and playing the section over and over on slowest until you get 100%, if you are consistently comboing large chunks on your current speed then move it up a notch! Full coordination will come with time, but just like you don’t try for a 5 star on every single new song until you get it before moving on, don’t get caught up here. I should also mention that the hammer-on section (infact, most of them) end with random strums as the song progresses to something else. I usually try to see if I can click any of them with my elbow for practice, but you can just restart the section at that point to continue practicing. Once you have this on full speed, move on to the next song.
An aside: Whenever you mess up during the tapping, which you certainly will, try your best to get back on track by continuing to move your tapping fingers while getting one elbow strum in to restart the hammer on. If it seems hopeless, just restart the section. YOU HAVE INFINITE TRIES!

****Knights of Cydonia****
Galloping Triplets (Expert difficulty)

This section is very structured in terms of the order of the fret buttons, so you should not get too confused about what finger is hitting what key too much. Since all of the “triplets” end in green hammer-ons, and we are always holding the button down, this section becomes more like a quick jump from a button on your strum hand to the red button, and back and forth (just like monsters!). the transitions between the triplets have a few switch ups (blue to yellow to blue to red) which might give you trouble, but as always you should be able to progress from slowest to full relatively quickly.

**********INTERLUDE (IMPORTANT, LOSERS)*********
The way I learned how to tap was in 30 minute practice sessions every day for about a week; there is absolutely NO NEED to keep hammering at a section you find difficult until you finally get it right every time; infact, it really doesn’t help. All of the people who are able to go from slowest to full speed dragon force intros in a matter of hours astound me, as I am possibly retarded. The main thing you need to remember is that your muscles need to adjust to their new role as tappers, and your brain needs time to figure out exactly how to work your fingers right. Every time I got stuck on a section where I just kept failing to the point of frustration, I would just stop there for the day. When you come back to it the next day you will GUARANTEED-ly (not a word!) have a firmer grasp on the section you are trying, despite doing absolutely nothing different. Your brain simply needs time to mull it all over, as it were. Use this guide section by section, and the second you hit a section you have issues with give it a few tries and then give it a rest, you’ve earned it.

****My Name is Jonas****
My name is Intro (Expert difficulty)

Once you’ve gotten a hang of the sections above at full speeds it’s time to hit the big leagues. This section is different from the others in that there is no clearly visible repeating pattern for your fingers to click, forcing you to think about which finger will be used as the notes scroll through. You might have trouble at first as you attempt to click one color and accidentally click another as you are not sure which finger is exactly where, but this is perfectly normal. Remember the interlude: When it gets difficult, take a break. You don’t need to learn how to tap by 5 pm today, do you? Stick around with this section until you get good at it at full speed, then move on.

****Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll****
Solo 2a (Expert Difficulty)

This section is the first actual hard section that you will more than likely get stuck on at first; not only does this section of 3 note triplets stress your strumming hand ( orange blue yellow triplets) it also shows just how hard it is to really work out which fingers do what when you’re on the wire. I had a lot of trouble with this section at first, as it was difficult to transition from blue yellow red to yellow red green and remember which fingers to use. Whittle away at this passage on slowest and then slower, but do not bother with getting it down on full speed (yet). Also pay careful attention (especially on slower) about going from yellow red green back to the top, as you might go too quickly during this gap and accidentally cut off a green hammer-on, ruining your combo.

**** Cult of Personality****
Song Sections:
Solo! (Hard Difficulty)
Start Soloing! (Hard Difficulty)

Having mastered my name is Jonas intro and slogged through Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll, it’s time for you to try an actual solo with no fun repeating patterns to keep you on track. You know the drill here, fire this baby up on HARD and see if you can follow along with this on slowest (all the way up to slow/full speed) and then skip over to it’s sister section “Start Soloing!” for a taste of pretty much the same thing. Both of these solos have a few introductory strums in the beginning, as well as several strums throughout, which should give you quite a challenge for elbow strumming. Elbow strumming is a great skill to master, as it is what keeps you from failing when you mess up your combo, and these sections are great for letting you master them.

Hopefully you have taken my advice and taken a day breather after attempting the Cult of Personality, as there is a bit of a “skill leap” at this point.

****Through the Fire and Flames ****
“They’re Hammer-Ons” (pick your favorite difficulty, it’s all the same really)

Whoa cowboy, slow down! We won’t be mastering the amazing full speed behemoth here, but simply treating this as another great excerise for your hands. If you’ve worked your way to here from all of the other sections in the guide, you should have little trouble following along with this section ON SLOWEST as you learn the basic repeating pattern and the ins and outs of the intro. The main trouble with this section is that if you mess up, it’s often very difficult to jump back on track as you have to strum the key you are going for then Quickly remove your finger in time for the the green hammer on to register. Just give it time: if you are unable to move from slowest to slow, hit up the previous sections to build more finger dexterity. At this point it’s more or less all about building speed in your hands. Ideally you are able to chug through slowest pretty quickly, and move on to slower. Here you will commonly break combo often, but with more work and constant practice (AS WELL AS BREAKS) you will be able to get it down as well. Seriously, take a break! When I first noticed I could get this song on slower, I moved on to slow only to find that I couldn’t string 2 notes together. The tears welling up in my eyes, cursed the game and went back to practice the other sections, only to come back the next day and find that the notes were now moving too slow and I was outpacing them (allowing me to step up to Slow with relative ease).

****Beyond the easy tapping sections****

At this point you should have a general idea of your skill at tapping, and begin using your practice time to hit dragonforce on the speed you can keep a combo going at in full force. Returning to Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll is a great way to build dexterity (This time do it on full speed) as well speed in your fingers. Another great section to hit up when you aren’t dragonforcing it up is Cult of Personality Solo! as well as “Start Soloing!” and now “ keep soloing!” as well, ALL ON EXPERT DIFFICULTY. You will not be able to master these on full speed (if you do, you have long since been able to tap dragonforce) But moving through these sections on slowest and slower is a great way to learn complex movements with your fingers.
Basically bounce back between these sections and the fastest dragonforce you can do, slowly building up in tempo until you have it all down on full speed. The only difficulty with dragonforce is that as you go from slower to slow the speed of the notes increases to the point where you might get confused as to what to hit and when, but all of this is worked out with more practice.



**UPDATE**
To make tapping a little bit less of a grind for everyone involved, I have ran through and found some more tap-friendly sections that you can hit up as you are building the speed in your hand in order to tap TTFAF. As stated above, you should alternate between the fastest speed of dragonforce you can do and all the other song sections that you find fun/challenging (so as not to go crazy with frustration and boredom) and the following songs are all excellent exercises for you to hit up. If you’ve gotten here after practicing the songs above, most of these sections should be no problem for you on slower after some practice, and are really meant just for your have a good time while mastering this new skill. Under every song section I discuss the basics of what you will play as long as any tips I can offer. These sections are really best tackled after you’ve brushed up on the sections above, as they are generally much harder and less structured than the tutorial ones I used.

The following sections are loosely in order of difficulty to practice on.


****Can’t Be Saved****
Fast Scales (Expert Difficulty)

If you enjoyed playing the Galloping Triplets of KoC, then you will feel very familiar as you stroll through this practice section. The only difference is that these are actual triplets, as the solo “scales” away from the green fret and becomes varying triplets. However, with the notes being evenly spaced and coming at a decidedly slow speed, you should have no problem tackling this on full speed after having tackled “Cities on Flame With Rock And Roll”.

****Cliffs of Dover****
Song Sections:
Intro Solo A (Hard / Expert Difficulty)
Intro solo B (Hard/ Expert Difficulty)

Cliffs of Dover starts off with 2 very meaty hammer-on solos that you can practice to improve your tapping; Both of these sections on hard are very similar to (but a bit easier than) the Cult of Personality
Solos, with a very easy snake of notes to follow (and a few wayward strums in between). Intro Solo A on expert is essentially just a faster hammer-on for you to dig through, but it introduces a very scary passage indeed: Intro Solo B on expert is the doppelganger of the TTFAF intro, but instead of having all of the green buttons as filler between the taps, it has oranges. What this means for you is that the section is essentially a very fast alternation between a random color and the orange ring finger fret, and the heaviest possible stress one can induce on that finger. This section should be tackled on the fastest speed you can continually work through large parts of it on, as after dropping combo it is a very difficult task to regain yourself and continue hammering on.


****The Metal****
Outro (Expert Difficulty)

The outro for “The Metal” is several big hammer-ons, each of which starts off by running down the entire fret (hitting all of the colors) and then spinning out of control into seemingly random notes, with a varation in each of the hammer-ons. This is a great section to practice for learning how to even out the speed with which your fingers hit the buttons, as many people tend to want to jolt down on the hammer on with every finger as fast as possible (which is a big combo breaking issue when tapping TTFAF) and outrun the hammer-on, which causes a combo break. This section is easy enough to tackle at slow and full speed.

****Stricken****
Solo (expert difficulty)

The solo starts off with quite a few strums, which you should sit through in order to hit up the last half of the section, as this solo is well worth running through. The solo itself is a relatively complex pattern which stresses the fingers in your strumming hand (lots of yellow and orange alternating hammerons) before scaling the entire guitar neck all the way to green and repeating again (and again and again). This is a very hard solo which you should sit down and work through on slowest, but as you increase in finger speed you should return to this solo a few times as the orange-yellow section of the hammer-on’s pattern is a very similar motion to that of the TTFAF intro, and learning how to follow this on faster speeds will let you better control yourself during the actually intro runs.


****One****
Song Sections:
Fast Solo A (hard / Expert)
Fast Solo B (expert)

This is the mac daddy of solos to tap, forgoing the formalities of scales or sounding good in favor of raping your hand with incredibly fast triplets that come in an order very uncomfortable for you to play (think “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll, in reverse, on 500% speed). Fast Solo A on hard is one big mass of hammer-on, and is at a very decent pace for you to wrack your fingers against in conjunction with practicing ttfaf. Try to hold down the lowest color in any one of the given triplets, so that you only have to tap 2 keys before the game finishes it for you (similar to why we hold down the green key always), but don’t be disappointed to not be able to claw your way through any higher than “slower” speed. In order to not have to play incredibly slowly through what appears to be a solid mass of notes I suggest turning on hyperspeed as your practice this, to simulate the solo being actual triplets and not what looks like a trill of 3 notes. On expert Solo A is blindingly fast even on “Slowest”, and may require more coordination of you than currently possible at your stage in tapping, but should you be able to pick up decently long strings of notes, don’t forget to tack on Fast Solo B to your practice routine as well, as this is an incredibly fast hammer-on that climbs back and forth between green and red and will be fantastic for building finger coordination.

****Black Sunshine (Building Finger Speed) ****
Song Section: Blown Gasser Madness (Part 1) (Expert Difficulty)

This song is not so much a tapping passage as it is a great way to increase finger speed without having to try to tackle the harder solos in the game (whose difficulty lies not just in tapping them, but reading them and figuring out how to tap them as well!) For those unfamiliar with this section, it is essentially several trills (long strings of Hammer-Ons between 2 colors alternating very fast,) strung together by a few sustained notes. The trills switch up which 2 colors you need to hammer on with every new trill, which allows you to work on building the tempo with which you can tap notes on essentially all of your fingers while maintaining a constant speed. If you have been following this guide and have practiced tapping most of the other song sections, you should have no problem tackling this on Full speed, but a word of caution: DO NOT try to move your hand down and perform the trills with your 2 best fingers. While you will certainly be able to hit them, we’re trying to increase finger strength in your other fingers at the moment.




***THE END?***

If you have read all 1,000,000 or so of these words you are either a moderator who is forced to or really bored at work, but I hope this has given those who thought they could never ever learn to tap a basic and dim guideline to follow in order to be able to cruise through TTFAF at full speed. While I would be sad to see this plummet to the bottom of page 1 and out of sight of anyone forever, hopefully enough people hit this forum up searching specifically for advice similar to this enough to be interested in what I have to say. Questions or Comments? Post them here! Or hit me up on xbl (screen name xgoodxdayx)

[psychomonkey62]

*starts slow clap*

[psychomonkey62]

*starts slow clap*

[blakstang98]

[blakstang98]

[11yearoldkid]

[11yearoldkid]

[CorpusCollosum]

[CorpusCollosum]

[matt34]

[matt34]

[Ziggyster]

[Ziggyster]

[xgoodxdayx]

[xgoodxdayx]

[Ziggyster]

[Ziggyster]

[blakstang98]

[blakstang98]

[foxtrotin]

Honestly that was the most helpful guide on tapping I've seen. Probably game related as well. Trying Knights of Cydonia was pretty awesome. Anyways cheers!
_________________

Only 1 goal right now.... beat Before I Forget on expert. :\

http://www.scorehero.com/manage_scores.php?game=6&diff=3

http://www.guitarhero.com/accounts/223485

[foxtrotin]

Honestly that was the most helpful guide on tapping I've seen. Probably game related as well. Trying Knights of Cydonia was pretty awesome. Anyways cheers!
_________________

Only 1 goal right now.... beat Before I Forget on expert. :\

http://www.scorehero.com/manage_scores.php?game=6&diff=3

http://www.guitarhero.com/accounts/223485

[KiLLaCameron]

I don't think any of those should be tapped with the exception of TTFaF; and would probably complicate things more than if you played them normally.

[KiLLaCameron]

I don't think any of those should be tapped with the exception of TTFaF; and would probably complicate things more than if you played them normally.

[xgoodxdayx]

[xgoodxdayx]

[T-Pain]

thank you so much man this helps so much for ttfaf its the only song on any gh i havent finished ive done tdwdtg and jordan but not this yet
this helps alot and im progressing nicely:D
(so if this comes up in league playoffs ill have a chance)

[T-Pain]

thank you so much man this helps so much for ttfaf its the only song on any gh i havent finished ive done tdwdtg and jordan but not this yet
this helps alot and im progressing nicely:D
(so if this comes up in league playoffs ill have a chance)

[mandrill]

That guide was GREAT! I already could FC the TTFAF intro :P But it was great for finding more tap-friendly parts in other songs to practice on. Two thumbs up, hope this one gets stickied.

Edit: Btw, I just tested your method for TTFAF and I think it's kind of hard. The thing is, you have to move away your tapping fingers very fast in order for the green hammer-on to register. I instead, use my left middle-finger for red and yellow, and my right index finger for blue and orange. That way I can pick the hammer-ons very fast and all the green ones register.
_________________

Win the Swedish WCG-qualifier [x]
Get the trip to China sponsored [WIP]
Stop sucking at TTFAF [705k ]
Complete sightread marathon of GH5 [checked, took 12 hours]
Follow my preparations for WCG Grand Finals in Chengdu

[mandrill]

That guide was GREAT! I already could FC the TTFAF intro :P But it was great for finding more tap-friendly parts in other songs to practice on. Two thumbs up, hope this one gets stickied.

Edit: Btw, I just tested your method for TTFAF and I think it's kind of hard. The thing is, you have to move away your tapping fingers very fast in order for the green hammer-on to register. I instead, use my left middle-finger for red and yellow, and my right index finger for blue and orange. That way I can pick the hammer-ons very fast and all the green ones register.
_________________

Win the Swedish WCG-qualifier [x]
Get the trip to China sponsored [WIP]
Stop sucking at TTFAF [705k ]
Complete sightread marathon of GH5 [checked, took 12 hours]
Follow my preparations for WCG Grand Finals in Chengdu