14-Year-Old World Record Holder’s Top 6 Guitar Hero Tips

14-year old Danny Johnson, was recently named the Guitar Hero Guinness World Records holder for “Highest Score for a Single Song” after he hit 99% of the notes for the DragonForce song “Through the Fire and Flames” on Expert level, scoring a finger-bleeding 973,954 points. Why only 99%? About 170 notes from the end, the blue button on his guitar controller broke. You can see him nailing it 100% in the vid above. And breaking the 980k mark.

The Grapevine, Texas native is also a skilled pianist, drummer, guitarist, saxophone and oboe player. (Oboe player? Is there a category of chicks this kid’s after who don’t fall for piano, guitar, sax or drums?)

Chances are you’ll never come just shy of a million points, but to up your rock star status, here are 6 of Johnson’s top Guitar Hero tips and tricks:

1. Starting out.
When you’re starting out, whenever you’re playing a song and you don’t know what notes are coming at you, do not hit random buttons. Only hit the notes you know you can hit. When you do this, you will eventually get better at a song. (Another thing is that you can try to take off your face plate if you have one. I think it helps.)

2. Trills.
If you see a lot of trills – which are any combination of 2 notes repeating – hold down the lower note and try to use your index and middle finger to do so. For example, hold down green and use another finger to hit red. If that doesn’t work, try bringing over your right hand to tap the higher note. You can hold down green with your index finger and bring your right hand over to tap red.

3. Triplets.
Triplets are three notes in a row that go from low to high (ex. green, red, yellow). I would suggest holding down the lowest note with your index finger and hitting the others with the middle finger and the ring finger. If that doesn’t work for you, try holding down the lowest note with your index finger and hitting the next note with your middle finger, then tap the highest note with your right hand. You can also do the same with descending triplets. Just hold down the lowest note and tap the highest note with your right hand. If you don’t like doing it that way, you can just use one hand if you want.

4. The beginning of Through the Fire and Flames.
People are always asking how to pass through the beginning of Through the Fire and Flames. There are several ways you can do it: first, you can do it with one hand, or you can do it with two. You can anchor the green with your right hand and elbow strum at the start using your right arm and use your left hand to hit the higher notes. You can also use your index finger on your left hand to anchor the green and use your right hand to tap the orange and blue. Just be creative and make your own method, because there are many different ways to do this.

5. Alt strumming.
When Alt strumming (strumming up and down on the strum bar), all odd number of strums (for example, three green notes in a row) start with a down strum and end with a down strum. All even number of strums (for example, four green notes in a row) start with a down strum and end with an up strum on the strum bar. This is a really easy way to play, especially when I’m using dreamGEAR’s WarBeast guitar controller.

6. Hitting the orange button.
Another thing I get asked a lot is how to hit orange button after going from medium to hard mode, which I think is the hardest jump in difficulty. There are two different ways I can think of to do this: You can either reach down and use your pinky on the orange, or you can slide your entire hand down with your index on red and your pinky on orange.

(For more tips and videos of Danny playing, go to www.guitarherophenom.com)