It was long rumored that Guitar Hero IV would include vocals and drums to compete with Rock Band. Well, now it’s official: we have Guitar Hero World Tour. The game was demonstrated for the first time at the All Things Digital 6 conference, with this unintenionally hilarious introduction from Kara Swisher:

Kotick: We have a new [...]

In Equipping Your First Fake Plastic Rock Band I described the essential accessories for a first class Rock Band experience. Seriously, read it. You will want a lot of that stuff if you’re serious about Rock Band.

But what about the non-essentials? Like, say… a killer fake plastic rock stage experience?

That’s what I’m talking about.

The above [...]

Scorehero is generally regarded as the ultimate source for competitive Guitar Hero and Rock Band online. And that’s in addition to the built-in online leaderboards in the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the games.

But worldwide competition can be a little.. intimidating. Did you know that someone recently full-comboed Guitar Hero I and II? That [...]

The scoring method for Guitar Hero and Rock Band is fairly similar — from 1 to 5 stars on each song depending on how high your score is. The scoring in Rock Band is more forgiving, however:

In Rock Band, it’s possible (barely!) to get a 2-star score and complete the song, which I’ve never seen [...]

To get better at vocals, you’ll need to do the same thing you do on drums and guitar — practice, practice, practice.

Of course, it helps to know the lyrics to the songs by heart. Here are handy links to web lyrics for the built in Rock Band tracks, in alphabetical order:

Are You Gonna Be [...]