Introduction
A funny thing happened on the way to making Guitar Hero III: The Legends of Rock; bands and musicians actually wanted to get their songs into the game. The Guitar Hero franchise had become a huge phenomenon that transcended gaming since the arrival of the first title in 2005, and suddenly some of the biggest and most-beloved rock acts in history were taking notice. They wanted to be part of the Guitar Hero family.
In fact, the desire for some bands was so great that they decided to re-record tracks for Guitar Hero III. "Cult of Personality" was at the top of gamers' wish list for Guitar Hero III, according to Jeff Matsushita, executive producer at RedOctane. The publisher approached Living Colour about using the hit song for the game, but the master tape for "Cult of Personality" couldn't be found (master tapes, as you'll read later in this article, are crucial to the process). As a result, the band got together and re-recorded the classic rock song, with a new, extended guitar solo. Even more amazing, the Sex Pistols re-united to re-record its punk classic "Anarchy in the U.K." for Guitar Hero III. Publisher RedOctane and parent company Activision no longer had to beg rock groups and real-life guitar heroes to take part in the game. No, those days, it seems, are long gone.
While having the original bands re-record hits songs is great, the games can't always rely on that luxury, especially with the growing number of songs on the set lists. And even when the master tapes for classic songs are found, an extremely rigorous process is required to get the tunes up to speed for the game. That's where WaveGroup Sound and musicians Nick Gallant, Marcus Henderson and Lance Taber come in. Many of the songs featured in the Guitar Hero games are actually covers; even with the growing interest from many bands, only about half of Guitar Hero III's songs are performed by the original group). As a result, Henderson (lead guitar), Taber (lead guitar), Gallant (guitar/bass/engineer) and other musicians are charged with recreating the classic tunes with a meticulous approach and painstaking attention to detail. Will Littlejohn, CEO of the San Francisco-based WaveGroup, oversees the recordings and optimizes the sound for the games.
Guitar Hero III: The Legends of Rock arrives this month.
The popularity of Guitar Hero, which hasn't slowed since the game's debut in 2005, is also a strong sign that great guitar playing is back after a grunge-induced dry-spell in the mid to late 1990s. Guitar Hero is loved by regular folks and musicians alike, and now many everyday people are picking up real guitars, hoping to become rock gods one day themselves. And with the music business continuing to decline - witness falling albums sales - the game may also become a new release platform for artists. Tom's Games talks with Littlejohn, Henderson, Taber and Gallant about making the music behind the Guitar Hero games.
David Konow: How did your studio, WaveGroup Sound, become the studio for Guitar Hero?
Will Littlejohn: Actually we had been working with Harmonix for several years prior to Guitar Hero on all the karaoke revolution products. We did all the music for those as well. We'd actually worked really closely with those guys on all those products, so when the Guitar Hero thing came up, when Red Octane actually approached Harmonix to do the project, we were kind of the natural source for all the content. We were brought into the mix right away, and they basically called us up and asked if we would be interested in being a part of the thing. Of course, we were really into it, even just hearing the concept was really exciting so we jumped right in right away. So even before Guitar Hero, we probably had been on 30 or 40 games in the last 10 years. We've done a lot of content, a lot of audio post, a lot of sound effects, dialogue and all kinds of things. We've worked on games since the mid 1990s.
We're kind of a whole group of engineers and producers, and we're almost like a collective. All the arranging, recording, mixing, vocal arrangements and all that kind of stuff are all done as a group. So it's really not like a band, it's more like a big production group; that's kind of how we do all this work. It's probably a little different than most people expect. They kind of think it's just like a studio where guys come in and lay their tracks, but it's a little bit different. We all work together on all the parts of the process.
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