When Activision first unveiled Guitar Hero World Tour earlier this year, we were a little surprised at how much the demos focused on the new music creation studio. After all, this would be the first GH game to add drums and vocals and allow you to play as a four-piece band, and a MIDI studio that you'd navigate with a guitar controller seemed to have limited appeal at best. And so we waited patiently for details on the actual setlist and gameplay, saving any opinions on the studio until we could actually check it out for ourselves.

With the release of GHWT coming up this Sunday, that time has finally come. We set aside some time for an in-depth look at exactly how the studio will work, and rather than just muddle through on our own, we went straight to the source: We spent a full day at Neversoft's offices, where the Lead Designer on the music studio, Travis Chen, walked us through all the studio's features and the creation of a song before turning us loose to create our own rock anthems.

Warning: We're going to go into a lot of detail in this article. If you just want a basic overview of how the studio works, this ain't it. But if you're really interested in the studio and want to know how every last corner of the studio works, there's a good chance we'll answer your question somewhere on the next five pages.

Rock School

When we arrived at Neversoft, we explained our goals: we'd composed two fairly simple songs before our visit (yes, we play real instruments), hoping to get a feel for how hard it would be to recreate them in the studio. For the first song, we'd have Chen walking us through the studio's functionality, and then we'd be completely on our own for the second song.


To start, we spent a few minutes discussing the big-picture abilities and limitations of the studio. While it's extremely impressive what Neversoft has been able to build within the context of a videogame, there are naturally some major constraints. Here are the most important points:

  • Songs can be built with five tracks (bass, drums, rhythm guitar, lead guitar and keyboard) using samples built into the studio.

  • Songs are limited to three minutes long.

  • Tracks can be recorded either "live" in the Recording Studio area, or constructed using "GH Mix," a sequencer where you can build and edit a track note-by-note.

  • There's no functionality to record live vocals (which would add a number of both technical and legal issues).

  • Recreations of existing songs will not be permitted, and any songs that violate an existing copyright will be removed from the upcoming GHTunes download site.

  • As tracks are created in the studio, you're also creating the Expert note charts for your song; the studio automatically scales down the charts for lower difficulties.

    With all this in mind, we set out to build our first song. Rock!