Guitar Hero 3 is one of the world’s most popular games, but mastering it will take a bit of time. The typical guitar hero strum involves one push of the strum button while holding down the fret buttons associated with the notes. While this strategy works well for songs on the lower level difficulties, as you begin to push yourself to the next level, you’ll want to begin incorporating pull offs.

A pull off is one of the most difficult techniques to master in Guitar Hero 3. It requires precision timing and quick reflexes. Only certain song sections have pull off sections in them. The sections will be denoted by notes that have a white border, as opposed to the typical black one.

If you have 3 notes, let’s say green, red, and yellow, in order one right after another you could complete these notes using the pull off technique. When the first note hits, you’ll want to have all 3 fret buttons pressed down. This is the start of the pull off, and the only time during the technique that you will press the strum button.

As the notes ascend the scale you simply “pull off” the already completed fret notes as they pass across your screen. This type of action allows you to play songs and note combinations that would otherwise be too difficult to strum manually. If you want to start playing the most difficult songs on the hardest levels in the game then pull off is a technique you will need to add to your tool belt and master.

The most difficult aspect of nailing your pull offs is getting the timing down pat. On the more difficult songs, the note combinations are quite literally flying by you on the screen. You’ll have to slowly memorize the location of the pull off note combinations to really make this technique effective. But with a little bit of practice and persistence there’s no question you can start nailing those pull off’s and shredding the scales.

Another technique you may consider is the hammer on.

A hammer on is basically a pull off in reverse. Instead of pressing all of the buttons initially, you simply hold down each fret button as the new note comes onto your screen. Much like the pull off, this allows you to play increasingly faster and more difficult note combinations.

While it may take you some time to get accustomed to these new techniques, once you have them mastered and burned into your muscle memory, you too can be a guitar hero!