GH3: "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" Expert Guitar FC

0:00 "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" FC
7:11 Slideshow of all GH DLC FCs (on guitar)

Perhaps the most infamous DLC chart in Guitar Hero history, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" still holds up today as one of the franchise's toughest FCs. Hot off the trails of GH3's success, this song came along quickly to rival (arguably even surpass) the insane difficulty of "Through the Fire and Flames," which had already frazzled plastic guitar enthusiasts worldwide.

Looking back, it's impressive how much variety of challenge this chart holds. There aren't many free sections at all, and the hard bits pose threats for differing reasons. For example, before even attempting either solo, the chart contains a few hurdles in the form of really fast strumming. I distinctly recall failing out of the intro strumming (0:14) repeatedly as a child because strumming that fast felt physically impossible at the time. (Granted, with the technique I used back in 2007, it probably was.) Even now that I can strum that fast, hitting a section like that was never a given, but the second strumming bit at 1:22 is a lot harder. I would constantly miss here for seemingly no reason, but I eventually discovered a breakthrough method by accident: looking away from the notes entirely. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it actually helped a lot. I think the problem was that I was overthinking the strum speed in trying to accurately "land" on the last YB note rather than just playing the damn notes. You can't really tell based on the camera angle, but I'm looking at the bookshelf next to my TV during that part. Going based on feel rather than vision ended up making the section a lot more comfortable.

With enough practice, the first solo became fairly reliable for me to hit, but getting to that point of consistency definitely isn't easy. When I still fumbled Verse 2 regularly, I'd occasionally choke 1:40 out of nervousness. 1:49 is genuinely quite awkward, especially with transitioning into the fast green strumming. I also sometimes screwed up the double yellow at 2:31 and the descending bits right after, as the jumps are a bit unnatural. Watch out for the taps at 2:48, but after that, I'd say we're in the territory of a genuine attempt at the FC -- the next obstacle is Victory Solo.

Victory Solo is one of GH's longest and perhaps its hardest guitar solo. Even after spending hours slaving away at practice mode to learn each part (as I did), the stamina and sheer focus to get through the entire solo without screwing up is insane. Even when the patterns aren't too tricky, they're just fast enough to wear out the fretting hand a bit, which then weakens the odds of hitting the harder parts. Many sections also have random strums thrown in (the first of which comes at 3:24), which are easy to miss and not always the most intuitive to hit. 3:35 is the first big hurdle here as it's just very awkward. My tapping method looks ridiculous, but practicing it a lot helped. Immediately after, the strums at 3:45 are awful and the 3:51 zig section is one of the solo's hardest. It isn't very easily tappable, but extremely precise and tiring with one hand, making it a total no-win situation. 4:11 is another part with really nasty strums, and I even had a 1-miss run at 4:15 that I posted yesterday. Victory Solo K (4:19) has some absolutely brutal tapping with ladders and is probably the solo section I had the least consistency with. Miraculously, I got the FC on my first run to this point, but I was nervous even for basic stuff like 4:34 here. 4:48 is pretty fast, but really, it's just a segue into Victory Solo R (4:56), the big finale.

I spent ages practicing K and R and it paid off massively. R is a section that simply must be learned. There is no other path to consistency. Even then, I was petrified of missing one of its many curveballs on this run. It's almost 30 seconds of pure anxiety with weird spacing, odd tapping, and awkward strums. If you slow down the video, you can see I almost lose the run at 5:23. I tap the red before the yellow by accident, then hit it again unnecessarily before the blue (almost forgetting to press down again to hit the next red note). Somehow, it worked out, but I played most of the final second of this solo completely wrong. I also thought for sure I'd miss Verse 4 (5:41), but I had enough mental fortitude to remember to go slow on the strums. To anyone struggling with that part, that's the best advice I can offer. Even then, it was, as I said, "the coinflip of the century." I was very lucky in my grind for this FC, as I expected for it to take longer.

Well, this is it: the final 5-fret GH FC on expert guitar. With this song done, I've now FC'd every on-disc and every DLC song in the Guitar Hero series on guitar, bass, and drums. I guess I'm running out of excuses to finish off vocals. I have 5 vocals songs left to complete the OMBFSFC and I've been working on vocals DLC on WT, but it's slow progress now.

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