Top Player Interview: Lilirock Plays Guitar Hero Overhand Piano-Style

5Frets interviews top Guitar Hero player Lilirock to learn more about her unusual playing technique

Manon "Lilirock" Desbiens's extraordinary skill at Guitar Hero has earned her a #15 ranking for highest Guitar Hero 5 Expert Guitar Career score on the competitive ScoreHero.com leaderboard.  But the kicker is her very unusual playing technique: she plays the guitar overhand like a piano, using all 5 fingers on her left hand in reverse order compared to normal.  Her pinky handles the green fret and her thumb handles orange – even for trills!

To get a better idea, watch this video of Lilirock's 100% perfect FC run of Rush – "The Spirit of Radio" in GH5:

Lilirock talked technique with 5Frets recently in an interview:

5Frets: Tell us a bit about yourself for readers who aren't familiar with you.

Lilirock: I'm a member of PMS Clan, "PMS lilirock" is my member name.. You can view my profile page here.  I've been a pro member of the Guitar Hero/Rock Band division for a little over a year, but I'm not an active member of the division right now because I'm taking a break from competitive training; I just had a baby on last sept. 1st, and also stopped playing during most of my pregnancy.. I'm just getting back into shape XD

5Frets: What led to you playing the guitar overhand?  How did you start?

Lilirock: I actually started playing normally (the guitar style) when GH3 came out, and became pretty good that way (was up to about 25 FCs in the game) in a few months, but a wrist injury forced me to stop playing completely for many weeks.. In the meantime I had heard on Scorehero about f4phantom2500, the only one other "known" overhand player, who was (and still is) one of the best GH players in the world… His playing style had caught my attention since I've always played the piano since I was 7, and I thought I could give that interesting method a try; at the same time it would be a lot better (less painful) for my previously injured wrist. So I did! It was very confusing at first, but after a couple hours of practice, it was a lot of fun, but also painless for my wrist, so I just stuck with it and realized I could become pretty good at this style too

5Frets: The piano style method is so interesting because every fingering position is different than normal.  What are the Pros & Cons of playing overhand vs. traditional style? Also, does it bother you having your pinky handle the green?

Lilirock: The biggest pro about playing overhand is definitely the use of the 5 fingers, so never having to slide back and forth to play green and orange frets. The thumb is actually almost as strong as my index finger, so I use it a lot too for orange trills, it never bothers me to use it.  So this is also an advantage I think. Also there are many sections in songs where people tap, like beginning and ending of Through the Fire and Flames, that are actually easy to play one-handed piano-style, so I don't need to tap as much, so that's also a plus. 'Cause it's easy to anchor green with the pinky (or red with ring finger) and tap with my strongest fingers

On the other side, since green and red are used a lot in every song, it's clearly a disadvantage to have my weakest fingers on those frets. Like in The Spirit Of Radio, I found it very hard to play the song many times in a row because I'd loose consistency due to my pinky/ring finger getting tired quickly. So getting the FC took a lot of focus to have my fingers do what I wanted haha!

Also we obviously don't hold the guitar neck, so it's tricky to have the guitar be really steady, and always know exactly where to press on the frets!  Fast strumming was also quite a challenge due to a new guitar angle, but after practicing a while, I don't notice much difference anymore..

And it doesn't really bother me having my pinky handle the green.. I know it's a bit difficult 'cause green is overused and pinky is weak, but in the other hand I use it to my advantage for tapping parts where I can easily just anchor the green

5Frets: What unique passages in certain songs really put a smile on your face when you play them correctly?  What are your favorites?  (examples: triplets, zig zags, fast chord changes, Raining Blood Mosh, Flood, Freebird descending scales, etc.)

Lilirock: I particularly enjoy playing songs with hard solos, but not insane ones (that only REALLY top players will hit with consistency), like Cult of Personality's solos in GH3, I'm pretty happy when I hit them; also in GH3 I can think of Cliffs of Dover solo A & B, which is also one of my favorite songs; solos in Slash Guitar Battle that have lots of scales, triplets and zig zags, those are great to play; and the hard solo in Stricken, I actually didn't hit it very often, and first time I got it was in front of a little crowd at a sponsored event, that was a pretty amazing feeling And most of all, songs where there's a combination of a bunch of chords (I really like those!) and some nice solo sections (like The Spirit of Radio, Sultans Of Swing in GH5, Mr.  Crowley, Trapped Under Ice in GHWT, etc.) are definitely my favorites!

5Frets: What is your strategy for mastering a difficult song/section that is giving you trouble?

Lilirock: Hmm I actually need to work on one, now that I'm getting to the hardest songs… Because until now, the only thing I did is to take problematic sections into practice mode a couple of times (usually on full speed), until I get it, then hope I'll be lucky to hit it next in a real run Oh also I sometimes look at the song charts to see when to finish on downstrum or upstrum, for example, or to figure out some confusing parts like really fast/weird solos. I usually don't like to practice the same sections over and over again to finally nail them, but with really hard songs I don't have the choice, I'll need to work on lower speeds quite a bit too!

5Frets: How often do you use Practice mode, if at all?

Lilirock: I use it sometimes, but not often enough.. I'd get a lot better if I took the time to practice all hard parts of really hard songs in practice mode, but I usually don't do it, mainly because my playing time is actually very limited and I hate to waste it on practice mode instead of having fun playing the songs! Or if I practice something, I'll only spend 15-20 minutes on it, then move to something else 'cause I get a little bored haha! For example, I just 5 starred Through The Fire and Flames for the first time in career mode quite recently, and the main reason I got it so late is that I never ever take the sections into practice (except for the intro when I learned it), and only play the song once in a while.

5Frets: What is your biggest weakness or toughest challenge in GH?

Lilirock: My biggest weakness is probably the insanely fast or long slide solos in the hardest songs of each game, like Satch Boogie in GHWT (I'm sooo bad at solos D/F), pretty much all the harder solos in Through The Fire and Flames and The Devil Went Down to Georgia, etc. I don't think I'll ever FC stuff like that! Oh also songs with lots of very fast strumming (Six, Misirlou in GH2, ending of Assassin in GHWT, etc.) are really tough for me, I need to improve my fast strumming skills a lot too

[5Frets: Keep in mind Lili's piano technique changes the way her other hand handles strumming, too.

See the strumming in her Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting) FC video.]

5Frets: What do you think is responsible for separating you from the rest of the pack?  What allows you to be part of the tiny group of people who can FC songs as difficult as The Spirit of Radio, which most will never do?  Is it just lots of practice or is there more to it?

Personally I have noticed that the vast majority of top GH players all have musical background/experience.  Do you think this is the major contributor?

Lilirock: It's definitely not just lots of practice in my opinion (even though it might be it for some people), it sure does help, but since I don't practice that much myself (right now I'm very lucky if I can get 2 hours of playing in one day.. I'll often spend many days/weeks without playing), I really think my musical/piano background is the main reason I improved quite fast in guitar hero.

So yes I think this is the major contributor in my case : I've played the piano for all my life (although a lot less after I graduated from high school), and I got to a level where I could play pretty much anything I wanted, and in fact I think that piano players even have a bigger advantage than guitar players at this game (frets are more similar to piano keys haha!).

Of course guitar helps too (I've played a bit, but I'm nowhere near good…) for fingers/hands coordination and rhythm. I also think I can be really focused, have lots of concentration when I play something, which probably helps as well, it sure did for my Do You Feel Like We Do (Live) FC, a ~14 minutes long song

Btw, please forgive me if some things are wrong/weird in my writing, English is my 2nd language (I'm french from Quebec) XD

5Frets: Lili, your English is perfect!  Thanks so much for giving us this excellent interview.

If you'd like to see more of Lili's overhand FC videos, head over to her YouTube channel.