A bit of background

I got a question on my previous entry regarding how the game works so I thought I'd go into a separate entry on how the game works. I kind of covered a bit of this on a previous post I wrote that got lost and as I figured no-one except me would ever read this blog I never got round to re-writing it.

Pictured below is the guitar I'm using to control the game:

And for reference, below is a 'real' Squire:

So they look pretty similar right? The controller, has fewer pickups, no whammy bar and gamepad type controls where some of the dials and knobs are but it's recognizably a guitar, not just a plastic controller. The black rectangle you can see at the bottom of the neck is the string mute; a spongy pad which when engaged stops the strings vibrating. When playing the game this needs to be in place, but when using it as a guitar it should be disengaged to let the strings ring freely.

The picture below shows a screen from the game

If you envision the neck facing away from you, then the strings from left to right, represent the strings top to bottom on the guitar. The indicators on the strings move down the screen and should be played when they reach the bar at the bottom. The number inside the indicator shows where the string should be fretted, with zero being an open string. For anyone unfamiliar with guitar, the frets are the metal bands that run across the neck. When playing the second fret, for example, the string should be pressed just before the second band of metal.
So in the image above for the next note I'd hold down the top (or 6th) string at the 3rd fret and strike that same string with the pick. The next 2 notes I'd play the 6th string again but this time without fretting.
The note after that is a chord, the number on the chord represents where to put your index finger, and the height of the change of the indicator shows where to put your other fingers. So in this case the index finger goes on the 1st fret of the 6th string with other fingers going on the 3rd fret of the 4th and 5th strings. The white line under the indicator shows which strings to pluck, in this case the same strings that are being fretted. Next to the chord is the chord name, which is probably easier to remember than trying to work out the indicator.
It's a lot of information to take in and it takes some getting used to, but it's apparently similar to guitar tablature that is often used to represent guitar music in books,