Tiers

Tiers (known as gigs in Guitar Hero World Tour), not to be confused with venues (stages), are the levels of groups of songs. Typically, lower-tier songs have easy-to-play songs (on Expert difficulty) while higher-tier songs or venues have more challenging songs (on Expert difficulty) for a particular instrument or in a Band/Cooperative play.

In early Guitar Hero games, setlist tiers would have their own names separate from their associated venue, such as the "Opening Licks" (setlist tier 1 in Guitar Hero), "Axe-Grinders" (setlist tier 2 in Guitar Hero), "Battle for Your Soul" (setlist tier 8 in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock) and the player can pick their own venue to play any song at. Starting in Guitar Hero World Tour and further console titles, tier names now goes by their venue name as their songs in Career are always played at certain venues.

While players can choose to play almost any song in a tier in most Guitar Hero video games in Career mode with the exception of encore songs until they are unlocked by playing other songs in that tier/gig, in Guitar Hero World Tour's Career mode, all songs in a gig (venue's setlist) are played in a single playlist in the order they are listed in and the gig must be completed in one go (failed songs can be restarted), otherwise the player would have to restart the entire gig from the first song of the gig shall they quit game before finishing gig's setlist.