Game similar to guitar Hero or Rock Band

Hello everyone. I am doing a project in my university to create a game similar to Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I wish someone could give me advice on how could I sync the song and the falling notes So far I have two ideas of how to do it:

1) Create a long strip(guitar neck) with notes placed on it and this will be faling down. I see the problem that the placement of the notes and perfect sync with the song can get a bit tedious and not to mention that the string would be quite long.

2) Create all notes separately and each one would have an attribute of time with in order to control the time at which it begins to fall.

I dont know if they are good or bad ideas, but that's what I have so far. I would like you to help me by giving ideas or talking about methods known for this kind of games. The game should be able to run smoothly, for obvious reasons, so I give the most optimal solution. Obviously there is a background animation that should be taken into account.