I've been learning guitar thanks to Rocksmith since 2011, and it has been a great experience.

 

Now I'm interested in branching out to other instruments and I've started trying to learn piano with Synthesia.

 

I've got all the required gear, and I think their game is pretty good, but the variety of songs is somewhat lacking.

 

The game uses midi files for its songs, so in theory it's a very easy format to develop customs for.

Unsurprisingly the official forum for the game doesn't support sharing of midi files for copyrighted popular music, and most of the midi files I've found online for popular songs have been of vastly variable quality.

 

So I thought I'd ask here. Does anyone here know of any good sources for Synthesia custom songs?

Also, I was wondering how feasible it might be to convert Rocksmith customs into Synthesia's midi format? A midi file is essentially just a list of notes, which is what's at the core of a Rocksnith custom too.

Any ideas?

This might help, for a start? http://www.synthesiagame.com/wiki/Finding_New_Songs

 

I'm not sure on the technical side of things, but I'm sure you'd be able to use guitar pro files in some way, shape or form

if you only need a midi file, EOF create one during the creation process of a CDLC, GP can also export music with this format. But i'm not sure about the fact that the midi file will be available in the .psarc file.

Thanks firekorn!

I'll have to investigate EOF.

Existing CDLC can be unpacked and opened with EOF can't they?

if you only need a midi file, EOF create one during the creation process of a CDLC

Perfect, that's exactly what I want to do.

I figured out how to unpack existing psarc files to get the XML of the arrangements, and how to import that into EOF.

I haven't figured out how to get EOF to create a MIDI file though. Is there something I need to adjust in the preferences?

I think it's always created on save, note sure about a particular settings for this, it seems like it was always like this for me...

I think it's always created on save, note sure about a particular settings for this, it seems like it was always like this for me...

Yeah actually, you're right. There's a notes.mid file in the project directory.

EOF doesn't export a standard musical notation style MIDI. MIDI just happens to be the file format used for various rhythm games like Frets on Fire, Phase Shift, Rock Band, etc. The only Rock Band tracks that are similar to a normal musical MIDI are those for vocals and pro keys, as they store the real musical notes.

 

If there's enough demand for it, I could probably have EOF export a musical MIDI file that has the right pitches for the tablature (ie. the notes it plays with the MIDI tones feature). Let me know what you guys think.

EOF doesn't export a standard musical notation style MIDI. MIDI just happens to be the file format used for various rhythm games like Frets on Fire, Phase Shift, Rock Band, etc. The only Rock Band tracks that are similar to a normal musical MIDI are those for vocals and pro keys, as they store the real musical notes.If there's enough demand for it, I could probably have EOF export a musical MIDI file that has the right pitches for the tablature (ie. the notes it plays with the MIDI tones feature). Let me know what you guys think.

Yeah, that'd be really helpful for me, and anyone else who was trying to port songs from Rocksmith to Synthesia.

Synthesia is in active development, and apparently they're planning on making use of Music XML in an upcoming version. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but since Rocksmith arrangements are also a type of XML file, maybe further cross compatibility could be achieved.

 

If you were interested in adding Synthesia to the list of music games that EOF supports maybe you could talk with Nicholas over on https://www.synthesiagame.com/forum/ and find out how best to export to formats that Synthesia can work with...

I currently am in your exact same position Spiritofcat, i just got a digital piano (Korg sp170s) and im constantly using synthesia, one tip i can give you is to use the words "midi synthesia" in youtube search, a looot of the tutorials there have download links to the midis they show, also this:

 

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110826193242AApRWgr

 

good luck!

Music XML is a standard xml notation for music sheet but that's not what EOF uses GP or Sibelius can export in Music XML format and probably other music creation program.

This might be a dumb idea, but if you download guitar pro tab files from ultimate-guitar.com or some such, there's often piano tracks in there, and you can use Tux Guitar to export to midi, no?

Guitar pro can do it by himself too.

I wouldn't know, I haven't bought it :)

I wrote a new feature into EOF that will allow you to save vocal and pro guitar/bass tracks to a MIDI file where all the pitches are saved as per a normal music MIDI. I imported this into Guitar Pro and it seemed to work alright.

I wrote a new feature into EOF that will allow you to save vocal and pro guitar/bass tracks to a MIDI file where all the pitches are saved as per a normal music MIDI. I imported this into Guitar Pro and it seemed to work alright.

Is it possible to import the rocksmith xml arrangement files into the pro guitar/bass tracks and use that feature?

I'd fiddle around with the program to see for myself, but the computer it is on is having some problems at the moment.

Yes, that will work. A big limitation here is that MIDI doesn't natively support pretty much any of the special techniques. The only one that might be do-able in MIDI (pitch bend) isn't being written by EOF at this time. Unfortunately, that MIDI event isn't capable of anything more than "bend this amount", and even then the MIDI specification doesn't require manufacturers/programmers to follow a standard about how that amount translates to notes. Apparently it's "recommended" for the range of the pitch bend event to be 2 semitones. I'll probably have to leave it to the MIDI enthusiasts around here to let me know what needs to be changed with the feature.

Just for information, Guitar pro doesn't export bend in midi or at least the program i used behind never used the information (Fl studio/Ableton Live) and i'm not sure how synthesia will handle this information since not all synthesizer have the ability to do a bend.

Yes, that will work. A big limitation here is that MIDI doesn't natively support pretty much any of the special techniques. The only one that might be do-able in MIDI (pitch bend) isn't being written by EOF at this time. Unfortunately, that MIDI event isn't capable of anything more than "bend this amount", and even then the MIDI specification doesn't require manufacturers/programmers to follow a standard about how that amount translates to notes. Apparently it's "recommended" for the range of the pitch bend event to be 2 semitones. I'll probably have to leave it to the MIDI enthusiasts around here to let me know what needs to be changed with the feature.

Thanks!

I'm not too concerned about special techniques like bends, slides, vibrato, etc. As long as it can give me the basic notes and the correct timing I'll be happy enough.

Finally got time to try it out, and yes, it works!

I used Rise Against - Swing Life Away as a simple test case and tried converting just the Bass arrangement first to avoid over-complicating things.

 

The midi file created by EOF was immediately readable by Synthesia, although being a bass arrangement, all the notes were way down past the left end of my 61 key keyboard.

 

I used a free program called MuseScore to tweak the midi file into a more useful form for my setup.

The first step was to transpose the whole thing up by two octaves to bring it into my keyboard's range.

 

Once I got that done I noticed that each string of the bass arrangement is represented as an individual instrument in the midi file, and so Synthesia interprets each string as being played by a different hand.

 

I managed to combine them all into a single instrument in MuseScore though, so now the whole bass arrangement of Swing Life Away is playable for one hand in Synthesia.

 

Here's the midi file if you want to check it out for yourself:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwn-F1yXFEVHenpJeGNQZHNwVHM/edit?usp=sharing

Each string is being written to a separate channel, it doesn't sound like Synthesia likes this. Are there any good reasons to keep the music MIDI exporting this way?

Each string is being written to a separate channel, it doesn't sound like Synthesia likes this. Are there any good reasons to keep the music MIDI exporting this way?

Synthesia doesn't really mind. It can handle large numbers of channels, but it only lets you actually play two of them with your own hands, it just automates all the rest.

 

I've continued working with Swing Life Away, tackling the lead arrangement now, and having some trouble when I try to combine the channels in MuseScore. I end up with stupidly long sustains and way more than 6 notes being played at once.

 

While having each string on its own channel would possibly be useful for splitting the arrangement into 2 hands, the trouble I've been having when trying to combine them makes me think it probably isn't the best way to go.

 

Writing each track (rea_bass, real_guitar, real_guitar22, etc.) out to the midi as a separate channel is probably a more optimal way to go.

That way each one is consolidated as a single hand in Synthesia, which can be a little awkward perhaps, but it's probably easier to split one track into two if needed than to manually combine six tracks into one.

I'll go ahead and post about this on the Synthesia forum to get some suggestions. If I can change the feature to use a single set of the most conventional practices, it would be a lot easier than having lots of configurable options.

I'll go ahead and post about this on the Synthesia forum to get some suggestions. If I can change the feature to use a single set of the most conventional practices, it would be a lot easier than having lots of configurable options.

Yep, that sounds reasonable. Thanks again for all your efforts!

This russian site has lots of MIDI, some hard to find in others.

There's the thread on the Synthesia forum:

https://www.synthesiagame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6537

 

Basically, the developer is saying the next major release of Synthesia is going to handle things very differently and would make it easy to mix two MIDI tracks into one left/right hand combination to play. In the mean time, I could have all notes in an arrangement write to the same MIDI channel which should at least make it less work. I could probably also have each track's notes use a different channel so combining them in a MIDI editor should be as simple as copy/paste and then they'll still be maintained as separate playable parts in the current version of Synthesia. Let me know if you'd like me to make these changes.