A song editor for "Frets On Fire"

# Tutorial

[ Creating a New Project ] [ Creating a Tempo Map ] [ Automated tempo mapping ] [ Fretting a Song ]

# Creating a New Project

Select "New" from the "File" menu:
You will see this screen:
You will need to select an OGG or MP3 file to use for this project. I've included a simple song which we will use for the purpose of this tutorial. Select "tutorial.ogg" located in the EOF folder:
Now you can fill in the basic song information:
Finally, you will tell EOF where you would like the new project to be saved. For this tutorial we will let EOF create a new folder for us. Select the "Create New Folder" radio button and fill in the name of the song folder in the edit box:
If the new project is successfully created, the EOF window should now look like this:

# Creating a Tempo Map

The first thing you will want to do when creating a song is set up a proper tempo map. While this step is not necessary to make a playable song, it will speed up the fretting process and give your song a professional touch.
You will need to turn on the metronome. Do so by selecting "Edit>Metronome" from the menu:
With the metronome on you will be able to audibly hear the beat markers while the song is playing. Press play (Space) and listen for about 4 seconds. Notice the first drum beat occurs around the 2 second mark. We want to move the first beat marker so that it matches the first beat of the song. Rewind to the beginning of the song (Home) drag the first beat marker to the 2 second mark:
Now rewind to the beginning again and press play. If the metronome sounds exactly when the first beat starts (when you first hear the drums in this case) the beat marker has been placed correctly. If not you will have to adjust it until it is correct. Here's what mine looks like when it's in the correct place:
You can also use the "Song>Properties" dialog to make adjustments to the position of the first beat marker by changing the "Delay" setting:
Once we have the first beat marker in the correct place we need to find the correct BPM for the song. You can use EOF's "Beat>Estimate BPM" function or an external program like MixMeister BPM Analyzer to find the average BPM of the song if you like. Or you can find the good average BPM using only EOF by listening for the start of the second measure (typically the beat after the second snare drum) and adjusting the fourth beat marker to line up with the start of the first beat of that measure. Listening to the song we can hear that the second measure starts around the 4.5 second mark so let's move the fourth beat marker:
Rewind (Left key) a few seconds and listen to see if the fourth beat marker is in the correct place. If not, adjust it until it is correct.
Notice the BPM at the first beat marker has changed from 120. It should be around 106 if the beat markers are placed correctly. This is roughly the correct BPM for the song so we want to set the BPM of the entire song to 106. The easiest way to do this is to use the "Reset BPM" option from the "Beat" menu:
Choose the option to erase BPM changes after the first beat and you will be prompted to confirm erasing the BPM changes. Clicking "OK" will set the BPM of the entire song to 106.
If you are having trouble hearing exactly where the beats are you may find it useful to play the song back at 75% or 50% speed. To do so select "Playback Rate" from the "Edit" menu:
By default, the "time stretch" feature is enabled, which will allow the chart to play back at less than full speed without lowering the audio's pitch. If this feature causes too much stuttering on your computer, you can disable it to use the older playback method that would slow the audio's pitch when the playback speed is less than 100%. Now that we have a close BPM value, we will need to listen through the entire song to ensure the beat markers are correct throughout. For most songs you will need to make small adjustments throughout as usually when a band plays they do not keep an exact BPM the entire song.
It is important to note that when compensating for slight variations in BPM over the course of the song you are encouraged to set anchors (select a beat and hit the 'A' key) at least once every measure or two. EOF readjusts all the beat markers in between the marker you click-and-drag and the previous/next anchors. This can cause earlier beats to be moved inadvertently so it's best to set anchors every so often even if the beats are already lined up correctly, as this will ensure they stay in place when you click and drag other beats. Anchored beats are indicated by a red arrow pointing down at the beat marker. Moving a beat marker with the mouse automatically makes that beat an anchor.
You may have noticed those yellow numbers displayed next to the beat markers. Those tell the placement of each measure and its number, based on the specified Time Signature (see Beat->Time Signature). This isn't information that's even used in all versions of Frets on Fire, but it may be useful if you intend to use Time Signature information as a charting aid. If you select the first beat marker and select Beat>Time Signature>4/4, it will set the time signature, marking every 1 of 4 beat markers with a number. When the beat is selected, the Information Panel will also display beat and measure numbering information.
Depending on the song, it might even help to see a graphical representation of the audio in what is called a waveform graph (see Song->Waveform graph in the Manual for details). You can display this graph by opening the Song menu, opening the Waveform graph submenu and selecting "Show", or you can use the F5 shortcut key:
As you can see from the picture below, the goal is to have the beats line up with the drummer. Although the graph won't always help you immediately identify the drum audio, it may help you make fine tuning adjustments when your hearing is in doubt:
Once you have reached the end of the song it is a good idea to rewind to the beginning and listen to the whole song with the metronome on. If some beats are a little off go ahead and adjust them until they are correct. Having a correct tempo map is the key to creating a high quality note chart.
Now that the tempo map is finished it might be a good time to save your work. You may also wish to save a an extra copy of the project (see "File->Save As") in case the tempo map is altered irreversibly later on in the edit process.

# Automated tempo mapping

If you're having difficulty creating the tempo map for a song, if you don't need results that are perfect, or if you even just want to get to a starting point that you can refine, EOF can import timing information generated by the program Sonic Visualiser. See the "Sonic Visualiser Import" section in the manual for specific details about using this feature. For the purposes of the tutorial song, it took a couple tries to get decent results. The tempo estimation function did not work well, neither did the beat estimation with the default options. However, using the beat estimation with the "old" beat tracking method appeared pretty accurate inside of Sonic Visualiser:
You may find that you get consistently better results when selecting "Broadband energy rise" as the detection function, but it depends on the audio itself. When importing the timing into EOF, the results generally aren't as accurate as authoring by hand, but the beat positions are usable at least as a starting point:
Be careful though, at the end of the chart, when the drum stops playing, it confused Sonic Visualiser's beat estimation and the tempo gets a little crazy:
If this happens, you may need to remove some of the un-needed tempo changes. You can do this by hand one tempo change at a time with the "Beat>Delete anchor" function, or if all of the tempo changes until the end of a chart (starting at any particular beat) are too inaccurate, you can select the first of those beats that has the offending tempo change (in this case the first beat before measure 36, which has a tempo of 105.45BPM), use the "Beat>Reset BPM" function and pick the option to remove the tempo changes occurring after the selected beat. Making corrections to automated tempo maps may take a couple minutes, but it can still be faster than doing it all from scratch if the song requires lots of tempo changes, unlike a completely synthesized example like the example song used in this tutorial:

# Fretting a Song

Now let's start adding notes to our song. The first thing we want to do is select a proper grid snap setting. For this song 1/16 should suffice:
Grid Snap allows you to more easily control the spacing between notes. The setting represents the fraction of a measure to which notes will snap. 1/4 will snap to each quarter of a measure (or each whole beat). We choose 1/16 for this tutorial because the smallest note in the song we are fretting is 1/16th of a measure in length. The Grid Snap setting also affects note tail length operations in that it will snap the tail to the previous/next grid snap position when changing the length of the tail.
Rewind to the beginning of the song and listen until you hear the first guitar notes played. Notice the guitar between the 11 and 12 second mark:
We want to place some notes where the guitar is. Move the mouse to where you heard the guitar notes:
Notice that you can see the note colors where the mouse is hovering (assuming the Edit Mode is set to Piano Roll, see Edit Modes for details). Right-click to place the notes where you think they should go:
We've placed our first notes now but the third note needs to be longer. Click on the third note to select it and scroll the mouse wheel up (or press the ']' key) to extend it. It should now look like this:
Now we listen for more notes and place them where we think they should go. It's really up to you where you put the notes but try and be realistic.
At the 21 second mark we notice something new. There are note chords. Making a chord is simply adding a new color to an existing note by right-clicking. I'm going to make mine a blue-purple chord:
Next we're going to learn how to copy and paste notes. Many songs have riffs or melodies which repeat multiple times. We can save a lot of time if we copy the notes for these repeating parts instead of re-fretting them.
Fret the song up until the 38 second mark. Between the 29 second mark and the 38 second mark is a part which repeats later on and with variation so let's copy the notes to the clipboard. Select the first note/chord after the 29 second mark:
Now forward (Right key) to the 34 second mark, hold Shift and click the last note/chord there:
This selects all the notes from the first note you clicked to the note you Shift+clicked. We want to copy these so we go to "Copy" on the "Edit" menu:
Now let's forward to where we want to paste the copied notes. Move the song position to somewhere in the beat where we want the pasted notes to start:
Select "Paste" from the "Edit" menu to paste the copied notes:
Listening to the song we can see that the last note is different this time so let's change it. I want to change my green-yellow chord to a green note so I right-click the yellow note to remove it:
Also, notice there are a few extra notes around the 45 second mark so let's fret those:
You can place the new notes without shortening the green note as it will be automatically shortened when new notes are placed on it's tail.
You can also use the Catalog to copy sections of a song from one part to another. See the Catalog section of Editing Songs and "Song->Catalog" for information on how to use the Catalog. Here's what the screen looks like with the first repeating guitar part added to the catalog and the catalog view turned on:
Pressing the play button in the Catalog view will play back that specific entry so you can easily compare what's in the Catalog to other parts of the song.
Between the 47 and 48 second marker the entire section we just made (from 29 to 47 seconds) repeats so let's copy and paste all those notes.
Fill in 1:06 to 1:26 however you see fit. Congratulations, you have just fretted your first song using EOF. Don't forget to save your work.