Billkwando

I've never tried any of yours... what would you say is the highest quality (most like ODLC quality) CDLC you've done?  I'll give it a try!

I would suggest any (or all! lol) of the top 4 I listed. Link is super fun and rewarding to play. Vivid Colors is a bit pop rock, but that's probably the one that pops into my head first when I think of ones I'm proud of. I honestly try make everything ODLC quality. Blurry Eyes is one I've worked on the entire time I've been charting, pretty much. As If in a Dream is pretty fancy too (from their debut, some Morrissey influence there, I think). Oh and Niji....I think everybody should try to play Niji.....that one is special...but very demanding on your right hand.

Be sure to check the release notes, as I often suggest pickup config or position (unless you only have 1 pickup! haha)

If you try more than one, let me know which one you like best. :D

(Oh, and all those Prince songs, but those can wait, LOL)

Those chord are doable without any trouble and they are pretty standard shape around barre chord so nothing crazy at all.

 

As for posting, it doesn't have something that you'll update in the next minute, it's just that the more activity there is and discussion the more interesting it will be to share and talk about CDLC creation.

 

Overall i didn't had any issue regarding the note themselves, might need to do some slow speed RR to really check things properly but at least i wasn't shocked by obvious mistake :)

You must have big hands! LOL I can play Fs and Cs all day long, but when you add that extra pinky, everything goes to hell. Any time there's a chord that is 4 frets next to each other and going up in a ramp kinda shape like that, and it needs to be done quickly, my pinky is like "D00D!"

1-------------

----2---------

--------3-----

------------4-

That was a pretty sweet tab. I haven't even started editing it for accuracy yet. It's nice (and rare) when you get one and it's basically perfect. All I had to do was edit and flatten 2 other tracks of overdubbed guitars down into 1, and that's pretty much all I've done so far. I took the day off work tomorrow, so I can finish it tonight/tomorrow and get started on my 50th L'Arc song, for this weekend.

I was surprised how well the overdrive and solo tone worked (aside from the volumes, of course), but when I start a new L'Arc song, I always load it up in the package for a different song from the same album, and often the tones are nearly ready to go, with very little tweaking. In the case of the solo tone here, I'm going to have to drop an effect (probably the reverb or the EQ) so I can slot a chorus effect in there. I can't think of any other time I've needed to put chorus on a Ken solo, but I'm pretty sure that's what I'm hearing (unless it's a flanger, which I definitely HAVE had to do on L'Arc songs before).

Whatchoo think?

So i did a quick playthrough of the lead and the thing that bother me the most is the inconsistency in sustain and hanshape length. You also have some slide that should be unpitch instead of pitched like the one going up to the 12th fret from one chord to another.

 

There's a few part where you could easily add some handshape (you have clear arpeggios with barre chord shape that don't have any).

 

It's an interesting start and the tones could use some volume adjustment a little to make it easier to test things up.

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that! Thanks! :D

Seph was encouraging me to post something up, to get the ball rolling, but the problem is that I typically work on only one custom at a time (though I do have ones in various states of temporary abandonment). LOL I'm still getting the hang of how this group is supposed to work. This is the one I'm working on now, and I just hadn't gotten to those things yet. I'm pretty into arpeggio boxes.

The sustain thing I might've missed though!

How about some of those ungodly chords? The one where you have to go ♫juggaJING!♫ before the starts of the verses (that happen to have a flanger tone, at the moment)....I'm like "WTF, Ken!?"

Artist : L'Arc~en~Ciel

Song : The Fourth Avenue Cafe

Path up for testing : Lead, Bass

Tuning : E Standard

Tones : Placeholders

Dynamic Difficulty : Yes

Link : https://mega.nz/#!t1cFUJoL!DUBea-y-1fww7Dbmiwv4Dy8yQGP-Qu7aS1pdFaLyA6I

Finger spaghetti ahoy.

Hello all!

I'm currently approaching a personal milestone, on the verge of charting my 50th CDLC by the Japanese mega-group, L'Arc~en~Ciel, and my 100th CDLC overall. Sorry for the long post, feel free to skim! Haha

If you don't already know me, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Bill, and I've been a CF member and CDLC charter since early 2014, nearly 4 years. Many charters have come and gone since I started. I guess some burn out after a while, some lose interest, and some just don't have the time, due to real-life.....or maybe they get fed up with only 1% of the people who download their stuff ever saying "thanks" or anything at all...lol

I mention it because every now and then, someone expresses surprise that I haven't gone MIA yet! And I don't plan to, unless I keel over or something. :)

I'm still hanging in here, releasing new customs as often as I can (admittedly, sometimes taking long breaks). I don't have kids, I don't work weekends, and my wife plays guitar, so she understands my hobbies and obsessions all too well, and supports my charting madness (which sometimes takes up the majority of my weekend).

Since I first started charting CDLC, my goal has been to "fill in the blanks", so to speak, for the bands that I like, that I thought *should* be on Customsforge, but weren't. (Or in the case of stuff like Extreme and Danzig, bands my wife likes! LOL)

"What, The Smiths aren't on here?" *charts some*

"What, there's no Prince on here?" *charts some*

Same for They Might Be Giants, Pizzicato Five, 10,000 Maniacs, Tom Waits, as well as a few more obscure artists

So I figured once I got the ball rolling on a given group, other folks would hop in and chart some, and over time many have (and sometimes they haven't, which is fine too!). Naturally, my early stuff was a little rough around the edges, but I kept trying.

I definitely emphasize quality over quantity. I know there are people who seemingly download a tab and just slap some tones on it. That's not me. I spend a lot of time on tones and volume levels. I update my tabs whenever I think I can improve them and I totally go overboard on writing release notes and tracking changes and updates on my CDLC (just in case folks are interested, and also so other charters get an idea of the type of issues they might like to look for in their own charts, if that makes any sense). I spend a lot of time on my customs typically, so that's partly why I haven't been more prolific. I use existing GP tabs, at least for the L'Arc stuff, which range from amazing to horrible, and I spend a lot of time trying to ensure all the notes are right (though I do make mistakes, sometimes!)

Oh noes! TL;DR Alert! Better get to the point! 

Once I started charting L'Arc songs, I just kinda went hog wild, because they're just so damned fun/interesting/challenging to play on guitar. My wife and I are actually huge fans of the solo albums of Hyde, the singer of L'Arc~en~Ciel, and didn't really know L'Arc that well. Later on, when I joined CF, I was already a pretty big L'Arc fan, but had never thought much about the guitar aspect. I quickly learned that Hyde's music was rather simplistic from a guitar standpoint, with lots of power chords and Drop D tuning.

L'Arc, on the other hand (with their guitarist, Ken.... that's just "Ken", lol) feature a galaxy of guitar techniques, and super interesting arrangements that are nearly never boring, and give you lots of stuff to do over the course of a song. They also have a phenomenal bassist (Tetsu, now known as "Tetsuya", for some reason), so if you ever feel underwhelmed by the bass in the average rock song, this guy's for you.

Hyde also has an amazing voice, not exaggerating. Maybe not as versatile as Mike Patton, but who is? The first comparison I ever made (when I first heard his song Season's Call) was to say that Hyde's voice reminded me of Geoff Tate of Queensryche. Realize that, regardless of what you might think of QR's musical style, that's high praise indeed.

If you've never heard of L'Arc before, they're kinda like the Japanese U2, in terms of stature. They came to America for one show, and reportedly sold out Madison Square Garden! Their music is definitely rock, but they don't restrict themselves to any particular style within the rock genre, so their sound can range from pop-ish to practically metal. Like any band that's been around for over 20 years, they have different phases of their career, so try not to judge them off of only 1 or 2 songs. ;)

Each of the four members knows how to play the guitar, so they each contribute songs to the mix... which is one reason why their music is so stylistically varied.

Most of the songs have guitar solos, some shreddy, some simple, some batshit insane, like John Frusciante on a bender! Ken's also a great, tasty rhythm player, who uses a wide range of chords.
Here's some recommendations, if you'd like to check out a custom, or two. :)
(L'Arc fans, let me know if you disagree, I'm generalizing here, A LOT lol....there's plenty of overlap)


My personal favorites (whether it's the song I really love or a chart I'm particularly proud of, or both):

As if in a Dream (this and Vivid Colors have fun U2-style delay effects)
Blurry Eyes
Link (super fun, and you will nail the solo with very little practice)
Vivid Colors

Heavy/Crunchy songs (they also often skew toward the easy side):

As One
THE NEPENTHES
Daybreak's Bell (uh, it's really big-sounding)
Revelation
Drink it Down (awesome song)
Inner Core (a personal favorite, written by their 1st drummer, Sakura) Fun & noisy rakes, and some of my favorite tones
Trick (super easy...written by their 2nd drummer, Yukihiro)
Existence
 

Fast, hard-driving songs:

Driver's High
Honey (Their biggest hit, I think)
Heaven's Drive
Stay Away
Shout at the Devil (not the Crue song, lol)
Round and Round (not the Ratt song, lol) AWESOME RIFF
Jiyuu e no Shoutai ("Invitation to Freedom")
Lost Heaven (Hyde sounds like Geoff Tate here, probably our first L'Arc song my wife and I heard)
Promised Land (also points for the cool ass line, "Devils walk in the strawberry fields")

Soulful/Bluesy leads:

Fate (!!!)
Shinjitsu to Gensou to ("Reality & Fantasy") kinda humpy sounding too....seksaaaayyy, lol ;)
Snow Drop
NEO UNIVERSE (You'll need an Ebow. preferably)
Shi no Hai ("Ashes of Death") That lead, I can't even, lol.... also, a badass song

Upbeat/Poppy/Happy:

Sai wa Nagarareta ("The Die Is Cast") This song makes me super happy, I highly recommend it, lol...really fun riff too
Kaze ni Kienaide ("Don't Vanish in the Wind") Like Sai wa, I could hug this song
Flower (a 90's classic)
Lies and Truth (has 30 tone changes, lol)
Dive to Blue
Hurry Xmas (jazzy crazy chords)
Feeling Fine
C'est la Vie (I won't lie,

Crazy arpeggios:

Shinkshoku ~Lose Control~ (crazy arpeggios AND crazy octaves....a heavy, moody song. Love it, can't play it worth a crap)
Niji "Rainbow" (this song is EPIC.....probably my favorite song to play, next to Link, whether or not I can actually pull it off that particular day)
Dune (only 1 super crazy spot)

Rock fingerpicking:

Sell My Soul (so fun, even if you fake it, like a mellower Funky Monks by RHCP. Also kinda seksay)
Secret Signs

Ballad/Mellow/Heartfelt:

Time Goes On
Ophelia
Shine (very popular with people who aren't me, lol)

In Eb:

X X X (pronounced "Kiss Kiss Kiss", also kinda seksay, yet arena-rock?)

Badass Bass (though they pretty much all do):

Blurry Eyes (no joke)
Be Destined (I love playing this)
Secret Signs (I love playing this even more)
Jiyuu e no Shoutai ("Invitation to Freedom")
Hurry Xmas
As if in a Dream
Sai wa Nagarareta ("The Die Is Cast")
Stay Away

Audio previews for every song in 1 convenient video:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x67f2ol

They're alphabetical, so you can just skip to the general area and find a song easily. It's interesting hearing how different all their songs sound from each other.

The first album, Dune, was released in 1993.

There's the occasional pop in the audio from the video capture.

So, feel free to check any of them out, or my other customs. likes my Purple Rain (which I just noticed has over 1500 people following the post, wow!), lol. ;)

If you have any L'Arc requests, feel free to share. I don't really do requests for groups outside of the ones I've already done, only because I have to really love a song to put in all that work.

Also, if you have a particular CDLC of mine that hasn't been remastered yet, and you'd like me to prioritize it, feel free to post. Also, if any of you like or would recommend a particular L'Arc CDLC, please post which one (and why, if you'd like....just for fun).

My 49th L'Arc CDLC, which will be done soon, is The Fourth Avenue Cafe.

The 50th will be uploaded this weekend, and it's a surprise! ;)

Thanks for reading everybody, and just I hope someone sees this, and discovers something new to enjoy. :D

-Bill

(P.S. I'm gonna try hyperlinking all of these to their respective record pages, if I don't run screaming to the hills first, from the repetition)

So far, LAME support appears to believe that the application and Audacity are misinterpreting the MP3 file by treating the "encoder delay" and "LAME tag" as audio data when they should be discarded, adding around 39ms of extra audio padding at the beginning of the file. Looks like this is the most likely explanation for why this happened: Some exotic MP3 codec metadata that isn't reliably supported between different programs.

Is this something that can be fixed, or are you still looking into that?

Wow, a lot has changed since this old post! (which I found on Google)

They are definitely good and are already one of my favorite Jpop bands. "My Heart Draws a Dream" is probably my favorite song of theirs.

Oh neat, I didn't know that! :)

My Heart Draws a Dream is on my to do list! Feel free to offer feedback on any of my L'Arc CDLCs. I'm often updating them, so if you think one needs something, I'm happy to revisit them.

I even have 2 Ken signature guitars that I use when I'm setting up the tones, one for early stuff (Fernandes LA-85 KK), and a LD-95 KK for everything else (with some overlap between....driver's high needs 24 frets) LOL. Cos I'm a goof.

I'd gotten about 30 CDLCs in, and when I found out Ken guitars actually existed, I was like "Dammit, I'm gettin' me some L'Arc guitars, I've earned it!" LOL. Fortunately, my wife plays guitar and likes L'Arc, and thus didn't grumble too much.

Thanks guys! It's nice to know I'm not crazy.....I've been making these things a long time! ;)

I knew it couldn't be simple user error, because when I drag the beat to match the wave graph, it syncs perfectly.

I was telling @firekorn the first thing I do when I import a GP tab is listen to it in EOF with the metrognome turned on, to make sure it's lined up and the beat matches. That's how I spotted the problem.

If nothing else, at least you guys have heard L'Arc~en~Ciel now, and one of their really good songs, at that! Lots of tasty guitar. ;)

Thanks so much for the standard tuning update! I can't math right! ;)

The note should move along with the beatmap unless you disable the note auto adjust in the preferences but in the worst case scenario a copy/paste should allow you to easily put the tab back into place.

OK, it turns out that that option was disabled, not sure why. I figured out that you do have to import all your instruments first, otherwise it moves the chart back to where it started, but the notes are left behind.

I'm still having the sync problem with GPA to EOF, and I did double check and make sure they were using the same source mp3. I actually deleted the EOF folder for the song just to make sure I was using the right file, and I checked the file path on GPA to make sure it was pointing to the same folder as EOF.

I even tried creating the EOF project by browsing to the mp3 in the GPA export itself, and it still was off.

Here's the file if someone wouldn't mind taking a look. I'm stumped for why it's happening.

https://mega.nz/#!hxsTFQSJ!o2YLagljOXMJBej8KfU0ZUucdv99TvQM8qlMTvJpw7o

BTW the dragging thing works awesome as long as I have everything imported first. :D

@@Billkwando just select and drag the very first beat and it'll move everything along.

Except it doesn't, when I try it:

You do mean to grab the first grid line of the first measure and drag it to match the waveform start, right?

In my case, the notes were left behind.

@@Billkwando another option would be import gpa sync before adding leading silence to the track and enable adjust notes for bpm markers then do a leading silence thing ;)

I always import before adding leading silence, and I'm not even adding it to this one because of the long piano intro (guitar/bass comes in later). Where is "adjust notes for BPM markers" located? Does that make it drag the notes with the beats?

Well that's because the two audio file aren't starting at the same time :

 

 

The top one is the one used by EOF and the one at the bottom is the one that was used for GPA sync.

 

Note that you can quickly fix it by simply draging the first beat in EOF (which will move everything together).

I am a spectacular new species of dumbass, worthy of study by anthropologists.

I do indeed have a whole other folder of L'Arc mp3 (down from about 5 of them) and GPA was pointing to the wrong one.

About the dragging, do I need to do select all or something? I have to import a track to get the beat map to move to the right-(ish) place, so there's no opportunity to do without the notes on there.....also, won't it try to move the messed up beats back every time I try to import a new instrument to my difficulty tabs? What about the bass track?

I've been having this problem for a while, so I upgraded from a 2sh version of GPA to 3.42 (the newest version I could get w/o paying again, plus the newest version's "auto sync" feature sounds limiting to me, because I'm afraid of not getting a good sync and being unable to adjust it manually (not sure if this is the case). I set a system restore point so I can downgrade to the old version if needed.

Anyway, I have 2 or 3 songs that when I import them to EOF and turn on the metrognome to test, the beats seem very obviously off, across the whole chart. 

Could someone take a look and see what it is I might be doing wrong? As some of you may know, I'm pretty experienced at this. I'm planning for the next 6 L'Arc~en~Ciel song CDLCs, and I want to do a sweet song in celebration of my 50th L'Arc CDLC (I've made around 45 or 46 now), and sometimes it feels like I'm never gonna get there, because all of the songs I want to do won't import right.

Here's an example if someone would test:

Shinjitsu to Gensou to (GPA Library export):

https://mega.nz/#!Vo0HCJDa!8AbcYLMvZNYowChuCGvHK8S5Rb4XYnByJa5foW3nGYA

Here's the EOF folder with the audio and stuff:

https://mega.nz/#!1x1HERpa!tggLk_zafPyrxf_FjDl86EjsuF5YUsGJFEiZfeo-CmY

In the past I've fixed this by dragging the beat map to match the music, and then pasting the notes back in, but obviously that's not ideal.

Thanks for looking!

Bill

Considering how dramatically Corrupt CDLC and Corrupt Game Saves complaints have dropped off, the 'non-sense' as you put it, must be working.

There are none in any of my CDLC threads.

As I mentioned, this tilde restriction must have been added later, because I remember when you guys started filtering out characters, and it wasn't an issue then. I basically only play my own CDLC, so if there was a problem, I would've noticed, since I've been playing many of these songs for years, and I've uploaded over 40 L'Arc songs. 

I'm all for restricting game-breaking characters, but the tilde is not one of them.

The developers of EOF and toolkit have implemented character validation that is consistent with characters used in ODLC.  This was done to reduce the number of game crashes and corrupt CDLC.  The tilde '~' is not an acceptable character in artist, title, album naming.   Please use an alternative character, such as, dash '-'.

 

Additional information on acceptable characters can be found here:

http://customsforge.com/topic/32086-noticed-a-light-problem-with-naming-songs/?do=findComment&comment=226309

http://customsforge.com/topic/37304-non-english-lyricsextended-ascii/?do=findComment&comment=252199

http://customsforge.com/topic/36486-cozy-keepers-musings-and-how-tos/?do=findComment&comment=252312

http://customsforge.com/topic/28521-commas-in-lyrics-not-transferring-from-eof-to-rs/?do=findComment&comment=210224

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. It's not consistent with ODLC because none have used the character yet. If L'Arc were suddenly released as ODLC, you can bet that the tilde would suddenly become an "acceptable" character. 

I've been making L'Arc CDLCs here since 2014. You can see all the existing ones with tildes in my list. No crashes, no complaints.

I would respectfully request that the developers reconsider.  I would rather not roll back Toolkit versions, or have to edit them by hand, but I will.

This wasn't a problem until now. However, the feature where it removes unacceptable characters has been around for a long time, so I don't understand why the tilde is suddenly an issue?

The most recent new L'Arc song I made was Driver's High, in May, and it wasn't a problem then.

Whenever I try to go back and edit my L'Arc~en~Ciel CDLCs (or make new ones, see below) it takes the tilde out. Can this be fixed please? (Unless it has already, not positive I'm on the newest version).

Thanks!

Bill

http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/everyone-a-puzzle-lover-w-mandolin-arrangement-r29742

Here's a quick & crappy playthrough video (2 emails! Oh noes!)

Getting more misses than I think I should. Not sure what the deal is yet. :)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5q7p2w_rocksmith-mandolin-demo-r-e-m-you-are-the-everything_videogames

I made a mandolin song if anyone feels like strumming some violin! ;)

http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/you-are-the-everything-w-mandolin-bonus-arrangement-r29646

♫JUST THE 2 OF US, WE CAN MAKE IT IF WE TRYYYYYYY♫

You know there's an edit button and multi quote, right? I got 4 emails this morning. :p

I was getting ready to try to figure out how to do this for mandolin (same tuning as violin), but it looks like someone has already invented this particular wheel. Can anybody point me toward a tutorial to set this up? I assume I'm just setting it to A440 x3?

Ah I think what happened was I missed the word button (mouse slipped off) and tried to back up (in Ultrastar) and must've accidentally overlapped. Thanks! :) I just redid it from scratch.