Create Metronome audio file from beat map?

[Azrael]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if it would be possible to create an audiofile with a metronome based on the beat map in EOF.

 

Playing with Rocksmith feels great, and there are a lot of songs I feel comfortable playing inside Rocksmith. But I realized that often enough e.g. fast riffs give me a hard time when I play them on my own without a beat, while they seem to work fine in Rocksmith (where I kind of flow with the beat^^).

As a similar issue, once I start lowering the sound of the music and increase the volume of my guitar, I realize that I don't sound as super awesome as Rocksmith made me think I do.

One problem for me is that I have difficulties keeping up the beat when I silence the music ingame.

 

Of course the ultimate solution is having a backingtrack of your song, but they are quite rare.

 

So I was thinking, what if I had a metronome ingame? I have posted my idea in the official Rocksmith Feedback thread, but of course the chances that this is seen are extremely low:

The sound of the metronome should be generated dynamically while the song plays (simply use the measure-information that is seen on the note highway). It must be dynamical to be able to acount for changes in the BPM during the song, which happen often.
"Metronome" should just be an additional entry in the volume "mixer" menu, and should be muted by default.

 

Then I had another thought: Would it be possible to use EOF to create a seperate metronome audio file that we can use to create a "metronome version" of any CDLC?

Similar to the midi-sound EOF can already produce, could EOF just create a "tick" on every beat and save it to a file?

 

Please let me know if you think this would be useful and whether this is realistic to implement :-)

 

Regards,

Azrael

[Alex360]

Just a quic tip: Every song rom ubi starts with metronome ticks, it's done using events:

 

  <events>
    <event time="10" code="B0" />
    <event time="10" code="e1" />
    <event time="10.5" code="B1" />
    <event time="11" code="B1" />
    <event time="11.5" code="B1" />
    <event time="13.524" code="E3" />
    <event time="17.746" code="E13" />
    <event time="209.881" code="D3" />
    <event time="215.803" code="E13" />
  </events>

B0 E1 B1 looks like what you need, you can create such map using information, have fun :)

[Azrael]

Thanks for your answer!

So you are telling me that the count-in ticks are generated ingame? I always assumed they were part of the audiofile!

 

Does this mean that I could add count-in to my own CDLCs as well? Sweet!

And does this mean that I could possibly create bonus arrangements that have the ticks throughout the whole song, just by adding a modified xml? That would be really awesome!

 

But as far as I understand, I would have to look up and fill in every single time stamp manually, right? That would mean an incredible amount of work^^

Or is that what you mean with the "map" and the <ebeats>? Could please try to explain this a little bit? I have never edited a xml before...

 

Edit: Ok, I have found the ebeats and their time stamps... I will see what I can achieve :-)

[Alex360]

@@Azrael, allsimple, copy all ebeats till the end of the song to a new file, replace wods ebeats with events and measure to code, you can map difrent sounds to difrent measure beats for just set all to one tick type, than you can copy that to your xml, I can write some code for you and add to arrangement form option to generate ticks throgh whole song (it will modify xml for you ;) ) but after you'll confirm successful creation of such arrangement.

[Azrael]

It works! WTF? Just like that?

I can't really believe it, but it works, exactly the way I imagined it :D

 

Now my additional xml looks like this:

<events count="456">    
    <event time="2.060" code="B0"/>
    <event time="2.060" code="e2"/>
    <event time="2.560" code="B1"/>
    <event time="3.060" code="B1"/>
    <event time="3.560" code="B1"/>
    <event time="4.060" code="B0"/>
    <event time="4.560" code="B1"/>
    <event time="5.060" code="B1"/>
    <event time="5.560" code="B1"/>
    <event time="6.060" code="B0"/>
    <event time="6.560" code="B1"/>
    <event time="7.060" code="B1"/>
    <event time="7.560" code="B1"/>
... and so on...

B0 is higher pitched than B1, and it sounds good to have B0 at the first beat of every bar, and B1 at the other three.

I don't know what e2 does, but I guess I could just delete it.

 

Even if I mute the music in the ingame mixer, the ticks are still audible. Seems like they are on another channel :-)

Only thing I noticed is that sometimes on resuming or restarting the song the ticks disappear, but I have noticed that in official content as well. Completely exiting the song and starting again fixes it.

 

Replacing everything worked really fast.

 

The steps were:

ebeat                   -> event

measure="-1"       -> code="B1"

measure="."         -> code="B0"

measure=".."        -> code="B0"

measure="..."       -> code="B0"

 

If you could write a script for this, that would be even more awesome!

We could even think about adding this to the Toolkit, so it is more likely that more people will notice it.

 

This will definitely help me a lot, and I hope others will like this feature, too :)

[Alex360]

@@Azrael, I'd like to know how to re rise events to keep ticks going, will do this asap I'm busy with psarc stuff right now :)

[Azrael]

@@Azrael, I'd like to know how to re rise events to keep ticks going

 

I don't understand what you mean.

 

In case you refer to the following:

Most of the time the ticks do continue if you pause and then resume, but on a few occasions not. To be precise, I only noticed a problem when I hit "restart" while the song was already playing.

[Azrael]

I've written a tutorial about adding a metronome to any CDLC:

http://customsforge.com/topic/13688-how-to-add-a-metronome-to-any-song/

 

I will updated it if you write such a script.

Even with a script I think it might be nice for people to know how it works and (really important) how to make sure the beat map is well prepared for the metronome.

[Alex360]

@@Azrael, I'm still stuck with psarc refactoring, I'll write scipt logic and add checkbox to the toolkit under bonus arrangement(it will make canges right before generation step). but for now you can use notepad++ for example and use regexpr for replace function :)

you can learn abit here http://regex101.com/

but here is for B0: (measure="[0-9]) 

[Azrael]

That checkbox idea sounds great!

 

I'm using notepad++, but for now I just recorded a makro to do the replacements :-)

But shouldn't B0 be something like (measure="[0-999]")? Just guessing :-)

[raynebc]

I just wanted to mention that EOF lets you assign metronome tick events by selecting the desired beat marker and using "Beat>Rocksmith>Place RS Event", so it shouldn't be necessary to manually edit the XML file. That dialog has the 4 event types (B0, B1, E1 and E3) that I know about. If anybody knows what other ones do, and whether they work in one game or in both, I can add them to the dialog.

[Azrael]

I just wanted to mention that EOF lets you assign metronome tick events by selecting the desired beat marker and using "Beat>Rocksmith>Place RS Event", so it shouldn't be necessary to manually edit the XML file. That dialog has the 4 event types (B0, B1, E1 and E3) that I know about. If anybody knows what other ones do, and whether they work in one game or in both, I can add them to the dialog.

Well, that is good to know!

But when I think about it, it is (only) practical for adding the four ticks in the count-in measure.

Going through the whole song and adding B0 and B1 manually on every beat is far more time consuming then editing the xml...

 

But with that said, shouldn't it be quite easy for you to implement the following function:

An option in the preference window: "Export seperate *_metronome.xml"

(This will export another xml for every arrangement and has the ticks on all the beats (with B0 on every first beat of a bar))

 

Edit:

On second thought, if I had to choose between the advanced export and alex's suggestion for an option to automatically add the metronome bonus arrangements with the click on the generate button in the Toolkit, I would prefer the latter. It would be far more convenient and, more important, work for unpacked psarcs, too.

 

... so, don't waste your time on this :-)

[raynebc]

I forgot you wanted the ticks on the entire track, yeah, it would be a pain to do that in EOF. If the toolkit can make that an option, that would definitely be easier. If that functionality doesn't end up being added to the toolkit, let me know and I could probably make a toggle-able track option to export a high pitch tick on the first beat of every measure, and a low pitch tick for all other beats.

[Alex360]

I'm done with psarc stuff, after testing I'll write this small function :)
it's not so hard since we already got similar function like low tuning fix(autocorrection while adding\editing in todo still, sry)

[Alex360]

@@Azrael, just pushed psarc related stuff, it took too much time to refactor related code, but I like the result :lol: 
Now I can work on this ;)