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How to Create Customs with Multitracks


Karmeleaux

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I was asked to try to explain working with multitracks, so here goes. I don't think I've written a tutorial before, so there's your warning. Images are hidden behind spoilers currently because I think most of them aren't necessary to the general public, I can remove the spoiler tags if this proves to be untrue.

 

Preamble Ramble:

This tutorial assumes you know the general process of creating CDLC and focuses mainly on the differences in the process for using multitracks. Reading The Third Way to Chart Customs is strongly recommended, as a decent amount of this may be that information just more poorly phrased. A lot of credit also goes to the user todtod, who taught me most of this process via PM when I was starting out here.

 

Now, by far the easiest way to get multitracks is to create a Frets on Fire forum account and use bluzer's topics for Rock Band and Guitar Hero (for those unfamiliar, there's a fair bit of overlap, I tend to trust Harmonix/Rock Band more for these cases but it rarely matters). There's a few other ways, but that's the simplest/most organized in my opinion.

 

Editor on Fire:

If you choose MIDI Import in EoF and choose a notes.mid in one of the folder, it should import a perfect beatmap (and sections, though not phrases, marked), an advantage which cannot be overstated.

 

 

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/tutorial%20images/midi%20import.png

 

 

Tangent: Also most of the time (any Rock Band song, GH:WT and after for Guitar Hero), vocals will import (though you have to remove +'s and stretch out the previous syllable for its length if you want them to be perfect, and some Guitar Hero imports miss a few syllables of words in my experience). And on very rare occasions a very accurate Rock Band 3 Pro Guitar/Bass chart that needs minimum tweaking will be imported as well.

 

But as stated, once you import the notes.mid, it should have a perfect beatmap with a few seconds of silence at the beginning, and default to the isolated guitar track.

 

If you're importing a Guitar Pro (or equivalent) file, the first thing you have to recall is these imports start with usually three beats of silence, so you have to insert that many beats of silence to the file you're importing.

 

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/tutorial%20images/guitar%20pro%20import.png

 

 

If you're charting from scratch, I will cover some advice later in this chart.

 

Once you import the guitar chart, you should sit down and listen to it. You've got the lead guitar by itself, you have an advantage on nearly every tab out there on the internet, make sure you exercise it.

 

After going through the guitar chart, choose 'Load OGG' and switch over to bass (titled rhythm.ogg) to repeat the process. There's VERY few tabs online that are hyper-accurate on both guitar and bass throughout, so keep your ears open for discrepancies.

 

Wwise:

After you finish the chart, the best way to handle the audio is to load all the oggs into a single Audacity (or equivalent) project, then mix it down to a .wav file.

 

 

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/tutorial%20images/audacity%20import.png

 

 

Mute the guitar track, then mix it down to a .wav file (with 'No Guitar' or something appended). Unmute the guitar track, then repeat the process with the bass. Finally, or perhaps beforehand if you want to test a bit earlier, mix it down to an .ogg and import it into the EoF file to create the preview.

 

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/tutorial%20images/audacity%20export.png

 

 

Do the Wwise stuff as normal, just including the No Guitar and No Bass versions as well as the standard version and the preview. I personally don't bother making a new preview for each version, after I'm done with the Wwise I just make two copies of the preview .wem and rename them for the other versions.

 

 

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/tutorial%20images/wwise%20export.png


 

Rocksmith Custom Song Toolkit:

Create the standard version .psarc as normal. Do not create No Guitar/No Bass versions yet, as you might find some errors when testing your standard version and currently you have to regenerate each version separately, so focus on your standard version until you're happy with it

 

Now that that's done, create your No Guitar and No Bass versions. You have to change the DLC Name (I just append NoGuitar or NoBass) for each version, and I suggest appending '(No Guitar Audio)' or '(No Bass Audio)' to the Song Title as well. In addition, you have to change the Arrangement Identification number for each arrangement in each version (I just increment it by one per version, remember that it's Hexadecimal). For vocals, this requires you to outright delete the Vocals arrangement and then add it again to generate a new value, as the Toolkit does not allow you to manually change those. Finally and most obviously, switch the audio over to the appropriate No Guitar or No Bass version.

 

 

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/tutorial%20images/Rocksmith%20Toolkit.png


 

Now it's time to test your No Guitar and No Bass versions. Once you load your library there should be three distinct versions in your library, and make sure to test that they accurately do lack the audio they're said to, they display vocals if you've charted them, and should all load. Ideally any major crap-ups should have been caught in your standard version testing, but it might become more apparent that your tones just aren't to snuff or something in this round. Unfortunately for any mistakes at this point, you'll have to reload, change, and regenerate each separate package, so try as I said really lay into testing your standard version.

 

Flying Free – Charting By One's Self:

Now, let's say you've got some balls on you and want to test your hand at charting from scratch. It's actually not as daunting of a task as it sounds, having the isolate guitar and bass lets you sit down and feel it out on your own. But there are options for shortcuts, the most notable being the paid program Celemony Melodyne. It's an expensive piece of software that's design for professional use, but if you're routinely working on this the $99 dollar version works well for single note riffs, including most entire bass tracks or solos. The more expensive versions help separate out chords, but frankly I don't find it worth the pricetag if you're not doing professional work.

 

Below an example of an entire bass track (Rock Rebellion by Bang Camaro) loaded into Melodyne. It contains a few glitches (the shorter the bit you put in the more accurate it is) and may not be intuitive to read at first glance, but the information is invaluable if you use it routinely.

 

http://www.cdlc.wit-n-wiz.com/tutorial%20images/Melodyne%20example.png


 

Melodyne is by far the easiest and quickest way, but if you're lookin' for something cheaper well your brain came free with your body. Use any knowledge you have about the song, the key, chord progressions, common tricks of the specific band, whatever. Enhance it with music video, live performances, covers, whatever you can find. Keep throwing all of the knowledge you're able to bring together until you're able to finish it. It's not a simple task for most people and I strongly, STRONGLY recommend if you try this without much education to do it with a simple single-note-focused song. Also, I heavily recommend the Scale Racer minigame. I'm sure others might be able to recommend tons of stuff to help with learning by ear, I might edit in some here after the fact on other people's recommendations.

 

So that's about all I can think of saying, any questions or comments are welcome.

  • Like 2

I've always got the multitracks.

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