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The Cranberries - Zombie (1st custom by MilkmanDan)


MilkmanDan

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Hey all.  Long post ahead, but Cliff's Notes version is that I'd appreciate comments / testing / advice on my first custom. 

ARTIST...................: Cranberries, TheALBUM....................: No Need to ArgueTITLE....................: ZombieVERSION..................: v1.4INSTRUMENT(S)............: Bass and vocals (for now)TUNING...................: E Standard A445CUSTOM TONE..............: Sorta - Copied a clean tone from Joe Satriani - Love ThingDYNAMIC DIFFICULTY.......: No, probably won't addDIFFICULTY LEVELS........: 1RIFF REPEATER............: I think so, but lacking in plentiful section divisionsSCROLL SPEED.............: 2PACKAGE ID...............: Cherub RockPLATFORMS................: PC

Links here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrSY0tjUkxCSmtTN0U/edit?usp=sharing  (PC, v1.55, see below for update info)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrSbUU0dllnVVZvQTA/edit?usp=sharing  (PC, v1.4 original semi-public release)(files are provided for educational purposes only; fair use) I have messed around with EOF and the Custom Toolkit a bit before, but I decided it was time to try actually making a full custom.  I teach English to High School-age students here in Thailand, and I like to do a few music listening exercises every year.  One of the songs that I taught in my classes was Zombie by the Cranberries (common Karaoke song in Thailand).  Then recently, as a treat for the end of the school term I brought in my PC with Rocksmith 2014 and took requests for songs to play along with on my bass.  I justified doing that for English class because the students could sing along karaoke-style; and I got a good fun class out of it.  However, I had a lot of students ask me to play Zombie since they remembered studying it earlier in the year, and it wasn't available as a custom song.  So, I decided to make that my first project to see how well I could figure out the whole custom-making thing. I play bass -- don't have an electric guitar here in Thailand with me -- so I concentrated on doing that chart first.  I found a good tab and the bass line is pretty simple so I thought it would be an easy(ish) way to start out.  Well, it turned out to be trickier than I imagined.  A big part of that is my noob-status I'm sure, but I ran into a few other snags. First, there are quite a few different BPM numbers listed for the song through various sources.  That should have been a red flag for me, but I discovered that the song definitely wasn't run through any sort of stabilizing software after being recorded in the studio, so the beat and tempo varies quite a bit with the human drummer / rhythm section.  Took me quite a bit of work to sync it all up with all the variation, but I think it is pretty close to being properly in sync now. Second, I had a heck of a time figuring out how to get slides to work and show up properly in the game.  The first note in the bass track is a slide from the 12th fret on E down to open, but EOF complains if I try to set the destination fret at 0.  So in the meantime, I set it as a slide from 12 to 1.  That works for now, but I am sure there is a more elegant/correct way to do that. Third, in my self-testing on early versions I heard a fair bit of dissonance.  It made me think that maybe my tab was wrong, but when I play along with my source tab in Guitar Pro it sounds great.  Then if I switched from that over to playing along with the recording, and it sounded off.  I eventually decided that the studio recording must be in a tuning a bit sharp or flat from standard E, A440.  I did some googling and found other people that discovered the same thing, but couldn't find anybody posting what the correct offset should be.  So, I fiddled around with my tuner set for a few different offsets to A440, and eventually settled on +5Hz, A445.  With that tuning, the dissonance goes away, at least to my non-perfect ear.  But anyway, if you have a good ear I'd appreciate thoughts on whether that tuning sounds correct or needs further tweaking. Fourth, I actually got relatively pleased with how the bass part works in-game, and that got me intrigued with putting in lead and rhythm guitar parts too.  The tab I use sounds good, but separates the guitar into 3 parts (technically 4 but 2 of those are just for stereo pan).  AND, I have been a bass-only guy for so long that my ear for guitar parts is definitely less than stellar.  Add in the erratic tempo throughout the song and the long gaps between guitar parts since it is divided up so much, and I have been pretty fully lost in trying to sync up the guitar parts.  Also, when I try to get the first notes in sync, it seems to screw up the sync in the bass track that I worked so hard to get set well.  Is that because of the opening silence I added?  It sure would be nice if I could just fit the imported guitar pro guitar tracks to the beat sync from the bass track, and seems like that it how EOF does/can/should work, but I'm a bit gunshy since my early efforts screwed up the bass track and I had to redo it. And finally, I'd like to add more riff repeated sections/phrases, but that whole system in EOF seems screwy to me.  Is there a trick to that process? Minus the guitar tracks and lack of more divided sections/phrases, I think the file linked above works reasonably well.  I do think that the tab I used is missing a few strum variations to keep it from being really perfect, but it sounds close to me throughout.  And in spite of trying to sync/anchor pretty much every beat to keep up with the erratic tempo, I do notice a few places where I could get it matched better. But anyway, any comments / suggestions / criticism / advice would be welcome.  Depending on whether or not I can figure out how to import the guitar parts and get them to use the bass track sync, I may also be happy to get a hand from a more seasoned custom-maker to add on lead and rhythm guitar parts.  I can provide my source tab and other files, although maybe it would be just as easy to use the toolkit to unpack that stuff from the psarc file (minus the GP5 tab anyway)? Thanks for any feedback!

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Milkman Dan

My YouTube channel  (bass playthrough videos)

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-reserved post-For now I'll put a video of my playthrough here. Just watching this briefly is probably enough to comment on whether or not the tuning I set for (Standard E / A445) sounds correct, etc.Video at: http://youtu.be/IvNOj86MApgA lot of the missed/late notes tell me that the sync isn't great yet.

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Milkman Dan

My YouTube channel  (bass playthrough videos)

My Customs Download Folder  (my customs)

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Do you want the Rocksmith 2012 version?

 

I didn't actually know there was a Rocksmith 1/2012 version until I posted my playthrough video on YouTube and found a playthrough of that one in the related links at the end.

 

I am pretty sure that I searched for it back on Smithy's Anvil and didn't find it even for RS1, but maybe I only ever searched for it in RS2014 customs.

 

If you have that version and could send it to me or direct me to a download source, I could unpack it and check and see if that author altered the tuning from Standard E / A440.  And probably would help me figure out other things also.  So sure, if you've got it or know where to get it I'd be happy to compare notes.

-----------------------------

Milkman Dan

My YouTube channel  (bass playthrough videos)

My Customs Download Folder  (my customs)

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Updated to a new version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrSdEE3YVVDam1IUzg/edit?usp=sharing Changes: v1.5*Re-synced from scratch after discovering that I could slow down the playback speed for better accuracy.*Attempted to add a lead and rhythm guitar track.  Since I did all of that first thing, it looks like they all synced properly by adjusting the beats on the bass track only and having that apply to all tracks; the bass plays throughout except for the intro.*My attempt to test the guitar parts involved a microphone and acoustic guitar.  Not ideal, but got far enough to have the game lock up on me when I tried to load the lead part, so I think I screwed something up.*Haven't even tried to load the rhythm part.*Tested the bass part, works well and seems in sync noticeably better than my previous efforts.

-----------------------------

Milkman Dan

My YouTube channel  (bass playthrough videos)

My Customs Download Folder  (my customs)

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One more update:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrSY0tjUkxCSmtTN0U/edit?usp=sharing

 

Changes:

 

v1.55

*Fixed the guitar parts locking up the game.  Problem was either A ) I screwed up and didn't mark them as A445 like the bass track, or B ) I had the bass tone assigned to them.

 (tested guitar parts only to the extent that I proved to myself that they load, accomplished by fretting up an octave on my bass, and then even higher for B and e strings)

*What I have as the "lead" track is basically the intro and outro guitar parts.  I should probably make this track a bonus arrangement.

*What I have as the "rhythm" track is most of the clean guitar parts in the song.  Chords, arpeggios, etc.  I'm not very smart at guitar stuff (bass is my instrument), but maybe this is the correct track to assign to "rhythm".  So maybe this is pretty much correct -- could definitely use testing/comments.

*I left a couple of guitar parts out of my import from my Guitar Pro tab source.  They are the distorted bits; mostly power chords.  I think I should add in these parts as the "lead" arrangement and kick what I've currently got for lead to a bonus arrangement.  I will probably do that tomorrow.  If I don't get any comments in here, I may submit that result to the database where it is likely to get some more interest.

 

I think I can play my acoustic guitar along with the part I will tentatively call the "lead" part (mostly power chords, so my bassist fingers can maybe handle it), so I can at least sorta self-test that part once I add it in.  I'll probably base my decision to submit on how that goes, because I think the bass part is actually pretty solid.  Rhythm part has way too many chords for my fat fingers to handle, so about all I can do there is look and see if it appears to be in rough sync.  Bedtime for me now, but I'll work on all that tomorrow.

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Milkman Dan

My YouTube channel  (bass playthrough videos)

My Customs Download Folder  (my customs)

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Bass is good but lead and rhythm tabs are sooo wierd, lots of silence and... weird xD, i would try to get a guitar pro tab and figure out lead and rhythm properly, i might be wrong but maan did it felt weird playing this, if you feel uncomfortable adding other arrangements than bass i would suggest doing just bass and specifying that you are ok (provided that you are haha) with someone else adding those arrangements in your comments, good luck and keep up the good work :).

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Thanks for the comment -- I am not surprised that the lead and rhythm parts are odd.  The lead part is mainly the intro and outro with an interlude in the middle -- did the chords in the intro sound OK / in sync?  I'll take a look at the rhythm part and see if I can sanity-check it better.

 

I did actually import both guitar parts from a guitar pro tab, but while the tab I used is the highest rated one from UltimateGuitar, it separates the guitar into 4 different parts that each tend to have a lot of silence.  I'd see if I could combine them, but there is some overlap in brief bits.

 

I left one (well 2 sorta -- identical tracks just stereo split into L/R) track from the Guitar Pro tab out, and looking back I definitely should have put that one in because I think it makes the most sense as a single coherent "lead" guitar part.  I think I will work on doing that within the next 24 hours or so.

 

You are right, I definitely feel much more comfortable with doing the bass arrangement -- and I am definitely OK with anyone adding my bass arrangement to their custom with better guitar parts, OR modifying my custom and replacing the guitar parts with arrangements that make more sense!

 

That being said, since this is my very first custom I did want to at least make an attempt at including the guitar parts myself -- even though I know I won't be the best at that!  :)

 

Another poster here in the workshop started working on Zombie a bit before me (link here) -- I didn't see his post until after I started this.  But he had some sort of car accident situation (I hope not too serious!) and got delayed a bit.  Anyway, he said that he was doing guitar parts but having trouble on the bass, so it might work out perfectly that between the two of us we can get a custom with good arrangements for all the parts/paths to put in the database.  Or he may get a handle on the bass part himself without needing to use my arrangement (although again I'm 100% happy if he wants to work my bass arrangement into his custom).  In the meantime, I will keep working and see if importing the guitar track I left out makes a better lead guitar option as I suspect it might.  If that still seems weird, I can try another tab.

 

Thanks much for the comments and testing -- one final question I'd ask is what your opinion on the tuning was?  Did A445 (shows up as A444 in-game) sound right?

-----------------------------

Milkman Dan

My YouTube channel  (bass playthrough videos)

My Customs Download Folder  (my customs)

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OK, redid it again today.  Now at version 2.  Link here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2GRHIrNcVrSSmtMOVc1cVNEczA/edit?usp=sharing

 

Changes:

 

v2

*Redid bass track from scratch.  Again.  I do this because it is easiest for my to sync the bass, and then the beat adjustments carry over to other tracks -- can't seem to make that work properly if I add a track after the fact.

*Bass sync should be close to as good as possible now, because I discovered that I could snap all notes to the beat grid (actually, 1/8th of the beat worked perfectly for me here).

*I imported the guitar part I had left out from my Guitar Pro tab before.  It is now the "lead" guitar path.  It is basically an easy power chord progression (mostly), and I was able to try it with my acoustic guitar.  Sync was snapped to the beat set to the bass in the recording, so it looked solid to me but I'd need an electric guitar that could actually register in Rocksmith to be 100% confident.  Tone is a copy of 2 Minutes to Midnight, just because I wanted something with distortion and that was the first obvious candidate.  Probably overly hot, but maybe OK.

*What *used* to be the lead guitar part is now a bonus rhythm arrangement.  It contains the intro, and brief accent bits, and solo.  I am hesitant to call it the lead guitar part since there are long gaps where it doesn't play anything.  On the other hand, it does have the most lead-like part of the guitar solo section.

*The old rhythm section is still the rhythm section.  I think that is a good label for this part; it plays a lot of chords and arpeggios that I think are correctly identified as rhythm parts.  I suck at guitar chords, so I can't play it very well to test it, and it is quite low-volume in the mix of the studio recording -- but it is there.  I didn't redo the sync on this track, so it could be semi suspect but I think it should be pretty close.  The only thing that I would do different if I did it again would be snapping the notes to the beat (they are off by very small fractions of a beat after the import, like maybe 1/32nd or 1/64th -- but when I didn't know how to snap to the beat I was adjusting the beat markers to account for those differences).

*Vocals are same as previous versions.

 

 

I tested all parts at least partially.  Played along with the bass track all the way through and missed only 1 note which tells me that the sync must be better than it was.  Then I tested guitar parts by hitting the 12th fret of my bass for EADG and then 14th and 18th frets of the G string for B and e, mainly just to confirm that they would load.  I played along with the new "lead" part with my acoustic (not registered in-game, but still works to ear-test), and I think the sync and charting looked good.  The other parts I just watched through a few measures to check the sync, and they look at least ballpark.

 

 

I think this is approaching a pretty usable custom, but I'd like feedback on whether the guitar parts are charted OK, in sync, and/or set in sensible gameplay paths (ie., does the lead arrangement feel like it belongs as lead, or should I move it to rhythm, etc.).  Oh, and the tones.  The rhythm guitar part could maybe use some echo or something to sound better, but for the moment it and the bonus rhythm are just pure clean tones.  The bass tone is a basic clean tone, but I think it sounds fine.  I don't have a real discerning ear for tones though.

 

Feedback on those issues in particular would be great, but any comments or feedback would be nice to have!

-----------------------------

Milkman Dan

My YouTube channel  (bass playthrough videos)

My Customs Download Folder  (my customs)

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I didn't actually know there was a Rocksmith 1/2012 version until I posted my playthrough video on YouTube and found a playthrough of that one in the related links at the end.

 

I am pretty sure that I searched for it back on Smithy's Anvil and didn't find it even for RS1, but maybe I only ever searched for it in RS2014 customs.

 

If you have that version and could send it to me or direct me to a download source, I could unpack it and check and see if that author altered the tuning from Standard E / A440.  And probably would help me figure out other things also.  So sure, if you've got it or know where to get it I'd be happy to compare notes.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi everyone,

 

@MilkmanDan, I just check your files v2 of Zombie for Rocksmith 2014, you did a nice work already on it, thx a lot for that and to share it with us.

 

I did some work on a tab for this song that i am using to play with my guitar, so maybe could be useful for you or anyonelse.

Perso i don't play guitar since very long but i practise like crazy this one cuz i really like this song and cuz i do like the big solo of Distortion at the end and of course i did my teeth on it as beginner.

 

So i'm just uploading my tab to songsterr which should be available in some hours max (i'm waiting their email to confirm job done), so for now i can give you my feedback only.

 

You have in your file, the Bass, Disto and Clean guitar tab. Nice combo but maybe Bass, Disto and Overdrive would be as well as interesting to play, of course we cannot have 4 guitars unfortunately but maybe 2 files of this songs could do the job like having in 1 file Bass Disto and Overdrive and a 2nd, what you already did so Bass Disto and Clean guitar tabs to switch and be able to play all the guitars here ^^

 

- Disto : About your "Solo" tab in high gain, I really like the A444 tuning, sound good for me, so if i'm right it is the Distortion guitar here of the song, but it is not really what i play for this one, and here believe me i worked very hard on the tab to get it right lol i really suffer hours, so maybe here with my file in gp4 format when it will be uploaded on songsterr you can check and see what you think about it to use or not my tab as you wish if it sounds right to you.

 

- Clean : I also rebuilt the Clean part which is not totally right but very close i have to say, nice work here too.

 

- Overdrive : I did the Overdrive guitar part too that you don't use.

 

- Bass : Here with the help of what you did i have completed my tab, cuz for me what you did seems perfect.

 

So here the link of my file just posted http://www.songsterr...mbie-tab-s431t0 to get the file .gp4. Enjoy! :wink:

 

Hoping guys that you will enjoy

Cheers Joffre257

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                 Les Paul Studio Pro II 2014 Fireburst

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