Devin Townsend - Life

[Azrael]

ARTIST...................: Devin Townsend
ALBUM....................: Ocean Machine: Biomech
TITLE....................: Life
VERSION..................: 0.3 0.4 0.5 1.0
INSTRUMENT(S)............: Lead, Rhythm, Bass, Vocals
TUNING...................: Open C (CGCGCE)
CUSTOM TONE..............: Yes
DYNAMIC DIFFICULTY.......: DDC v2.1, ddc_default, phrase length: 4
PACKAGE ID...............: Cherub Rock
PLATFORMS................: PC

 

Download:

See CDLC Database

Video of song:

 

Changelog:

Version 1.0

• Release

 

Version 0.5

• Adjust tuning of bass arrangement in EOF
• Adjust bass volume to -26

Version 0.4:

• Adjusted the vocal lengths, thanks Rockfirstlast
• Changed the bass tuning to CGCG.
• Changed the volume of the bass tone. The default was very silent, changed it from -23 to -15. I hope it's not too loud now!
• Resolved "COUNT" phrase issue by adding 4 beats before the first beat. Doesn't seem to have any influence ingame...

 

Hi everyone,

I bought Rocksmith 2014 about a week ago, because I found out about this great community. I soon found myself importing the tabs for this song into EOF. When it worked quite nice, I realized I had to buy Rocksmith... and I really enjoy it. Only problem is... my fingers hurt so bad, because its been a while since I last played so much! Now I proudly present to you the first song by Devin "Heavy Devy" Townsend on Customsforge :smile:

 

Alright, so this is my first CDLC! I did a lot of testing and revisions, but now I am at a point where I cannot further improve it on my own.

 

Known issues / Question:

• Currently, the applied custom tone is from here, I found the link somewhere on this board. I quite randomly chose "American Idiot" and it doesn't sound extremly wrong. But since I do not have any knowledge about creating sounds for electric guitars (neither in real life, nor in RS), I do not see myself creating that anytime soon...
• I do not know bass and did not try the bass track. The instrument is set to five strings though, and I have no idea if that is even possible... (anyway, only the two lowest strings are used)
• I am wondering whether dynamic difficulty works as expected. What I did was set the sections (intro, chorus, verse, prechorus, chorus, bridge, solo, transition, chorus, modchorus, outro) and create the phrases with the same names. It did not divide the sections into more than one phrases. Now DDC e.g. splits the chorus into three phrases, and the different phrases level up very differently, even though they are nearly the same and I play them with equal precision.
• I added 3 seconds leading silence in EOF. When I save it, I get a warning that "the first beat marker is not positioned at 0 seconds [...]. Reset offset to zero?" I click "no", because when I click "yes" it changes the bpm to a completely different value and I cannot savely re-import my guitar pro file if I mess something up. This causes another warning "there is no COUNT phrase, but the first beat marker already has a phrase. You should move that phrase" - currently, everything seems to work fine, but I wonder what you think about it
• Not that this is really important, but... is there an easy way to import the vocal notes from a guitar pro file into EOF? Because right now, all the vocal notes only last for one beat.

So please, enjoy the great Dev and give me your feedback!

Thank you very much,

Azrael

 

 

Credit:

I used the tabs from here and they are pretty accurate, as far as I can tell. I had to edit lots of tiny bits and use some tech notes though, to get all the hammer-ons and bends working in EOF. See below for the original credit in the .gp5-file.

Tab by Jesse Cohen.This was largly taken from a tab by "Rodolphe" (rodpowa@hotmail.com). The bass, drums, and synth parts are almost entirely his. Most of my contributions are in editing the guitars and also arranging and cleaning up the score.

[Rockfirstlast]

Well, I just played and it was fun! This is one of those songs where after it's over I feel like I've completed an epic journey.  Thanks a bunch and good work.  Here's my playthrough:

 

 

 

As for that stuff you asked:

 

1) The tone matched well.  To make it work with my gain settings I had to change the song volume to -5 and tone to -15.  I'll listen to the song again later and see if I can think of another amp that also works.

2) (I'll give the bass a go later and give some feedback)

3) While I didn't play with DD, the section bars on top looked pretty normal. 

4) As far as I know it SHOULDN'T mess up the BPM after the first note.  It usually creates one really fast beat at the start and the rest are normal.

 

Does the beat marker on the first note have an anchor on it?  If not, I would place an anchor there and try it again.  I'd hate to mess up your project if I'm wrong, so I'd back it up first in case it doesn't work and undo doesn't help.

I bet fixing the offset thing will fix the COUNT phrase thing.

5) I've never seen anyone discussing how to import vocals from guitarpro.  Everyone seems to use Ultrastar Creator.

[Azrael]

Hi Rockfirstlast,

 

holy sh*t, your playthrough is impressive! Currently, there is no way I can play what I called "pre chorus" and "transition" faster than maybe 50%...

And... did you know this song before, or did you just learn it that fast?

Anyway, I'm happy that even the parts I cannot play seem to work fine, and also that the ridiculous zero-2half-1half-2half bend in the solo seems to work.

 

Would you allow me to link to your video when I submit this CLDC to the database?

On Youtube, the description is "Found this one at customsforge.net". It sould be ~.com I guess, maybe you want to change that ;-) (I just realized your video is "not listed", so it doesn't really matter... on the other hand, I would appreciate it if you made this one public and add "Devin Townsend" somewhere, once I have submitted it :-))

 

1) Ok, good to know.

2) Looking forward to your bass try. I used the bass tone from American Idiot for that one, so hopefully it sounds ok as well

4) Thanks for the info, I havn't used anchors yet. I'll try that...

5) I ended up using Ultrastar as well. But I was just wandering about the *length* of the notes he is singing, currently I have no notes at all in the vocal track. But again, this is completely unimportant^^

[Rockfirstlast]

Go for it, I updated the youtube description.  While I hadn't heard the song I did a few practice runs before the video.  That hard part in the beginning is easier if you keep your index finger on the 7th fret and hit the other notes with your middle finger and pinky.

 

After playing the guitar part again, the HG-100 guitar amp was good and doesn't need to be changed.

 

Couldn't hear bass with the current volume settings, so I switched to another tone.  If you change the tuning from FCFC to CGCF the notes are the correct pitch.

 

As for vocal lengths, you can click on a lyric and mouse scroll up to change it's length.  No need to go crazy getting the length of every syllable exactly right, cause it won't even be noticeable ingame.   I usually just worry about the length of the last lyric in each line, and max out the lengths of the other words, like this:

http://i.imgur.com/zdFy2yG.png

[Azrael]

Thanks again for your input, Rockfirstlast!

Just wanted to leave a quick note here that I will continue my work on this in about a week, when my exams are over. Thus the silence the last couple of days...

 

In the meantime:

If anyone with a ps3, xbox or mac stumples across this and is willing to test a version for their platform, please leave a message.

I would like to support all four platforms, but I will only do so I if I know everything works fine :smile:

I don't yet know what I have to change in WWISE and so on... so I prefer this method to just uploading something and then having someone complain about it not working.

 

Edit:

I finally got the time to work on this one again :smile:

 

Changelog:

• Ajusted the vocal lengths, thanks Rockfirstlast
• Changed the bass tuning to CGCG. I realized I just left it at default in the Toolkit, I guess. @@Rockfirstlast, thanks for the info, but why did you say CGCF? I chose C, so that I did not have to retune my guitar for trying it out in emulated bass mode. Anyway, would you mind testing it again? Maybe Rocksmith has problems picking up my lowest string (red C) in bass mode... I just miss most of the nodes, no matter what I do. The yellow G string works way better...
• Changed the volume of the bass tone. The default was very silent, changed it from -23 to -15. I hope it's not too loud now!
• Resolved "COUNT" phrase issue by adding 4 beats before the first beat. Doesn't seem to have any influence ingame...

 

About the hard part in the beginning, do you really mean keeping the index finger on the 7th string? All the notes are on 8th to 12th, so do you mean barre on the 8th with the index finger?

[Rockfirstlast]

Thanks, I just played it again.

 

While I went with CGCF because this is a more standard tuning (drop C), CGCG will work just as well.

 

The tuner checks for CGCG, which is good.  That means the toolkit is set for CGCG.  While playing the game (using a real bass) I am missing 95% of the notes.  That means the tuning is probably wrong in EOF.  While using EOF go to your bass chart.  Then select TRACK->PROGUITAR->SET TUNING.  CGCG tuning would look like this:

 

String1   0

String2   -2

String3   -2

String4   -4

 

Also, in changing the bass tone from -23 to -15 the bass volume was lowered.  You wanna go the other way.

 

And yeah, I meant to say the 8th fret.

[Azrael]

Nice, resetting the tuning in EOF totally did the trick for the bass track!

 

About the volume:

I now changed the volume back "up" to -23 again, but I couldn't hear a real difference to -15.

Judging the volume is difficult for me, because I use an acoustic guitar that is sometimes louder than the ingame sound...

But I compared the bass to some other "authentic tone" basses and it seems quite normal.

Since you thought -23 was to silent, -15 must have been super silent for you... can you give some advice here?

The Toolkit suggests that even -21 is "HIGHER", so it seems to me that I shouldn't go higher...

 

Another question: Should the bass be fingered, or picked?

 

Thanks again for your help!

[Rockfirstlast]

I used a pick, but you can chose whatever you like.

 

I re-downloaded the V4.0 with no DD but still had note recognition issues.  I imported the psarc into the toolkit and made 2 changes:

 

1) I looked at the xml for the guitar arrangement and the tuning was like this:

 

<tuning string0="-4" string1="-2" string2="-2" string3="0" string4="1" string5="0" />

 

so I pasted that in the bass arrangement xml.  Then I deleted the bass arrangement from the toolkit and re-added it to make sure the toolkit tuning updated. 

 

2) I changed the bass volume from -15 to -26 (I could barely hear it at -15 using a REAL bass.  I'm guessing you get different results using an emulated bass tone).

 

This is the result:

 

Because riff repeater shows (almost) no missed notes, the detection worked well.

 

 

Ignoring that wall of text, if you just change the EOF bass tuning to look like this

 

String1    0	 G   String2    -2    CString3    -2    GString4    -4    C

delete then re-add the bass arrangement in the toolkit, then change the bass volume to -26 you'll fix the bass issues.

[Azrael]

Oh man, I'm sorry you went through all that trouble... If I had changed the file I would have created a version 0.5 and mentioned it in the changelog!

I simply didn't update the file in the Dropbox, because I wanted your opinion on the volume first (in order not to make you test so many different versions...)

 

Now I uploaded the following changes, and I feel like this could be my final version:

 

Changelog

Version 0.5

• Adjust tuning of bass arrangement in EOF
• Adjust bass volume to -26

 

Thanks for the second video!

[firekorn]

Here's your tone for this song :

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B1ZKYtpB0vu2OGpaRXFSYXNzalE&usp=sharing

It's the one named LifeFuzz and you can use it all the way through the song.

 

And as i played this song, here's my feedback :

During the chorus  there's a slide from 7 to 3 on the B strings, but it's probably more of a 6 to 3 since 7 is not in the scale used in the song.

You can shorter all the sustain a little and delete them all in the riff on the EAD strings since it's useless and doesn't help to see the note.

[Azrael]

Firekorn, thank you for this great tone and your feedback!

I hope you don't mind that I would like to continue this conversation in the CDLC-thread to get everybody's attention :smile: