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Curious about the process people use to create....


ice9

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1. Download GP file and add it to EoF. 

2. If it syncs with any of the  BPS i try (the one in GP file, or estimate BPS in EOF, or Ultrastar half BPS)

    then I check the tab, add all of the parts. Move the BPS sticks if something doesnt sync.

    Most of the time everything syncs well.

3. Add leading silence, if needed. 

4. Check all the parts of the song.

5. Ultrastar vocals

6. Vocals in EoF, move them, and make em good. 

7. Add sections and phrases.

8. Add Tonechanges

9. Check the chart, once more to see if its perfect.

10. WWise + paint.net for album cover

11. DDC

12. Create tones

13. RST

14. I keep updating it till its perfect. 

 

This is my basic procedure. 

 

Although few weaks ago I had to skip some steps and replace them.

I was working on a song which isnt tabbed yet. So I had to watch youtube cover 

of some guy, over and over and over again. Trying to transcribe the tab.

Then I used BPS from Ultrastar and I manually added everything else.

 

I think the most important part of this isnt how the song is done, but the final step.

Which is 14. here. I dont upload songs that aren't finished, cause I dont see the point :P

| The MUSE Project | BABYMETAL DiscographyMY Customs | Rocksmith for 15£ 

 

"Please, always leave feedback, it helps me to create better customs !

Don't forget to write down your comment and push the thanks button !" 

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I think the most important part of this isnt how the song is done, but the final step.

Which is 14. here. I dont upload songs that aren't finished, cause I dont see the point :P

 

Don't get too hung up on perfection, or else you'll never put up anything at all. ;)

 

A little WIP action isn't a bad thing. I would say if you need to move on after getting a song around 90% accurate, by all means, upload it now and come back to it later with a fresh mind when you're ready to fix it. That's just my thought, just because I released a handful of imperfect customs when I started out, and it was a great learning experience, but then I went back and fixed the rough ones later.

Words of wisdom for CDLC charters:

 

"When in doubt, steal a tone from Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son"

 

- Billkwando

 

Download my L'Arc~en~Ciel Ken "Love Driver Cat" custom Inlays here

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I think the most important part of this isnt how the song is done, but the final step.

Which is 14. here. I dont upload songs that aren't finished, cause I dont see the point :P

 

Don't get too hung up on perfection, or else you'll never put up anything at all. ;)

 

A little WIP action isn't a bad thing. I would say if you need to move on after getting a song around 90% accurate, by all means, upload it now and come back to it later with a fresh mind when you're ready to fix it. That's just my thought, just because I released a handful of imperfect customs when I started out, and it was a great learning experience, but then I went back and fixed the rough ones later.

 

 

 

Oh yeah definitely. And im not saying that Im realeasing only pefect songs. Thats why I love feedback, people always tell what can be improved and I always try to get song as perfect as I can. When I started there were tons of mistakes and the feedback helped me improve. I was talking earlier about the fact that I dont upload songs which dont have arrangement that is available, or they dont have custom tone, or sections, or DD. With every song I try to get as close to 'approved' or 'ubisoft' song as I can, because I believe people who download the songs appreciate it, so therefore they deserve it :P

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| The MUSE Project | BABYMETAL DiscographyMY Customs | Rocksmith for 15£ 

 

"Please, always leave feedback, it helps me to create better customs !

Don't forget to write down your comment and push the thanks button !" 

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I think the most important part of this isnt how the song is done, but the final step.

Which is 14. here. I dont upload songs that aren't finished, cause I dont see the point :P

 

Don't get too hung up on perfection, or else you'll never put up anything at all. ;)

 

A little WIP action isn't a bad thing. I would say if you need to move on after getting a song around 90% accurate, by all means, upload it now and come back to it later with a fresh mind when you're ready to fix it. That's just my thought, just because I released a handful of imperfect customs when I started out, and it was a great learning experience, but then I went back and fixed the rough ones later.

 

Same here, i did my first customs with EoF (because i didn't have an idea that GPA Exists). And then i learned how to use each tool, how to put the tones, add phrases and sections and everything else. If anyone is a DT fan in this thread, i'm doing Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (a 42 minutes song divided in separated tracks) and yeah...is hard. But well, i gotta learn how to put DDC and other important thing, how to create a GP tab from 0 and other stuff 

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Synching with gpa, Is easy. It plays the track and shows the tab. You just have to link up the the notes, not all but a good portion of them. It let's you change pitch so you can hear the bass clearer, and the tempo too.

 

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I ended up not doing ddc anymore, riff repeater is the best way to learn a hard riffSent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

Personally, I don't want to learn each song I have to perfection. Sometimes, I just feel like playing a song without getting too hung up on minutiae, and I'll just pick a song and play the notes I can. If someone has bothered to add DD in a sensible way and I get to play the most relevant notes in a way that it still sounds nice, I'm all the happier. I mostly play to relax, not to becoming the best possible player. So for me, DD makes sense. And playing slowed down might get you the low down of how to play the song, but arguably it sounds shitty  :-P  

 

So if, like me, you're in it for the fun, DD still make sense. I don't mean to say you MUST add DD, just that there's legitimate uses for it.

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When I first bought RS2014 I had no idea that you could ramp up the difficulty of songs so I progressively learned all of my favorite tracks as the game taught me them.  Each time it would add in more notes in a solo, I would find myself having to change my fingering because I had been playing things where it felt comfortable.  As a result of this, I'm not a big fan of DD unless the song is just insanely hard, like Cliffs of Dover or Satch Boogie.  I still haven't broken 40% mastery on either of those.  

 

So I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with both Torkk and Flummi on this topic.  DD is a crutch to allow you to make the song still recognizable while you ramp up to learn it.  However, if the song is relatively easy to learn, then riff repeater at 100% is a better solution than DD.

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Sometimes I use big words that I don't completely understand, just to make myself seem more photosynthesis.

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When I first bought RS2014 I had no idea that you could ramp up the difficulty of songs so I progressively learned all of my favorite tracks as the game taught me them.  Each time it would add in more notes in a solo, I would find myself having to change my fingering because I had been playing things where it felt comfortable.  As a result of this, I'm not a big fan of DD unless the song is just insanely hard, like Cliffs of Dover or Satch Boogie.  I still haven't broken 40% mastery on either of those.  

 

So I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with both Torkk and Flummi on this topic.  DD is a crutch to allow you to make the song still recognizable while you ramp up to learn it.  However, if the song is relatively easy to learn, then riff repeater at 100% is a better solution than DD.

I'm not a big fan of DD. But i'm putting it in some songs (like the ones from Dream Theater) because they are really hard to play and i know some people can't play them without DD. And in the first Rocksmith, DD was a pain in my ass (that's why i always removed DD in some songs) but now it's really cool :D 

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Better than adding DD, you can break down the really difficult parts into smaller sections. I don't know if there's a limit to the section size, I usually make them about four measures, and 8 for simpler stuff. (I think there's a limit to the number of sections, though).

 

There's a downside to smaller sections, for me, since I'm kind of compulsive about this and find it impossible to move on to a new section until I've mastered the first. So it takes a really long time to get through the arrangement of the song. But at least I don't have to wait through 20 measures to get to the two notes I'm having trouble with.

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Yeah - sections defintiely help.

 

The one reason I do like DD is that it shows me the harder parts of the song - I usually ramp up the difficulty to about 80%, then let DD take it from there.

 

Here's the issue with the DDC tool, and one that is probably very difficult to address:

 

It has no concept of the song structure - it can only make educated guesses about which notes to add in and when, and usually follows just breaking down on the 1/4, 8th, 16th note barriers.  This is often not accurate, and results in incorrect fingering as well.

 

Perfect example (that I intend to address in an update) is Holy Wars on bass.  In the main opening riff, the full pattern is:

 

A|-5-h7--------------10-p7--------------------------|E|--------0--0--0-----------0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--|

but the emphasis in DDC is on the 5 and 10 - DDC  doesn't know that that sounds "wrong" when ramping up.... or at least to my ears it does.

 

I've also encountered situations, where EOF/DDC has no clue where to place the fret markers - the algorithm seems to be "anchor at the lowest finger for this measure"... which in general is ok, but if it's a major scale, you should anchor the root with your middle finger, not your index.

 

My point in all this is while I love the fact that we all are pumping out CDLC, we also need to be mindful that we are providing teaching tools for others to learn, and need to be careful of the output of automated tools that don't always understand the song structure.  I am guilty of this as well, and I am fixing the ones I have already made :)

 

That being said, if you ALREADY know how to play fairly well (understanding scales/modes/positions/etc), then Rocksmith really just becomes more of an animated score/tab sheet that is just fun to play.

 

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Yeah - sections defintiely help.

 

The one reason I do like DD is that it shows me the harder parts of the song - I usually ramp up the difficulty to about 80%, then let DD take it from there.

 

Here's the issue with the DDC tool, and one that is probably very difficult to address:

 

It has no concept of the song structure - it can only make educated guesses about which notes to add in and when, and usually follows just breaking down on the 1/4, 8th, 16th note barriers.  This is often not accurate, and results in incorrect fingering as well.

 

Perfect example (that I intend to address in an update) is Holy Wars on bass.  In the main opening riff, the full pattern is:

 

A|-5-h7--------------10-p7--------------------------|E|--------0--0--0-----------0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--|

but the emphasis in DDC is on the 5 and 10 - DDC  doesn't know that that sounds "wrong" when ramping up.... or at least to my ears it does.

 

I've also encountered situations, where EOF/DDC has no clue where to place the fret markers - the algorithm seems to be "anchor at the lowest finger for this measure"... which in general is ok, but if it's a major scale, you should anchor the root with your middle finger, not your index.

 

My point in all this is while I love the fact that we all are pumping out CDLC, we also need to be mindful that we are providing teaching tools for others to learn, and need to be careful of the output of automated tools that don't always understand the song structure.  I am guilty of this as well, and I am fixing the ones I have already made :)

 

That being said, if you ALREADY know how to play fairly well (understanding scales/modes/positions/etc), then Rocksmith really just becomes more of an animated score/tab sheet that is just fun to play.

 

 

TL;DR

 

In all honesty, as a pretty beginner still, i prefer slowing it down instead of missing notes. Since like you said, you learn incorrect fingering.

 

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Well, in theory, the fret hand positions (the highlighted frets) should stay the same no matter what the difficulty level. So you should never have to change your fingering, as long as you're paying attention to that. But you're right in that the DDC doesn't know how to read music well (yet).

 

But these days, I really like DD when playing official songs. They've usually done a really good job with that.

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Yeah, I put DD in all my stuff. If people don't wanna use it, it's not that hard to crank up the difficulty in riff repeater and restart the song. My wife won't even download a song if it doesn't have DD. Even if it's a really easy song, at least the person gets the confidence boost from maxing out the difficulty levels really quickly.

 

Personally, I charge headlong into everything with it cranked up, and hope for the best. Everybody else who plays RS at my house does DD. I don't see my lady going into RR and turning down the speed to practice a riff over and over anytime soon. She's still going through a long "I suck" phase, rather than realizing she's just out of practice.

Words of wisdom for CDLC charters:

 

"When in doubt, steal a tone from Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son"

 

- Billkwando

 

Download my L'Arc~en~Ciel Ken "Love Driver Cat" custom Inlays here

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If I can play a song right away without even trying much, I won't add DD because I figure that if I can play it, everyone else can, too.

 

When I add DD I do it manually. I've tried the DDC and it just never worked right for me. Maybe I'm just not giving it the right input, but the output always seems weird to me. When I do it by hand, I look at the note pattern and try to get an understanding what the actual difficulty is. Then I try to tone that done, one step at the time. I don't usually do more than four levels. It took a pretty long time for the first song I did this for, but when I did it the last time, I was much faster. And I was lucky enough to have selected notes to play for the easy difficulties that still make the song recognizable and fun to play - or so I hope.

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If I can play a song right away without even trying much, I won't add DD because I figure that if I can play it, everyone else can, too.

 

When I add DD I do it manually. I've tried the DDC and it just never worked right for me. Maybe I'm just not giving it the right input, but the output always seems weird to me. When I do it by hand, I look at the note pattern and try to get an understanding what the actual difficulty is. Then I try to tone that done, one step at the time. I don't usually do more than four levels. It took a pretty long time for the first song I did this for, but when I did it the last time, I was much faster. And I was lucky enough to have selected notes to play for the easy difficulties that still make the song recognizable and fun to play - or so I hope.

 

 

When's the last time you tried DDC? It's not a static thing....Chili's always improving it. My wife was just commenting the other day that even though it's simplified, it really feels like you're playing the song. If you get a chance, check this one out:

 

http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/kuso-breakin-nou-breakin-lily-r3275

Words of wisdom for CDLC charters:

 

"When in doubt, steal a tone from Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son"

 

- Billkwando

 

Download my L'Arc~en~Ciel Ken "Love Driver Cat" custom Inlays here

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If I can play a song right away without even trying much, I won't add DD because I figure that if I can play it, everyone else can, too.

 

When I add DD I do it manually. I've tried the DDC and it just never worked right for me. Maybe I'm just not giving it the right input, but the output always seems weird to me. When I do it by hand, I look at the note pattern and try to get an understanding what the actual difficulty is. Then I try to tone that done, one step at the time. I don't usually do more than four levels. It took a pretty long time for the first song I did this for, but when I did it the last time, I was much faster. And I was lucky enough to have selected notes to play for the easy difficulties that still make the song recognizable and fun to play - or so I hope.

 

 

When's the last time you tried DDC? It's not a static thing....Chili's always improving it. My wife was just commenting the other day that even though it's simplified, it really feels like you're playing the song. If you get a chance, check this one out:

 

http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/kuso-breakin-nou-breakin-lily-r3275

 

Last weekend. As I said, maybe I haven't fed it right..? I didn't really try more than one setting, and perhaps that was wrong...

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If I can play a song right away without even trying much, I won't add DD because I figure that if I can play it, everyone else can, too.

 

When I add DD I do it manually. I've tried the DDC and it just never worked right for me. Maybe I'm just not giving it the right input, but the output always seems weird to me. When I do it by hand, I look at the note pattern and try to get an understanding what the actual difficulty is. Then I try to tone that done, one step at the time. I don't usually do more than four levels. It took a pretty long time for the first song I did this for, but when I did it the last time, I was much faster. And I was lucky enough to have selected notes to play for the easy difficulties that still make the song recognizable and fun to play - or so I hope.

 

 

When's the last time you tried DDC? It's not a static thing....Chili's always improving it. My wife was just commenting the other day that even though it's simplified, it really feels like you're playing the song. If you get a chance, check this one out:

 

http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/kuso-breakin-nou-breakin-lily-r3275

 

Last weekend. As I said, maybe I haven't fed it right..? I didn't really try more than one setting, and perhaps that was wrong...

 

 

I don't make any phrases (DDC does that), only sections for RR, I set the phrase length to 4, and add 4000ms of leading silence usually. Also, it's important that your notes are correctly placed on the measures, cos if they're not, you'll get some wildly bad results...but I doubt that's your issue:)

Words of wisdom for CDLC charters:

 

"When in doubt, steal a tone from Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son"

 

- Billkwando

 

Download my L'Arc~en~Ciel Ken "Love Driver Cat" custom Inlays here

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I'll try that and see if it works for me. Perhaps the success also depends on the song. I've got a song with relatively simple chords in the pipeline, I'll see what it does with that.

 

Also: I think EOF has some pretty good features to create DD. There's your simplify chords thingy, there's your paste from feature and others. The one thing that confused me in the beginning is when you add a difficulty level and all of a sudden the names disappear and you get numbers ;)

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I'll try that and see if it works for me. Perhaps the success also depends on the song. I've got a song with relatively simple chords in the pipeline, I'll see what it does with that.

 

Also: I think EOF has some pretty good features to create DD. There's your simplify chords thingy, there's your paste from feature and others. The one thing that confused me in the beginning is when you add a difficulty level and all of a sudden the names disappear and you get numbers ;)

 

Make sure you have the most recent version of the toolkit, naturally. Also what does simplify chords and paste from do? I'm always afraid to click on things I don't understand, cos not everything can be undo'd.

Words of wisdom for CDLC charters:

 

"When in doubt, steal a tone from Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son"

 

- Billkwando

 

Download my L'Arc~en~Ciel Ken "Love Driver Cat" custom Inlays here

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Make sure you have the most recent version of the toolkit, naturally. Also what does simplify chords and paste from do? I'm always afraid to click on things I don't understand, cos not everything can be undo'd.

 

 

When you select notes, you can use Simplify Chords to for instance turn a three finger chord into a two finger chord. I know it works well that way, I have no experience with that feature when it comes to barre chords though.

 

Paste from can be used if you're creating difficulty levels by hand: you do the full song in "Amazing", then you click on the next lower difficulty and use "Paste from" to copy all the notes from Amazing. Then you can thin it out, go to the next lower level and use "Paste from" to copy everything from the second highest level and so on. Great for gradually decreasing the amount of notes or the complexity of chords.

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Make sure you have the most recent version of the toolkit, naturally. Also what does simplify chords and paste from do? I'm always afraid to click on things I don't understand, cos not everything can be undo'd.

 

 

When you select notes, you can use Simplify Chords to for instance turn a three finger chord into a two finger chord. I know it works well that way, I have no experience with that feature when it comes to barre chords though.

 

Paste from can be used if you're creating difficulty levels by hand: you do the full song in "Amazing", then you click on the next lower difficulty and use "Paste from" to copy all the notes from Amazing. Then you can thin it out, go to the next lower level and use "Paste from" to copy everything from the second highest level and so on. Great for gradually decreasing the amount of notes or the complexity of chords.

 

 

Awesome, thanks!

Words of wisdom for CDLC charters:

 

"When in doubt, steal a tone from Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son"

 

- Billkwando

 

Download my L'Arc~en~Ciel Ken "Love Driver Cat" custom Inlays here

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Also what does simplify chords and paste from do?

It removes the gem from the highest played string in the chord, ie. a 3-5-5 power chord is reduced to 3-5. If you ever are uncertain about what a function does, give the manual (available in the Help menu, or you can just open manualfunctions.htm from EOF's program folder) a look. It contains a description of every menu function.

I'm always afraid to click on things I don't understand, cos not everything can be undo'd.

Generally every operation that alters the chart triggers an undo state, although certain operations performed multiple times in a row will only make an undo for the first time (ie. if you lengthen a note with more than one mouse wheel scroll, the undo state is only made before the first scroll, so that when you undo, the note's length returns to its original length instead of just one scroll less). If you identify any specific chart manipulations that can't be reversed with the Undo function, please let me know.

Paste from can be used if you're creating difficulty levels by hand: you do the full song in "Amazing", then you click on the next lower difficulty and use "Paste from" to copy all the notes from Amazing. Then you can thin it out, go to the next lower level and use "Paste from" to copy everything from the second highest level and so on. Great for gradually decreasing the amount of notes or the complexity of chords.

This is usually how multiple difficulties were authored for other rhythm games that use static difficulties (ie. Rock Band). For Rocksmith, difficulties are authored on a per-phrase basis, so EOF has some functions to level up (insert a copy of the current difficulty level) parts of the track that have been split up into phrases. My recommended workflow for manually authoring dynamic difficulties (ie. not using DDC) is as follows:1. Author the entire arrangement. Doing this in the lowest difficulty tab will make it a little easier.2. Define all phrases and sections from start to finish.3. For each phrase that is hard enough to need another difficulty level, open "Track>Rocksmith>Manage RS phrases", select the phrase in question (it is automatically selected if the chart's seek position is in the phrase) and add a level. Normally every instance of a phrase should be identical or at least similar, so you should allow it to level up every instance of the phrase. This function copies the notes in the affected phrase to the next difficulty level.4. Simplify the notes in difficulty 0 a little bit, such as by thinning out the number of notes if they are close, removing some techniques, removing the number of notes in a chord, etc.Repeat steps 3 and 4 as often as necessary. The end result is that each phrase will have as many difficulty levels as needed, and simple phrases will be fully leveled up sooner than more complicated ones.
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Thank you, that was most illuminating. I'll try that process. I guess it yields much better results if the song has a less even structure than most I've done so far.

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