Best practices and other questions about my first CDLC

[J.P.]

 

I've just made my first CDLC, and I want to keep the quality as close to ODLC as possible.

So here are my questions:
1. The song I made only has one guitar. The official songs seem to always have a rhythm track, even when the song only has one guitar. Is it good practice to just copy&paste the lead track into the rhythm track? Or should I leave rhythm guitar empty?

2. This song starts with some dead notes during the count-in. How should I add a count-in in this case? Should I add the sound on top, or the bar before?

3. Also, the bass doesn't kick in until the chorus. Does it make sense to add a count-in in that track?

4. The song ends with a fade-out. I haven't found a way to make the instruments fade out. Guitar Pro has volume automations, but they can't be exported to GP5 format. Is there a way to do it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[J.P.]

 

After looking for similar cases in official songs, I'll be answering myself:

1. I've seen several official songs that don't have either a lead or a rhythm guitar track. For example, Karma Police by Radiohead only has a rhythm track, Breed by Nirvana only has lead and alternate lead, Plug In Baby by Muse only has lead and a bonus lead, Roxanne by The Police only has rhythm and bonus rhythm. However, there are also a few songs that seem to copy and paste the same lead track into the alt track. For example, Like a Stone by Audioslave seems to be identical in both paths (unless I'm missing something). So I guess this comes down to personal preference. I personally won't be adding the same track twice.

2. Official songs only add the cue sound to the empty beats, so they have a "partial" count-in. An example of this is Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry.

3. For songs in which an instrument doesn't kick in until later, official songs never add a count-in. They're there only when there is no other cue about when to start, usually when an instrument is the first to start playing.

4. I've managed to fake a fade-out by adding 4 extra tones besides the default one, and reducing the volume in each of them. This wouldn't be as easy if the song had any sound change, but luckily this one doesn't have any.

I've already uploaded the updated version of my CDLC, and I'm very happy with the end result

 

[Shroud]

They are all very legitimate questions without a unique answer 

I don't like the distinction between Lead and Rhythm guitar, it's an obsolete distinction.  I  wish the game never separated the paths like that but rather showed all guitar charts at once with maybe a symbol to indicate whether it has a solo. I think the only reason to have a separate Rhythm path is for players who don't want to stumble upon a song that requires them to play a solo. In the real world, bands can have multiple guitarists without one of them being the only soloist, there are songs with two distinct guitars both of which have a solo and I would rather have them on separate tracks as the original guitarists. Otherwise I  would always instinctively choose Lead path in RS and don't like having to switch path to check what's on the other, but this is how the game is designed unfortunately for me.

 

Count-ins aren't always needed. Their purpose is to signal the tempo especially when many instruments start at once. Rarely but possibly you could also have a count-in later in the song. I would use a count-in only where it helps your instrument. The worst case is when you hear a count-in and you have nothing to play next.

 

For the fade out, I  wouldn't bother with multiple tones, just stop charting notes when it makes sense, possibly on the first downbeat. When I created a (very few) customs for Rockband3, I put the audio files into Reaper and edited the ending, increasing volume to compensate for the fade out, and trying to cut-off the song on a downbeat, which is one way musicians play such songs live (other ways are a "big rock ending", medley with the next song, or come up with an entirely different ending, but none of these are doable for CDLC). It doesn't always come out nice, so I wouldn't recommend it as a standard solution but you can give it a try.

[J.P.]

 

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer!

I absolutely agree about the distinction between Lead and Rhythm. In fact, I've seen songs that are charted worse because the charters focused on those roles, instead of how the guitar parts are actually played. For example, one of my favorite songs in the game is Blackbird by Alter Bridge. In the original and live versions, both guitarists play solos, and also the "lead" guitarist (Mark Tremonti) plays the main arpeggio, while "rhythm" guitarist and singer (Miles Kenendy) alternates between singing and adding licks. In the game, they decided to butcher both parts and make a sort of Frankenstein's monster that doesn't flow well at all, in which the arpeggio is constantly interrupted to play those licks, or they make jumps between parts originally played by each of them. So I agree, that distinction doesn't mean much nowadays, and I'd also prefer if they kept the tracks separate and the way the original guitarists play them.

In my first version I did stop the song as you say, and it sounded fine, so I'll probably do that when I have to in the future. However, this time I found it useful to learn how to add tone changes in EOF and assign them in DLC Builder, and I'm happy with the final result.