[update: The latest release is v0.9.9, visit the website: http://www.rocksmithtotab.de

This program can convert any official or custom DLC into Guitar pro tab files (either .gp5 or .gpx). All of Rocksmith's features are supported and mirrored in the tabs. There may still be a few bugs left, and the rhythm notation is occasionally weird or just plain wrong, but overall the output is very decent and usable. The program can now be used on a Mac.]

 

Hi all,

 

over the past week I've begun to write a small program that can convert Rocksmith 2014 arrangements to Guitar Pro .gpx files. While Rocksmith's way of showing songs has its advantages, I've always had difficulty to figure out certain things from it, particularly strumming rhythms and quick passages. So for a while now I had been searching for a way to extract tabs from Rocksmith's tracks, and from a quick look through the forum, I might not be the only one. Recently I stumbled upon the RSTabExplorer, which attempted to do just that. Unfortunately, it wasn't in a state where its output was really useful to me, but at least it was a starting point. I had a look at the code and decided that I might have a shot at creating my own attempt.

 

I have chosen to export the tabs to Guitar Pro, and specifically Guitar Pro 6. The reason is that I own Guitar Pro, and the gpx format was the quickest one for me to figure out (because at its core, it's just a very readable xml file, as opposed to the fully binary format of gp5). I also considered MusicXML, but it was a little more awkward to write, and more importantly, Guitar Pro's import is not advanced enough to capture all the relevant features.

 

Now, the program isn't fully finished, yet, but it is in a state where I think it is already useful, and also could benefit from getting some feedback from other users. The program is a basic command-line utility (no GUI, sorry), where you specify the .psarc file and an output directory, and it will process all arrangements found in the archive. It already exports most of Rocksmith's features and does a decent job at rhythm detection, so many arrangements (at least in part) look quite good in Guitar Pro.

 

There is one additional reason I'm releasing this now. Of the two major missing features (sustains and bends), I need help with the bends, specifically in understanding how Rocksmith interprets bends. I read the tutorial post about authoring bends in Eof, and that is all quite straightforward. However, in practice I found several tracks where a note has just a single bend value, yet sometimes Rocksmith interprets it as a simple bend, and sometimes as a bend/release. I can't figure out how Rocksmith differentiates between the two. For example, in Black Magic there is a bend/release on the 6th fret of the 5th string, but looking at the arrangement xml, I only see a single bend value for this note. Can anyone help me out here? Thanks :)

 

Other than that, well, just try it out and let me know what you think. Just a little heads-up: Slides are only semi-working at the moment. Unpitching slides are fine, but slides to a target note only work in some instances. I know why, I just haven't had the time to correct it, yet.

Also, the rhythm. Obviously, since Rocksmith has no direct notion of rhythm, it is quite a challenge to get an accurate rhythm representation out of Rocksmith's tracks. Basically not a single note maps 100% to its original rhythmic duration. I have experimented a bit with this, and my current approach is still quite basic, *but* it works surprisingly well in most instances. However, you have to expect the occasional oddity or error in the output, particularly in fast and "sloppy" solos. I have some ideas about cleverer approaches that I will try in the future, once all other features are implemented.

 

One final warning: By default, the program puts all arrangements of a song (e.g. lead, rhythm, bass) into a single .gpx file. This is generally fine, but one caveat in Guitar Pro is that all tracks share the master bars, which dictate tempo and time. This is almost never a problem, but I did find in "Red Fang - Number Thirteen" that at some points, the lead and rhythm arrangements use different time in some measures. So when you combine them into a single file, this distinction is lost, and the result is simply wrong. There's not much I can do about that. I have implemented a switch to the program (-t) that will split the arrangements into separate files, if you need it.

 

Now, finally, here is the link to the project: https://github.com/fholger/RocksmithToTab

And the first release is here: https://github.com/fholger/RocksmithToTab/releases

The program requires .NET 4.5. I hope I packaged everything correctly, please let me know if something isn't working. There are basic instructions on the GitHub page.

 

I hope you get some use out of it, and please do point out any errors you spotted (besides those already mentioned above) in conversions. Many thanks to all you guys here who created the Custom Toolkit, and also to the RSTabExplorer team, because without you this project wouldn't exist.

I updated the Toolkit to the latest version, and it's working great now!!

Thank you guys

So if I make a custom for Rocksmith

can I upload the guitar pro file to a tab website

if I made it my self and then add drums

but first I have to find out how to add drums

as it would be easier to use your software then try to do it in tuxguitar

as I know how to do it on editor on fire

but it is your software

so I want to make sure 

All the software does is basically convert the chart from one format to another. If it's your chart, it's your tab, do with it whatever you like :)

You may have to edit the generated tab in places, as the generated rhythm isn't always perfectly accurate due to missing information.

All the software does is basically convert the chart from one format to another. If it's your chart, it's your tab, do with it whatever you like :)

You may have to edit the generated tab in places, as the generated rhythm isn't always perfectly accurate due to missing information.

OK

thanks

now I just have to find out how to do drums :D

So, I've been absent a little longer than I anticipated, but I can probably find the odd hour in the coming weeks to apply some polish to RocksmithToTab and eliminate the remaining bugs. I really want to get to a nice, clean v1.0 release :)

Unfortunately, since I got bug reports from various sources (e.g. this thread, email, reddit, ...) and did not properly take notes of all bugs reported, I kind of lost the overview about outstanding bugs. So I'm hoping you can help me out. Please mention all songs (official and CDLC) which are broken in some way, so that I can investigate and figure out the cause and hopefully fix it for good. That would help me tremendously :)

 

(One bug I already fixed is with CDLCs which feature a 5-string bass. This is the cause for the problems with the various Dream Theater songs that @@DanPro777 reported.)

can't convert: In The Presence Of Enemies by Dream Theater...

it's saying something about: duration -1 properly spliting in half...

Thanks. I fixed the infinite loop bug, but I also found the underlying problem: That track has an incorrect empty sub-beat in one of the bars, which was throwing off my rhythm detection. I added a check for empty sub-beats.

Keep 'em coming :)

Nice to see you working on this one again! This is not a bug but rather a new feature request:

 

Maybe you have been aware of the new feature "Create Metronome Bonus Arrangements" in the "Edit Arrangement" window of the Toolkit.

@@Alex360 has added it a while ago, and it produces a copy of the original arrangement, exept for adding metronome tick events to the xml.

(The benefit is that you can play the song completely on your own and hear nothing but your guitar and a metronome to keep up with the beat.)

 

Now when those psarcs are converted with your program, all the arrangements will appear dublicated. I have been wondering whether you were able to detect those identical arrangements and ignore them in the conversion.

Maybe Alex could even sneak some special "flag" or boolean or whatever into the arrangement, telling you that it is a Metronome Bonus Arrangement and that you should ignore it?

 

Here you can find some example CDLC:

http://customsforge.com/tags/ccs/Metronome%2BBonus%2BArrangement/?search_app_filters%5Bccs%5D%5BsearchInKey%5D=database_3

 

I hope you two could look into that. This is not high priority of course, but rather nice to have (if it is relatively easy).

 

Regards,

Azrael

@@Azrael, toolkit has already mechanism for detecting that, he could just use it :)

I see there is a "Metronome" property set in the arrangement manifest, however, I don't quite understand the values. The bonus arrangements have Metronome set to 1, as I would expect, but the normal ones have it set to 2. I would have thought it would either be missing or 0. The 2 confuses me :)

So, no further bugged arrangements? I'm fairly sure there were more, including some official ones, I just can't remember which ones... Help me out here, please :)

Did you find out what Metronome = 2 means? :)

 

Anyway I wanted to give my songs another testrun to find bugged arrangements, when I noticed something weird:

I placed all of my CDLC in the subfolder "SteamApps\common\Rocksmith2014\dlc\CDLC" and they seem to be ignored by the GUI version of your program.

I didn't notice this before, because the last time I used the GUI I hadn't changed my folder structure yet. And in the meantime I only used my own batch file which converts only the subfolder, because the GUI cannot save the settings yet.

 

Thus I suggest you program should work through all subfolders of \dlc\, because I am sure I am not the only person with this structure :)

 

Still I found one CDLC with warnings in the bass arangement:

"Not possible to merge empty note with neighbour in bar 65 - 69"

http://customsforge.com/page/customsforge_rs_2014_cdlc.html/_/pc-enabled-rs-2014-cdlc/du-erkennst-micht-wieder-r5890

 

Regards,

Azrael

Amazing tool,

thanks a lot

Hm, I can't get it to convert "Surrender" by Cheap Trick. (Mac)

 

There are lots of tabs out there for this legendary song, but none of them match what's in RS2014.

 

If someone's got it (maybe a Windows user?), do you mind sharing it with me? Just PM me.

 

Thanks in advance.

What kind of problems are you having, exactly? That particular file is part of the rs1_compatibility.psarc and should be converted by the RocksmithToTabGUI program. So does it just not generate the tab, or is the tab unusable?

pretty cool stuff, I converted tracks yesterday, I was really surprised to find tabs been written out that I don't have in rocksmith, they look like rs1 songs, I take it they are in located the  rs1_compatibility.psarc?

@@jason_slab if you've got rs1 stuff you can reach all songs from the psarc, not having them just an illusion, so you can buy disk iomport tool to have ondisk tracks too..

interesting,  I just figured that the rs1 songs would be a separate download that I'd have to buy, handy to know all I need is the disk import tool.
thx

Hello. I just found this thread and more importantly, this awesome RS to Tabs Converter of yours. I converted about 1100 songs and out of those, there were 11 CDLCs that wouldn't convert. For each song, the app would hangup until I 'Closed' it. I would have to remove said song from the DLC folder and then relaunch the app again in order to go further in the conversion process. As you can tell, I had to do this another 10 times.

 

The songs in question are:

 

_Buddy_Holly_Maybe_Baby_v2_p

_Buddy_Holly_Oh_Boy_v3_p

_Buddy_Holly_That'll_Be_The_Day_v2_p

_Meridian_AugustBurnsRed_p

_Sons-and-Daughters_v1_DD_p

Buddy-Holly_Peggy-Sue-avdocs-Version_v3_4_p

Elvis-Presley_Jailhouse-Rock-Blackbird-version_v1_DD_p

Hole_Doll-Parts-Ver-2_v2_DD_p

Nazareth_Love-Hurts_v3_0_p

Pretenders_Back-On-The-Chain-Gang_v3_5_p

ZZ-Top_La-Grange-Blackbird-version_v1_p

 

With that out of the way, can anyone  tell me how I can covert any new CDLC song(s) into tabs that doesn't require doing a batch conversion of every song already in my DLC folder? Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Rock on!! 

I'll take a look at these songs.

Converting individual CDLCs currently requires you to use the command line version of the program, but I'm working on a new release that will feature incremental updates in the GUI, so that only newly added songs are converted.

Thanks for the reply. You can also add to the list of songs that crashes the program

 

Alicia Keys - Fallin_p

@RockNRollKid: I tested all of the CDLC you reported, and they are all working fine with my development version. So apparently I already fixed the bug that was affecting these files. Should work with the next release :)

@RockNRollKid: I tested all of the CDLC you reported, and they are all working fine with my development version. So apparently I already fixed the bug that was affecting these files. Should work with the next release :)

Awesome. Thanks!

 

On a related note, there were a few songs that managed to convert to GP5 Tab files, but upon launching GP5, they are missing tabs all together or they wouldn't allow for exporting to PDF's. Is this a common thing for anyone else? I've tried converting those songs again to GP5 in the hopes they would work the second time around. Still have the same issues.

I downloaded the program and tried it on Bon Jovi's Bounce and it wouldn't work,  Running Win 7.

@RockNRollKid: If you point me to specific songs that are affected by this, I can take a look. There have been bugs in my GP5 converter in the past which resulted in invalid .gp5 files, so that's always a possibility.

 

@SixStringSlinger2k: The song is converting fine with my development version, so I imagine that one should also be fixed with the next release. (Any day now, I'm pretty much done with my todo list.)