[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.

Thank you a lot for this new great tool !

One more reason to ask contributors for well sync CDLCs ...

Thanks! Thats awesome, I thought that i will must do something like this by myself and this works great :-)

Thanks a lot, it works really well on my mac :) When you said it may take a while , I would have never imagined that you would be so fast and efficient !  Cheers !

Fret hand mutes on a single string works fine with the latest release. ill compare a few more solos to see if all bends have been converted with the right bend strength

Cool. Let me know if you find any mistakes :)

I'm also working on the next release, which will probably be v1.0. I'm adding a simple GUI frontend to the program. It's not a complete GUI and doesn't offer all of the freedom of the console app. Basically, it just allows you to select your Rocksmith folder (if it's not autodetected, anyway) and an output directory and then will convert every installed song. I think that should cover the most basic use case and might help those people who are not comfortable around a console :)

 

If everything goes according to plan, I'll release the new version on Monday.

Could you add ps3/xbox360 psarc support?

Not sure, that might be quite a bit of effort. Also, I'm not sure there's a significant user base for it, since I don't think you can easily access the console versions' data files?

You should be able to use the toolkit to convert the files to PC, then export them to tab.

New version is out, v0.9.8. Check out the fancy new website ;) http://www.rocksmithtotab.de

 

This release features a few minor feature additions that were requested, and I also added a simple GUI frontend to it. So anyone who's scared of the console, you don't have to deal with that anymore. The whole conversion process is now very simple: Start the RocksmithToTabGUI.exe, ensure that the selected Rocksmith install path and output directory are ok, then hit "Convert tabs" and let the program do its job. Afterwards, you'll end up with a folder full of fancy Rocksmith tabs. Enjoy :)

Many thanks to @cabalistic for his efforts and making this possible.  The RocksmithToTabLib.dll has been incorporated into the CSC Toolkit under the "CDLC 2 Tab" menu (formerly "SngToTab") giving GUI access to generating *.gp5 files.  The toolkit can generate gp5 files for maximum song difficulty or all difficulties, similar to what can be done for generating plain printable ASCII Tablature.  You can select multiple CDLC files for conversion.  You can also select specific songs and arrangements, including multi-song CDLC files .

 

Unfortunately, not all the features could be incorporated into the CSC Toolkit at this time.  User will still have to use the command line version of RocksmithToTab to gain full access some features, like Xml conversion to Gp5.

I make all the tabs for my customs available on UG anyways, but I often change things around in EoF after the initial tab is done, so it's great that I can finally incorporate those changes in an efficient manner. Thanks again, cabalistic.

I was rather skeptical about this project, but it has become an amazing tool. 

I'm sure it will generate ideas in peoples mind, they could not think of before.

Like creating a compilation "Best of Buckethead's Riffs"

 

I came up with the idea to convert the "etudes.psarc", which contains about 35 teaching lessons under names like "$[33147] - $[34420]"

 

I also became nostalgic with Dos batch files. So I adapted Azreals batch file my way

for dlc's I put on my desktop or in a folder on the desktop, to convert into a folder Gp5 on the desktop (on Win8.1)

 

title RocksmithToTab Batch-Convert

REM paths:
set RS_PATH=%userprofile%\desktop\
set GP5_PATH=%userprofile%\desktop\Gp5\

REM Convert all files on Desktop:
for /r %RS_PATH% %%f IN (*.psarc) do ( RocksmithToTab.exe -o %GP5_PATH% %%f -fgp5)

 

I noticed, the "guessing" process of notes duration is wrong when notes duration were shortened by a "Rest" in the original GP file.

It's not a big issue, but maybe it's possible to activate different guessing procedures, eventually by command line options like -g1, -g2.

 

I also notice that some  cDLC don't convert, they have to be regenerated in the Toolkit first. 

They are not only elder ones.

Thanks. Interesting idea to convert the etudes.psarc, it actually works, which is somewhat surprising :) I would recommend to do it with option "-n {identifier}", though, which results in more sensible filenames.

 

 

I noticed, the "guessing" process of notes duration is wrong when notes duration were shortened by a "Rest" in the original GP file.

It's not a big issue, but maybe it's possible to activate different guessing procedures, eventually by command line options like -g1, -g2.

Unfortunately, that isn't really possible. Since Rocksmith conveys absolutely no information whatsoever about pauses, there are basically a million ways you could interpret a single, non-sustained note. Sustaining it till the next note is the only way that is reliable and predictable, and it is an ok approximation in many cases. The only other thing that I could do is mark all non-sustained notes as staccato, but I'm not sure that is particularly helpful.

I could not find a help topic for the -n option.

 

About different guessing options, I thought of respecting the real duration of sustains, (except if they have none) and fill in the rest with usual "rest", not dotted, and give the option to add this as a second track in Gp5. In weird guessing cases, it would be easy to copy the part of a correct guess from another track. Just an idea.

But that's already a problem. Sustains in original tracks and in most CDLC end shortly before a new note begins. If I were to try and honor that exactly, you would get some very weird rhythm with a lot of very short pauses that don't make any sense. To avoid that, you would already have to start and guess how long a pause would have to be to write it down.

It's worse with non-sustained notes, because there is literally no indication what is the correct length. If you listen to the music, some of those are actually sustained until the next note, while others are cut off immediately (staccato), and anything in-between. I don't have any information to get this right, and you can't guess at the correct way, either. All you could do is define a default maximum length for a note, and if the next note is farther away, fill the remainder with rests. But even that is tricky, because to get sensible results out of this, you would have to take the current bar context into account. For example, if the current note is part of a triplet, that would drastically change the sensible choices when figuring out how long to make the note and how long the pause. So it wouldn't even be easy to implement.

 

I'm sorry, but I really don't see a way that would provide useful output. The necessary information just isn't there.

Thanks, so Rocksmith doesn't support staccato, (cut offs) 

which confirms my criticism of Rocksmith being to permissive in rhythm to give a decent feedback.

When I play with headphones, my children only heard the "acoustic strings" without the music,

and they told me it sounded faulty even with 98%. :o

This is certainly one of my biggest issues with RS. Not being able to more accurately define the rhythmic patterns without making the tab look messy (especially in fast songs when the notes show up in big clusters and close together) is really annoying. By now, I tend to put accents on staccato notes for example, so I can more easily see which notes not to sustain under any circumstance so as to get the right feel. I also try to give chords only as long a sustain as they have on the record by using the "crazy" status on them.

I wish however there were more options for rhythmic notation, but thats probably something for the next RS installment.

I have with one custom in GP5 a come back of the Error message during a thrill part  with lot of  hammer on and pull offs. Ill send you a more detailed description.

Alright, but I can't promise anything. I've seen another arrangement fail in GP5 that loads up fine in TuxGuitar, GP6 and GP Mobile, and so I don't really have any clue what's wrong. The bend issues were at least debuggable, but it seems GP5 is kinda sensitive with some things...

i opened the gp file with tuxguitar and saved it again with it and the problem got apparently fixed by tuxguitar. I opened the one saved by tuxguitar in Guitar Pro 5 and there was no Error screen anymore

That might help. I can try and do a diff on the two files and see what TuxGuitar changed.

If you send me such a GP5 file, I can take a look at it to see if I find any problems.

you my friend, you are THE man! 

 

Just did a convert of my complete rocksmith folder and it worked great! All the songs in the game got converted verry fast and quite accurate aswell. I only use TuxGuitar and the ones i opened for a test all worked!

 

I really want to thank you fort doing this great effort! I'm going on holiday from tommorow so i can print out the tabs now and i can continue to play the giutar while sitting at the pool.  ^_^

 

And thats all thanks to you!

Awesome tool,  fantastic work !

 

Just what I need for working out whats going on on those complex sections :)

 

[ Go a bit mad playing the riff repeater @ 25% just to see the notes ]

 

 

Thank you for making it !

very good gob! i just tested it for fun and its works really good!

it can help if you dont have the tab and dont know how some part should be exactly playd:)

(or wanna test your own cdlc)

thanks

Wow, just come across this program this morning. While I've only had about 5 minutes to play around with it, this is bloody brilliant. Great work. Although I haven't managed to convert my entire list as yet, there are a couple of songs it breaks on with "unhandled exception: System.InvalidOperationException:  Nullable object must have a value.". I need to remove them from the directory to bypass them. I have to say thanks for all your efforts on this, it's definitely going to come in handy as rocksmith can be really hard to read sometimes.

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