My Fretting Tutorial

[timedrifter]

I made this tutorial for fun, it shows how I been fretting songs and there is a video for each step. I think this tutorial makes it pretty easy for noobs.
I could not get feedback to work on my PC, If I do and figure it out I will add to the tutorial later.

here is a link to my tutorial page:
http://www.renatomusic.com/?page_id=554

Please tell me what you think.

Peace.

[raynebc]

Without having to read past the first section, I already could point out that the tutorial NEEDS to have any suggestion of using Freetar Editor removed immediately. Any experienced fretter will acknowledge that program is rubbish, and that it's not even useful for creating a rough draft of a chart. Your tutorial won't end up being legitimately useful unless it demonstrates the proper method of beat syncing: Setting the MIDI delay (ie. in the song properties menu or by clicking and dragging the first beat marker), setting a good (realistically accurate) starting tempo, using anchors to correct minor tempo slips and compensating for major tempo changes by using anchoring or explicitly setting the tempo on the appropriate beat marker. Also, you don't need any software other than EOF to convert any normal MP3 to an appropriate OGG file, it can do that automatically (it comes with command line programs to do the job). EOF allows you to create sustained notes (use your mouse scroll wheel or the [ and ] keys). Using a separate MIDI editor to make notes sustained is ill-advised. Lastly, the use of song.ogg to control whether a chart's audio is muted when the player missed notes was deprecated a LONG time ago. Don't add a blank/silent song.ogg or a clone of guitar.ogg (named as song.ogg) to force it one way or the other. Miss volume is a user-defined setting and the user should set his or her preference.

[timedrifter]

OK, I am glad to see your quite passionate about this and I appreciate your feedback, in my defense, I did post the first part with freetar as being optional, and I am still learning how to master fretting, and for my own songs I only used EOF because I knew the exact tempo for all but one song and I am very happy with what I have done so far and my 3 clutch songs I fretted and posted, I used exactly what I showed in the tutorial to make them and I think they came out pretty dam good.

With EOF I dont know how to stretch out the notes, and I dont understand the anchoring part too much either but none the less I think it is an awesome tool.

[raynebc]

I already told you exactly what to do to make sustain notes in EOF. You ought to check out the documentation that comes with EOF and perhaps look at the tutorial video on the project homepage:
http://www.t3-i.com/eof.htm

I can tell you right off the bat that EOF is much easier to use than Reaper, so unless you have the time to learn such a complex program, EOF would be the better choice, but you won't get much help on the RBN forums.

[timedrifter]

OK, OK......your right, I will try the sustain note with the scroll wheel, thanks very much for that, I am very glad about that cause I was pulling out my hair trying to figure it out. I did not realize there was a video on that page, so I get the "Duh award". I did read the EOF documentation a few times and did not understand it all.

I do not expect much from the RBN forum, I figured reaper would be good to record my own new song projects and have the ability to fret them all in one place, but it does seem complex, I just like that it exports midi which garageband does not and does a bunch of other things too as far as recording my own songs.

anyway, thanks for your help, I will re-make the tutorials in the near future, it would be nice if the EOF video had someone talking it through, not just doing it as well as pointing out every aspect of it, maybe there is video's but I havent really looked but I will.

[Kostires]

theres nothing on that page with link.
nothing shows up.
totally helpless

[raynebc]

If you're talking about the EOF website, the video DOES show up. Otherwise you or your ISP are doing something wrong.

[timedrifter]

OK raynebc, I fretted my first song that is not my own with nothing but EOF and I am pretty happy with it,
The BPM part I didnt do like in the video at the EOF site but I will try on the next song.

Kostire, if your talking about my site, I took it down because it was brought to my attention that is it actually the hard way, when I get EOF totally down, I will re-post a tutorial.

Rock onward

--- EDIT ---

Just a quick note that I updated my song "warning" located in this thread: https://www.fretsonfire.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45945 and I used nothing but EOF and I used the tempo method described in the EOF tutorial and it came out great in my opinion.

[timedrifter]

I just re-fretted six of my songs all with EOF for all instruments and vocals, it is a great tool indeed,

I have a question, I noticed with the GH songs like Disturbed Stricken, it has 3 OGG files - Guitar.ogg (contains guitar), rhythm.ogg (contains bass) song.ogg (contains drums and vocals) is there other files I could use to separate the drums (drums.ogg or vocals.ogg?) from the vocals or are those the only 3 files that can be used in a FOF song folder?

[raynebc]

The decrypted Rock Band charts have these:
guitar.ogg
drums.ogg
rhythm.ogg
song.ogg

You should be able to have all four with your chart (only worthwhile if they're separated), but that will probably affect the game's performance. As far as I know, it would play all the files back, but I can't guarantee it. AFAIK, the vocals and other instruments/SFX/etc. were always mixed into song.ogg.

[timedrifter]

Thanks raynebc, Appreciate it!
I am going to add those files to my own songs (I wrote) and offer "lite" versions with one ogg file for people who have slow systems. as far as fretting songs as a fan, I will probably stick with the one file, could you explain that line command to make the mute (or lower volume) effect happen in EOF?
I like that you could do everything in EOF and I feel more comfortable than ever.

One other question, for the coop charting, is that where the guitar.ogg (lead) and rhythm.ogg (rhythm) would be utilized?

[raynebc]

rhythm.ogg is usually what the bass guitar is stored in, but some songs like "Master Exploder" use it for other guitar instead. It should be fine to use it for that purpose, but if you need to have rhythm and bass guitar as separated audio, that's probably going to be hard to do (not sure if FoFiX allows such a thing). In FoFiX, the "Lead Guitar" notes are in the "PART GUITAR COOP" MIDI track, but it doesn't get separated audio. It would be a neat feature in FoFiX if separated audio tracks can be defined per instrument in the song.ini file, perhaps that would be a good feature to request from the developers.

I'm not sure what you mean about the volume. FoFiX has a setting to lower the volume when the player misses notes.