Rock Band Pro MIDI & Tech Info Discussion

[raynebc]

I'm using original MIDI standard channel numbering, where the first usable channel is number 0. There are a couple of these forced hammer on notes in both of the songs ("The Look", "Foolin'"), although I did find multiple instances where notes were not explicitly forced as hammer on and were made hammer on automatically (ie. close enough to the previous note). Here's the MIDI dump of the first real forced hammer on in "Foolin'":
Delta file pos=0x17E31 Deltas=0 Real time=186321.630500ms Delta time=169680 Adj. real time=186321.630500ms Event file pos=0x17E32 (Running status): Event: Note on (Channel=2): Note #=99, Velocity=112
Delta file pos=0x17E34 Deltas=0 Real time=186321.630500ms Delta time=169680 Adj. real time=186321.630500ms Event file pos=0x17E35 Event: Note on (Channel=0): Note #=100, Velocity=113


I say real because I found that half of the notes in the solo's tremolo phrase were marked as forced hammer on, which makes no real sense, so I tweaked EOF to remove hammer on status from all notes within tremolo phrases. The first of two notes for this chord are sent over channel 2, indicating the chord is a hammer on, but I don't remember if it is that way in the song. If anybody can confirm that it is, it would mean that RB3 does indeed support HOPO chords for pro guitar. This one instance aside, all single notes that I saw in Youtube videos of the expert pro guitar tracks for these two songs were correctly imported into EOF as hammer ons.

The chord name system is a bit screwy, especially how a chord and it's "power" version (ie. G versus G5) are marked with the same number. Other than that (space) oddity (haha, bad pun), the chord numbers I listed are consistent in the two charts. RB3 must have another means to determine the correct name in such circumstances. In at least one other instance, I saw a chord name given as a text event, but I don't know how often they are named in that way.

[thekiwimaddog]

I've notced the Text Event Chord Names too but I think these might be related to the game trainers and not chords. They didn't seem to make any sense to me when I was looking into it before. It's a shame as this would have been a perfect way to notate the chord names and I do wonder why they didn't just do it like that.

I'm happy to go with the 0-15 system if you say this is more correct. It was that I notice that many MIDI programs seem to use the 1-16 system but it make no difference to me.

In regards to the forced HOPO's I was certain that they were as follows.
Easy Note 30
Medium Note 54
Hard Note 78
Expert Note 102

Maybe they work together?
Do you know of any forced off midi events?

Thanks
David

[raynebc]

I haven't found any forced HOPO off markers yet, but I'll keep an eye out. For forced HOPO notes, all I can go on is what I see in the MIDI. It's likely that lots of notation that is one way in legacy tracks (5 lane guitar) is different for pro guitar tracks. I'll continue to implement the pro import logic by comparing the MIDI data with videos of the charts, and hopefully when another beta/release candidate of EOF is made, people can help compare import results with what they see in-game or on Youtube to help find mistakes.

[drihscol]

Well, aren't hopo's showing up in game only when they're forced?
i think that would make more sense, because you wouldn't want hopo's when there aren't any in an accurate pro guitar chart.

[raynebc]

As I described, there are HOPOs shown in the video even when the note's aren't marked specially.

Edit:
I examined the chart for "The Power of Love" and found some more info:

Pre-defined chord numbers:

Code: Select all

Chord Eb: Marked with note #15
Chord Cm7 or Cm7b13: Marked with note #12
Chord Ab: Marked with note #=8
Chord Bbsus4: Marked with note #=10
Chord G7: Marked with note #=7

I still don't know how the game tracks variations of chords, ie. Cm7 versus Cm7b13, all all chord numbers seem to be marked on channel 0 with a velocity of 105. I was able to confirm that pro guitar solos are marked with note 115.

I looked at the video for "Foolin'"'s expert pro guitar track again, and it doesn't look like that chord I mentioned (the one immediately after the tremolo section) appears as a hammer on chord in-game. So either all notes in a chord must be marked on channel 2 for that to work, or the game doesn't allow hammer on chords, or it uses a unique notation for them.

I'll eventually be able to verify difficulty-specific things, such as hard slide phrases versus expert slide phrases, but if anybody can link to easy/medium/hard pro guitar recordings, it will help me out. Otherwise I'll probably have to record them myself so I can compare it side by side with the MIDI data.

Edit 2:
I can confirm that note 104 marks arpeggio sections, but note 108 supposedly does something to mark the base note of an arpeggio. http://rawksd.japaneatahand.com/wiki/PRO_Mode_Research mentions this, but I haven't figured out what it's talking about.

[ComicBookGuru]

Ah. That was my writing on the wiki. Your research is a bit more in-depth, however, so it's safe to say pretty much everything I've found has been covered by you. :P

[raynebc]

I examined the easy and medium difficulties for "Beast and the Harlot" and found the following:

Pre-defined chord numbers:

Code: Select all

Chord Ab5: Marked with note #8
Chord B5: Marked with note #11
Chord C: Marked with note #12
Chord Bb: Marked with note #10

More slide markers:

Easy
Note on (Channel=0): Note #=31, Velocity=116: Note slide down, slide ends before next note
Note on (Channel=0): Note #=31, Velocity=117: Muted note slide down, slide ends before next note

Medium
Note on (Channel=0): Note #=55, Velocity=116: Note slide down, slide ends before next note
Note on (Channel=0): Note #=55, Velocity=117: Muted note slide down, slide ends before next chord
Note on (Channel=0): Note #=55, Velocity=108: Muted chord slide down, slide ends before next chord

[raynebc]

Does anybody happen to know which on-disc RB3 songs use pull off pro guitar notes and where in the song they are?

[thekiwimaddog]

Does anyone know how songs which use CAPO's are handled in RB3. I'm not sure if there are any songs that come with it that would make use of one though but I may be wrong.

Thanks
David

[raynebc]

Supposedly, various songs like "The Con" and "Stop me if you've heard this one before" use capos, and Harmonix charts them so that the capo'd fret is treated as the nut of the guitar. So if your song uses a capo on fret 1, you'd chart fret 12 to indicate playing fret 13, because the 12th fret after the capo is fret 13. Open notes are still charted as open notes. This means that if you try to play the song correctly in RB3 with a capo on your Squier guitar, the notes will be scored as missed. This is a stupid way to do it, but that's what Harmonix chose to do. They'd have to fix it in software to deduct the fret number where the capo is from every strummed note.

[thekiwimaddog]

Supposedly, various songs like "The Con" and "Stop me if you've heard this one before" use capos, and Harmonix charts them so that the capo'd fret is treated as the nut of the guitar. So if your song uses a capo on fret 1, you'd chart fret 12 to indicate playing fret 13, because the 12th fret after the capo is fret 13. Open notes are still charted as open notes. This means that if you try to play the song correctly in RB3 with a capo on your Squier guitar, the notes will be scored as missed. This is a stupid way to do it, but that's what Harmonix chose to do. They'd have to fix it in software to deduct the fret number where the capo is from every strummed note.

I guess we could have a song ini tag noting what the capo shift is. I can then add an option to enable and disable the capo shift.

Thanks
David

[raynebc]

I finally got my Squier guitar. Phase Shift doesn't detect it at present, but when connected via MIDI cable, it sends a keep alive signal just like the Mustang:

Code: Select all

TIMESTAMP IN PORT STATUS DATA1 DATA2 CHAN NOTE EVENT           
0004E6F1   1  --     F0  Buffer:    18 Bytes   System Exclusive
SYSX: F0 08 40 08 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F7

If there's anything I can do to profile or provide details, please let me know.

[thekiwimaddog]

I finally got my Squier guitar. Phase Shift doesn't detect it at present, but when connected via MIDI cable, it sends a keep alive signal just like the Mustang:

Code: Select all

TIMESTAMP IN PORT STATUS DATA1 DATA2 CHAN NOTE EVENT           
0004E6F1   1  --     F0  Buffer:    18 Bytes   System Exclusive
SYSX: F0 08 40 08 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 F7

If there's anything I can do to profile or provide details, please let me know.

This seems quite odd to me as I've tested the Pro Adaptor by running the Pro Mustang into it via the MIDI out.
Make sure you have the MIDI adaptor in "Guitar Mode" before you launch the game otherwise it might get confused when you change ingame.
Something that you'll need to remember is that you won't be able to navigate using the fret buttons in the menus. The Mustang also sent seperate Coloured Button Signals for the first and last 5 frets on the guitar for Legacy Support. I haven't been able to replicate that via the MIDI adaptor.

Thanks
David

-- Edit: Sun Mar 06, 2011 9:07 am --

Oh wait!, I think I know what's happening. I think that the MIDI adaptor might give out a different Instrument Signal as it has 22 frets.
I'll send you an app to look for this.

Thanks
David

[zhangjiamei241]

thank you

[raynebc]

I was comparing chords given in the trainer for medium versus hard and I have found that the game displays the correct name of the chord based on what it has you play. Ie. if you play a barred F#m chord in hard difficulty, the resulting 2 string chord they give you in medium difficulty would have the correct chord name (ie. F#5) given. This means that the MIDI either has the correct name for every chord in every difficulty or the more likely scenario that the game engine determines the correct name by looking it up against a list of chords (ie. note F# and note C# form a F#5 chord). This will probably be the best way for Phase Shift and EOF to go, meaning that the correct tuning will have to be defined for each chart (or assumed to be standard tuning). I can start working on a chord database, but it could be slow going unless I can find a complete list of all chords (I don't care about guitar chords, just standard notes like the F#5 chord example I gave). The alternative is that custom defined chord names will need to be defined on a per difficulty basis.