Audio tracks for customs
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I’m finishing up charting instruments (sans DRUMS) for a song. Now I have a question about audio.
What are the required tracks for custom songs? I know we have:
– Non-multitrack (FLAC/WAV/MP3/M4A/etc)
– GH tracks (ranging from separate guitar, separate guitar/bass/rhythm, to full band stems sans keys)
– Karaoke (separate vocals included)
– actual multitracks
In the case of GH multitracks, the guitar MIDI in Magma can be assigned to the guitar track, and so on.
Anyway, here are my questions:
What is rendering? What type of music file does Magma only accept? Do all tracks have to be “rendered” with the count-in? For GH tracks (guitar/bass), will the “silence” be generated for the 1st two measures so that the track won’t begin two measures too early? What about stems for drums in this case? Would I just clone the backing track for drums and “silence” it?
Where do you guys get your drum samples for count-ins?
What about the case of songs w/ vocals? without vocals?
… halp.
- Rendering involves turning audio data into a file with certain settings that you desire (or to what Magma would require, in this case).
- Your audio files (stems) also need to meet several requirements:
- .wav file format
- 44.1Khz or 48Khz sample rate (except for dry vocals files)
- Mono or stereo will work, but use the Audio Tab section in Magma for some caveats
- 16- or 24-bit bitrate
[*]The count-in is only needed in the backing track.
[*]You’ll have to manually position all tracks to compensate for the leading silence and/or count-in.
[*]This includes (and is not limited to) drums stems.
[*]I don’t think this is necessary.
[*]They can either come bundled with the Reaper plug-in pack, or as a snippet from a song’s drum track.
[*]You’ll need to put all the voices together for one vocal track that is heard in-game. But when putting in dry vocals for lip sync processing, keep them separate. This is especially if you’re doing harmonies.
[*]Back in the early versions of RB3, there’d be a bug where if a song doesn’t have a vocal part or even lip sync data, the band members’ mouths would start moving in weird ways. And sometimes the singer would try to get the band together as a unison. It’s pretty humorous. But don’t let it be a negative factor when you’re authoring.
My additional notes (some may be redundant):
* For the count-in, I try to snag something from the song if there is a sample to be had; if not, I was given http://free-loops.com/ as a resource at one point and I’ve used stuff from there before.
* You need to manually adjust the start point for your audio to line up with the start point from your chart, and then re-render. e.g. if you’re using a karaoke track, you need to line your vocal audio up with the start of your vocals, and your backing audio with the start of your instrumentation, and then re-export each track to ensure that they’re of the right length and timing.
* For tracks for which you do not have a stem, use a silent audio file. This file can be of any size/length — I have a two second long silent track that I use for mine customs. My recommendation is to not clone and silence — if this creates a track that isn’t actually silent, you’re going to end up with a huge file size CON.
* If you have instrumental tracks with no vocals, just don’t select the vocals track as one of the tracks for your game. I do remember someone mentioning that there is a weird audio issue with songs that have only two instruments, but I’ll be damned if I can find anything on it this morning.
…ensure that they’re of the right length…I would think Magma already does this when they begin processing the stems.
My additional notes (some may be redundant):* If you have instrumental tracks with no vocals, just don’t select the vocals track as one of the tracks for your game. I do remember someone mentioning that there is a weird audio issue with songs that have only two instruments, but I’ll be damned if I can find anything on it this morning.
2 instruments = right channel audio distortion.
…ensure that they’re of the right length…I would think Magma already does this when they begin processing the stems.
nope, not Magma. maybe MagmaCompiler. but definitely not Magma.
…ensure that they’re of the right length…I would think Magma already does this when they begin processing the stems.
It will require that one track is longer than the longest midi track, iirc, but that’s it. I haven’t screwed around with it that much, but given that different stems can be different lengths and different .mid tracks can be different lengths, it’s best to be sure you’ve got the right audio and not leave it entirely up to the program.
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