I have some further follow up questions that, to me at least, need further qualification please.

 

1) 4.1.1 refers to TRACKS track… cant find this in REAPER v2.2 – is this the single AUDIO track?

 

2) free space below the ‘tracks track’….? I cant see this… is this an unlabelled track or something..?

 

3) 14.1.1 – turn off all instrument plugins… what are these and how do I do this….?

 

4) 14.1.2 – only the audio track is selected for render ie. no instruments, events, beats, venue files etc…?

 

5) 14.1.13 – ‘mute all audio tracks‘… generally speaking, isnt there only one audio track per project? So mute only the audio track and render again ie. no instruments, no events, no beats, no venue files etc.

(Essentially a file with nothing in it…?)

1) Yes, it’s referring to the audio track. It’s gone by different names from different templates before.

2) This may be refering to a new* REAPER file without the template, but the process is still the same. It’s literally talking about the blank space after all of your TRACKS and midi lanes. You drag a new .midi onto the blank space, and then you get the option to import it directly.

3) That’s really just in case you do not mute correctly other files. However, what you are looking for is the green-light circle next to the FX button on the left side for each track. Clicking that turns it red, signifying the FX (ie, plug ins) are off.

4/5) This means that, when you select render, that ONLY your audio files should be playing. What render does is play through the entire project and export ALL sound as a .wav file. However, we’re not using this as actual midi file creator, and we use this to get a proper .wav file for Rock Band. When creating a playable Rock Band file, the game does not have the ability to “start” an audio file at a certain spot like we have it in our file. Thus, that blank space before the audio starts (and the count in) need to be a part of the audio file. This is what render does for us.

Yes, you should actually have at least 2 audio tracks. One is your main audio file with the music, and the only should be where you placed your count in. If you are using STEM files (each instrument with its own audio file, then you’ll need ALL of these to be rendered together to make the true audio file). That is what they mean by audioS*.

By selecting them, it means that you either need to Solo your audio tracks, or mute all other tracks except them; so basically the only thing playing when rendering is any audio files you have. On the left side in the track options boxes, you’ll see a [M] and buttons. Those are mute / solo. Mute turns off the track, while solo turns off all EXCEPT these tracks. use whatever, but have it so that only your audio files are on.

Then render. After this, you’ll get a new file which has your countin/blank space/audio all in one file, and that is the file you’ll feed to Magma.

In terms of the blank file, I’ve never had to use one so it may be for FoF only? Either way, that means to mute ALL tracks and render again. This will create an empty .wav file which is the same length as your charts. I’m assuming you need that too for something.

Thank you for your fully qualfied explanation!

 

Just so that I am fully understanding this…? I only have an audio WAV file of the song.

 

In a nutshell…

I import WAV file and from this create the tempo map / author the drum / guitar and bass parts/ venue and events

 

1) I then select AUDIO and the COUNT-IN tracks ONLY – and Render – this gives me the game audio file.

 

2) the MID files created via EXPORT simply tell Rockband about the note patterns and events that are required to sync with the tempo map…?

 

3) Stem files.. instruments with their own audio files… is this an instrument with its own MID file / equivalent..?

This is throwing me… I have no instrument files – the instrument parts I author from scratch.

Or are STEM files authored tracks for instruments…?

 

(Am I the only one having problems understanding all of this jargon..? )

Ignore the stems, if you’re working on a custom, you probably won’t have the files from the artists anyway. You need to export 4 things:

1) The audio file of the song, linked in the Backing slot in Magma

2) A mute audio file linked in all the other slots in Magma OR, better yet, just use the mute files Magma provides (the tutorial was written before Magma had that feature)

3) A dry audio file (16 bit, 22 KHz, mono) for the vocals (for your first try just render the song audio and that’s it)

4) The MIDI file

That’s RBN documentation, I never use that method. Look here:

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