The subject of pro keys has been under discussions for months inside C3. Let’s face it: pro keys (except probably for easy single notes charts) is almost as tough to do as pro guitar and bass, instruments that are so time consuming that even Harmonix did them for only selected songs and with stems available to use. You need to be able to transcribe what the artist is playing and this is a skill that professionals creating commercial sheet music have, not just people who play the instrument or people who dabble in authoring. And this is especially true for piano songs: synths are clean and complex synth parts are usually composed of single notes; on the other hand piano is extremely more complicated. And then there’s the issue of not having a separated keys track to work on…

However, since C3’s inception we always provided pro keys for all our songs except for literally a handful for which authoring without stems would have been impossible. To do this we used a number of tools, including sheet music and MIDI files. However, many songs have never seen the light of day exactly because we couldn’t author pro keys and never would. So, after months of discussing the issue we have finally come to a conclusion, using every element we could have possibly gathered, including download numbers, and we want to share it with authors first and foremost before telling the public.

So this is how we move forward. Our releases will still carry pro keys as a standard, however this requirement will be lifted for any song for which keys/pro keys will be deemed too hard to author for us. We will also apply a “best effort” policy, meaning that we will consider releasable songs with imperfect charts (to the tune of 2/3 measures repeated a couple of times in the song with something that is not correct but it’s plausible) instead of not authoring keys at all. We will also apply a “self-restrain” rule, which means that we won’t release heavily keys driven songs without keys unless there’s a good reason to do so (a full album with some songs like that that couldn’t be released otherwise, a large pack that contains a few of those, etc.). But most importantly, we will never release a song without pro keys that we would have released with pro keys before this decision. This is a matter of the author not being able to, not a matter of the author not willing to. All previous policies still applly (exemption for buried keys, etc.)

This decision is something we haven’t made lightly: we want to release songs in the most complete shape possible. However, 2 years in and 5 years into the UGC era, it starts to be clearer and clearer that if by now we don’t employ anybody able and willing to author the most complex parts, we’re never going it.

So, does this mean pro keys players will get a lot of less songs? Actually, it means the contrary. What we are addressing are songs we would have NOT released anyway. This means that pro keys players will get at least the same amount of songs. Not only that, we are going to try and work around a few parts of some songs to release acceptable charts, so theoretically we should have more songs for pro keys players.

As a final note, be aware that our philosphy doesn’t change: we still believe a song without pro keys is incomplete. But it’s 2015 and it doesn’t make complete sense not to release songs that up to and including the Rock Band 2 era would have been considered just perfect only because we are unable to provide a part that needs good musical skills to be authored and that only a portion of the players will be able to enjoy.

This decision has little to do with what Harmonix chose to do and everything to do with the well known discussion we have been having for months, as you all authors know. This is how we implement this policy.

Admins

Admins self regulate following those 3 key rules.

Established authors

Established authors need only to advise that a song won’t carry keys. If no admin objects to it in a timely fashion (as in, giving the author time to consider options) the exemption is considered agreed upon. The same goes for imperfect charts.

Non-established authors

Non-established authors are required to briefly motivate their decision (nothing big, just “This is the song, I can’t do keys because … and for these reasons it falls under the exemption rules…) or explain how imperfect the chart is to an admin to get the exemption.

We’re going public on Monday with this, so if you think any tweaking is needed to the message please give feedback before then.

As always, thanks for being part of the collective and contributing to many people having so much fun with all the songs we release!