The way I’ve been doing vocals is searching for “[song name] midi”, opening the midi file in Reaper, then finding the track that corresponds to the vocals (if any). With luck, it will be pitched correctly, so it’s a simple matter of copying that track to your project and syncing it to your song. If it doesn’t correspond properly or if you want to do it manually, import your song into Reaper and slow it down (to 25-50%) so that you can hit the right vocal timings. Then play the song full speed so you can edit those timings to have the correct pitch. If you aren’t using the C3 Custom RB3 Template, you can manually add the ReaSynth (Cockos) VSTi to the FX so the notes will play a tone when clicked. If you’re importing the track to an existing project, mind the tempo track, as it may affect the old project. You can copy/paste the track instead to avoid this issue, or export the midi without a tempo track.

For lyrics, search for “[song name] lyrics” and copy it to a text file. Remove all lines so it’s all in 1 line, then start separating each word by syllable (more info here). In Reaper, make sure you have a shortcut for adding lyrics from a text file. To see if you have one, go to Actions -> Show Action List -> Section: MIDI Editor, then Filter: lyrics. Several guides here refer it to having Shift+L, so if you don’t have that, add that as your shortcut. Then select all your vocal notes (can do Ctrl+A), press Shift+L, then import your lyrics. If your lyrics don’t match the notes properly, I’d recommend undoing the import, editing your text file, then re-importing. If you need to edit notes, do so, then select the 1st lyric, hold Shift, select the last lyric, press Delete to delete them all, then re-import. You can also add Lyric text events to the beginning of each vocal note manually (to make sure it’s aligned properly, use Shift+A).

As far as I know, the mouth animations are set from the dry vocals. Dry vocals are audio tracks where there is only the vocals and nothing else. If you don’t have a separated audio track, you can record yourself singing, sync the audio timing with your song, then use that when compiling with Magma. I recommend using Audacity to record yourself, then importing the song, figure out the time difference by comparing the audio wavelengths (set your Selection to Length), then adding silence to the beginning or subtracting that difference from your recorded voice. Then export your track as a 16MHz, mono, 16-bit WAV format to import into Magma.

The way I’ve been doing vocals is searching for “[song name] midi”, opening the midi file in Reaper, then finding the track that corresponds to the vocals (if any). With luck, it will be pitched correctly, so it’s a simple matter of copying that track to your project and syncing it to your song.

Using a MIDI to start from is very good but it’s nowhere near anything that just needs some timing, it can only be used as a rough reference. First of all music MIDIs have really loose timing, which makes authoring far from a “simple matter” of syncing notes. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_wink.gif”> Plus, all slides in music MIDIs are managed by MIDI Pitch events, while the game needs every pitch in a different note, which means almost every syllable needs work. Vocals follow the same rule laid out in my tutorial for beginners: they are a frame of reference, nothing you can use blindly or with just a simple pass. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_wink.gif”>