FAQ
Table of Contents
- The Basics
- Troubleshooting
- Customs Songs
- Scores, Save Data, and Online Play
- Custom Creators Collective (C3)
- Rock Band Harmonies Project
The Basics
How do I play custom songs?
Watch our tutorial video or read this ScoreHero post (which is still accurate, despite being 2+ years old).
Where do I download C3’s custom songs?
From our song database or the weekly release posts on this blog.
Do I need a modded Xbox 360 to play customs?
No! As long as you have an EA version of the Rock Band 3 disc (the MadCatz and Games On Demand versions don’t work), you can play customs on any Xbox 360.
Can I play customs on PS3/Wii?
Yes, though you need a modded system in both cases. For more info, see this thread for the Wii and this thread for the PS3. Make sure you download the correct versions from the song database!
You can also play all C3 releases in Phase Shift, a PC clone of Rock Band 3.
Can I play customs in Rock Band Blitz?
A modded Xbox 360 is required to play custom songs in RB Blitz. (Blitz only accepts signed LIVE files, which won’t work on a normal console).
Troubleshooting
Help! Custom songs won’t load for me! What do I do?
Find your problem below:
If the songs do show up in Rock Band 3, but …
- …you get a dirty disc/disc read error, it means you’re running under Title Update #5 (“TU5”, the most recent update to Rock Band 3) or using the Games-on-Demand/MadCatz disc version of Rock Band 3, which have TU5 baked in. Customs cannot be played under TU5 on a non-modded console. If you have the correct, older version of the disc, install TU4 as explained in our tutorial.
- …the songs crash or otherwise hang, it usually means there is a problem with the .mid file inside the custom package. Contact the custom’s author for troubleshooting, or post in our troubleshooting forum.
If the songs do not show up in Rock Band 3:
- Check out your storage device through the Xbox 360’s menus. If the songs are listed as Corrupted, there is either a problem with the custom song package or its download (which should not happen for our releases), or the file is in the wrong spot. Check our tutorials for info on where to put custom song packages. If the songs are not listed at all, you may have run into the “256 songs” bug (see below).
What’s the “256 songs” bug?
Party Buffalo, the most commonly used tool to move files to and from an Xbox 360 flash drive, has a bug where it can’t correctly process more than 256 song packages per node. There are two easy solutions for this:
- Use another program to load packages beyond 256, then switch back to Party Buffalo. Party Buffalo can handle 257+ packages, it just can’t get there.
- Use C3 CON Tools (formerly Le Fluffie C3) to package all of your customs into a single CON file. This also has the advantage of faster load times when you boot up RB3!
Custom Songs
What’s the quality like on these songs? I’ve heard that customs are poorly charted compared to official DLC.
We’ve put together this collective with the specific goal of providing the best releases we can. Our releases are as close to the original thing as possible. Many of our authors were/are part of RBN, and most of us have several years of authoring experience. We try our best to peer review all of our songs before release, and if you find an error in any of our songs, you can let us know in our troubleshooting forum.
Remember, however, that we are not an alternative to official releases. We will never author a song that is or was officially released as DLC. Go buy those from the official in-game store (while using TU5)!
Will instrument parts on these songs mute / drop out when I miss notes?
Some will, but most will not. All official Rock Band songs have audio straight from the record label’s archives, with all instruments on separated tracks. This enables Rock Band to mute that instrument when you miss a note. Our customs, however, are usually based on the song’s “mixdown”, the single audio file version you can buy from iTunes or a record store. Since we don’t have separated tracks, we can’t mute individual instruments, and we prepare the song files so that nothing gets muted when you miss a note. When we do have those master multitracks, however, we use them! Check the “Audio” column in our song database to see whether a song is multitracked or not. You can also filter to just multitracked songs with the checkboxes at the top of the database.
Can I lower or mute the vocals track?
The answer is usually “no”; see the previous question for details. Isolated vocal tracks are slightly easier to find and create than full multitracks, though, so we offer a decent number of “karaoke” tracks (where the vocals can be muted but instruments cannot). As with multitracks, this info is available in the database.
Do these songs have all instruments? All difficulties?
Yes! If the song itself has a given instrument, it will be in our customs — no “single-instrument” (i.e. “guitar only”) customs are released through C3 — and those instruments will each have Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert charts.
What’s the deal with “Rhythm Version” songs?
If a song has a rhythm guitar part alongside the lead guitar, an author may choose to release an alternate version of that song with the rhythm guitar playable. If the song does not have a keys part, it’ll be assigned to keys. Otherwise, it will override bass, Guitar Hero 2 style. (The original version of the song without rhythm guitar will be available in all cases).
If you’re playing one of our “rhythm on keys” songs, you’ll need to 5-star 50 songs on Medium or 3-star 50 songs on Hard/Expert to unlock the ability to use a guitar controller on keys parts.
Scores, Save Data, & Online Play
Can I play custom songs online?
Not on the Xbox 360. You can’t use an old title upgrade (i.e. TU4) while connected to XBL. Online play may be possible for the Wii.
Do custom song scores get saved to your save file? Do scores set offline get uploaded when you go back online?
They do and they will. We suggest having a separate non-Live account for customs and TU4. Consider it a sandbox; you can pretty much do whatever you want, because you can’t go online with it. If you want to play for the leaderboards or access the store to buy official songs (which we very much encourage), use the TU5 stick.
Will I get banned from XBL if I accidentally upload custom song scores to Rock Central?
We obviously can’t guarantee that you won’t, but to date, we have had no reports of any problems with custom song scores. Just don’t upload fake scores for official DLC.
Can I use the same save file in TU4 (customs) and TU5 (online play)?
No. The save file won’t be read by both versions, and if you save it with TU5, it will cause issues with TU4. Our recommendation is to use two different save files, saved on the same storage device as that title upgrade.
Customs Creators Collective (C3)
Why are you guys doing this?
C3’s admins and authors all have their own reasons for contributing to the project, but ultimately it’s about continuing “DLC” support for one of the greatest video game franchises of all time.
Do you make any money from this?
No, and we have a zero tolerance policy on commissioning customs or otherwise discussing money on our forums. We are here to give you free DLC, and we don’t want any of the trouble that comes with money.
Do you accept donations for hosting costs?
No, for the reason above, but we appreciate the sentiment.
Do you take requests?
Not in a direct “you request a song and we author it” kind of way. We maintain a Song Requests forum, however, and we try to encourage our authors to author well-known or popular songs.
Rock Band Harmonies Project
Do RBHP upgrades affect scoring?
RBHP upgrades don’t change scoring for single instruments. Even chart “fixes” do not change scoring. So, no worries — these upgrades are not “illegally” boosting scores for instruments.
Do I need an EA disc to play pro drums/keys/harmonies and pro guitar/bass upgrades?
No! Upgrades will run on any version of Rock Band 3, including the MadCatz disc and Games On Demand version.
With the end of weekly HMX DLC, I’m very happy to have found you guys. Using your instructions, I had myself up & running in less than 30 minutes. I’d like to contribute in some way down the line – obviously by learning to do some charting myself. Can you point me towards a good starting point? And what’s up with the keepitfishy.com songs? Are they off limits or just gone to the great beyond?
Also, when testing out my “offline/customs” stick, I tried playing a few regular songs, and one of them (“Mud On The Tires”, if it means anything) wouldn’t load. 3 others played just fine. Any idea what that might be?
Anyway, thank you for all of the work that’s been done so far – I look forward to playing your files, as far into the future as possible!
A tutorial is coming. In the meantime, I’d recommend starting with an RBHP contribution, or perhaps adding an instrument to something that’s guitar- or drums-only in the spreadsheet.
Not being able to play a song is typically license trouble – did you download “Mud On the Tires” on a different xbox, perhaps?
As far as keepitfishy, there’s some server trouble – we’re working on it.
Yeah, it’s probably licensing – this certainly isn’t my first 360. I don’t suppose that there’s a fix, is there? And the keepitfishy tracks seem to be working now, thank you very much.
Now as far as contributing some work/time goes, where do I start? Some background info? Software that I need to buy? I really have no idea where to begin.
Swim around in our new forum a bit!
Unless you’re playing without a title update, the game reads saves from TU5 just fine on earlier title updates. From my experience, the only issue with playing a TU5 save on TU4 is your settings get reset the first time.
The game also has to rebuild the song cache when going from TU4 to TU5, so making a backup of it beforehand will avoid the 10- to 20-minute wait.
I would be very interested in seeing this available for the Wii.
If there could also be a way for the wii to get the other remaining RBN tracks that would be awesome too!
Is there a link or is it possible to get a single download file that includes all current releases instead of d/l them one at a time? Maybe I’m just missing something.
Thanks
that is not going to happen for a variety of reasons. right now we track stats for downloads of each author’s files, which would be lost if you could download all at once. more importantly, that would serve very few people, since most people don’t like all kinds of genres. that’s why we got together such a diverse group, so you get all sorts of music 🙂 unfortunately, you gotta download them one by one.
Hey
Any chance you could get a twitter account or something so we can keep track of song releases? I know i’m bound to forget to check :p
https://twitter.com/CustomsCreators
Re: the 256-songs issue, solution #1. I use my Normal/Online stick to transport new songs. I then move them over to my Customs/Offline stick using the 360’s storage utility. No problems so far, though it should be noted that I haven’t actually reached the 256 song limit yet. Which I suppose make this a fairly worthless data point.
Hi,
I’ve followed all the steps in the tutorial, but the custom songs will not load for me. When I check the songs / update via Xbox, everything looks fine. Nothing is corrupted and all items have correct titles. I receive no errors from RB.
Any ideas as to what could be going wrong?
Thanks in adance
You need to use an account which supports RBN in order to use custom songs (ie. not an Australian account).
SOLVED.
Guys I need a help please! I tried to put the song Jump by Van Halen but that song appears with a “DEMO” tag in my setlist and i just can play a few seconds and after that appears a message asking me to purchase a full version of the song. I downloaded the file from CustomCreators database and i used the software Horizon to inject the file. What is happening? What i did wrong? Please help me
do not assign ownership to the file when injecting, skip that. Otherwise, you’ll want to run an “unlcoker” on the HD.
How does the Wii version work? I.ve looked everywhere, but see no instructions anywhere. Also it says you will be updating the back catalogue to Wii. How’s that going?
how do u get the songs to work in blitz.i have a modded xbox but its not jtagged
Here is a link to a full Wii RB3 custom scheme:
http://rockband.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36077
Any song any instrument?
Do these songs work with RB1, RB2 or Lego RB?
By the way, while I’m here, if they don’t, where can I find customs that work with them?
I’ve been currently playing RB1 while a RB3 disc replacement doesn’t arrive at my home, and so I’d like to try out a few customs.
RB3 only as far as I’m aware. All these customs are made with RB3’s engine in mind, for those features, and to fit its requirements. You can experiment all you want with the files. But don’t expect support for any other game than RB3.
Can I use this site and download songs on a Mac?
For an xbox 360
My wife and I recently got back into playing RB and bought RB3 used. We were pumped to find this site, but let down that the Mad Catz version won’t work (which is what we bought). Is there any way of telling apart the earlier, EA version from the Mad Catz version (other than the logo when the game starts?) The EA logo is printed on the disc; I assume MC didn’t bother changing the art for that for financial reasons. I’d love to buy an older version – any way to spot the difference WITHOUT putting in 360? Thanks!
Well, the Mad Catz logo is printed on the box too, so there’s that. 🙂
Hey Farottone, thanks for the reply! In the time since I left that comment, I:
1) figured out the problem – the Mad Catz logo was on-screen because of TU #5. Once I removed it to a flash drive and installed TU #4, we got the MTV/EA logos;
2) properly set up said drive to hold customs, and;
3) downloaded a metric ton of customs and am currently working thru them with my wife (Queensryche is the BOMB, BTW).
Loving the RB3 revival at our house!
Awesome, keep rockin’! 😀
how can i play these songs in Phase Shift?
Hey guys first off thanks so much for this this really is getting back to playing my favorite game i just have a few questions. I did everything perfect and the songs are playing flawlessly. However i noticed that i cant play any of my purchased dlc from the past and my rbn songs dont come up either. Is there to combine every song in the library along with these customs? The only ones that i can play are rb3 dlc and the on disc songs. My rb1 rb2 and all pre rb3 dlc wont work. Thanks again
You need to redownload all licenses (i.e. redownload the songs, it will just take an instant for each one). It’s not a customs thing, it’s an offline thing: if you’re not signed online, you need to have the license downloaded.
Hi all, absolutely awesome site! Hats off to the incredible work everyone has done here!
I am having the same problem as above, as well as my LegoRB and RB2 songs won’t play.
Could you expand on the answer given above to fix the issue?
Thanks!
is the song database offline?
This might be a silly question but I couldn’t find an answer anywhere:
How can a download an entire Pack from the database? For example, I’m trying to download the Muse C01 pack, but I can’t find any option to do so, except for downloading each song separately…
Packs seem to be more of an organizational thing here, only on very rare occasions do they do the multiple-song-download thing.
Hi, I am new here… I have a question. I have an xbox 360 RGH and a rock band 3 downloaded for torrent… Can I play these custom songs? Thanks.
I’m trying to release a song, but i can’t seem to find my token? Where do i find it?
It’s at the bottom of the page
Thank you for your response, but when i click “Click to read your C3U Token” my token isn’t there?
Similar problem to Mehman, but I have the code and it doesn’t seem to be accepted? I’ve tried using my username as it appears on the profile page below my profile picture both with the ‘@’ symbol and without. I’ve also tried using my email as my user name. I have tried using the token just directly copy and pasting it, retyping it exactly as it appears, and also retyping it ignoring the hyphens.
Any help would be very appreciated! I’m probably just missing something incredibly stupid!
Is there possible that you guys could make a patch or hack to have auto kick for the drums in RB3 and TBRB?
I have a question about the EA/MadcCatz disc issue and having a modded Xbox 360. I’ve got two RB3 discs that I don’t have the original game boxes for, so I can’t tell if either is an EA version or the MadCatz one with TU5 pre-loaded. I’ve found more than one source (including this page here) that states one cannot load custom songs on an unmodded Xbox 360. However, I will have a modded Xbox 360 that I plan to set up with RB3 Enhanced and everything here very soon.
My question is, is it correct to surmise that one CAN load/play custom songs onto a TU5 version of RB3 with a modded Xbox 360? I’m fairly certain the answer to this is yes, as I’ve seen videos of custom songs played on RB3 Enhanced, which is built off of TU5 (see videos by bradoo/birdman.exe on Twitch/TikTok).
Just trying to get a confirmed yes or no so that I can look into finding an EA disc if I need to. Thank you!