[TrojanNemo]

Yeah the poll is out there. What I meant was this post specifically seems to contribute little to the raw data I presume the admins are looking to collect and make a final decision on, given how most of the thread has been about tangential conversations and personal preferences, and not directly answering the question to be answered.

 

Obviously I’m on the boat of releasing them without Keys over never releasing them. And I would like to see this discussion come to a decision and not become an open ended discussion that never ends, even if the decision is to continue as we have been and not release “incomplete” songs at all.

[naginalJJ]

To me, keys are a bonus, but not a necessity.

[Erniewan]

That requires knowing a song beforehand in detail. Or you can use MIDI Analyzer to see note density for any or all instruments ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_wink.gif” /> Just throwing this out there for anyone who is on the same boat.

Yeah, I go by a combination of keys difficulty, knowing the song, seeing the preview, or sometimes genre.

 

Thanks for your contributions to the Beatles project. Now get back to work and do some more Beatles songs, you slacker. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_cheeky.001.gif” />

Hey, I’ve been on vacation! And Baby You’re a Rich Man took a while… But yeah, I’m a slacker too. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_cheeky.001.gif” />

[sageamagoo]

I know it’s been a long time since this thread was made, but I thought I should share my thoughts on the matter.

 

If a song has a prominent keys part, then suddenly gets hard to hear, I think it’s worth trying to figure out. I’d rather have 40% of a song 100% correct than have 0% of a song playable. But it’s all very subjective and you’re constantly second-guessing yourself, so it’s not always a fun task. I get that charting these types of parts can feel needlessly tedious. But where do you draw the line on which songs you cut and which songs you don’t?

 

Imagine authoring a Billy Joel song without stems and having to transcribe it by ear.

 

It might not be easy, but in this situation, keys are a must. People look forward to playing Billy Joel on keys. He’s the piano man. It’s kind of his thing. Besides, if the piano gets too muddled, we have the liberty of charting horns or strings in its place.

 

Basically, this all comes down to abuse of the rule. I don’t want to see people scrimping on the pro keys part because it was a little hard to hear in the verses. Allowing this rule opens the floodgate of ambiguous cases, and I don’t want to see C3 releasing a bunch of almost-full-band-but-we-got-lazy charts. Fun for the majority of players, I’m sure, but not so fun for the keyboardist sitting around waiting for the next song to start. We have enough of that already. Besides, what makes keys so special? Let’s say the tables are turned, and there’s prominent keyboard with muddled guitar. Not so uncommon for, say, Arcade Fire. Yet if you axed the guitar chart of

, people would complain. This begs the question, would there be a situation where it’s acceptable to lose the guitar entirely? I imagine so, but it would have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I think keys should be treated the exact same way.

[blackheartstar]

Obviously I’m on the boat of releasing them without Keys over never releasing them. And I would like to see this discussion come to a decision and not become an open ended discussion that never ends, even if the decision is to continue as we have been and not release “incomplete” songs at all.

 

On this note I have to ask if the major C3 authors have came to a consensus on this topic, or is this an on going debate behind the scenes? I’d hate to hear of songs never getting released because of impossible to chart keys sections. Especially considering a good chunk of our official Harmonix DLC doesn’t include keys.

[Farottone]

On this note I have to ask if the major C3 authors have came to a consensus on this topic, or is this an on going debate behind the scenes? I’d hate to hear of songs never getting released because of impossible to chart keys sections. Especially considering a good chunk of our official Harmonix DLC doesn’t include keys.

 

Considering, as we said before, that the number of songs we want to do that are in this shape is very very small, I’m not sure any change in policy would be noticed anyway. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_wink.gif”> It wasn’t a consensus thing, it was a polling to see what people would want to see. And if people had said “Just release songs with no keys ever, who cares?” we would still have to do what’s right because we know our users do play keys. ” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif”> My personal takeaway from this is that I won’t be releasing songs that a skilled transcriber or pro keys author could do: I understand those songs will never be done but we set standards for ourselves and I don’t want to abandon them. I will probably release songs with *piano* parts you can hear and then cannot: with no multitracks, you either fudge the parts you can’t hear big time or don’t author them, and honestly I don’t think it’s worth our time to author somewhat approximate parts. But as I said, we’re not talking about many songs, less than 1% of the songs I’ve ever worked on have that issue.

[DoNotPassGo]

I think my biggest issue with the keys is the same I had when I first heard key’s were coming to Rock Band; Keys sadly seem like an “add-on” to the game.

 

When I heard keys, I thought they would either 1) have to start getting songs specifically for keys (which happened to the RB3 setlist), or 2) they would have to fudge sound-effects and other sounds to keys which happens a lot as well.

 

I personally feel that, on a song with a less important key part, it should not be the end-all to not get keys. If you cannot hear them, and have no proof they are there, don’t chart them. It sucks that a lot of songs have keys mixed very low except certain notable parts, which can make charting keys weird sometimes. Certain artists are known for keys, and authors of those should do everything possible to chart these for people (known key songs usually have sheet music available which is a plus).

 

However, if you have proof that the keys exist, you should chart out what can be played. If you make the decision to chart the keys, you don’t want the key player only paying 15% of the song.

[Farottone]

Certain artists are known for keys, and authors of those should do everything possible to chart these for people (known key songs usually have sheet music available which is a plus).

 

If by keys you mean piano, sheet music is sadly close to useless.

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