[boblybob]

If you’d like help separating stems or charting drums feel free to PM me.

[boblybob]

Great songs this week. Especially surprised and excited to see Neutral Milk Hotel. (As well as some vocaloid.) The only gripe I see is House of the Rising Sun, it sounds like a lot of the ghost notes are missing. That’s probably intentional, but I think there should be snares between every ride and one landing on the second ride in the ride triplet hit. A version containing ghost notes would be wonderful, they’re only towards the end when the song picks up as far as I can assume. 

[boblybob]

I havn’t looked at any of those tempo maps for The Mars Volta songs over at FOF. That surely is a project to undertake at some point.

I’ve fixed up and added overdrive and pro to several of them, so if you need any just message me.

[boblybob]

I wanna say that most of the entire Mars Volta discography has been charted on drums over at FOF. I never really got into this band but am interested in tackling those conversions in the future.

Oh god yes, I’d be so on board for more Mars Volta full band. Just be aware most of those customs have lax tempo mapping that needs to be fixed.

 

Me and my friends played Cassandra Gemini full band yesterday, Expert drums, bass, guitar, and keys. 8.1 million and gold stars. Game crashed before we could get a picture ;_;

 

Is there some sort of 20 minute limit on songs that causes the game to crash? The same thing happened with Octavarium, but not Swim to the Moon at 18 minutes.

[boblybob]

Great songs, extremely excited to do Cassandra Gemini full band. One problem though. At 4:34 in the preview video for Kickapoo, it sounds like there is tom work going on as well as cymbals and kick drum. And the straight build up of kick a slight bit earlier also sounds like he is hitting the tom along with it.

[boblybob]

I’ve thought about this before. It’s something that’s stopped me (and probably countless others) from submitting our songs to the C3 pipeline. I include full difficulty 5-lane keys, but tabbing out and trying to piece together every key part for every song I do is way too time consuming and unrealistic, especially when only a fraction of the userbase will play them.

 

I think if C3 treated pro keys almost like pro gtr/bass upgrades (a welcome cherry on top of an already great custom), and only made 5-lane keys necessary in the greater scope of songs, we’d have a much larger and more varied amount of songs from different authors to look forward to each weekend.

[boblybob]

Thank you GOD for the Ween song. I’d completely forgotten that song for years and never realized they were the ones who made it.

 

I’ve noticed a couple errors in the drum chart. There should be another bass pedal during the snare roll around 1:06 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHnokD92FOE

 

I don’t think the two snares at 0:28 are there, sounds like it’s still just snare+hi-hat. Same with 0:42. Should be one snare+hi-hat and the yellow cymbal following the two snares should be a blue tom.

[boblybob]

Considering your music taste so far, is it beyond reasonable expectation to hope for a Boris track in your Japan releases?

Yes, Boris will be in it. Any song in particular you’d think would be fun from them? I’ll also be including another similar band with a female guitarist.

[boblybob]

Thank you guys, glad you like them. I definitely plan to do more Dillinger, Converge and BtBaM (as well as other difficult bands) so get giddier. Thinking of starting 43% Burnt soon.

 

7/7/2014

Guniw Tools – “Fancy Pink” (1997)

Shinsei Kamattechan – “23 Sai No Natsuyasumi” (2010)

 

2 songs of my planned 18 song Rock Band: Japan pack. I highly recommend downloading and giving them a chance, even if you’re unfamiliar. I’m sure you’ll love them. Insanely great songs by amazing artists. A catchy upbeat visual-kei song with a fun bassline and vocals, and a song by my favorite band, Shinsei Kamattechan. Noise pop about depression and suicide by a crazed Japanese NEET.

 

Hope you enjoy, and look forward to the rest of my Japanese releases.

 

(Note on Swim to the Moon 2x Bass Pedal: Somehow the solo marker on drums was deleted. Will post fix with the keyboard update.)

[boblybob]

Finally got it working. Thanks for these Farottone. Adding full difficulties and editing Magma’s drum animations are usually a pain and I always feel my songs aren’t the best they can be without them.

[boblybob]

Good songs this week. Just one nitpick, the tom section during the chorus of F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X should be charted like this:

 

Listening to the semi isolated track from the GH3 stems and watching live videos you can tell he is using both the floor tom and high tom for it.

[boblybob]

The first one is maybe the band Fall of Troy? Google says there is a thing called FCPREMIX (excluded periods – typing on iphone)

Yea, I’m pretty sure it’s referencing F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. Shame, I was just about to finish my full band chart of it.

 

Very good hints though.

[boblybob]

“You’re authoring something the player can’t hear, that is called overcharting”

Completely wrong. Overcharting by definition is making a part harder then it actually is, adding notes that don’t exist just for sheer difficulty. By charting ghost notes you may be going against authoring recommendation but it is in no way overcharting.

 

If you want to play semantics, you can make the case that overcharting is solely “adding notes that don’t exist”. I’d argue that it goes a little beyond it, with that being the primary occurrence (charting echos, merging multiple parts into one chart). I would certainly argue that charting notes that are not audible in a full mix solely on the basis of them being audible in an isolated track definitely fits the criteria. I’ve only ever considered it in RB:HP, and usually only on vocals/keys when the part may have been audible in the original but not in the RB mix, because those are easier to ‘process’ mentally.

 

If you’re really averse to the term “overcharting” in this context, then let’s go with the other favourite charting buzzword and call it “hyperaccurate charting”.

Okay, I can agree with that definition of overcharting. Charting echo/delay, making everything primarily 3 chords, charting sound effects into insane 64th note sweeps, etc. I’m also fine with hyper-accurate charting, as that makes the distinction between ultra-realism versus charting non-existent things/artificially inflating difficulty.

 

And Farottone, you’re right. I shouldn’t have said it so matter of factly. Everyone is free to choose how they think it should be interpreted, and Rock Band has always ignored ghost notes historically. I would never overchart vocals in the way espher described, nor would I chart barely audible notes in guitar or whatever instrument. So I guess now, thinking about those examples, I understand how you guys feel about hyper-accurate charting.

 

I play insane free jazz and mathcore customs. And me and my friends, being in the Top 100 of Expert Drum players during Rock Band’s heyday, always look for the most difficult songs possible. So I’m just heavily inclined to making ultra-realistic charts. It just comes naturally to me, and I prefer ridiculous difficulty. I guess I just felt every other drum chart should adhere to the same criteria, and even looked down on them when I could hear uncharted ghosts. Which is wrong, I realize. You’re just following in Harmonix’s steps.

 

But, I do disagree heavily with this:

It’s actually the very opposite. It’s unrealistic. You want to transcribe random or inaudible hits, that’s the opposite of realism, as stated before.

I do not chart anything I’m not dead sure is there. After playing and charting so many insane customs, you get a feel for how beats are structured. You know when ghost notes are there. When they shouldn’t be. I go over sections for an hour at a time sometimes just to make sure I’m getting every note being played, and that every note IS being played. So believe, everything is there.

I also don’t understand how you think charting in-audible notes is unrealistic? Ghost notes literally exist. It’s not like I’m making them up because the song is boring. And they are most certainly not random. The drummer played them for a reason. They augment the groove.

It’s in no shape or form “the opposite of realism”, if the notes being played exist. It’s just “hyper-accurate”, as espher stated.

 

I do think though, when the song itself is intense enough, it should warrant the ghost notes being charted. Scatterbrain off of GH5 is a perfect example. A crazy jazz song, that sounds absolutely insane on drums. I remember the first time I played it (not being very good at the time) being so underwhelmed at what hit me, compared to what the song sounded like and what I was expecting. Many other people felt the same. An example of this done well would be C3’s release of Oblivion. That contained inaudible ghost notes and was a fine chart, and was the kind of song you would expect difficulty going into.

 

But I understand your stance now.

[boblybob]

Do not go with Option #2. It does not matter if you can’t hear it in the mix, you know it exists and is played that way. Never underchart.

 

This is extremely wrong in a number of ways.

 

1) Authoring rules. “Be aware that details that can be heard when listening to a soloed drum mix don’t always translate well when playing with the rest of the band. A common example of this is when you can hear the drummer lightly tapping a crash, ride or hihat cymbal in between the more heavily emphasized downbeats. When playing such a drum part in-game, the extra 8th notes may be detracting from an intended quarter note groove. Again, the author should listen to the groove as represented in the full mix so that the authored part doesn’t feel overcrowded with seemingly arbitrary gems”, from RBN docs.

2) Gameplay. Perception is king: you need to have a connection between what you see and hear and what you do. Once you lose the connection, you are just hitting some pads while a soundtrack is playing.

3) Weights. Visually you always see gems of the same “weight”: they are all “hits”. However, if you author very loud notes and incredibly light notes alike, visually you have, again, a disconnect.

4) With all that said, you can’t hear those notes in the final mix, so for all intents and purposes those notes are not there. You’re authoring something the play can’t hear, that is called overcharting, something FoF charts are filled with and, also, one of the main ways you can spot a good chart from a not so good chart.

 

“You’re authoring something the player can’t hear, that is called overcharting”

Completely wrong. Overcharting by definition is making a part harder then it actually is, adding notes that don’t exist just for sheer difficulty. By charting ghost notes you may be going against authoring recommendation but it is in no way overcharting.

“one of the main ways you can spot a good chart from a not so good chart”

And this just irritates me. How does charting everything exactly as it is make it a bad chart on that basis alone? Sure, it’s less party friendly, but honestly, it’s a more accurate (albeit more difficult) chart. I completely invest myself into making sure every one of my charts are dead on. Perfect sync, a perfect note for note transcription. And to be told my charts might be “not so good” because I went for complete realism is unfair.

 

I am a drummer, and play at the high end of the skill spectrum. So I personally feel that instruments should be fully represented exactly as they were played. I understand that you chart with a party atmosphere, and cleanliness in mind. But one does not make the other wrong. They are different schools of charting.

 

Harmonix have laid down very good guidelines for authoring, but that does not make them infallible. And the absolute end all be all of what you should do. Take the drum chart for Toto’s “Rosanna” for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_aDQ036vnM.

A very famous half-time shuffle beat, that completely relies on the ghost notes for the groove. But by following protocol, they are removed, killing the central point of the beat, making it awkward and noticeable as a result.

 

Sorry for getting a little long-winded, but I just don’t think charting something exactly as it was played should be automatically considered wrong, just because Harmonix’s documents said otherwise.

[boblybob]

I’m not familiar with his kit, is the splash in question to the right of the ride? If that is true and the smaller cymbals are to the left then I’d make them yellow and go with Option #1.

 

Do not go with Option #2. It does not matter if you can’t hear it in the mix, you know it exists and is played that way. Never underchart.

[Author]

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