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12-12-20: Jacksfilms – “Will Smith grunt”
Because of course one of the few good things about 2018’s YouTube Rewind is that Will Smith was in it.
08-08-20: Green Day – “Don’t Wanna Fall in Love”
This deep cut in Green Day’s discography was first released as a B-side on the “Geek Stink Breath” single in 1995, but it would later be released on a compilation album of B-sides and covers called “Shenanigans”.
RongoIK – Tempo Map, DIY Stems
VreyIsGrey – Instruments, Events, Venue, Lower Difficulties, Overdrive
“Other Download” is a clean version. This version replaces the F-bombs.
Decided to include my most recent custom in a separate post.
08-08-20: Ween – “Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)”
The second track off of Ween’s fourth album and first recorded in a professional studio, “Chocolate and Cheese”, is an grim and creepy song about a child with spinal meningitis, as the name would imply. The verses consist of a macabre child-like voice with an eerie dinging noise throughout the song, but the choruses are more subdued. Following the song is a harrowing, screeching guitar solo, which the song then ends afterwards.
Clone Hero version available as well!Hey; been a while, hasn’t it? Normally, I’d regularly update this thread whenever I release a custom, but at some point, as you can see, I kinda got lazy, to the point where I haven’t updated this thread in a year. A whole decade ended and a friggin’ pandemic started in the time between now and last update.
But meanwhile, here’s every custom I’ve released since then.
08-09-2019 (C3X): The Offspring – “Feelings”
This song, if it wasn’t made apparent from the title, is a lyrical “adaptation” of Morris Albert’s “Feelings.” This song takes a complete 180 from the original song and gives it that punk angst, courtesy of The Offspring.
Instead of the original lyrics about “feelings of love”, this song takes a turn and changes it to “feelings of haaaaaate!”
08-30-2019 (C3X): Vrey’s Shameless Self-Promotion Pack!
These are selections from my 2019 album, “Aspirations”, released for the C3X encore. Download here: https://vreyisgrey.bandcamp.com/album/aspirations
The pack starts off with the fourth track off the album.
This song can be described as heavenly. From the emotional strings, to the instrumentation, to the lyrics of the song. Speaking of lyrics, this song is the only one in the pack to have vocals, and even then, it’s just five phrases. But even with that, this song doesn’t have a lot of breathing in between those five phrases, as they were not sung by a human… kind of.
You see, I wanted to record myself singing this song and have it vocoded, but alas, I was kind of… “vocal shy.” So what I did, was I spliced clips of childrens’ author and poet Michael Rosen (A.K.A. the “click nice” guy). I edited the clips in Sony Vegas so that he speaks the lyrics, then I vocoded it to a file of the main melody, and so they combined.
As for the instruments, they’re really not much of a hassle. Guitar waits for a bit, then plays beautiful arpeggios at the one chorus in the song, stops, and then plays grace note-like chords. Drums plays this basic beat on the chorus, stops, then plays hand drums. Bass is pretty barebones, playing a basic line throughout the chorus, and then waiting until the last chord of the song to play a single note.
Keys, however, while they only play whole note chords, these chords carry the song, playing strong and powerful strings. These chords, especially during the chorus, usually consist of 4-note chords on pro keys, and it’s kind of difficult to switch hand positioning, especially on pro.
This is the titular title track off the album. This song actually dates back the furthest and was planned to be on an album before the album’s conception. This song here is basically a sentimental, yet hopeful pop-ish song for the whole band to play (unless you’re a vocalist haha).
Keys just plays chords throughout the song, but then changes it up a bit with a bridge consisting of a solo.
Since there is no guitar in the song, the guitar part plays a vibraphone instead. The “guitar” part isn’t that difficult, but kinda fun to play.Bass only plays some accompaniment, playing the notes in the chords and not much else.
Drums is where it gets interesting. The drum part is kind of frantic, consisting of breakbeat-esque patterns with some embellishments, and very tough and strenuous fills that require the right hand quickly positioning across pads to play the toms, along with a few difficult fast kick patterns. This is the only part in the pack to be rated 6 dots.
On top of that, this song has a Big Rock Ending! I likely would’ve never added this into the song if I wasn’t aware of it in Rock Band. Enjoy!
This is the eleventh and final track off the album, coming immediately after the title track “Aspirations”.
This song takes a drastic turn from the somber, yet cheerful vibe of the previous track, to this incredibly melancholic solo piano piece. There’s a reason for that, and that reason being is that I was in a pretty bad spot at the time of making this piece. I tried to get it as dissonant, as melancholic, and as alienated as possible, and I think I succeeded.
There’s not really that much in terms of difficulty, but I still wanted to chart this thing anyway.
11-29-2019 (Chart-a-Thon): The Offspring Pack!
From their 2003 album “Splinter”, this short but sweet thrash punk tune from The Offspring is named after the titular tough-guy Hawaiian surfers that formed in the 70’s. This song is a depiction of their general badassery, because you don’t fuck with Da Hui, lest they fuck with you.
This song, in premise, is very similar to their hit single “Pretty Fly For A White Guy”; similar instrumentation, with similar percussion elements; as well as a similar song structure too. Some may even call it a sequel to Pretty Fly. This one, though, deals with a young prankster that loves to cause trouble, and that eventually he’ll regret pulling those pranks.
It’s also worth noting that this is the only song in the pack with a keys part, although it’s not really anything noteworthy; it’s just a loop that plays on occassion throughout the riff and verses.
Here’s another pick from “Splinter”. This song in particular deals with someone that Dexter knows is depressed, but when he tries to help them, they try to hide it.
Fun fact: The music video was filmed with over 125 different cameras.
12-13-2019 (Chart-a-Thon): Blonde Redhead – “For The Damaged Coda”
Most of you probably know this as Evil Morty’s Theme from Rick and Morty, because this played during a significant part during the show. I admit I don’t know too much Blonde Redhead outside of this particular song, sorry!
AJFOne23 did drums, I did everything else!
12-19-2019 (Chart-a-Thon): Super Nintendo Music Pack!
Because it would practically be a crime not to include this song in a SNES oriented pack! Keys play the iconic steel drum melody, guitar plays accompaniment, bass swiftly plays along on the tuba, and drums are absent until the second loop when the Yoshi bongos come in. Fun for the whole family!
I’ll admit I don’t really know anything about the game and I didn’t take part in charting this, but it looks to be a fun challenge on all instruments, including keys.
Instruments and EMH authored by TheWay123
Venue, overdrive, and events authored by Oddbrother
From the game Earthbound
This classic from the Earthbound series starts off with an eerie 8-bit chiptune intro, but then shifts into gear in a 16-bit metal-oriented thrash banger. Drums will really give your foot a challenge!
Instruments and venue authored by TheWay123
EMH, overdrive, and events authored by VreyIsGrey12-19-2019: Empire Today Jingle
Fuck it. Why not one more custom before the end of the decade?
This has been sitting on my hard drive for months, and I never wanted to release it for some reason… until now. Now I’ve decided to give it some touch-ups and release it to you guys, because why not?
For the harmonies chart, I used sheet music as a reference, and it was stunningly very accurate. However, there’s four vocal parts in the original jingle, so corners had to be cut.
I’ve decided to chart the one bass note to bass, guitar, AND pro keys. I even went out of my way to make a Pro Guitar/Bass chart for it, because why the hell not?!
This song even has a venue for the five people that care.
Enjoy.
03-31-20: The Rabbit Joint – “Zelda”
This song got its popularity in the early 2000’s when it was spread around Napster. It’s notable for being incorrectly labeled as by System of a Down. Later, the true origin of the song was discovered to be by a man named Joe Pleiman as part of the band “The Rabbit Joint”.
Searching for the correct metadata was quite challenging, given how little it appears online. I did eventually find the album it belongs to, as well as the cover art, track listing, the year it came out, etc.
Enjoy this little piece of internet history!
04-01-20: (skibidoo bop mmm dada *BOOM*)
Happy April Fools!
The explosion is charted to guitar, bass, and drums because why not
Preview video by naav! The video doesn’t reflect the current venue, though.
04-24-20: Vrey Is Grey – “Quarantine”
“There has never been a worldwide crisis quite like this in years. Nobody’s been equipped to deal with a pandemic like this, and as such, everyone has transitioned into an apocalyptic style of life, which is unfortunate. The Earth has truly become a modern-day dystopia, and I fear for what else may come.
Condolences to all the lives lost and families devastated due to COVID-19.”
Obviously, amidst this worldwide pandemic and me being stuck at home wasting away, the silver lining in this situation is that the inspiration struck to create a destroyed and bitter sounding piano piece regarding it.
The song is very much not full band, as a matter of fact, it’s only keys. What keys does play, however, is an incredibly slow and dramatic solo piano arrangement, given an artificial bitcrush effect, to sell the effect of degraded, aged vinyl, reminiscent of The Caretaker’s “Everywhere At The End Of Time”, which was a partial inspiration for this piece.
The song is actually incredibly slow. Even though I created this entirely in a DAW, and no “real” piano is being played (it’s just a soundfont), the song has an incredibly subtle tempo dip, starting at about 60 BPM, and slowing down to 55 BPM over the course of the song, and then, in the final part of the song, the tempo dips exponentially to around 42 BPM, which is very close to the minimum tempo that Magma will let you use. So even then, I had to tempo map my own song.
Here’s where I discuss the very intricate details that would bore regular folk to death.
Extra attention to detail was paid when authoring the animations for keys. Simply having the right hand play the notes of the pro chart was just unacceptable and didn’t sell the effect. I made sure to transcribe it as accurately as possible within the confines of the animations. The right hand and left hand parts are actually separate tracks, even in the project file, so there was no guesswork deciding which hand gets which. This also allows for the two parts to pop in and out of the keys stem depending on which part is most prominent in the chart, making this technically a multitrack custom. I also had to take a few creative liberties; I had to fudge the animations a little bit, making the keyboardist play the “wrong notes” when the situation called for it. For instance, the right hand melody plays a single note just barely outside of the very top of the register, so I decided to put the note as the top C on the piano, so the right hand didn’t just quickly grace the lower octave, although I made sure not to put the camera on the keyboardist’s hand. There’s also two instances, one at the very end, where the left hand plays a very low and “bassy” note, but instead of authoring the correct note, I set it to the bottom C of the register to give the effect of hitting a very low note.
As for the venue, I decided to capitalize on the “aged vinyl” effect by making the entire song in the “photocopy” post-processing effect, which is a very fuzzy, low frame rate, black and white, which suited it perfectly. However, due to the lack of color, I went to town on the lighting cues and camera shots, making them as dynamic and effective as possible. In the end, I think it turned out brilliantly.
Anyhow, enjoy this new release from me!
Listen here on Bandcamp.
Credits to Naav for making the preview video!
06-11-20: “At Doom’s Gate” (from DOOM (SNES)]
I think it was about time this song got the update it so finally deserved. In case you don’t know, there is a chart of this song that is very infamous for its lack of quality, including off-grid and inaccurate charting, horrible quality stems that even go out-of-sync with one another and has the Magma audio glitch in it where one side of the audio gets muffled. And so I took it upon myself to release this.
This custom actually dates a bit far back, as this was intended for the SNES music pack that I’d released for Chart-a-thon with TheWay123 back near the end of 2019. I’m now bringing this chart out of development hell after being on the backburner for so long (much like Duke Nukem Forever, hehe).
The original DOOM was released on multiple machines, all with very different soundchips; as mentioned previously, this particular chart is built off the SNES version. Probably not the best and most authentic version, but hey, it works.
As for the charts, the guitar is obviously the most notable, sporting some basic easy thrash riffs interrupted by ridiculous shredding interludes. Drums is relatively straightforward, but the fills can be quite the challenge and are just enough to warrant a 2x Bass Pedal version. Bass, unfortunately, gets the least treatment, playing just straight 8th notes and is not all that audible in the mix.
Anyways, enjoy.
07-11-20: Jonathan Coulton – “I’m Your Moon”
This love song by Jonathan Coulton is written from the perspective of Pluto’s moon, Charon, after the IAU decided Pluto was no longer a planet, but instead a “dwarf planet”. Coulton addressed this in his live concert as “a status which did not even exist prior to Pluto’s demotion, thereto; which frankly seems like kind of a dick move to me. I am not a scientist, of course, so I don’t know. Maybe that’s the kind of dick move that you pull if you’re a scientist.” It was released only one day after the fact. The song lyrics are surprisingly heartwarming as you can get for a moon and the “planet” it belongs to.
The original guitar and drums charts for Clone Hero were done by Nightmare Lyra, with minor touchups. I added the bass, vocals, and keys afterwards. Another thank you to Gigakoops for getting in contact with me to issue me the stems (which were actually distributed by JoCo himself a while back).
As for the instruments themselves, their parts are basic and not very challenging, but fun to play. Keys has a lot of broken chords, so watch out for those.
The original song also faded out, but I made a minor edit to give the song a proper ending.
Once again, preview video by Naav! Although I never told him ahead of time that the song had stems, so he just overlaid the song audio that I had to send to him. Oops, my bad haha!
08-05-20: Kevin MacLeod – “Carefree”
Ah yes, the infamous “royalty-free ukulele” song, bound to drive anyone insane.
Kevin MacLeod is perhaps most well known for his endless library of royalty-free music that’s used in so many YouTube videos, and then some songs became particularly infamous, this song being probably the most famous example.
And yes, those difficulty tierings are accurate. Every instrument in this song is super easy. Guitar plays the ukulele before an actual guitar joins in, drums play a shaker for 3 minutes, bass plays– well, an actual bass, and keys plays the glockenspiel.
It’s worth noting that this song actually does multitracks. I could only find multitracks for this song, though. Kevin did distribute paid stems, but they are no longer available. I had to find the stems elsewhere.
Phenomenal release! Really excited to see Sungazer in the game! The Cowboy Bebop theme is also a brilliant idea for a custom! Also really glad to see Caravan turned into a full band custom after I watched Acai play the drum chart. The other songs, though, are very nice additions, and the customs have basically introduced me to the original songs. Work Shit Out is my new jam!
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