The Beatles: Rock Band is arguably one of the most amazing rhythm games ever and Rock Band 3 players have enjoyed playing the songs extracted from that game for years. But what about putting for example American Idiot IN TB:RB? Or even better, why not make the game a full The Beatles discography project? That’s exactly what a group of brave authors is trying to do, and I sat down virtually with them to know more about the project…
Ok, so, people, customs in The Beatles: Rock Band uh? Clearly it can't be possible, you're literally creating mock videos of customs songs like TTFAF to prank people, correct?
correct. next question.
1
But you got that a lot probably, during your early days
I mean, it seemed too cool to be true
I know when I first saw this project I couldn't believe it was real
We didn't get a lot of "fake" somehow, if anything, it went completely opposite, the response that people gave us initially was super awesome, and still growing now. People tend to be more like "I can't believe people are putting out content like this for the game" followed by "so now how do I play it".
1
are we still in insult mode
1
And we're definitely actually doing all of this, despite the complexity of the animation system in the game. That said, there used to be a lot of "fake mockup trailers" of potential releases back in the months following TBRB's release that people put a ton of creative effort into, and I believe we all got really inspired by those trailers and wanted to make those a reality one day. Some of the ideas in some of those trailers even ended up being used for our dreamscapes and stuff because it felt like a cool way to pay homage to that
Thats pretty cool!
Adding on to that, one awesome thing is a lot of the people that made those trailers back in the day have actually came out and joined our community, and gave suggestions of how to handle some dreamscapes, even more awesome, they've then used additional footage from the new dreamscapes and live shows we've made to put together new "mockup" trailers. It's awesome to see the people that were kinda doing this thing years ago come out and be inspired again by what we're putting out.
And we'll go on to learn how you're creating incredible content, because I think a huge part of the incredible experience is not just the possibility to play customs in the game but the attention to details in all you've done, I don't think this kind of in-depth work has ever been done before. But going back to the beginnings, how did it start?
So, if we go back to the very start, Pikmin (who isn't here currently), and another person known as MahoppianGoon kinda experimented with it around the games launch, Pikmin made a Let It Be custom on the rooftop with custom hand animation back in 2013 and MahoppianGoon had done random song transplants into the TBRB game. A few years ago, me and @Rocker were messing around playing the PS3 version online, and wanted to play some more songs, so we took some custom charts from C3 of various Beatles songs and made a small custom pack, this was kinda in it's most basic form however, just note chart and audio replacements while the animations were taken from other songs. Flash forward to late November 2019, @atupomaruru mentioned looking into the games animations and well, it kinda snowballed from there. This is something we wanted to do for years now, so we hit atu up, started discussing what we could put out. Those discussions lead to the pack that released for Chart-A-Thon and the rest is kinda history from there.
1
I was snagged in by eavesdropping the original conversation
can't forget about Promised Land being one of the first TBRB customs!
Yeah the original team consisted of me, hentai, Rocker and Rongo, but at that point we barely knew if any of this was even possible in practice, and we were all experimenting and hoping that we wouldn't run into any major roadblocks. Lipsyncing was something we could just not figure out how to do since the system is subtly different from the ones used in other Rock Band games so we didn't have any tools with it, and we were basically just incredibly lucky that Onyxite had been researching how the Rock Band lipsyncing engine works, and we got tipped off that he might be able to help and invited him onto the team. So it's really been a lot of streams of different projects all merging together to make this possible.
Can you recall a moment when you thought "yeah, we can do this, it's just a matter of how refined we can make our content look"?
Meaning maybe when you cleared the last huge obstacle
Oh yes. The lack of lipsyncing made us kind of go "maybe we can release it like this and people won't notice" and I'm glad that we didn't have to go that route 
Other than that, we've constantly been learning how to do more and more things with the engine, so some of our earlier releases lack some of the polishing that we've been able to do with the most recent ones.
Other than that, we've constantly been learning how to do more and more things with the engine, so some of our earlier releases lack some of the polishing that we've been able to do with the most recent ones.
Does anyone want to talk about the animation issues that Help! used to have that we couldn't figure out how to fix for way too long? 
dont mind george, just collapsing in on himself
Oh so you wanna talk animations? Sure, let's do this!
TB:RB is an incredible visual experience and while Rock Band definitely has some great animations, it pales in comparison to what TB:RB does. Doing animations for Rock Band isn't easy, I can't imagine what it must be for TB:RB
I'm expecting more than a few anecdotes 
the first few songs were a bit of an uphill battle, for sure. we'd figure out something like lipsync but then george would break his back at a 90 degree angle on his way to the microphone.
(btw, some videos or pics of all of this, if you have them, would be amazing)
Oh, I have one, give me a second to find it
1
Could spend 1000 hours discussing all the animation glitches we’ve caused/found
ah yes, the first dreamscape I ever worked on
I should've known better
I think the main difference between this and "normal" rock band customs is well, this is a lot more manual, while in main line Rock Band games, a lot of the actual animation itself is handled by the engine. Things in TBRB have to be done by hand, Even things down to the strums on the guitar are hand animated.
It's all midi
And the guitar animations are also customizable to the point where you can have each member actually play the correct notes to the track
1
For a 3 minute song what kind of workload are we talking here roughly?
In hours I mean
Hours? That's optimistic!
2
Well it can be any number of hours
To be fair, it only took us about half a day to get Working Class Hero 90% finished, but that was a one time thing
The fact that there's only one Beatle in it helped a lot
That also kinda goes into what's been our motto for the proj: No deadlines.
Yeah a single song definitely comes out to tens if not hundreds of hours of work split between us. There's the authoring for charts, reductions, overdrive Beatlemania, practice sections and all that you would expect from a RB3 custom, but then there's also individual animation tracks for every single note or chord played by every single Beatle, animation triggers down to making someone close their eyes for when they're singing a specific note or look at their guitar neck for a section, we're also doing stems and custom loading screen audio for every single song, and that's not even talking about dreamscape backgrounds…
I think the best comparison a "rock band 3" author could have to some of the guitar animations is having to author three pro guitar tracks per song.
for every song I have to find a custom count-off for the song, which requires sometimes over an hour of digging through beatles' outtakes just to find one that suits the song
and that's for just 2 seconds of audio
Ok, let me stop you right there
Because I'd like to talk authenticity
So I'm a huge Beatles fan, my parents used to play them when I was a kid and I picked up a healthy love for their music. I used to go bootleg CD hunting to get alt takes compilations and started collecting those too. It's one of these groups whose production is almost sacred, how did you approach the songs to be as respectful as possible to the originals?
I spend a good chunk of my time listening and relistening to beatle songs, tutorials, stems, etc to try and properly notate what is being played in each song
But there are also limitations to what can and cannot be animated within the game
I was thinking more chart-wise
well, a lot of us are lifelong beatles fans as well, and that helps a lot. i think the key to our process is just working well together as a team and taking input from each other. we spend a lot of time in friendly arguments discussions about what would be most authentic to both the beatles' performances and harmonix's vision for TBRB.
Like who sings what harmony, the exact chords played, etc.
I think it's worth mentioning the fact that we try to use the Beatle Beats drum trainer patterns to make sure our drum charts match what HMX had in mind for some of the songs that didn't make it in
Ooh, yes. We have used several references from the past as well as our own ears for that. I mainly chart vocals now, but it is really hard sometimes to distinguish harmonies. @astronomyhopesRB is really good with telling the Beatles apart.
We're also watching live performances and listen to alternative mixes and takes to distinguish things that are hard to pick up in the final mix. And each release usually goes through a month or so of a QA process, and there's always a lot of minor stuff like that ("I think Paul was actually the one to sing this harmony") that comes up and ends up being discussed until we decide on what seems the most likely or accurate
1
It also helps a TON with using the stems that @Rocker makes
oh god yes
Perfect
Because I wanted to know about audio
All your releases have multitracks, right? But obviously Beatles multitracks are not easily available, how have you solved the problem?
I wanted to mention, as rocker has multiple times, that we don't just take what comes out of AI, but also edit them more
we're very fortunate to be working on this when creating usable stems out of finished mixes is easier than ever. a lot of tools for audio separation these days are driven by machine learning, that's something not even the original audio team for TBRB had access to.
So, older songs are more easily separated, as people who worked with audio or just dabbled in the field know. Is it just that or do you have some tricks you employ?
Because judging by all you've done, I'm sure there is more to it than feeding it to an AI
But I'll take a "trade secret!" objection if you want
Most of the time, it actually isn't that simple. I don't just throw it into an algorithm and call it a day, since most of the time the original stereo mixes have weird pannings or the stems sound really dirty in a way. Some extra things I do include taking frequencies I find in other stems and moving them into others. It's a lot of time and effort to try and get as much separation as I can.
Not only that, but in the officially released songs, a lot of them are remixed to have them not feel weird when playing in stereo. When listening to a stereo mix, sometimes you'll have drums and bass on the left and vocals on the right, but in The Beatles Rock Band, almost everything is in the center, minus later 8 track songs from Abbey Road and Let It Be.
I was just about to ask: is there an era (though with The Beatles talking about an "era" seems funny) or an album that is way harder than the rest not just for song lengths but for the original mixing?
There are definitely some difficulties with each album. The first two albums are really easy to work with since it's just simply guitars, bass, drums, and vocals with two tracks to work with. Once you get into the more experimental songs, it does become more complicated to extract the extra instruments, like flutes and low frequency based instruments, since they clash with other instruments like vocals or bass.
I would guess it's amazing to be able to dive deep into those separated tracks, just from a fan and an audiophile point of view
It is
It's really cool to be able to hear a lot of these songs like that. They aren't really suited for audiophile use per say, but it is cool to be able to work on songs and find little quirks that you may not have noticed with the full mix.
yeah, it's a lot of fun! there's a lot we learn every time we do a release just from working with the audio.
They work great for muting volumes!
You think I know how to animate? That's just my cover story to get access to the stems!
3
It also allows us to enhance certain parts of a song. One great example is Got To Get You Into My Life, where with the stems I made, I was able to make the barely audible guitar part actually pretty audible in a full mix.
i think we'd all probably agree that Let it Be is the most difficult album to work with, audio-wise. phil spector's controversial production alone makes it difficult to discern or extract certain instruments a lot of the time.
That's a great point.
Another fun part of stems is the freedom it gives me to create new endings for the songs that usually fade out – like GTGYIML as Rocker just mentioned
the ending I made for it wouldnt be possible without those stems
Ooh and we can't forget about For No One's drums! Didn't even know it was there to begin with
Yeah, one of the things I think is really cool about this project is just discovering those little things buried in mixes that i've heard hundreds of times before but never noticed.
Ah yes! When making the stems, a lot of the time I don't use the stereo mixes. Sometimes we dig deep to find mixes where certain stuff is more audible. There is a 5.1 mix of For No One which has a more defined drum part unlike the stereo mixes where you can barely hear it, and I took advantage of that 5.1 mix to make it audible.
Interesting
So, back to charting…
The Beatles are not "Guitar Hero material", so when I started authoring songs in 2011 I think I was the first, or among the first, to release a Beatles song full band, and over the years more came from other authors. Obviously Orange Harrison released some amazing tracks for C3 and the community relased even more. Did you start all your charts from scratch or were you able to build on what was alreay done?
It's definitely a huge help to get a start using the older charts made by fellow authors! We do change some things however. I try and aim to be almost perfect with vocal charts but sometimes harmonies were charted incorrectly or some slides were missing, but its somewhat minimal when we use the charts which we have permission to upcycle.
If there's work we can use as a starting point, we reach out and ask permission to use it, however, in terms of charting standards, TBRB and RB3 are two very different games, just because a chart is suitable for RB3 doesn't mean we can use it here without heavy editing. The most basic example of it I can think of currently is in reductions, and that TBRB just uses GRY in lower difficulties, whereas RB3 uses more.
I think if you are not improving on previous work, you're doing it wrong, so I think it's only a given that, seeing the amount of work you did, you added a lot more to anything that was done before
Ah, I didn't remember TBRB got away with doing that
Another thing that's different I can think of too is alt charting, while RB3 supported keyboards which meant anything that isn't really Guitar/Bass/Drums/Vocals ends up on the keys part, we don't have that available to us, so things like horns, stringed instruments and keys can end up on a guitar part in TBRB that wouldn't be there in a RB3 version.
i think it's safe to say this project wouldn't exist without the groundwork laid by rb3 authors. a lot of them have very kindly allowed us to adapt their hard work to this game. some gave us useful tips and feedback, some (like TheSheepQueen) even ended up joining the team!
5
You seem like a very tight group, very well organized. You remind me of the passion that got us started in 2013. Is there someone, or more than individual, keeping things like schedule, etc. and making hard decisions or do you do that by committee?
One of the first things we decided was NO DEADLINES outside of very rare cases, our love for the game kinda keeps us working on schedule. We want to see new content in the game just as much as anyone else does. It's a lot of work, and we are all just people doing this in our spare time, so we want to have some flexiblity to reduce stress whenever. As for decisions and stuff, it generally comes down to what that decision is, at the very least, we tend to get multiple opinions before going forward with anything.
We really like to avoid making decisions that not everyone is happy with too. We spend a lot of time discussing how to go about minor, or major, details that we disagree upon in the team, and it usually leads us to exploring different options until we find something we all can agree on rather than doing a vote or having one person come down and say that this is the way we're doing it. It's part of the reason we're (for better or worse) very picky about who gets to be on the team, because that way of doing things very much relies on us being able to get along well with each other.
everyone has their own specialty whether that's audio, graphics, playtesting, authoring, fact-checking, etc. but we all contribute to each others' work as well. Rongo is an author, but he also makes great DIY stems. Rocker is our main audio engineer, but he also records gameplay. and then Atupo is pretty much just great at everything
Don't get us wrong, we love our fans, but if we had to do everything they told us to we'd have to put Long Tall Sally in every venue!
4
Well yeah, you need to make the hard calls for the good of all fans
Oh god the Long Tall Sally Venue Debates that have literally spanned multiple hours.
i think it should be on the rooftop, personally.
We have ended up getting stuck in "development hell" for a few releases though due to the attention to detail we want to achieve, so there are a few times where one of us has had to come down and basically say "we're releasing this next week, no matter if we keep finding more things to fix"
Is your end goal to have everything released or is there content you already know you don't want or won't be able to get to?
And no matter what… someone always finds something we missed on the first day of release anyway
1
We're probably not releasing Carnival of Light anytime soon
I think songs from other compilation and remix albums would be really cool to see, like the LOVE album… but for now the main priority is focusing on the main discography.
We aim to have the entire "main" Beatles UK discography in game by the end of the project, and a few choice singles such as Free as a Bird and Real Love. A list of what we've done (and what we're considering the discography) can be found in #progress of TBRB Customs Discord Server. That being said, just because something isn't on that list, doesn't mean it's not an option, as seen previously with Gnik Nus.
(Personally… I still wanna see the LOVE version of Hey Jude in game)
I've wanted to get to the LOVE album for RB3 but I gave up rather quickly haha
OH still owes me a Matchbox for RB3, so let's make it happen!
well, we've sure got a long way to go
Indeed!
Final round, very simple question: what's your favourite Beatles song and what's the one custom song people absolutely need to play in The Beatles: Rock Band and, if you can, why that is. This is for everyone individually
my answer for both is It's All Too Much
That's 2 questions smh faro
Personal fav is easily I'm Only Sleeping. I think the one custom song that needs to be played though is Please Mr. Postman. That dreamscape, oh man, it's amazing that the stage that we used was left unused.
https://streamable.com/p6zcbk
1) Lady Madonna
2) Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, not because I made the original custom but because of what the other people made of it which is at a way higher level than the RB3 version
1
I LOVE Mr. Postman btw
My favourite Beatle song is For No One, and tbh I can't answer the second question because I actually can't play the customs atm 
My favorite Beatles song won't be a custom (Eight Days a Week) since it is already on the game for everybody, but I can't wait until we get to Strawberry Fields Forever or even Penny Lane because they are just amazing songs and there's so many things we can do with them
my favorite Beatles song is Hey Jude, but i think the Revolver album tracks make for the most unique experience in TBRB right now. my personal favorite out of those is 'she said she said'. it's a lot of fun, and the dreamscape is a lot of fun to watch too. ❤️
As for songs in the game already, play Please Mister Postman!
although, you have to play wild honey pie at least once. or twice. or forty times.
Actually, go play Working Class Hero, since it's one of only 2 songs released so far that I've worked on
to give another song a highlight – Got To Get You Into My Life is a great chart and a great dreamscape that everyone should play if they can
Also going to suggest Julia, I think the song has a much more intimate feeling to it, that hasn't really been seen in TBRB before.
My favourite Beatles song is In My Life because of what it represents in my life personally, and I have always been a fan of our custom for Roll Over Beethoven. I am such a sucker for Chuck Berry
Brass instruments in Got To Get You Into My Life, oh man
Ah chuck berry
nvm I am dumb
but Richard too
Can my favorite be Revolution 9? I know it's barely considered a song but I've gone back to listen to it so many times to find out what's happening in it and I'm fully dedicated to it getting a playable custom one day, no matter how unconventional it is musically. Got to Get You Into My Life is definitely a custom everyone needs to play, it's so cool how a stage that was made especially for another song (Getting Better) ended up working so well for Got to Get You as well, with the lyrics cut and all ahhhh
I actually said something in that whole thing I'm gonna give myself a chocolate medal for this
7
5
All of the pre Beatles late 50's early 60's stuff has always been incredible to me
It's honestly hard to call a favorite for me, I fell in love with each and every Beatles track I had the pleasure of working on
also TheWay did a great job with the vocals chart for Got to Get You Into My Life, just saying
3
Everyone's done a good job with everything, just saying
Hell yeah! What a pain in the ass that song was for vocals
Along with a few others but that's besides the point
Awesome 
Listen, I had more fun than I already thought I had doing this, I hope you liked it too
3
Well I hope my explanations were precise, clear and sufficient
2
Are there social channels or other media you want me to use to point people to?
we have a youtube channel now! beatles songs on youtube, can ya believe it?
Our YouTube and Discord is probably the best place to reach us, the YT channel functions as an archive of all of our past work, and I hope everyone enjoys checking out the content we've made (especially the trailers, @astronomyhopesRB does an amazing job with them, and they're honestly the most favorite part of our releases)! It can be found over at https://www.youtube.com/c/TBRBCDLC. For actually talking to us (if for some crazy reason you'd want to!) we have a discord over at https://discord.gg/XM9gexj in which we're always active and talking about The Beatles, Rock Band, The Beatles Rock Band or some of the other hundred topics that come up. We have over a 1000 members there as of a few days ago, so I really encourage people to hop in and join our community and hey, a suggestion you make may even make it into a future Dreamscape!
1
That gif is quite possibly one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Awesome interview!
Probably the only glitch that would have been worth keeping? But seriously, amazing work guys! 🙂
Hey Farottone,
I’m just checking in to let your users know about Spleeter, it is now a standalone Graphical User Interface available below (900megs). Drag and drop quickness with no additional installs. It will separate any song into 2, 4 or 5 separate stems. It’s quite amazing and should help you guys with more detailed and precise song entries.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cLK1OMpHAPSKhN9PNRm8Z3DID1SvE-f9/view