~Inserting Solos~

[Frizkie]

~Tutorial by Frizkie~

The game Rock Band introduced something not seen before; solos. The fretboard turns blue, and displays the percentage of notes hit in the solo so far. Guitar Zero has been optimized to perform the same thing.

You will need:

• FeedBack Chart Editor (FB 0.97 Beta: www.dotblip.com/feedback/ccount/click.php?id=24)
  
• A song already fretted (for this tutorial, I'll be using my song, Teacher's Pet by School of Rock.)
  
• Some solo sensing skillz.
  

First, open up your FeedBack Editor folder, and open the 'Songs' Folder.



If you just downloaded it, there will be an existing folder, which you can delete. In this folder, place the three most important parts of your song; the song.ogg, the guitar.ogg, and the chart.



Open the FeedBack Editor. If it's your first time, pick your language. (All of the FeedBack Editor is controlled by the arrow keys, the enter button, and escape.) Now, go to the exact note that you would like the solo to start at. Press 'W'. A box will appear. Type in 'solo_on'.



The same thing will appear below, but don't click on it. Just type 'solo_on' into the box and hit enter. Move to the end of your solo. If you would like a note to be included in a solo, make sure you have navigated PAST the note. If the marker is right on the note, it will not be included in the solo. Do the same as above, but instead of typing 'solo_on', type in 'solo_off'.



Press enter. Press 'S' to save. The chart in the 'Songs' folder will be replaced with the new one. Viola! Solo magic.

---

There also is an alternate method to this. Using the key 'R' when in FeedBack opens a menu for naming song sections. This can also be used to denote solos; any song section with the word solo in it will be a solo.

If you convert a CHART to a MIDI, sometimes information like Track Events (like solo_on and solo_off) and even Track Sections can dissappear.

=======

Edits after community input session started:

• Added info about solo detection using song section names
  
• Added info about sometimes losing info when converting from CHART to MIDI
  

[Frizkie]

ANNOUNCEMENT:

I am planning to move this tutorial to the Guitar Zero Wiki in 1 week from the date of this post. If you have any suggestions or improvements on the tutorial, please post here and your comment will be considered.

[derelict68]

Nice looking tutorial. At the minimum please include a small snippet about how the game will also look at song sections by using the "R" command. It would also be good to perhaps also show how solo's work with midis as well as charts.

[Frizkie]

Come on everyone, we really need the communities input. Please take the time to read it.

[SoD Sasquatch]

Yeah this looks simple enough. I'm definitly going to use it.

[Frizkie]

Thanks.

[pcb]

It's great
as good as your fake virus *insider*

[Frizkie]

lol ty

[SoD Sasquatch]

Yeah, I tried to do some of my songs last night, but they were all .midi and tried to open them up and they just froze and got the whole "program not responding thing". The only song that I have out of 400 something songs that has a .chart file is that God of War theme that those guys fretted for me in the forums. I opened that up in it and was able to edit it, went to the spot for the starpower and turned solo_on but I don't think it did anything. Went ahead and went to the last note and turned starpower off. It maybe that you can't see solos in practice mode? I always have to play in practice mode because of that damn rockmeter. Anyway, is there something to go from .midi to .chart?

[derelict68]

There are usually a few very minor things that can stop you from opening the mid in feedback. You'll need Anvil studio which is free.

The first potential problem is if the mid does not have the track named "PART GUITAR" (see iceflake's post about the drum mod for more info). The other item that works sometimes is if you go into anvil and in the file menu -> "Export Midi-Format 0 File". I've had to do that a few times. Make sure to copy your mid before changing it, and also do each step one at a time, because sometimes renaming the parts and then exporting as type 0 doesn't work together. Any problems post in the help section.

[SoD Sasquatch]

Ah, I see. Um...is there a .midi to .chart converter? I would like to have a huge group of charts rather than those because they're easier to organize and so that I won't have to go through all of the Anvil Studio problems.

[Frizkie]

look in darthslaws signature.