For fretting songs using the MIDI editor, you will need:
- the song file
- a MIDI of the song (you can find many of them at Music Robot Midi Search
- a MIDI editor
This tutorial is done using Fruity Loops as a MIDI editor.
1. Check if the MIDI file and the song file are similar to themselves and are the same version of the song you are going to fret.
2. Run Fruity Loops and choose File/Import Midi. Choose your MIDI in the dialog that pops out. It will come up with a box; don't change anything here except for the Realign events, which should be turned off. Click the big tick.
Your MIDI should be loaded and you should see the instrument tracks listed near the top:
3. Delete any of the instrument tracks you don't want by right clicking on the instrument button and choosing Delete.
4. Right click on every of the instrument buttons of the tracks you will be using and choose Replace/FL Keys.
5. Choose Channels > Add one > Audio Clip from the menu. Now, click on the audio clip button. You should see a box similar to that:
Click on the file loader button and browse for your song file.
You may have noticed that the notes track doesn't look the same for the audio track and for the MIDI tracks. That's because the MIDIs are placed on the piano rolls and the audio is still placed on normal sequencer beat keys.
6. Click the first beat key which is just to the right of the instrument button to tell the program to start playing the song right from the beginning. Click play.
7. If the audio and the MIDI are out of synchronity, there are two possible reasons for it.
Most songs have a small amount of silence at the begining. The silence on the audio track may be longer/shorter than on the MIDI. Use an audio editor like Audacity to either add or cut small amounts of silence to the beginning of the audio track, then reload the audio track in Fruity Loops and press play. Do this untill the first note of the MIDI plays as close to the first note of the audio track.
Then listen to all of the song to check if all of the notes from the MIDI play synchronously to the ones from the audio track. If they don't, it means the tempo of the MIDI file is unsynchronised with the audio file. To see, what tempo your MIDI file is actually using, look at the play controls:
To adjust the tempo, click any of the piano roll tracks to call up the piano roll editor, then down in the bottom left of the piano roll screen there will be a blank section of window:
Right click there and select Tempo (course) the bottom of the piano editor will change to this:
The big pink/peach coloured area represents the tempo of the MIDI file. If you move your mouse over that area your pointer changes to a pencil, making you able to draw the tempo of the file:
If you adjust the tempo at one point, the changed tempo will go continuously to the point where you clicked next (or, if there are not any points after this one, to the end of the MIDI file).
8. If your MIDI goes synchronously with the audio, you should start moving your notes around. As you have a load of notes and they are already isynchronized with the audio, you will not have to move the notes left or right (back and forward in time), only up and down to make them fit within one of the difficulty bands.
To move the notes click the Select button on top of the piano roll editor, then just drag a box over some notes and use L-shift + up/down to move the notes up/down by 1 place; if you want to go faster, use L-Ctrl + up/down to move the notes by 1 octave.
Play the song back now for a final check.
9. Now right click on each instrument button and choose Replace > MIDI out. Then right click on each of them again and pick Rename to give each instrument a correct names for Frets on Fire to recognize them. The names are case sensitive, so be sure to type them correctly.
- PART GUITAR - main guitar track
- PART BASS - bass guitar
- PART RHYTHM - rhythm guitar
- PART GUITAR COOP - lead guitar.
You can have a total of 4 different instrument tracks to play in game
9 Right click on your audio clip button and delete it to clean your MIDI file up. Go to the menu and choose File > Export > MIDI file and save your file. It will then come up with an export dialog box. Don't change anything here, just make sure the file type in the top right corner is set to MIDI. Click Start.
10. Convert your song files to .ogg format using Audacity and name it guitar.ogg, rename your MIDI to notes.mid, place them in a folder, create your song.ini file in that manner:
[song]
name = name_of_the_song
artist = artist_of_the_song
cassettecolor = #hex_color_of_your_cassete
Move the entire folder to your /data/songs/ folder to be able to play it.
Ref: http://www.fretsonfire.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=3;t=7251
