Tips for Speedier Song Creation

[EvileOL]

(I'm not asking for shortcuts etc just help)

Basically, I'm busy with band things and life in general, but I am charting stuff to send to RBN. I didn't realise how time consuming it can be, but I really want to get it done. I find it becoming very tedious at times, and have to back track to remember how to do things etc

Basically, can anyone give any tips on how they go about creating a song in an efficient and more swift manner?

Do you do things in certain orders? etc.
I feel as if the stuff is above me and i'm unable to do it.


I'm STILL dubious about tackling Vocal authoring to the extent of vowel/consonant precision, and the text events, camera/lights etc still throw me - i've just been concentrating on the music charting for now.

[trg007]

Authoring a whole song by yourself is a very daunting task, especially on your first few songs when you're still learning everything. That's why there are so many 3rd party authoring companies out there and more popping up all the time, since most bands don't want to go through the trouble.

Hm...I don't know of many shortcuts. I'm assuming you know about the Alt+C shortcut to copy all the notes down to the next lower difficulty? That's handy when you've finished Expert and starting to work on Hard, and so on. You can of course use Copy & Paste when you've got repeating patterns of the same gems.

I'm STILL dubious about tackling Vocal authoring to the extent of vowel/consonant precision

The best way to go about finding where to start and end your vocal notes is by using your ears. Place the cursor where you believe the note should start, press Play and listen. If you can hear part of the consonant sound, move the cursor more to the right (or to the left, if you don't hear the consonant) and repeat until you find where to place the start of the note. It's quite tedious, but fortunately you only need to author one "difficulty" for vocals.

[MarsPhoenix]

All I can say is keep on trucking, because there's a lot of people who want you to be on the Network as much as you do. If things get too tangled, please do consider going with a third party company (I personally chart for Music Game Authors).

The only thing I can think of is that if there are repetitive parts in Guitar/Bass/Drums, you could write all four of the difficulties for those parts and then copy/paste them. You'll still have to look over the Hard/Expert charts a lot for differences, but chances are high Easy/Medium will end up the same.

[ethicalpaul]

Here is what I learned after charting my first song by myself:

1. Do the tempo track first. Do it right. Do not go to step 2 until it's done right. If you don't know what "right" means, then you are probably doing it wrong. Once you have done it right once, this will be the easiest step.

Do the vocals. I make these my first charting because I find them to be the hardest. But they are also the easiest because there are no difficulty levels. At this point, you should have a playable song with vocals only. Make a venue track that puts the vocalist in closeup and watch her sing the whole song. Make note of any areas where the lip sync sucks. You will have to work around these areas later, but it's good to know where they are in the beginning.

Do the rest of the instruments in Expert only (one at a time). No sense starting any other difficulties until expert is all done.

When all the instruments are charted expert, then place your overdrives. Don't start any overdrive stuff at all before then. Test your scoring to see if you can gold star (but not too early!). Adjust your overdrives until satisfied.

Then in no particular order you can work on the other difficulties and on the venue track if you care to.