Guitar/bass arrangements in Synthesia

Trouble with Synthesia, your keyboard, or adapter? Think you found a bug?
When describing problems, always mention your OS and game version (shown at the bottom of the title screen).

If your keyboard has USB or MIDI ports, there is a tremendously high chance (>99%) it will work with Synthesia. See what you'll need on the keyboards page.
Post Reply
raynebc
Posts: 39

Post by raynebc »

As a user request, I updated EOF (a chart editor for guitar-centric rhythm games) to be able to export the guitar and bass arrangements as normal MIDI files, ie. each note of each string is written as a MIDI note of the correct pitch. A user indicated that each string was treated as a separate instrument, and he was only able to play two of them at a time. I assume this is because each guitar string's notes are being written to a different channel in the MIDI file, which to my understanding is typical with MIDI guitars. Is there a preferred way to handle this besides just writing all notes into the same MIDI channel? The user suggested each arrangement could be written as a separate channel in the same track instead of each arrangement being written as a separate track, but that doesn't sound like a very common convention to me, what do you folks recommend? Also, what's the preferred way to specify what instrument each track uses, should I throw in some program change events to set the appropriate instrument for each channel?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

What you're seeing is expected behavior: Synthesia will show a "part" in the advanced view for every distinct channel/track combination. Said another way: it breaks things down until each part contains notes from only a single track and single channel.

So, even your alternative solution would most-likely lead to the same result.

Today there isn't a great workaround outside of having each string use the same channel. But, the headline feature of Synthesia 10 (mostly a "track splitting" tool to treat single track/channel parts as more than one) will also let you merge things together for the purposes of assigning hands. Right now only one part can belong to a hand. Once track splitting is finished, you'll be able to assign all 5 of the finger parts to the same hand, which should solve the problem. (Keep an eye on the Development Updates section. After the "Quality of Life 3" preview goes out, track splitting is next -- and last.)
raynebc
Posts: 39

Post by raynebc »

I think the user wanted to be able to play the bass part as a left hand arrangement and one of the guitar parts as a right hand arrangement, but this would require the bass and guitar parts to be authored within the same MIDI track (on different channels), then wouldn't it? Or will Synthesia easily allow a player to mix and match between different tracks in a MIDI? The user mentioned having to manually transpose the bass part into another octave so that he could play it on his keyboard, is this something that Synthesia is able to do for him?

About the program change events, should I add them? I imagine it would be better for the bass arrangement to sound like it's playing on a bass guitar voice instead of grand piano voice as a default.

Also, will Synthesia automatically display appropriate names for each chord, or should I throw in something text events to define chord names?

Thanks for your help.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Lots of questions! :D
  • Synthesia 10 will be able to mix and match with respect to tracks/channels. You can continue exporting exactly how you do today. In fact, changing how you export will cause zero behavior change in Synthesia (outside of all fingers on the same track and same channel).
  • Whole-octave transposing is also scheduled for the same development preview, so that should be supported too. (This may be the first place I've announced that.)
  • Yeah, I'd add the program change events. Sorry, I missed that in my first response. Program changes are how Synthesia recognizes/displays voices for parts.
  • For chord names, there isn't a great solution today. Synthesia doesn't show them (or info from text events). That said, Free Play just required adding some new chord-detection code, which is something that could be extended to the song screen someday. For Synthesia's purposes, you can hold off on text events. That is, unless you're targeting other software out there that uses them.
raynebc
Posts: 39

Post by raynebc »

I guess I'll ask the user to keep an eye out for the next Synthesia releases. Changing the logic to export all strings' notes to the same channel of the same track would be pretty trivial for me to do, I could probably just have each instrument part written to a separate channel in the same track if that would make it work in the current version of Synthesia, but that would take a little more work.

EOF already has chord detection logic, so I could throw in the text events naming each chord with just a couple lines of code, but if Synthesia doesn't look for them it doesn't sound like there would be any purpose for me doing so.
Berneer
Posts: 1

Post by Berneer »

Funny, I am a Rocksmith user now dabbling in Synthesia. Then I see our revered raynebc here active in yet another community! Thanks raynebc for adding this functionality in EoF. I just bought my son an iRig Keys I/O with 49 keys and I am beginning to try to understand midi so I am sure I will soon benefit from your work. Thanks Nicholas for your help!

I keep watching YouTube videos of Synthesia content creators making songs I want to learn on piano and instead of linking to midi files they link to $10 music sheets hosted on musicnotes.com. I guess I have to buy the music sheets and then import into Finale or my favourite trusty EoF and export a midi myself. Whole new world for me. Thanks for all the hazard work! Now that I found this forum I presume I will find all my answers here.

Cheers!
Post Reply