More Music Maker Madness

Alliteration FTW.

No, I haven't finished or even resumed work on Don't say "lazy". This is a new project entirely, and exposes some other flaws of the deeply flawed music creator in World Tour.

Specifically, you can't change BPM mid-song.

I need to do this to prevent it from auto-charting hammerons in my latest project, my favorite song from Megaman X, Storm Eagle. I thought it'd be neat to have the boss fanfare in there as the intro, and charted it just fine. It sounds about perfect at 120BPM. However, for Storm Eagle's actual stage music, I need to double it to 240 to prevent auto hammerons. (Edit: okay, after doing the entire melody once, double is too fast. Maybe to 180BPM (120 * 1.5)?)

I have a couple of options for charting this. The first, which is the one I'm currently doing, is simply charting it with sixteenths where there would normally be eighths at 120, but I'll have hammerons all over the place.

My other option is to leave Storm Eagle's stage music as 120BPM eighth notes and just have a half-speed lounge version or something.

The even less desirable option would be to leave the boss fanfare as its own 9 second long custom and chart Storm Eagle at the max available BPM (160) and just blame shitty developers for not providing more options where they're feasible. (Edit: it's really 180, so... 90 BPM and still have to cope with hammerons, or keep it 120, chart triplets (ugh) and still have to worry about hammerons)

I've already FCed the fanfare on guitar and the bassline I made up for it. I bullshitted some drums as well since it didn't have any, doesn't sound all that great but it sorta fits.

Doing the drums is where I ran into the other stupid thing. I thought it would be neat from an artistic license point of view to have a cymbal roll from the fanfare into the stage music. World Tour's drum charts have drum/cymbal rolls charted as sustains. However, you can't chart a sustain on drums.

My only option, thus the one I'm currently doing, is to chart it as a string of 32nd notes on the orange cymbal, first one is an armor note since climactic cymbal rolls sound better when the first hit is hard and the rest are soft and gradually build back up volume. That and strings of 32nd armor note orange cymbals sound like shit. I can't actually play the chart since I don't have the drum kit (and why can't you buy them separately from the rest of the game?), but at least sound-wise it sounds good.

To aid myself in charting the song (which I pretty much had memorized, but whatever) I remembered that ZSNES has toggles for the SNES' SPC-700 sound channels. So I loaded up a rom of Megaman X, got through the intro stage, and went into Storm Eagle's stage and fiddled with them until I had just the drums. I ended up having to add the melody back in just so I could listen for places in the song where the beat changes up and actually know where they were.

I really don't know what I'm going to do for the ending. I figure I'll repeat the main melody once or twice if time/notes allow, but I have no clue how to end the song, since the stage music loops. Maybe just chart the "you died" sound effect as a joke. Who knows.

I'm taking some artistic license on the guitar part, since it's clear there's more than just guitar/bass/drums in the song. I'll probably stick some backing chords or something in the rhythm part. There are plenty of chords in the lead melody, so currently my plan is to have the chords in the rhythm and single notes in the lead. I might end up moving the guitar to the rhythm, but that would make the single notes sound like shit since they'd be chords.

Ugh, Neversoft, why are the parts so damn restricting? The reason you gave on ScoreHero doesn't even make sense. "Technically impossible to tell whether we should chart a single note or a chord" my ass, if I'm holding multiple frets, I want a chord, if I'm just holding one, I want a single note. How does logic that simple escape you?

Also, during this process, I've found a really good way to cut off a sustain on one of the beat lines. Chart it past the beat line you want to cut it off at, then go back to that beat line, change your snap to a 16th note, move one 16th note up, chart a note, then delete it. Your sustain will get cut off perfectly on the line. I think it's even perfect tick-wise. (as-in, a two beat sustain made with this method wouldn't change the last two digits of your score)

I just realized, if I hear it correctly, Storm Eagle is in the key of C sharp. That could be why, to cram the song onto 5 frets, I'm having to change my settings for which colors produce which notes and occasionally change the pitch on consecuitive notes of the same color, something I hate that Neversoft did in most of their customs. They also went down in pitch going up the fretboard a few times too.

Edit: Grrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaat. It won't let me chart the note two octaves above the root note, no matter what. I really need a high F but I can only get the mid and low Fs. Middle finger to you, Neversoft.