Without going back and re-reading the thread to double-check, I don’t believe that anyone claimed that an AI transcribed the song. The AI generated the awful notation of that transcription (and even that wasn’t really “AI”, but I feel like that’s a tangent). No one is arguing against the accuracy of the transcription itself - they’re just pointing out the poor representation of that transcription in the generated notation.
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I would not reread - it get’s all emotional 
I don’t understand this sentence: " The AI generated the awful notation of that transcription".
But I feel we’re gettin closer to the issue, thanks!
So, summary:
- Tonelib Jam = OK
- Transcription = OK
- Notation = not OK
I think I get that and could even explain it (to me),
James Preston has written an interesting guide, how he creates the Rockmsith/Tonelib songs:
I found James on Linkedin and invited him over - but also send him a link to this thread and prepared him for the tone here (not representative for the forum)…
I hope he shows up and gets involved in this discussion - I would understand if not.
Anyway, maybe somebody can find the source of all the trouble in James how-to?
Hi there - sorry for the delay in coming over, I haven’t been on LinkedIn much lately…
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No worries - cool that you’re here!
I’m really curious about your thoughts…
PS If you get serious about BassBuzz (lots of reasons too), introduce yourself here: Introduce Yourself! (2025)
I must admit that I really do need to get around to updating this guide because several of the software packages have had updates and the final stages of creating the psarc file for Rocksmith has changed. The principle is still the same though.
Regarding the point about the generated notation, the GP5 file which I create goes through quite a bit of conversion as part of the process. I’ve seen GP5 files which have been generated directly from Rocksmith customs, and yes - they are awful, and bear little resemblance to the source GP5 file. That said, it has been many years since I did music theory at school and I may have forgotten many of the accepted notation standards. Interestingly, I was re-reading a thread I was part of on another forum. Neil Murray had posted transcriptions of many Whitesnake songs he’d played on. These were like gold dust to me and many of my fellow custom creators. Unfortunately, someone at Berklee College of Music had seen them and criticised how Neil had notated the songs. To most of us, it was perfect - it showed which fingers to put on which strings and when, which is what you want, but apparently some single notes should have been tied double notes etc. It’s a shame, because Neil had put a lot of effort into his transcriptions and this criticism - to me anyway - was totally unfounded.
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Is it this one?
"A very respected bass player and teacher, Steve Bailey, who I’ve met at Warwick Bass Weekends in Germany, saw the transcriptions and quite rightly made the criticism that sometimes the notation is not exactly ‘correct’ - I assume he means that you’re supposed to see where each crotchet/quarter note starts in each bar, by using e.g. two tied quavers/eighth notes instead of a crotchet, indicating that one of the four beats in the bar lands in the middle of that particular note. In my defence, I would make the following points:
Although in certain situations (Gilgamesh 1973, National Health 1976-7, We Will Rock You 2002 onwards) it’s been necessary to be able to read music (but not sight-read), for the entirety of the rest of my career playing by ear and not requiring the ‘dots’ in order to do the job has been the most important skill.
I assume, perhaps wrongly, that the bassists who are interested in my playing are more likely to look at the tab, with help from the notation, particularly for the rhythms. Tab is probably banned at Berklee, and mostly I wouldn’t use it much myself, but I didn’t transcribe these bass lines for Berklee students, and if I’d known they would be scrutinised by one of the instructors, I would have made sure they were notationally perfect.
For me to do these transcriptions, my abilities are not good enough to use a pure notation app such as Sibelius. I need to be able to hear the notes sounding similar to a bass guitar, and to at least enter the notes in tab, based on the fret positions I used when the songs were recorded. The program that is best for this is Guitar Pro, though certain bends and effects are difficult to notate, even in an app designed for guitarists.
Some parts took a huge amount of time, partly just hearing and working out what I played, particularly on the live versions, given that I often haven’t listened to some of these tracks for 35+ years. So occasionally if I got it sounding correct rhythmically, I left the notation as Guitar Pro had entered it, even if I knew it wasn’t 100% ‘correct’ according to the rules. Given that I am not earning anything from the transcriptions, I feel they’re good enough for people’s purposes.
The criticism has left me less enthusiastic about continuing with more transcriptions, though anyway at the moment I am extremely busy with non-musical family situations, soI don’t have time. My main plan was that the transcriptions were just an add-on to videos of me replaying these songs, but that’s a more difficult task, to do well, especially as I’m not an extrovert who loves seeing their face on social media etc.
Thanks for everyone’s very kind words!"
He better not post his tabs here
Yes that’s it. I’m converting his score of Ain’t Gonna Cry No More at the moment.
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