Oh damn, first time I have thought to myself, for a brief second “Should have bought a PC”, then I snapped back.
I used to be a Windows guy, way back before probably around 2008, ever since then, I only use PC at work. But I have not worked for almost 2 years due to health issues and Covid (I didn’t have Covid, but slows down all my health resources, so I stay down longer) .
So, are you saying to specify MAC version when I download a file?
I will go and check it out before I start to ask a bunch of questions I can possibly answer on my own.
Thanks for all the help, and the future help in about 10 min
What is also pretty cool: You can add built in effects to the play along track (your bass sound), and that can be done on a per measure basis.
So you could add different effects for the verse and the chorus, and while playing along, switching between effects will happen automatically.
It also supports VST plugins.
I haven’t checked yet how good the builtin effects are, but I think the feature itself is pretty neat.
Big thanks to @KenKnight for highlighting ToneLib. I’ve been using the bundled Zoom software and found it really very clunky. Being able to drag and drop effects into the chain is so much simpler and intuitive in this free software. Having fun creating a delay patch for late night missions into the unknown. Thanks again.
Tonelib Jam 4.7.5 (latest) is on sale for $34.97 right now. Full price now looks to be $69.95. When I grabbed it last September it was $44.95 - so this is probably a solid deal. ToneLib Metal and ToneLib GFX are also 50% off.
All of them also come with a 30 day free trial (no software limitations).
This program is back on my mind because I’m going to do a first jam session and we agreed on a few songs to prepare. Terrible memory here, so I’ll need it on paper as well. No need to get a questionable or hard-to-read tab transcription online because I already have the songs for Rocksmith - so now I just load them up into ToneLib Jam and print: tab, notation or both on the same page.
I don’t have a Zoom any more but if I did I would consider buying Jam just to support the guy - ToneLib Zoom is fantastic and IMO almost required to own. And free!
Have been playing around with this quite a bit in the last couple days. With all the material on https://ignition4.customsforge.com/ it’s a very, very nice application. The tempo changes throughout the songs look strange, until you realize it’s to make sure that absolutely every note in the file occurs at exactly the time it’s supposed to. Listening to the backing track and watching the cursor go from note to note in the sheet music / tablature, and it’s dead on.
EDIT: This means that you can turn on the MIDI track, and it will be perfectly in line with the backing track. This is a luxury I’m not quite used to when trying to use MIDI files set to a constant tempo.
Currently enjoying the free trial and watching for a sale. Good stuff!
Thanks @chris_van_hoven , I think it was probably one of your posts on Tonelib Jam that got me to look at it. I underestimated how useful it would be, honestly.
Along these lines, another great tool to have in the bag is the Rocksmith Custom Song Toolkit:
It’s not necessarily for the faint of heart, but has a ton of functionality for these Rocksmith files. Including unpacking the file to get at the tab, backing track and such contained within. The backing track is stored in an Audiokinetic Wwise OGG format, and this tool will convert it to OGG Vorbis so you can use it to extract stems from. You can even take an audio track that you’ve, say, removed the bass track from, make that the backing track for the song and then repack it so you can use it in Tonelib Jam. And if you find a file that’s only available for instance in XBOX or PS format, you can convert it to Mac/PC. All sorts of useful possibilities.
I would not advise to use RocksmithToolkitGUI and EOF for creation of synched tracks, unless you are an expert.
It is always better to look for free tracks first on https://ignition4.customsforge.com/, then see if they are available at Steam (for Rocksmith 2014 - you need to purchase those though).
[FOR FREAKS ONLY]
If everything else fails, you can use RocksmithToolkitGUI and EOF to create your own file, providing you have good Guitar Pro tabs or MIDI files. But most are not really synched.
So you need GoPlayalong to synch, import into EOF, do some magic and create the final PSARC in RocksmithToolkitGUI . This can be used in Tonelib Jam.
That is not for the faint of heart! If anybody really really REALLY needs a track I can create it and make a Youtube video (so you don’t need Tonelib Jam).
I don’t disagree. But being able to modify an existing PSARC, with say a modified audio track isn’t super difficult. And could be quite useful. Some of the CDLC content I downloaded had several versions that they had repacked - minus the bass track, minus the vocals for karaoke, etc.
And fully agree with you on this - if you don’t consider yourself tech savvy, it’s likely to be pretty frustrating.
Most of the time you need to move the audio (in the bottom part) to the right position, but that is easy peasy. Just select the first note and move the audio so it matches.
Sometimes you will not find the right track to work with, as there many different versions in some cases…
Then - and only then - it makes sense to go through RocksmithToolkitGUI torture to get the OGG from PSARC.
Personally, having the exact version of the song synched up absolutely perfectly is the main draw. So to me, it’s worth using that same version. I’m going to be doing stem extraction if I’m learning a song and making a cover anyway. So as a computer geek and bass freak, I’ll go to the trouble to pull the OGG out for stems, but not having to repackage and just being able to replace it directly in TL is definitely a plus!
At the end of the day, you don’t need to go down the rabbit hole, but it’s there.
Maybe one more advise: many audio files in the original PSARC totally s#ck, in terms of audio quality - so change them!
I have the habit of normalizing all tracks I play, using high quality FLAC files (often up to 192Khz/24bit, but 44Khz/18bit is also ok) and import those in Tonelib Jam.
First of all you can really enjoy the original track better (providing you have good equipment or headphones) and secondly normalizing files means: no fiddling around with volume for every track. Sometimes the volume of audio tracks are totally different from each other, and that s#cks!
