Another Tonelib Jam deal - not quite as good as last summer, but still 40% off. $42 down from a normal of $70.
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I donāt 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/ itās a very, very nice application. The tempo changes throughout the songs look strange, until you realize itās to make sure that absolutely every note in the file occurs at exactly the time itās supposed to. Listening to the backing track and watching the cursor go from note to note in the sheet music / tablature, and itās 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 Iām 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!
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I have created a little YouTube playlist that shows different play modes of Tonelib Jam and a few tracks (including Billie jean!) to jam a little.
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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:
Itās 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 youāve, 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 thatās 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 donāt need Tonelib Jam).
For all you masochists: a good explanation for creating your own PSARCs can be found here: Creating a custom from a Guitar Pro file ā James' Bass Blog
I donāt disagree. But being able to modify an existing PSARC, with say a modified audio track isnāt 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 donāt consider yourself tech savvy, itās likely to be pretty frustrating.
Oh, that you can do much easier.
Just import the PSARC (choose the _p or _m variation) into ToneLib and (ex-)change it directly in ToneLib by loading a new backing track:
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 casesā¦
Then - and only then - it makes sense to go through RocksmithToolkitGUI torture to get the OGG from PSARC.
Itās a whole other learning curve for sure! 
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Good to know, thanks!
Personally, having the exact version of the song synched up absolutely perfectly is the main draw. So to me, itās worth using that same version. Iām going to be doing stem extraction if Iām learning a song and making a cover anyway. So as a computer geek and bass freak, Iāll 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 donāt need to go down the rabbit hole, but itās there.
I know what you mean 
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!
Man the only thing that bugs me about this software (which otherwise looks awesome and I love ToneLibās other stuff) is all the bogus tempo changes it puts in to the tabs 
No song actually varies its tempo by 1-2 BPM cyclicly like that. Not even the most hardcore Math Rock geeks do that.
I totally believe you that the recordings do that. Thereās many reasons that can be the case - recorded media like vinyl warping, original studio recording tapes stretching, drummers not being perfect, etc etc. But while I am sure someone could find an isolated example of a drummer who did that on purpose (maybe to f*ck with his bandmates or something), itās just not a thing in how real songs are written, and so itās weird to see the music notated that way. One should not try to emulate that when playing the song, youāll go mad
Yeah, but again: for playing it really really REALLY (!!!) makes no difference.
I can load a Guitar Pro GP5 into Tonelib and it will show no tempo changes. It will in 99% of the cases also not fit with the original audio file (and I never use vinyl rips, just for the ā¦ eh ā¦ record!).
So the tempo changes seem to be necessary to adjust (faulty?) GP5s to the audio.
Just test it yourself. Take any GP5 and match it to one of your digital song files. I bet you it wonāt work properlyā¦
Now use GoPlayAlong to synch, export it and look at the .XML file in the export folder. It will show you the tempo changesā¦
I just did āRenegades of Funkā by Rage against the Machine. The sync tag shows the timing corrections. GP from Songster, flac by myself.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>Yeah totally get it, not arguing here when it comes to the actual recordings - things like that can happen for many reasons. However, when you move beyond just covering others songs to a prerecorded track - just saying you donāt want to emulate those tempo changes when playing covers with a real band, and it usually wouldnāt be notated in the sheet music
I look at things like this a little differently - my bandmate and I never use backing tracks when making covers.
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Tonelib Jam is on sale again - for about $42!
Some think itās just a toy - but weāre here to play anyway
This is what you can do with it: List of play-along songs with synchronised tabs on Youtube
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