How to add custom songs to YARG

YARG (Yet Another Rhythm Game) is a free, open-source game in the style of Rock Band. It plays guitar, bass, drums, keys and vocals, and it reads the same song folders that the Clone Hero community has been sharing for years. Adding your own songs takes a couple of minutes once you know where the settings are.

What a song folder looks like

Every song lives in its own folder. A typical folder holds a chart file, the audio and a small text file with the song details:

• notes.mid or notes.chart: the notes for each instrument
• song.ogg, or separate tracks such as drums.ogg, guitar.ogg, bass.ogg and vocals.ogg
• song.ini: title, artist, album, year, difficulty ratings and the charter's name
• optionally album.jpg or album.png for the cover art

Songs you download usually come as a zip or rar archive. Extract it first so you end up with a plain folder like Artist - Title that has the files above directly inside it. A folder nested inside another folder of the same name is fine, but a zip file on its own will not be picked up.

Adding the folder in YARG

YARG does not have one fixed songs directory. You tell it which folders to scan, and it keeps a list of them:

1. Put your song folders together in one place, for example Documents/YARG Songs.
2. Start YARG and open Settings.
3. Select Open Song Folder Manager.
4. Click Add Folder. This adds an empty slot to the list.
5. Click Browse on the new slot and pick the folder from step 1.
6. Click Refresh All Caches so YARG scans it.

When you add more songs later, drop them into the same folder and press the Refresh button on that slot. Refreshing a single slot is quicker than refreshing everything, which is why the YARG wiki suggests a separate slot for each big collection.

When a song does not show up

• The song is still zipped, or the files sit two or three folders deep inside the archive's own folders.
• You added songs but did not refresh the slot afterwards.
• The folder has no chart file. Audio alone is not enough; YARG needs notes.mid or notes.chart.
• The song.ini is missing or broken. YARG can usually still read the song, but title and artist may be wrong.

If a song appears but an instrument is missing, the chart simply has no part for it. Plenty of community charts only cover guitar, for example. The song list shows which instruments each chart includes.

Getting songs to play

YARG comes with a few setlists you can download in the YARC Launcher. For anything else you need a chart. Community sites have large libraries of hand-made charts, but many songs have never been charted, and your own recordings never will be.

That gap is what AutoChart.eu fills. You upload an MP3 or FLAC and get back a zip with the folder described above: drums, guitar and bass on all four difficulties, a vocal part with lyrics timed to the singing, separate audio tracks so YARG can mute an instrument when you miss, and the cover art from the file's tags. Unzip it into your YARG songs folder, refresh, and it is in the list. The charts are generated automatically, so they are not as polished as a good hand-made chart. The guide to making charts compares both approaches.