How to make a Clone Hero or YARG chart from any song
Charting a song by hand compared with generating the chart from the audio: what each takes, what you get, and when to use which.
Updated
Most Clone Hero and YARG players eventually go looking for a song that nobody has charted. Maybe it is a deep cut from a small band, a song in a language the charting community rarely covers, or something you recorded with your own band. You have two options: chart it yourself, or have a program generate the chart from the audio.
What a chart actually is
A chart is a timed list of notes for each instrument and difficulty, plus a tempo map that lines the beat grid up with the recording. Clone Hero and YARG read charts from notes.chart (the format of the Moonscraper editor) or notes.mid (the MIDI layout Rock Band uses). A full-band chart has guitar, bass and drums on Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert, and often a vocal part with lyrics and pitch.
Charting by hand
Hand charting is how nearly every chart in the community libraries was made. The usual tools are free:
- Moonscraper Chart Editor for
.chartfiles. It is the common starting point for guitar charts. - Editor on Fire for MIDI charts, including drums and vocals.
- REAPER with the Rock Band authoring templates, which many experienced charters use for full-band MIDI charts.
The work happens in a fixed order. First you build the tempo map, because every note snaps to it and a drifting grid ruins everything after it. Then you chart Expert for each instrument, reduce it to Hard, Medium and Easy, and finally add vocals, where every syllable needs a time, a length and a pitch. Testing in the game and fixing what feels wrong takes another round.
The result can be excellent, and a good charter makes choices no program will: which guitar layer to follow, where a fill should feel hard, how to keep a fast part playable. The cost is time. A careful full-band chart of one song is a matter of hours, often many of them, and the learning curve before your first decent chart is steep.
Generating the chart from the audio
An automatic charter works from the recording alone. With AutoChart.eu you upload an MP3 or FLAC and get back a complete song folder:
- drums (including pro drums with cymbals and toms), guitar and bass on all four difficulties;
- a vocal part with the lyrics timed to the singing;
- a separate audio track for each instrument;
- a
song.iniwith the song details and the cover art.
A conversion usually takes between 5 and 30 minutes, depending on the song length and the queue, and you do not need to know anything about charting. The trade-off is quality. A generated chart will not always match what a skilled human would write. It works best on rock, pop and metal where drums, guitar, bass and vocals are clearly audible. Electronic or orchestral music usually gives weaker results, because there is less of those instruments to follow.
Which approach to pick
| By hand | Generated | |
|---|---|---|
| Time per song | Hours | Minutes, without your involvement |
| Skills needed | Editor, tempo mapping, charting conventions | None |
| Quality | As good as the charter | Playable, less refined |
| Vocals and lyrics | Every syllable placed manually | Created automatically |
| Cost | Free tools | First song free, then paid credits |
The two also combine well. A generated notes.mid opens in the editors above, so you can start from it and fix the parts that bother you instead of charting from an empty grid.
Whichever way you go, only chart songs you have the rights to use, such as your own music, royalty-free tracks or music you have a license for. Then follow the steps for YARG or Clone Hero to get the folder into the game.