3) How to create song patterns (separated wav tracks)

Complete guide how to implement song into the editor from separated audio tracks.

Requirements

1) You need to know how to create custom song mod described in this main tutorial

2) You have song in separated tracks by instruments. I.e. drums.wav, snares.wav etc

3) You need also full song wav (MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_BG_Easy.wav)

4) Audacity software

A) SETUP

1) Open your Beat the Song editor project in the Unreal Engine (double click at the BeatTheSong.uproject)

2) In the UE editor create the "dev" directory anywhere, import there kicks.wav, snares.wav, create Cues for them (right click) and add Cues into "Dev Bg Music Tracks" in "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_Easy_Music_BP"



3) In the UE editor in "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell/Music" import "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_BG_Easy.wav", create Cue for it and add it into "Game Background Music" inside of "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_Easy_Music_BP"



4) Run Beat the Song editor

5) Open your song from select box. If you do not have there anything to select, make sure that you have loaded your mod level.

6) You already have 5 pages in editor from main tutorial. If not, add them and fill correct BPM and set "Scroll speed" to 200. Save it.



7) Run Audacity and open all your separated wavs



8) Open another Audacity or different audio editor for sample editing. I will use here Wavelab to know what is what in this tutorial.

B) CREATE A PACK OF SAMPLES

In the Audacity:
1) Play begining of song and decide what instrument will player play and how long. Let's say kick and snare (obivously)

2) Find kicks.wav track and highlight part what will be played by player

3) Press CTRL+B. At the bottom of all tracks will appear new "Label track" with your selection. Name it "Kick"

4) Repeat 2) and 3) for the snare



5) Switch to Wavelab and load kicks.wav track

6) Select one sample of kick and save kick sample as wav with the name E_Kick_1.wav



7) Repeat 6) for snare

C) CREATE PATTERN

In the UE editor:
1) Import created samples (E_Kick_1.wav, E_Snare_1.wav) into "SoundsEasy" directory and create Cues for them by right click

2) Add these Cues into "Sound Bank" inside of "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_Easy_Music_BP"



In the Beat the Song editor:
3) Create patterns by clicking at the selectboxes a set kick and snare to correct places. You can check timing in Audacity with time inside of editor. Fill patterns until that time that is marked in your Audacity for kick and snare.





4) Save it.

5) Autoplay it. Kick and snare will be louder. If you cannot hear it clearly, change "BG volume". If you are distracted by other sounds, change selectbox "Dev BG Music" from "Final" to "Kick.Cue" or "Snare.Cue" and you will hear only this track instead of full background sound.



6) Check if you samples plays at the same time like they are in the full music. If not, fix their position.

Note: Autoplay can play samples a little off-time by few miliseconds, but in common game it is correct. So if you will hear that it is not played exactly at the same moment as it is in full tracks and sooner by one line is too soon and later by one line is too late, then don't worry, it is correct. Temporaly it can be solved by editing "Start BG music delay" value but remember to set it back to correct value before release.

7) Repeat (Tutorial B) and (Tutorial C) until you will reach end of the song.

D) FINALIZE SONG

1) In the Audacity click at every label one by one and press CTRL+L to replace sounds with silence




2) In the Audacity press CTRL+SHIFT+E to export all tracks merged into one and save it like "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_BG_Easy.wav" (overwrite full song)

3) In the Audacity open final "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_BG_Easy.wav" and use menu -> Effect -> Normalize -> use value -1.0



4) In the Audacity use menu -> Effect -> Compressor -> use default values
Note: it can break some part of the song, so watch it out.



5) In the UE editor reimport "MOD_Rotacak-StairwayToHell_BG_Easy.wav"



6) In the UE editor play your song and tune samples volume. That can be done in the song editor globally for all samples or one by one in details of Cues.





Note: samples must be often played with higher volume than in background song. Background song is played with half volume but sometime it is not enough and you have to make samples even louder. Otherwise is not recognized (by player) what sample is actually playing.

7) In the UE editor check if song can be finished - run autoplay and if at the end is "Congratulations" then it is ok.

8) Make sure that your song will ends after last note will fall down. Is needed to add several empty pages at the end of song.

9) In the UE editor delete the "dev" directory

10) Continue in the main tutorial with "E) BUILD MOD PACKAGE"