This is an old revision of the document!
WORK IN PROGRESS!
This page details how to author the standard and pro 4-lane charts for Drums to be played with a drum controller or MIDI drumset.
Introduction
Charting Drums for Rock Band consists of creating a pretty close and mostly accurate representation of the actual drum part in the song. While some adjustments have to be done for things like multiple cymbals and toms on occasion, the basics are mostly 1:1, and can actually teach the player how to perform the song on a real drum kit in a rudimentary way.
To start with, you'll want to understand the basics of playing drums, and which part of the set makes which sounds. Simply playing some Rock Band Pro drums can be enough to get a grasp of this, though looking up drum tutorials online is also useful.
When you're ready to chart, keep in mind which parts of the drum chart usually corresponds to the actual drums:
- Orange Kick - Bass Drum
- Red Drum = Snare
- Yellow Drum = Tom 1
- Blue Drum = Tom 2
- Green Drum = Tom 3
- Yellow Cymbal = Hi-Hat
- Blue Cymbal = Ride
- Green Cymbal = Crash
Layout
Will add pictures
- Notes - Where you put the playable notes, Green being the lowest and Orange being the highest on the neck.
- Tom Marker - Marks a note to show up as a tom when playing Pro Drums. Works for Yellow, Blue and Green.
- Solo Marker - Marks the duration of the note as a solo, meaning it will count your note-hit progress for the section and give you a bonus in-game.
- Overdrive - See its own page for detailed explanation
- BRE - See its own page for detailed explanation
- Roll Marker 1-Lane - Creates a “roll lane” on one drum or cymbal for the duration of it, used for parts with burst rolls or cymbal swells to help make it more playable. Use sparingly!
- Roll Marker 2-Lane - Creates a “roll lane” on two drum or cymbal for the duration of it, used for parts with cymbal swells to help make it more playable. However, we recommend not using this one, as the hit window for it is completely messed up and could actually create fake difficulty instead of helping.
Some of these will be explained in greater detail later.
- Grid (A) - The note density when placing notes. In most cases its fine at 1/16th, but you might sometimes need to change it to 1/32th for faster songs.
- Grid (B) - Changes which rhythm the grid uses. Straight is the default. Triplet is often used in Blues, Swing is often used in Jazz, and Dotted is very rarely used at all.