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This page details how to author the standard 5-lane charts for Guitar and Bass to played with a 5-button guitar controller.

These are authored in the “PART GUITAR” and “PART BASS” tracks.

Charting Guitar (and from here on out Bass by implication) for Rock Band consists of creating a rough representation of the actual guitar part in the audio across the 5 button layout. The idea is to make it *feel* like you're playing a real guitar despite jamming out on a piece of plastic.

To start with, you'll want to have some experience playing the game yourself, preferably on Expert as you always wanna start with authoring the Expert chart. You can also look at how songs have been charted officially and in customs before for inspiration, though be aware that the standards for what constitutes a good chart keeps evolving over the years and is very different between games.

Lastly, you'll want to look into the basics of how a guitar is played and some very basic music theory before beginning. Also, make sure your song is tempomapped properly before you start charting, or you'll waste lots of time trying to fix that later.

1. Notes - Where you put the playable notes, Green being the lowest and Orange being the highest on the neck.
2. Force HOPO On - Makes it so a note marked by it will always be a Ho/Po in-game, meaning you can play it without strumming it as long as you're keeping combo. Only allowed on Expert and Hard.
3. Force HOPO Off - Makes it so a note marked by it will always be strummed no matter what. Only allowed on Expert and Hard.
4. 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.
5. Overdrive - See its own page for detailed explanation
6. BRE - See its own page for detailed explanation
7. Tremolo - Creates a “strum lane” for the duration of it, used for parts with fast off-time strumming to help make it more playable. Use sparingly!
8. Trill - Creates a “trill lane” for the duration of it, used for parts with quick shifting between two different notes that would be hard to play consistently otherwise. Use sparingly!

Some of these will be explained in greater detail later.

On the bottom of the MIDI editor window there are additional options next to the play button:

• 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. You can also type in the grid yourself, allowing you to use custom ones if necessary for extremely complex 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.

Will add pictures

The hardest difficulty, and the part that should try and be as close as possible to the real song in terms of note density and rhythm. You want it to feel as close to playing the real thing as possible within the limitations of the game itself and the engine. Here are some of the basics to keep in mind:

• Think about the pitches - For a low-pitched note put it as Green, for a high-pitched note put it as Orange, as a very basic example.

• Consistency - To help emulate the feeling of playing a song, try to keep the way you author a part consistent for each repetition. For example if a riff is charted as Red → Yellow → Blue, keep it as Red → Yellow → Blue for each repetition.

• Chords - Unlike a real guitar, we use 5 buttons laid out differently than the 6 strings of that. As thus, you'll want to chart chords using 2, 3 or 4 strings as 2 notes at the same time, and bigger chords that uses 4, 5 or 6 strings as 3 notes at the same time. Consistency also applies here, but can be fudged a bit if there is a lot of really fast chord patterns that would be impossible to play (for example in a Technical Death Metal track).

• Sustains - By increasing the note length to more than a 16th, it will create a visual tail after the note in-game, and the note need to be held down for the duration of it to get maximum score. As thus, you want to have a 16th gap between the end of a sustain and the next note for the sake of readability and to avoid a situation where optimal score is RNG, and in worst case audio cutting out awkwardly if using multitrack audio.

• Sustain length - You'll want to make sure the sustain is long enough to be realistically able to whammy it at least once or twice with the whammy bar on the guitar controller. As thus, don't add sustains to absolutely everything even if it might look more realistic, as it will make it a worse gameplay experience.

• Pitch over technique - You want to chart the way the song sounds rather than the exact technique of how it is played for the same reasons we can't chart chords entirely accurate; a real guitar with 6 strings is different from a 5 button controller. For example, if a song has a sweep that picks across different strings with different pitches without the guitarist moving their fretting hand, it should be charted as different notes and probably be Hammer-Ons rather than just a line of the same notes in your chart. This is not a guitar tutorial, its a guitar simulator.

• Wrapping - Since you can only represent 5 notes at once, you sometimes need to reorganize notes in a way that isn't 1:1 pitch accurate, but represents the movement and feel of the part. For example, if a solo keeps going up in pitch, you might have to repeat an ascending such as Green → Red → Yellow - Blue and then Red → Yellow → Blue → Orange pattern multiple times in a row. This is one of the hardest parts to get used to, but by finding good ways to wrap you can massively improve the quality and feel of your chart.

All 2-note chords are allowed on Expert.

3-note chords are also allowed, with the exception of any 3-note chord that has both a Green and a Orange note in it (G-R-O, G-Y-O and G-B-O)

Hard is very BPM-dependent on when it comes to note density. In general you'll want to have it mostly be 8th notes, but how many 8th notes per measure vary wildly between BPMs:

• 90-120bpm - Constant 8th notes, meaning approximately eight notes per measure
• 120-160bpm - 8th notes but with small breaks, meaning approximately seven notes per measure
• 160-210bpm - 8th notes with lots of breaks, meaning approximately six notes per measure, and just 3 notes in a row at a time

For extremely high and low BPMs:

• Below 90bpm - Three 16ths in a row
• Above 210bpm - 4ths instead of 8ths

The reason we say “approximately” to the ammount of notes per measure is that it doesn't have to just be straight 8ths; try and reduce the part to keep the rhythm of the song intact. For example, if a song has a groovy riff that syncopates and moves around in different ways, representing that in a simplified form will feel better to play, and will help lower level players develop and practice more complex rhythms in a safe environment.

All 2-note chords except for Green-Orange chords are allowed on Hard.

No 3-note chords on reductions.

Only 2-note chords without a lot of hand stretching required on Medium, meaning no Green-Blue chords for example.

No 3-note chords on reductions.

Absolutely no chords should be on Easy.

Sustained notes needs a small gap at the end of it before a new note is played, which differs between difficulties. At most normal tempos (between 90bpm and 180bpm-ish) you'll want those gaps to be these lengths:

• Expert - A 16th gap
• Hard - A 16th gap
• Medium - Three 16ths gap
• Easy - A 4th gap

This is done for the sake of gameplay. If the end of a sustain tail is touching the next note, it looks disorienting in-game as their graphics somewhat bleed into each other. It can also mess with audio and points if you don't have the time to move your hand to the next note, something that's a common issue with for example Guitar Hero charts. The bigger gaps on reductions are simply to make it easier for lower level players.

The BPM of the song can affect how big the sustain gap should be. Here are some general advice for common confusing situations:

• Expert - A 32th gap
• Hard - A 16th gap
• Medium - Two 16ths gap
• Easy - Three 4th gap

• Expert - A 16th gap
• Hard - A 8th gap
• Medium - A 4th gap
• Easy - A 4th gap

If the song is somehow even slower or faster, feel free to experiment further. Just make sure it will look good in-game and won't make gameplay worse.

Here is how to make sure your character animates correctly on-stage. If not authored they will automatically be set to the default play animations for the entire song and never move their left hand, which often looks very odd.

Determines what animation pool to use for the character:

• [play] - The default playstate, makes the character energetically move along to the beat while playing.
• [mellow] - Makes the character stand mostly still while playing, good for laid back or sad songs.
• [intense] - Makes the characters move around a lot on stage, good for high energy songs.
• [play_solo] - Makes the character focus on playing their instrument with soul, looks good during guitar solos and other leads.

• [idle] - Makes the character stand in place and nod their head to the beat without playing.
• [idle_realtime] - The default idle state at the start of a song. Makes the character stand still without moving with the beat, so its a good idea to also put this one at the end of the song, for example.
• [idle_intense] - Makes the character dance with the beat without playing.

This changes how the fretting hand is animated:

• [map HandMap_Default] - Single notes are played as single notes, chords are played as chords, no extra bells or whistles. Default!

• [map HandMap_AllBend] - All notes are animated as string bends.
• [map HandMap_DropD] - Green notes are played without holding down a string, everything else is animated as a chord.
• [map HandMap_DropD2] - Green notes are played without holding down a string, otherwise Default.
• [map HandMap_Solo] - Big chord animations and chord string bends.

• [map HandMap_AllChords] - Everything is animated as a chord.
• [map HandMap_NoChords] - Nothing is animated as a chord.
• [map HandMap_Chord_C] - Everything is animated as a C chord.
• [map HandMap_Chord_D] - Everything is animated as a D chord.
• [map HandMap_Chord_A] - Everything is animated as a A chord.

If you're unsure which one to pick, keeping it to Default is usually fine, and then change it to Solo during a solo or DropD2 during a chugging riff, for example.

Bass only; this determines which type of strums the bassist will use:

• [map StrumMap_Default] - Playing with two fingers
• [map StrumMap_Pick] - Playing with a pick
• [map StrumMap_SlapBass] - Playing with fingers and thumb slaps

Its often a good idea to look up live footage to see which technique the bassist of the band uses IRL if you're unsure which one to pick. For songs with programmed synth bass, we recommend SlapBass.

The MIDI notes below the actual charted notes at lanes E1 to B2 determines where your character's hand is on the guitar neck, with E1 being the lowest near the head of the guitar and B2 being the highest near the body of the guitar.

Be sure to leave gaps between the end and beginning of left hand position notes, or else the character's hand will awkwardly jerk between notes. Note length doesn't matter as long as notes aren't touching in Rock Band 3, though the hand will slide immediately when there is a gap in Rock Band 2.

A lot of movement is also automatically animated based on the Expert chart, so if a riff or solo pattern is playing different notes across different strings you don't need to change the left hand position any during it.

It is impossible to make a 1:1 representation of how this would look when playing the song IRL, so don't worry about that. Just try your best to make it look convincing enough. A simple left hand position animation is better than none at all.

This section contains further explanations on how to handle things like HOPO forcing, solo markers, and the like:

Notes will usually become Ho/Po's by themselves if it is a 16th or closer next to another note and isn't a chord. However, sometimes you'll want to force a note to either be a Ho/Po or remain a strummed note. To do this, either put a “Force HOPO Off” or “Force HOPO On” note at the same time as the note you wanna affect.

Some common uses for forcing Ho/Po's on:

• For parts that are slides, bends or tapped notes in the audio
• For chords you want to turn into Ho/Po's
• To make stuff more manageable to play on higher BPMs

Some common uses for forcing Ho/Po's off:

• During note transitions with fast strumming
• For parts that sounds very noticably plucked or chugged in the audio
• To make stuff make more sense to play on lower BPMs

Be sure to not overdo forcing; if everything is a Ho/Po or a strum willy nilly it can make the song less fun to play. Also remember, realism isn't always the best way to go if it makes the song less fun to play.

Ho/Po forcing is only allowed on Expert and Hard, as you want to avoid Ho/Po notes all together on Medium and Easy.

If the song has a guitar or bass solo, or anything solo-like such as a section with fast tapping or a particularly tasty lead, you can mark it as a solo section with the “Solo Marker” MIDI note. When you do this, some special things will happen:

• The note lane will have a blue glow on the side, and a counter showing how many percent of the notes you've hit during the solo section appears.
• At the end of the solo, you'll get a point bonus based on how well you did.
• For players using a Rock Band guitar, they can tap notes using the solo buttons on it during a solo section.
• It's fun

To mark a section of the chart as a solo, simply put a MIDI note that covers all the notes you want to be part of the solo section in the “Solo Marker” note field.

Be sure to not have a solo marker too close to a BRE, another solo marker or the end of the song. If the game doesn't have time to show you the solo bonus results, which takes a couple of seconds, it will glitch out and not give you the bonus, making the song artificially harder to get a high star ranking on.

Trill lanes are meant to make trills, a series of two different notes repeated in rapid sucsession, easier to play when they're covered by the “Trill Marker” MIDI note. HOWEVER, the hitboxes for them are bugged, and as such it should only be used once in a blue moon if a trill is so fast it would be unfeasable to hit it otherwise.

To make them work somewhat, make sure to implement them like this:

• Make the very first note of the trill a forced strum. Hammer-on or pull-offs into a trill lane will never register correctly.
• Mark all the notes in the trill, but have the last note only covered by a 128th note length of the trill lane. This prevents the lane from extending past the playable notes (I told you it was buggy).
• Have a small gap after the trill; an 8th or 16th followed by a note that is also a strum tends to be fine. Try to avoid having the next note after the trill be a Ho/Po.
• Unless its all on the same frets and are just natural gaps in the audio, do not have multiple of these things in a row. Moving frets and dealing with trill lane hitbox jank is a recipe for disaster (see Crazy Train solo).

Unnecessary trill lanes have ruined a lot of charts, including several official HMX releases. Treat working with them as working with nitroglycerine; be careful and know what the hell you are doing or else it might be catastrophic.

Tremolo lanes are meant to make sections of very fast, sloppy strumming on the same fret easier to play when they're covered by the “Tremolo (Strumlane)” MIDI note. HOWEVER, the hitboxes for them are bugged, and as such it should only be used once in a blue moon if there is a extended stretch of fast strumming with no beat or rhythm to it.

To make them work somewhat, make sure to implement them like this:

• Make the very first note a forced strum. This should be self-explanatory considering its a tremolo lane.
• Mark all the notes to be laned, but have the last note only covered by a 128th note length of the tremolo lane. This prevents the lane from extending past the playable notes (I told you it was buggy).
• Have a small gap after the tremolo; an 8th or 16th followed by a note that is also a strum tends to be fine. Try to avoid having the next note after the tremolo be a Ho/Po.
• Do not have multiple of these things in a row, for the love of god. Moving frets and dealing with tremolo lane hitbox jank is a recipe for disaster (see the outro of Raining Blood).

Unnecessary tremolo lanes have ruined a lot of charts, including several official HMX releases. They should be used even more sparingly than trill lanes, meaning 99% of the time do not use these.

This section contains some additional advice on charting that might come in handy sometimes:

Grace notes is when you strum a note, then quickly slide or hammer-on to another fret to make it sound like one note with a bent pitch. While often realistically charted as 32th notes on a straight grid, we recommend charting them as 16th on a triplet grid to account for how strict the Rock Band engine is.

A common confusion is how to handle authoring harmonic notes; very high pitched notes created via holding your hand barely on the string over one of the bands on the guitar and then strumming. It is very easy: treat them as normal notes. In most cases you'll want to keep them strummed and as single notes, unless they actually are chords (for example the verse riff in Roundabout by Yes).

Sometimes the guitarist creates the harmonic with their strumming hand and then bends the string or uses a whammy bar to create a effect that sounds like a fast trill. In those cases, chart it either as a grace note, sustain or a trill depending on if it will make the song more fun or not. Remember; more difficult doesn't always equal more fun.