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PathStats - Per Measure Pathing Data- Beatles (no harmonies)
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Kawigi  





Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 2879
Location: Redmond, WA

PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:08 pm    Post subject: PathStats - Per Measure Pathing Data- Beatles (no harmonies) Reply with quote

Ok, this is a project I've had in the works for a long time, and have been meaning to make public for a slightly less long time, and I've decided it's finally time to get something up there. There's no fancy index page or adequate description of what's there yet, but there will be soon enough - this is mostly just a start at helping other full band pathers basically have an easier time doing a good job by giving them a key tool in evaluating their paths:

http://rockband.yajags.com/pathstats/

And here's the part where I ask myself questions and pretend like they were frequently asked by others:

What have you done?
I've gone through each song and generated per-measure data about how many points there are, where overdrive and drum fills are, how many points are covered by drum fills, and how many beats of overdrive drain in each measure. I've also included the maximum possible BRE bonus for songs that have BREs and the total of all guitar/drum solo bonuses and vocal percussion bonuses - basically everything that contributes to your band's score is in there. Finally, I have the per-measure scores for each instrument broken out, so you can adjust the full-band per-measure scores if you're not playing with a full band (say, for instance, you're pathing for voxtar, or you have a guitar/drums combo you play with or something).

How is the data is formatted?
Each file has two tables, and the first line of each table has a "name" for each column. The tables are tab-delimited, and may not line up when you look at them in your web browser or text editor. The intent is for you to paste them into a spreadsheet program like Excel (If you have Excel 2007, feel free to use my spreadsheet template). For the first table:

  • Measure Numbers - The number of the measure. Should always line up with ajanata's charts, although his charts were out of date last time I looked at them, and some of their measure lines were in the wrong places.
  • OD Beats - The number of beats of overdrive that drain in this measure. A full meter of overdrive is 32 beats. For most songs, this column will be all 4s, but a few are all 8s or all 2s. Still others change every once in awhile, or even frequently (especially if it's by Dream Theater or Rush).
  • OD Notes - A short description of overdrive-related events that happen in each measure (the ends of overdrive phrases and drum fills basically). Hopefully you'll be able to figure out what the notes mean, but that's a task for a different post.
  • Points per Measure - The total number of non-bonus points for all instruments in the measure. This takes all four parts into consideration (although vocals is obviously an estimate) and also considers streak multipliers (assuming you don't break combo and only have to build up a streak at the beginning).
  • Drum Fill Cover - If a drum fill intersects this measure, this gives the number of points covered by it if it shows up.

In the second table, the first two columns are the same as above, and the other four columns are per-measure scores for each instrument. In between the tables are the total number of points theoretically possible in the BRE (if there is one) and the total number of points available from bonuses (if you FC all the guitar/drum solos and vocal percussion sections).

How do you use it?
See the next post for a complete description of how I use this data to start pathing a song for a band.

Any tips for finding good paths?
Yes. Make the number at the bottom of the spreadsheet as high as possible. To help you figure out how to do that, consider these three BIG guidelines.

First, read and understand Raunch99's Guide to full band pathing, and try to understand the techniques and best practices he describes and why they work.

Second, use Ajanata's charts to help you make sure your paths will be possible and practical.

Third, always ALWAYS try at least three different paths for every song, even if you're sure you've found the best one possible on the first try. Don't be afraid to try 10 different paths before declaring yourself done. Combine the best parts of several different paths, try starting a given activation earlier or later, whatever - just don't call your first path optimal because it "looks right".

Always use the resources available to you, which sometimes includes other people's paths - give and receive in Beez's full band path thread here. Also, watch youtube videos of top-scoring bands to see if you learn anything.

Your paths are teh awesome. Can I be in your band?
Too late to be in my band, but not too late to be in Better Than You--v's cheering section :-)
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Organizer, Vocalist and path factory for Season 9 League Champion band Barre Exam (RB1) and cofounder of Season 10 League Champion band Better Than You --v (RB2) - The #1 band on scorehero
Kawigi's Rock Band Projects
Drum Paths | Star Cutoffs | Scoring Data for Pathing | Notes and Lyrics for Vocalists


Last edited by Kawigi on Wed Sep 23, 2009 9:36 am; edited 5 times in total
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Kawigi  





Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 2879
Location: Redmond, WA

PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's a basic step-by-step guide on how I start pathing a song with this data and Microsoft Excel 2007:

First, download my spreadsheet template at http://rockband.yajags.com/pathstats/_TemplateV2.xlsx , make a copy of it and rename the copy to something based on the name of the song. Then open the spreadsheet.

Next, go to the text file for the song you care about (I'll use Today as an example), and copy the first table minus the headers. Sometimes I'll also just copy starting at the second row, so that the measure numbers line up with the row numbers in Excel.


Now highlight cell A2 and paste. You may need to paste special:

And select Text:

in order for this to work correctly.

At this point, the first several columns of the spreadsheet should look like this:

The colors in column D help you visually identify the more point-dense parts of the song so you'll know to use overdrive then. Green cells are in the top 20% highest valued measures, red cells are below-average (and white is anything in between).

The next couple of columns look like this:

Columns F-J and N are what you fill out with your paths, and columns K-M calculate the score for your path. Finally, the last couple columns look like this:
These last 5 columns are the average score per measure for 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 measures starting at that row. They are there to help you find the best places to activate for different lengths of activations. The colors have the same meaning as in column D.

This is a good time to save, before you start messing with stuff. To create a path, first make a copy of the sheet. You do this by right-clicking on the tab and selecting "Move or Copy..."

On the resulting dialog, select "(move to the end)" and select the "Create a copy" checkbox.

Now rename the new sheet to something appropriate.


Now fill out the sheet with your prospective path. Use the "od notes" column to make notes about what's going on with the path. Put x's in columns G-J for the measures that each instrument will be using overdrive. Put x's in column F for measures in which a drum fill will appear.

Now scroll down to the bottom and look at the estimated score for the path:


Now copy either the template sheet or a path sheet and try another path.

Once you're done and you have a path you're happy with, write it out in a way that your bandmates can understand it.

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Organizer, Vocalist and path factory for Season 9 League Champion band Barre Exam (RB1) and cofounder of Season 10 League Champion band Better Than You --v (RB2) - The #1 band on scorehero
Kawigi's Rock Band Projects
Drum Paths | Star Cutoffs | Scoring Data for Pathing | Notes and Lyrics for Vocalists


Last edited by Kawigi on Sat Oct 18, 2008 9:49 pm; edited 2 times in total
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SilverSwift  





Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Amazing. Excellent job on putting so much time and effort into this, Kawigi. I'm sure this'll be bookmarked by many, many people. Thank you!
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raunch99  





Joined: 08 Aug 2006
Posts: 712
Location: Chicago

PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is some pretty sweet stuff right here Kawigi. If I ever give up on my pathing program and go back to "manual pathing" this will come in most handy. Having this data would have saved me soooo much time on my RB1 paths. Outstanding.

Also, I added a link to this thread in my full band pathing 101 post.
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Last edited by raunch99 on Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:29 pm; edited 1 time in total
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beingmused  





Joined: 13 Dec 2007
Posts: 2475
Location: Boston, MA

PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kawigi -

You're a god! Whenever work was slow I would work on a path for a song, and I would maybe get through one a day...

now that I don't have to add in vocals/OD beats/drum fills myself, I was able to do FIVE RB2 paths today. You've saved me a ton of time.
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Kawigi  





Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 2879
Location: Redmond, WA

PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

raunch99 wrote:
This is some pretty sweet stuff right here Kawigi. If I ever give up on my pathing program and go back to "manual pathing" this will come in most handy. Having this data would have saved me soooo much time on my RB1 paths. Outstanding.

Also, I added a link to this thread in my full band pathing 101 post.


Thanks, I've reciprocated that link, since it has all the basic best practices people will have to understand to path, spreadsheets or none.
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Organizer, Vocalist and path factory for Season 9 League Champion band Barre Exam (RB1) and cofounder of Season 10 League Champion band Better Than You --v (RB2) - The #1 band on scorehero
Kawigi's Rock Band Projects
Drum Paths | Star Cutoffs | Scoring Data for Pathing | Notes and Lyrics for Vocalists
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meister  





Joined: 09 Nov 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 10:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'll have to try out pathing a song with this, I had a pretty good and quick method before, but I'm sure this will be much more exact
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CHawk  





Joined: 12 Jun 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 6:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I love you for making this.
BUT.
I can't access the template from the link in your 2nd post Kawigi. It say's there maybe an error in the address...pl0x help?

EDIT: I figured it out...you gotta make sure that the comma at the end of the link isn't part of the URL.
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Nalk  





Joined: 27 Jun 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Did you manually calculate vocalist points for each measure? Or did you figure out a good way to do it based on the midi charts?

This looks remarkably easy (and eerily similar to what I've been doing!).
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Kawigi  





Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 2879
Location: Redmond, WA

PostPosted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 9:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CHawk wrote:
I love you for making this.
BUT.
I can't access the template from the link in your 2nd post Kawigi. It say's there maybe an error in the address...pl0x help?

EDIT: I figured it out...you gotta make sure that the comma at the end of the link isn't part of the URL.


Fixed, thanks for the heads up.

Nalk wrote:
Did you manually calculate vocalist points for each measure? Or did you figure out a good way to do it based on the midi charts?

This looks remarkably easy (and eerily similar to what I've been doing!).


I take all the time within a phrase that the vocalist should be making sound and evenly distribute the points for the phrase across that time. So if a phrase has 100 ticks of singing in it, and 60 ticks are in one measure and 40 are in another, it'd assign 600*m to the first and 400*m to the second (where m is the combo multiplier). It's inherently an estimate and a skilled vocalist will tend to get all the "pie" earlier in the phrase (and is capable of pushing more of it later in the phrase), but it's as good of an estimate as any.
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Organizer, Vocalist and path factory for Season 9 League Champion band Barre Exam (RB1) and cofounder of Season 10 League Champion band Better Than You --v (RB2) - The #1 band on scorehero
Kawigi's Rock Band Projects
Drum Paths | Star Cutoffs | Scoring Data for Pathing | Notes and Lyrics for Vocalists
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beingmused  





Joined: 13 Dec 2007
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Location: Boston, MA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 4:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kawigi -

There appears to be something funny going on with your drum fill values...for example, the song "Nine in the Afternoon" on expert, every measure I'm looking at has a higher value on your sheet than it shows on ajanata's charts.
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KingGuy1  





Joined: 13 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 4:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

when I saw this, I thought it was just some guys dumb idea... then I saw who made the topic... then I read the topic... holy, crap
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Kawigi  





Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 2879
Location: Redmond, WA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 4:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

beingmused wrote:
Kawigi -

There appears to be something funny going on with your drum fill values...for example, the song "Nine in the Afternoon" on expert, every measure I'm looking at has a higher value on your sheet than it shows on ajanata's charts.


Is this for the drum fill values or the measure values? For the measure values, this is because ajanata's measure value totals don't include vocals at all. For drum fills, if you count the drum notes under the fill (including the squeezable notes), does it look like the right number?
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Organizer, Vocalist and path factory for Season 9 League Champion band Barre Exam (RB1) and cofounder of Season 10 League Champion band Better Than You --v (RB2) - The #1 band on scorehero
Kawigi's Rock Band Projects
Drum Paths | Star Cutoffs | Scoring Data for Pathing | Notes and Lyrics for Vocalists
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beingmused  





Joined: 13 Dec 2007
Posts: 2475
Location: Boston, MA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 4:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kawigi wrote:
beingmused wrote:
Kawigi -

There appears to be something funny going on with your drum fill values...for example, the song "Nine in the Afternoon" on expert, every measure I'm looking at has a higher value on your sheet than it shows on ajanata's charts.


Is this for the drum fill values or the measure values? For the measure values, this is because ajanata's measure value totals don't include vocals at all. For drum fills, if you count the drum notes under the fill (including the squeezable notes), does it look like the right number?


Drum fill values.

Nevermind, I just realized that your values also take into consideration the crash at the end, which of course overwrites whatever is at the start of the next measure too. Before your measure values I haven't taken that into account in my spreadsheets (which means I've effectively been calculating the squeezed values, but that isn't ideal).
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Kawigi  





Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 2879
Location: Redmond, WA

PostPosted: Tue Oct 21, 2008 7:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I had a bug where I indicated that there was whammy in OD phrases that didn't have any whammy, or I showed more whammy than really existed in the phrase. The bug affected ~30 songs total, including the following RB2 disc songs:
Bodhisattva
Lazy Eye
Nine in the Afternoon
Panic Attack

The files have been updated.
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Organizer, Vocalist and path factory for Season 9 League Champion band Barre Exam (RB1) and cofounder of Season 10 League Champion band Better Than You --v (RB2) - The #1 band on scorehero
Kawigi's Rock Band Projects
Drum Paths | Star Cutoffs | Scoring Data for Pathing | Notes and Lyrics for Vocalists
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