Creatings Songs:
Creating songs is the most complicated aspect of Ultrastar, it takes a lot of works, but once you get it done, it's great! Here is a quick guide on how to create songs. Required: - Ultrastar 0.5.3 - Mixmeister BPM Analyzer 1.0 (avalible from download page) - The song's mp3 file
Before you get started you should check out all the ultrastar sites to see whether or not the song you're planning to make has been made already. The worst thing that can happen is to make a song that's already out, all your effort will have been pointless. Also look around for a song that lots of people want, because then after you've made it, all the more gratitude for you.
1. OK, let's get started! First, you need to find a midi file for the song that you want to make. A midi file is like the basic outline of a song with different tracks for instruments. You'll need a midi with a voice track in order to make an ultrastar song. To find a midi, just google around the name of your song, eg. "maneater midi file". It may take a little hunting to get an midi file that sounds right but once you're sure you've got one, move onto step 2.
2. To make things easier, let's put that midi file in the root directory of your hard drive. If you're not sure how to do this, its pretty simple - open my computer, double click on the hard drive with all your stuff (generally the C drive) and drag the midi in. Now boot up Ultrastar.
3. Scroll around on the main menu and then open the "create your own song" menu. You will be presented with a screen with the option to 'convert midi to text'. Press enter. Now open up your midi file by typing in its name followed by the .mid extension. A bunch of colourful lines (tracks) should come up. Use the spacebar and the arrow keys to navigate around and select the track that represents the singer's voice. Label this track with an "N" and then, if you were lucky with your midi selection, there'll be another track for lyrics (lots of vertical lines) which you should label with an "L". Press save and now move onto Step 4.
4. You're not doing bad if you've gotten up to here... but you've still got a way to go yet, so let's keep going. In you're hard drive's root directory where you saved the midi file you should now find a text file (.txt) with the same name as the midi, drag this into the song's corresponding folder in the Ultrastar directory. Add the mp3 to this folder and all other files relating to the song.
5. Open the text file, it may look completely bewildering, but don't fear. It's not as hard as it looks. Let's take a look at the information that should be at the top of every song text file. Here's an example by Corvus5 himself.
#TITLE:Superstar (demo)
This part's pretty simple. The #TITLE line is where you put the name of the song, the #ARTIST is where you put the artist's name for the sake of organisation, the #CREATOR bar gives credit to the person who put the effort in to make the song, the #EDITION line isn't needed but it can show different versions of a song, the #MP3 line is where you type the filename of the mp3 (remember to add the .mp3 ending), the #BPM line stands for beats per minute and finally, the #GAP line is the gap between the song starting and the singing starting. Add in all these values (except #GAP). You can work out BPM by using the MixMeister BPM Analyzer program that can be downloaded from the Downloads page. Drag the mp3 into the window and it will calculate the BPM, then enter that value into the text file (decimal values are allowed).
6. With that all done, let's open up Ultrastar. Go to the songs menu and select your song (which should now be shown) but instead of pressing enter, press E. This will open the editor. The editor thankfully makes things a hell of a lot easier, there are just some basic keys to learn and then you're set.
Keys:
The arrow keys control movement over notes + when you press down you go to the next page. The + and - keys control the BPM, press shift as well to increase the BPM by 1 The Num Pad's + and - keys control a notes pitch while pressing control. Press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow to move all notes to the left, the right arrow to move it to the right. Shift + Left moves one particular note. Control + left/right increase the length of a note. Press F4 to edit the lyrics of that note. Pressing S saves the changes you've made Pressing P plays the whole line, Spacebar plays one note.
There is more detailed documentation on the keys in the Ultrastar Deluxe package (see downloads page) but with these you should be ok. Using the above keys you can add in the lyrics to each corresponding note, but be warned that each syllable is generally on a different note, this can take a lot of practise and perfect synchronisation will take some time. If you got the lyics from the midi file though, everything will be much easier. When you've got it all perfect, try it out.
7. Congratulations, you've completed your song, now all you need to do is add the finishing touches.
Add the #COVER function to the top of your text file and fill in the name of the picture (with the .jpg or whatever extension). This serves no useful purpose but it does look a lot better.
Add the #VIDEO function to the top of your text file if you have the video at hand and then, once again, type in the name of the video, this time with the.mpg extension. Note that you may have to add an additional function - #VIDEOGAP to make sure the video is in sync with the mp3.
Don't have a video? Then add the #BACKGROUND function and add the name of a picture (with the .jpg extension) instead.
Once you've done all of this, test the song one more time, and have a sing off. 8. You can now upload the text file to a website if you wish, share your work around. If you have a song that you've worked on we'd happily post it here for you under your name. Send us an email at ultrastaradmin@gmail.com
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