Hello everyone this is my second tutorial and this time i will tell you how you can keysound your beatmaps!
What is keysounding? Keysounding means to assign a sound sample to every note in the song to give it the experience that you are playing the song itself.
There are different ways:
Full Keysounded beatmap: The sound samples are taken out directly out of the song and are only played by the notes.
Additive Keysounded beatmap: The song plays as a complete thing and the sound samples are are added ontop of that.
The first one is the more difficult one to do but additive keysounding works good aswell since it will make those notes sound louder and more standing out of the rest, so you still get a good effect on it.
The easiest way to make a beatmap like this is work with an allready existing bms file. The songs are allready cut up into samples and those can be used directly and you can jump straight into mapping. For songs that are not done allready like this you will need to create the sound samples yourself, i will show you how to do that now.
There are a couple tools to help you and speed up the process of this but i will show the manual progress now for a better understanding, also doing manually will give the best results, just takes longer.
Step 1: Preparation Stage:
Since we are going to work with the audio now you will need some sort of sequence editing program. There are many different ones but for this tutorial i am using PreSonus Studio One 2 and the VST Hypersonic 2. You can probably do the same with a different one of your choice.
The next thing is to find a MIDI file for the song you would like to work with or any other form that shows you the pitch, piano sheet for example. Or maybe even use your own songs that you previously created.
After that, listen throughout the song and pick what kind of instruments you want to keysound and which you dont. To save time and file size it is important to plan ahead and only export sounds that you actually going to use in the actual beatmap. The sounds which you are not going to use will later be exported to an mp3 track itself while the sounds you use will be exported as sound samples.
Step 2: Dissecting the audio track and breaking it down into notes:
After you loaded up your project go ahead and remove all the tracks you dont plan on using for now. It will look something like this http://puu.sh/3kMlZ.png
The top part are your audio tracks and the bottom part is where you can edit the track's notes (you open it by double clicking the track).
Next thing is to apply an instrument to your audio track. Since it is a midi it won't sound very good on its own. Do that by using the menu on the right side, click on instrument an drag the VST of your choice ontop of the audio track. Chose the fitting instrument and you are done. It will playback the same track in the instrument you chose instead of the plain default midi.
Click on the note that you want to want to create a sample for and press copy (CTRL+C). http://puu.sh/3kMMA.png
Click on an empty space so no track is selected and press paste (CTRL+V). The single note is now exported to its own track.
Click it and drag it down to it's own track. http://puu.sh/3kMTl.png Add the same instrument to this track, otherwise the note will have no sound.
Because of the reverb you will need to extend the track your note is in now a bit. Otherwise it will sound cut off later on. Depending on the notes lenght you will either need to extend it more or less but 1 measure is usually fine. http://puu.sh/3kMYh.png
That's it basicly.
Now, depending on the note range of the instrument of your choice you will have to extract quite alot of notes. A piano for example uses a wider range of notes than a drum kit so it is important to rename all of your tracks in order to avoid losing the overview of your project when there are suddenly 50 different tracks or something. It also helps to avoid of creating duplicate notes. For every note that you need you only need one sample anways.
Right click and rename track, the format that i use is pith and note length. http://puu.sh/3kN4n.png
This way i can easily see which notes i allready extracted and which ones i still need later on.
After you got a few notes select them all and right click -> event -> bounce selection (CTRL+B).
This will create a WAV file for the selected tracks, and since your track consists only of the single note it will export the single note for you this way. http://puu.sh/3kNuK.png
On the right side menu you can quickly see all of your bounces now if you select the "Pool" tab in the bottom right corner. Since we renamed our tracks before this makes a nice structured list of notes now. Use the bounce command from time to time to keep converting new tracks to WAV files and onto the list to update it. Right click on file on the list and chose "open in explorer" to open the folder where all of your files are located.
Step 3: Exporting your sound files and getting it ready for mapping:
When you are done with all the notes save and close your project and open up the complete MIDI file again.
Now it is time to export all the different audio tracks that were not used as a single mp3 file that will play as the "background" in your future beatmap.
Assign the instruments to all of the tracks and render it as an MP3 file. In studio one 2 this option is found under song -> export mixdown.
Allright, you got your MP3 file now for the song and all the notes exported. Now you need to convert all of your WAV files to OGG to save alot on file size (don't use MP3 for this one!). There are many different ways to do this. An easy way is to do it in the Foobar2000 music player. You can drag all your files into the playlist, select them all, right click -> convert and you are done. Just use any method you are familiar with for this.
Step 4: Mapping in the osu! editor:
Start your new beatmap and put all of your sample files in the song folder. Now just place your notes in the editor as usual.
To assign your samples to a note select it and click it while holding down the ALT key. A new sample window will come up http://puu.sh/3kNXn.png
You will see all your files in the song folder on the left side. Pick the sound you need for this note and and click apply and close the window.
The sample button means that you will set this sound as a story board sound on that location so dont get confused and chose that by accident. If you accidently done that you can click on the sameple list and see all the storyboarded sounds and remove them if needed.
Well that's it all in all basicly.
Here is a little map i created earlier for testing/practice purposes if you are curious: http://puu.sh/3kO7F.osz
It's just a little something i did for demonstration but imagine what other great things you could do. You could create your favorite song from the final fantasy series or maybe some classic zelda song some touhou song or even some popular pop song like gangnam style
Good luck and happy mapping!
What is keysounding? Keysounding means to assign a sound sample to every note in the song to give it the experience that you are playing the song itself.
There are different ways:
Full Keysounded beatmap: The sound samples are taken out directly out of the song and are only played by the notes.
Additive Keysounded beatmap: The song plays as a complete thing and the sound samples are are added ontop of that.
The first one is the more difficult one to do but additive keysounding works good aswell since it will make those notes sound louder and more standing out of the rest, so you still get a good effect on it.
The easiest way to make a beatmap like this is work with an allready existing bms file. The songs are allready cut up into samples and those can be used directly and you can jump straight into mapping. For songs that are not done allready like this you will need to create the sound samples yourself, i will show you how to do that now.
There are a couple tools to help you and speed up the process of this but i will show the manual progress now for a better understanding, also doing manually will give the best results, just takes longer.
Step 1: Preparation Stage:
Since we are going to work with the audio now you will need some sort of sequence editing program. There are many different ones but for this tutorial i am using PreSonus Studio One 2 and the VST Hypersonic 2. You can probably do the same with a different one of your choice.
The next thing is to find a MIDI file for the song you would like to work with or any other form that shows you the pitch, piano sheet for example. Or maybe even use your own songs that you previously created.
After that, listen throughout the song and pick what kind of instruments you want to keysound and which you dont. To save time and file size it is important to plan ahead and only export sounds that you actually going to use in the actual beatmap. The sounds which you are not going to use will later be exported to an mp3 track itself while the sounds you use will be exported as sound samples.
Step 2: Dissecting the audio track and breaking it down into notes:
After you loaded up your project go ahead and remove all the tracks you dont plan on using for now. It will look something like this http://puu.sh/3kMlZ.png
The top part are your audio tracks and the bottom part is where you can edit the track's notes (you open it by double clicking the track).
Next thing is to apply an instrument to your audio track. Since it is a midi it won't sound very good on its own. Do that by using the menu on the right side, click on instrument an drag the VST of your choice ontop of the audio track. Chose the fitting instrument and you are done. It will playback the same track in the instrument you chose instead of the plain default midi.
Click on the note that you want to want to create a sample for and press copy (CTRL+C). http://puu.sh/3kMMA.png
Click on an empty space so no track is selected and press paste (CTRL+V). The single note is now exported to its own track.
Click it and drag it down to it's own track. http://puu.sh/3kMTl.png Add the same instrument to this track, otherwise the note will have no sound.
Because of the reverb you will need to extend the track your note is in now a bit. Otherwise it will sound cut off later on. Depending on the notes lenght you will either need to extend it more or less but 1 measure is usually fine. http://puu.sh/3kMYh.png
That's it basicly.
Now, depending on the note range of the instrument of your choice you will have to extract quite alot of notes. A piano for example uses a wider range of notes than a drum kit so it is important to rename all of your tracks in order to avoid losing the overview of your project when there are suddenly 50 different tracks or something. It also helps to avoid of creating duplicate notes. For every note that you need you only need one sample anways.
Right click and rename track, the format that i use is pith and note length. http://puu.sh/3kN4n.png
This way i can easily see which notes i allready extracted and which ones i still need later on.
After you got a few notes select them all and right click -> event -> bounce selection (CTRL+B).
This will create a WAV file for the selected tracks, and since your track consists only of the single note it will export the single note for you this way. http://puu.sh/3kNuK.png
On the right side menu you can quickly see all of your bounces now if you select the "Pool" tab in the bottom right corner. Since we renamed our tracks before this makes a nice structured list of notes now. Use the bounce command from time to time to keep converting new tracks to WAV files and onto the list to update it. Right click on file on the list and chose "open in explorer" to open the folder where all of your files are located.
Step 3: Exporting your sound files and getting it ready for mapping:
When you are done with all the notes save and close your project and open up the complete MIDI file again.
Now it is time to export all the different audio tracks that were not used as a single mp3 file that will play as the "background" in your future beatmap.
Assign the instruments to all of the tracks and render it as an MP3 file. In studio one 2 this option is found under song -> export mixdown.
Allright, you got your MP3 file now for the song and all the notes exported. Now you need to convert all of your WAV files to OGG to save alot on file size (don't use MP3 for this one!). There are many different ways to do this. An easy way is to do it in the Foobar2000 music player. You can drag all your files into the playlist, select them all, right click -> convert and you are done. Just use any method you are familiar with for this.
Step 4: Mapping in the osu! editor:
Start your new beatmap and put all of your sample files in the song folder. Now just place your notes in the editor as usual.
To assign your samples to a note select it and click it while holding down the ALT key. A new sample window will come up http://puu.sh/3kNXn.png
You will see all your files in the song folder on the left side. Pick the sound you need for this note and and click apply and close the window.
The sample button means that you will set this sound as a story board sound on that location so dont get confused and chose that by accident. If you accidently done that you can click on the sameple list and see all the storyboarded sounds and remove them if needed.
Well that's it all in all basicly.
Here is a little map i created earlier for testing/practice purposes if you are curious: http://puu.sh/3kO7F.osz
It's just a little something i did for demonstration but imagine what other great things you could do. You could create your favorite song from the final fantasy series or maybe some classic zelda song some touhou song or even some popular pop song like gangnam style
Good luck and happy mapping!
