View source for Plastic Guitar Authoring

As an alternative to entering all of your guitar/bass midi notes by hand, you can also plug in your plastic Rock Band guitar into your PC, and create a 1st pass on the guitar/bass midi by playing the part on your instrument. Here's how it works (thanks to NOLOGO for defining the process).

This will work for drums as well, all the instruments appear as a Microsoft Game Controller in Windows. If you have wireless instruments, you can purchase a Wireless USB adaptor.

== Setting up your Plastic Guitar and PC for Authoring ==
* 1. Plug in the dongle (that USB thing) into your computer's USB slot.
* 2. Windows should automatically find the drivers.
* 3. Go into Reaper and go to Options --> Preferences (or just press Ctrl+P) and under Audio go to MIDI Devices.
* 4. Select Add joystick MIDI and choose the Device (Harmonix Guitar/Drums).
* 5. Select rockband_guitar.txt or rockband_drums.txt.
* 6. Select which console the guitar or drums is for and exit Preferences (making sure you hit "apply" and/or "okay").

== Recording the Midi track ==
* 1. Have a blank audio track armed to record (by pressing the little "ar" on the left of the track info bar).
* 2. This should bring up something in the track info bar that says "MIDI:XXXXXX". Select that and go to MIDI Input --> Map input to channel --> and select "All Channels". This will connect the RB controller to the track.
* 3. Isolate the track you are mapping by pressing the "s" button on the right of the track info bar
* 4. Press the Record button to record and play the controller how you would normally in game (meaning strum with the buttons instead of just pressing the buttons).
* 5. Press the record button again to stop recording. You can now check out and edit your MIDI file.

== Helpful Tips ==
* 1. Remember to isolate the track you are working on! (the "s" button).
* 2. If you can't hit the notes in the right order pitch-wise, just try to hit when the notes are played, so you can just click and drag the gems to the proper pitches when you are doing the final editing.
* 3. You don't need exact pitches, just try to make sure it is playable and fun!
* 4. This doesn't make the transcription process take only five minutes, you still have to make sure everything is exactly lined up with the music and works just fine.
* 5. Remember to strum along and not just press the five note buttons!