
A song editor for "Frets On Fire"
Table of Contents
EOF contains many useful functions which can be accessed through various menus. Many functions also have a keyboard shortcut to expedite the song editing process. Let's get to it.
[ File ] [ Edit ] [ Song ] [ Note ] [ Beat ] [ Help ]
[ New ] [ Load ] [ Save ] [ Save As ] [ Load OGG ] [ MIDI Import ] [ Feedback Import ] [ Lyric Import ] [ Settings ] [ Preferences ] [ Display ] [ Controllers ] [ Song Folder ] [ Link To FOF ] [ Exit ]
Create a new EOF project. You will select an OGG or MP3, choose a destination for the new project, and enter some information about the song. If the selected audio file contains tag information, the song artist, title and year will be automatically entered into the song's properties from the audio file's ID3v1/ID3v2 tag or OGG Vorbis tag comments if available. The album information will be similarly read into an INI setting if it is available. When choosing a destination for your project you have three options. "Use Existing Folder" requires you to point to an existing folder where EOF will create your project files. "Use OGG Folder" will place the project files in the folder with the OGG or MP3 file you selected. "Create New Folder" will create the folder you specify in EOF's own song folder (see File->Song Folder).
Wherever you choose to store the project, the OGG file you chose will be copied to "guitar.ogg" (required by "Frets On Fire"). If you choose an MP3 file, and you have LAME and Vorbis Tools installed (included in Windows version of EOF), EOF will convert it to "guitar.ogg" using the average bitrate you specify in the "OGG Settings" dialog, automatically re-sampling the audio to 44khz if necessary. A copy of the MP3 file will also be saved as "original.mp3" in the project folder, for use with the Leading Silence feature. If you do not have LAME and Vorbis Tools installed, you will not be able to use the built-in MP3 conversion.
Load an existing EOF project. EOF will look for a "guitar.ogg" file in the same folder as the EOF project file you loaded. If it cannot find one you will be asked to locate an OGG (or MP3, which will be converted to OGG format) file for EOF to load.
Save the current EOF project. When saving a project EOF automatically generates all the files needed for the song to work in "Frets On Fire."
Save the current EOF project to a new location. Subsequent "Save" requests will write the song files to the new location. If no "guitar.ogg" exists in the destination folder, EOF will create one using the currently loaded OGG file.
Load a new OGG file into the current project. If your song has separate audio for the guitar or other instrument you are fretting you can use this function to switch out the audio.
EOF keeps separate "Delay" settings for each differently named OGG file you load. This allows you to use tracks of differing length without having to adjust the delay and notes each time you swap OGG files. This is useful if you have two different versions of the same song, perhaps a karaoke version without vocals and a normal version. Setting up the "Delay" for each file will automatically move the beats and notes to the correct place each time you use "Load OGG" to swap them out.
Create a new EOF project from an existing MIDI file. This function is useful if you want to edit a song which was not created in EOF or if you want to alter a chart where the EOF file is not available. Tracks are imported from the MIDI file and song properties are loaded from "song.ini" if it exists. A Rock Band Audition (RBA) file contains is a chart that was authored for Rock Band Network (RBN). EOF provides the ability to open the MIDI data from this type of file the same way as a normal Rock Band MIDI. EOF will look for a "guitar.ogg" file in the same folder as the MIDI file you loaded. If it cannot find one you will be asked to locate an OGG (or MP3, which will be converted to OGG format) file for EOF to load.
Create a new EOF project from an existing Feedback chart file. This type of file (typically has a ".chart" file extension) is a chart format generally created using the Feedback chart editor and was originally intended for creating custom charts for Guitar Hero. Various conversion utilities have been created previously allowing people to convert these charts into a MIDI file usable in Frets on Fire. EOF allows Feedback charts to be imported. It will look in the chart's folder to try to load whichever audio file is specified by the chart (MP3 and OGG are supported). If that file is not present, it will try to open guitar.ogg. If that file is not present, if the chart's folder only has one OGG file in it, it will try to open that file. If there is no OGG file in the folder, or if there are multiple OGG files to choose from, EOF will have you browse for the audio file to use.
Imports lyrics from an existing file into the current EOF project. See the Lyric import section of the vocal tutorial for details.
Change the program settings. See Configuring EOF for details
Change the user preferences. See Configuring EOF for details
Change the size of the EOF window.
Configure guitar and drum controllers. These can be used in tandem with the "Guitar Tap" and "Guitar Strum" edit modes.
Tell EOF the base folder where to save new projects. New projects created with the "Create New Folder" option will be created in a folder inside of the base folder. For example, if you select "C:\games\fof\wipsongs" for the base folder and create a new project with "Create New Folder" and "my new song" as the new folder name, the project will be stored in "c:\games\fof\wipsongs\my new song\"
Allows you to link EOF to "Frets On Fire" if you are using a mod which allows starting a song from the command line (RF or FoFiX for example). You will first locate "FretsOnFire.exe" and then select the location of the song library (the base song folder). If done correctly you will be able to launch FOF with the current song for testing (see Song->Test In FOF).
Close EOF. If you have unsaved changes you will be prompted to save.
[ Undo ] [ Redo ] [ Copy ] [ Paste ] [ Old Paste ] [ Grid Snap ] [ Zoom ] [ Preview Speed ] [ Playback Rate ] [ Preview HOPO ] [ Metronome ] [ Claps ] [ Clap Notes ] [ Vocal Tones ] [ Bookmark ] [ Selection ]
Undo the previous operation. You can undo up to 8 operations.
Redo the previously undone operation.
Copy the currently selected notes to the clipboard (see Editing Songs). The clipboard is shared between all instances of EOF. If you copy notes in one instance, you can paste them into another instance. If you copy notes in both instances, only the most recently copied notes will be in the clipboard. Copied notes' HOPO, "crazy" and double bass statuses are kept on the clipboard and are applied to the pasted notes accordingly.
Paste notes from the clipboard. Note positions and lengths are pasted relative to the beat markers meaning pasted notes will stretch and shrink depending on the BPM of the beats being pasted into. Pasted notes will begin at the beat in which the position line lies and continue on through subsequent beats. This allows pasted notes to retain their original grid snap positions even when you are pasting into beats that have different tempos than the copied notes.
The same as "Paste" except the note positions and lengths are not scaled to fit into the beats. The notes will remain exactly as they were copied and the first note will be pasted exactly on the position line.
Paste notes from other locations. "Paste From->Supaeasy/Easy/Medium/Amazing" copies all notes from the desired difficulty to the currently selected difficulty (useful for downgrading songs to lower difficulties). "Paste From->Catalog" pastes notes from the currently selected catalog entry.
Change the current grid snap setting. Grid snap forces note placement to the specified setting. If you have created a tempo map for your song, turning grid snap to an appropriate setting will save you lots of time when placing notes.
A grid snap setting of 1/4 means that each grid snap position occurs at 1/4 of a measure intervals. With this setting you can fit up to four separate notes into one measure. A grid snap setting of 1/8 means that each grid snap position occurs at 1/8 of a measure intervals and so on and so forth. Using a custom grid snap level, you can define the number of intervals per beat or per measure. Keep in mind that if you supply a custom "per measure" grid snap, you must also place time signatures where appropriate, in order to define the number of beats per measure. Otherwise, one beat per measure will be assumed. Currently, a limit of 64 intervals is in place, because using higher values will rarely be practical.
Change the zoom level of the fretboard editing area. For faster songs, zooming in can help with note placement.
Change the speed of the fretboard in the 3D Preview.
Change the speed of the audio playback. For fast solo sections it can be useful to play the song back at a slower speed to make it easier to hear the notes in the song. You can play the song back at 50% speed without changing the setting by holding the Ctrl key while pressing the play button. You can play the song back at 100% speed without changing the setting by holding the D key while beginning playback. You can also specify a custom playback by specifying the percentage of full speed it should play back, such as 30 or 200.
Select the algorithm used to determine which notes display as HO/PO notes in EOF's 3D preview panel. RF is equivalent to "Guitar Hero 2." If you are using RF-Mod or FoFiX you should use this setting. FOF is for standard "Frets On Fire." Manual will only show notes within forced HO/PO On phrases as HO/PO notes, making it more useful for authoring in Rock Band or other rhythm games that may support this notation, as well as to future-proof your chart should FoFiX eventually support forced HO/PO On/Off phrases. An important note: HO/PO notes are determined by an algorithm in all current versions of FOF, FoFiX and all current mods, so what EOF shows is not necessarily what the user will see in-game in regard to HO/PO notes. What the players receive for HO/PO notes depends on their settings and what version of the game they are using. In order for a note to be a HO/PO note in FoF, it normally has to be within 1/12th measure or less of the previous note. Turning on the "Eighth Note HO/PO" setting in "Song Properties" will change the HO/PO note threshold to 1/8th instead, for mods that support the "Eighth Note HO/PO" song.ini file setting.
Toggle the metronome. When the metronome is on, a tick will sound at every beat marker during audio playback. This feature is useful when you are creating a tempo map for your song. See Creating a Tempo Map for a demonstration of how to use this feature.
Toggle note claps. When note claps are on, a clap will sound at every note during audio playback. This feature is useful to ensure your notes are synchronized with the audio in the song. If your notes are placed correctly, the clap should sound at the same time each note is audible.
Select a specific note color you want to trigger claps.
Enables or disables the sounding of piano tones in PART VOCALS. See the Testing and editing lyric pitches section of the vocal tutorial for details.
Place a bookmark at the current location of the position line. You can seek directly to your bookmarks (see Song->Seek) at any time. If you are going to be seeking to a specific part of a song multiple times, having a bookmark there can save lots of time.
Perform various select operations. "Select All" selects all the notes in the current difficulty. "Select Like" selects notes which match any of the currently selected notes. "Select Rest" selects all notes from the currently selected note to the end of the song. "Deselect All" deselects all notes. "Select Previous" selects all notes from the beginning of the song to the currently selected note.
[ Seek ] [ Track ] [ Catalog ] [ File Info ] [ INI Settings ] [ Properties ] [ Leading Silence ] [ Audio cues ] [ Waveform graph ] [ Test In FOF ]
Perform various seek operations. Seeking moves the position line to the desired location.
Select a track for editing. PART GUITAR is the default track. Tracks containing notes will have an asterisk (*) displayed next to them. All tracks are edited the same way. PART DRUM will have a slightly different display in the 3D Preview.
Perform various catalog related operations. The catalog contains portions of your song which you can play back or paste into other parts of the song (see "Edit->Paste From"). "Show" toggles the catalog display. "Add" adds the currently selected notes to the catalog. "Delete" deletes the current catalog entry. "Previous" selects the previous catalog entry. "Next" selects the next catalog entry. See the Catalog section of Editing Songs for more details.
Display various information about the current project.
Define additional INI settings which are not available in Song Properties.
Change the song properties for the current project.
"Song Title" is the name of the song.
"Artist" is the artist the song is attributed to.
"Frettist" refers to the person who created the "Frets On Fire" note charts.
"Delay" is the delay or MIDI offset value which tells "Frets On Fire" how much time to delay the notes. Changing the "Delay" setting alters the position of all the beat lines in the current project and optionally adjusts the note positions as well.
"Year" refers to the year the song was released.
"Lyrics" refers to the optional song.ini parameter that indicates to FoFiX that it should display Script style lyrics during chart playback using the file script.txt. If this checkbox is checked, and your chart has lyrics defined, EOF will create the script.txt lyric file automatically during a save operation and enable it in the chart's song.ini file. This will provide subtitle style lyrics for various versions of Frets on Fire, even those that did not support scrolling lyrics.
"8th Note HO/PO" refers to the optional song.ini parameter that overrides FoF's default Hammer On/Pull Off settings, specifying that a single note (probably not chords, but this may vary between versions of FoF) in any guitar track that is 1/8 of one measure apart or closer to the previous note will be a HOPO note and not require a strum. This song.ini parameter should work in RF-Mod based versions of FoF, such as RF-Mod, Alarian and FoFiX.
"Loading Text" is the text that appears on the loading screen while your song is loading in "Frets On Fire" (currently only supported in FoFiX).
EOF stores all these settings in the ".eof" project file and exports them to "song.ini" when saving for compatibility with "Frets On Fire."
Allows you to insert silent audio at the beginning of the chart audio, for purposes of allowing enough time before the first beat marker or simply give the chart a polished look by easily adding a controlled amount of leading silence before the first beat marker without having to alter the audio in another program such as Audacity. Unless necessary for syncing purposes, it's best to sync the first beat marker for your chart (see the EOF Tutorial for details) before using this feature. When you access the Leading Silence feature, you have the option of adding a specified number of milliseconds' or beat's (based on the first beat's tempo) worth of silence (only positive, whole numbers) to beginning of the chart via two different options: The first option (Add) simply adds the specified amount of silence whereas the second option (Pad) will take the first beat marker's position (MIDI delay) into account to adjust the chart so that the amount of silence added moves the first beat marker to the specified position from the start of the audio. The appropriate amount of silent audio is created and the currently loaded OGG file is joined to it. For example: If you have synced a chart to have a MIDI delay of 225, adding 100ms of silence will result in the chart having a MIDI delay of 335 afterward. If you pad to 500ms of silence instead, it will result in the chart having a MIDI delay of 500ms afterward.
EOF takes precautions to preserve the original audio, making this function safe to use. When this feature is used to add silence to the beginning of a chart, the original audio for the currently loaded OGG file (see Load OGG for details) is saved with a ".backup" file extension, allowing you to restore the original audio file manually if necessary. The undo and redo features are also compatible with this function, so you can simply undo and redo the adding of leading silence as desired. If you have already made enough changes so that there are not enough undo states to revert the addition of leading silence, you can open the leading silence feature again and add 0 ms of silence, and the original audio will be restored. That will also work for restoring the original audio file even if EOF crashed before saving changes. After each change to the audio, including the addition of, undoing of or redoing of leading silence, the waveform graph will be recreated if it has been generated. In the Leading Silence dialog menu, you have the option of whether or not to adjust the position of the note and beat markers. You should allow them to be adjusted if you are using this feature on a chart that is already synced and has notes. There are also two methods presented for processing the audio:
Stream Copy: This method uses a third party utility called "oggCat" to append the original audio to the silent audio by streaming the two audio files together, preventing the audio quality loss that would occur by having to re-encode the audio. This means that to use the feature, you will need to have oggCat (part of the OGG Video Tools) on your system. OggCat comes with the Windows release of EOF, but Mac and Linux users will need to build the OGG Video Tools to use the feature. There are some limitations to oggCat, so it is possible that afterward the audio may sound corrupted. If that happens, just undo the operation and retry adding leading silence with the "Re-encode" option detailed below. In most cases, oggCat will work as desired and will finish more quickly without any quality loss since re-encoding is avoided. You may notice that a slightly different amount of silence than you specified may be the result, due to technical limitations of how OGG files work. This should not prevent the chart from remaining synced though, as EOF appropriately adjusts the first beat marker.
Re-encode: This method decodes the currently loaded OGG file and re-encodes it with the leading silence. This method takes longer, but would be as accurate as possible with no slight difference in leading audio that could occur with using oggCat. This is also the only alternative if the OGG file you are using is incompatible with oggCat in that it resulted in corrupted audio. If you originally selected to use an MP3 file when you created your chart (in EOF 1.7 or later, see File>New), the MP3 file is copied to the chart's project folder and re-used with this re-encode operation. This means that if you created the chart with an MP3, using the re-encode leading silence feature will not lower the audio quality of your chart, since the same MP3 file is decoded and encoded to OGG just the same as when the chart audio was originally created. If you created your chart in an older version of EOF or by providing an OGG file in the New Chart wizard, the loaded OGG file is decoded and re-encoded, which will result in some quality loss. If you did create your chart with an MP3 file in a version of EOF before 1.7, and still have the original MP3 file, you can copy it to your chart's project folder and rename it to "original.mp3" (do note that Linux is case sensitive, and Mac may be, so use lowercase letters in the name).
If you have added leading silence and haven't saved, if you discard changes when exiting EOF, loading another chart or importing a MIDI or Feedback chart, EOF will restore the OGG files that were in use during the last save operation. This will prevent the chart from being left synced to the wrong OGG file.
Opens a dialog window allowing you to change the volume for the chart audio and any of EOF's audio cues: Clap, metronome, vocal tone and vocal percussion. This will affect the volume of the cue when it is sounded during playback or when the chart is stopped (such as when clicking on a lyric or vocal percussion note). This dialog window also allows you to select the sound that will be used for a vocal percussion note. See Percussion sections in the vocal tutorial for details.
Provides the ability to show, hide and configure a waveform graph for the currently active OGG file. To generate the graph, use the "Show" item in this menu or simply press the F5 key when the chart is not playing. After a few seconds, the graph will be displayed as per the settings in the "Configure" dialog menu. For each horizontal slice (one pixel wide) of the graph, the minimum amplitude in that portion of the audio is rendered in dark green, the peak (maximum) amplitude is rendered in light green and the root mean square (think of this as the average) amplitude is rendered in red. In the "Configure" menu item, you can specify whether the left audio channel, the right audio channel or both audio channels will be graphed. You can also specify whether the graph will be scaled to fit within the fretboard area or the entire editor window (the area above the scroll bar and the below the playback control buttons). When both the left and right channels are being graphed, the left channel is drawn on top of the right channel. Once the waveform graph has been initially generated, you can show/hide it with the F5 key. If you load another OGG file (see File->Load OGG), the waveform graph will not be recreated until it is hidden and shown again. This will, for example, allow you to generate a graph for a drum track and then load another audio file. If you load or import a chart, any existing waveform graph will be discarded and will need to be created again by showing the graph.
Launch FOF with the current song, track, and difficulty for testing. This feature only works if you are using an RF-based mod (ie. Alarian Mod or FoFiX) and have correctly linked EOF to it (see File->Link to FOF). As of this release, it has been confirmed through testing and documentation that "Test in FoF" should work for Frets on Fire releases from MFH Alarian Mod 2.900 through FoFiX 3.100.
[ Toggle ] [ Transpose Up ] [ Transpose Down ] [ Resnap ] [ Edit Lyric ] [ Split Lyric ] [ Toggle Crazy ] [ Solos ] [ Star Power ] [ Lyric Lines ] [ HOPO ] [ Delete ] [ Display semitones as flat ] [ Freestyle ] [ Toggle Expert+ bass drum ] [ Pro drum mode notation ]
Toggle the desired color in all selected notes.
Transpose (move) all selected notes up one color. If any of the selected notes are are purple the transpose will be prevented.
Transpose (move) all selected notes down one color. If any of the selected notes are are green the transpose will be prevented.
Resnap all selected notes to the closest grid snap positions according to the current grid snap setting (see "Edit->Grid Snap"). If two notes snap to the same position you will be notified so that you can undo if you want. It is best to use either 1/32 or 1/48 grid snap when resnapping.
Let's say you imported a song and some of the notes appear to be slightly off of the beat markers. Setting the grid snap to 1/32, selecting all the notes, and doing a "Resnap" can set the notes in their proper place without you having to manually move each note.
Allows you to edit the text of the currently selected lyric. See the Manipulating lyrics section of the vocal tutorial for details.
Allows you to split one lyric into multiple lyrics by inserting spaces in the lyric text. See the Intermediate vocal charting topics section of the vocal tutorial for details.
Allow the selected notes to overlap other notes, overriding EOF's default behavior of truncating note tails to prevent this. Use this feature to create "extended sustain" notes, where the notes in a sustained chord are played separately but are all held for the duration of the chord.
Perform various operations related to solo sections. "Mark" marks the currently selected notes as a solo section. "Remove" removes all solos in which selected notes lie. To delete one solo section simply select at least one note within that solo and select "Note->Solos->Remove." "Erase All" erases all solo sections from the song. "Re-Mark" will modify an existing solo section. If you mark a solo and later need to modify it, simply select the notes that belong in the solo and select "Note->Solos->Re-Mark." "Re-Mark" is only available when at least on of the selected notes lies within the solo section.
Solo sections are not supported by all mods. For FoFiX (the only mod with solo support as of this writing) solo sections will only work correctly if you define at least two Star Power sections (see "Note->Star Power") as well. This is due to the way FoFiX detects solo sections. Guitar Hero and Rock Band use different conventions to define Star Power (Overdrive in RB) and Guitar Hero's SP markers happen to use the same MIDI note as Rock Band's solos. If you don't define Star Power, FoFiX will detect your solos as Star Power except under certain circumstances.
If you want your solo sections to be compatible with older mods (such as MFH) you can use the older Text Events method of marking solos documented here.
It's important to note that solos are not automatically treated as sections by FoFiX so you will need to add Text Events (see the Events section of Editing Songs) in the appropriate places if you want to have your solos listed in Practice mode.
Perform various operations related to Star Power sections. "Mark" marks the currently selected notes as a Star Power section. "Remove" removes all Star Power sections in which selected notes lie. To delete one Star Power section simply select at least one note within that section and select "Note->Star Power->Remove." "Erase All" erases all Star Power sections from the song. "Re-Mark" will modify an existing Star Power section. If you mark a Star Power section and later need to modify it, simply select the notes that belong in the section and select "Note->Star Power->Re-Mark." "Re-Mark" is only available when at least on of the selected notes lies within the Star Power section.
Star Power sections are not supported by all mods. Currently (at the time of this writing) the only mod that allows user-defined Star Power sections is the FoFiX betas.
Allows you to mark/unmark/remark the selected lyrics as being in a lyric phrase. See the Intermediate vocal charting topics section of the vocal tutorial for details.
Set the HOPO status of selected notes. Currently, FoFiX only makes a note a HOPO (Hammer On/Pull Off, meaning that a note does not have to be strummed) if it is close enough to the previous note. What amounts to "close enough" depends on the tempo, the presence of the eighthnote_hopo option in the chart's song.ini file and the user's in-game HOPO settings. Eventually, FoFiX may be updated to support notation where a note is manually defined as having HOPO forced on or off, as Rock Band charts have this feature. You can force HOPO status to prepare your chart to have this functionality for future versions of FoFiX, or for other rhythm games that may support this already. A note that has HOPO forced on will be drawn smaller than normal in the piano roll area, and a note with HOPO forced off will be drawn larger than normal. You can also use the H key to cycle the HOPO status for the currently selected notes (between HOPO On, HOPO Off and Auto).
Note: It has been said that Guitar Hero's open strum (for bass guitar track) is charted as a forced HOPO On for a fret 1 note. While FoFiX may not currently support open strums, other games such as "Phase Shift" may already support it.
Delete all selected notes.
Displays note names with flat notation instead of sharp notation. See the Advanced topics section of the vocal tutorial for details.
Enables/disables/toggles the freestyle status of selected lyrics. See the Intermediate vocal charting topics section of the vocal tutorial for details.
Enables or disables the selected bass drum notes (green, fret 1) from being associated with the Expert+ drum difficulty. This difficulty is similar in theory to Expert, but it includes faster use of the bass drum pedal in what people usually refer to as "double bass". Besides the specially marked "double bass" notes, all other notes in the Expert+ difficulty will be the same as those in the Expert difficulty. Only bass drum notes in the Expert difficulty can be marked this way, which will cause the affected notes to show with a red center in the piano roll and entirely red in the 3D preview. When the chart is saved and the MIDI file is created, affected notes will be written to exist in the Expert+ difficulty instead of Expert (written as MIDI note 95). Phase Shift version 0.71 implemented this notation, allowing people to create a chart so that the game will offer the "Expert+" drum difficulty if there are any gems using note 95. Since there are no immediate plans for FoFiX to support this feature, if the chart being saved has any bass drum notes marked for Expert+, EOF will automatically create an "expert+.mid" file in addition to "notes.mid" during save. This "expert+.mid" file will contain only the Expert+ difficulty, which is composed of all notes from the Expert difficulty and the Expert+ bass drum notes. Until FoFiX implements MIDI note 95 for Expert+ bass drum, people will be able to rename the "expert+.mid" file to "notes.mid" or "notes-unedited.mid" in order to play the Expert+ drum difficulty in FoFiX.
Allows yellow, blue or green notes to be marked/unmarked as cymbal notes. This notation is in the style of Rock Band 1's and 2's unused pro drum notation and Rock Band 3's Pro Drum mode, differentiating which notes require hitting a drum instead of the cymbal of the same color. Rock Band 3's drum kit has 4 pads (red, yellow, blue and green), a bass drum pedal and 3 cymbals (yellow, blue and green). EOF displays green drum notes as being purple, in order to different them from bass drum, which is drawn in the color green in EOF.
A pro drum phrase applies to all drum notes in the track contained between the start and end of the phrase, regardless of which difficulty the drum notes are in, similar to overdrive and solo sections. At the moment, for practicality reasons, EOF is not implementing this notation in the editor as phrases. However, when notes are added or moved to a location where a cymbal note exists (in any drum difficulty), those notes are marked as cymbals where appropriate. You will be able to tell which notes are marked as cymbals as they will be drawn as triangles in the piano roll editor and as cones in the 3D preview window. During save, the MIDI is created to have the appropriate pro drum phrase markers for the drum notes in all difficulties.
For EOF to create a MIDI having pro drum notation, at least one normal Green/Yellow/Blue drum note must be marked as a cymbal. If no drum notes are marked as cymbals, the drum notes will be saved to MIDI in the original style, with no pro drum phrases. If at least one note is marked as a cymbal, the drum notes will be saved with pro notation: Green, yellow and blue drum notes that are outside their respective pro drum phrases are treated as cymbals. They are scored as drums instead if they are in the appropriate phrases, marking them as drums instead of cymbals. Frets on Fire does not currently support pro drum charts, but it should still allow them to be played as 5 note drum charts. Phase Shift is adding support for pro drum charts, requiring the player to hit cymbals instead of drums where appropriate.
Commonly, a chart will have more involvement with cymbals than it will with tom drums. For example, the hi-hat is properly charted as a cymbal (traditionally the yellow cymbal), and in all likelihood will be used more often than any tom drum charted on that color. With this in mind, you can use the "Mark new notes as cymbals" option to allow you to chart several cymbal notes in a row without having to manually highlight and mark notes as cymbals. When this feature is activated (it will show as checked in the "Pro drum mode notation" menu), all yellow, blue or green (displayed in EOF as purple) drum notes that are toggled on or created will be automatically marked as cymbals. Drum notes in other difficulties that are at the position of the toggled/created cymbal notes are also marked as cymbals. This remains in effect until the feature is de-activated. This feature does not apply to pasted notes.
The "Mark as non cymbal" function removes cymbal notation from all selected drum notes and drum notes at equivalent positions in other difficulties. If you wanted to select a range of notes and ensure that toggling cymbal notation turned on cymbal notation for those notes, clearing cymbal notation and then toggling on would be a guaranteed way of achieving this without having to make sure none of the selected notes were already marked as cymbals.
[ BPM Change ] [ Time Signature ] [ Add ] [ Delete ] [ Push Offset Back ] [ Push Offset Up ] [ Anchor Beat ] [ Toggle Anchor ] [ Delete Anchor ] [ Reset BPM ] [ Calculate BPM ] [ All Events ] [ Events ] [ Clear Events ]
Change the BPM of the currently selected beat. If "This Beat Only" is selected, only the current beat will be set to the new BPM. Further beats will remain at the old BPM setting. "Adjust Notes" causes any notes within beats affected by the BPM change to be scaled to fit (the same as the ""Note Auto-Adjust" option when moving beat markers with the mouse).
Set the time signature starting from the currently selected beat. You may use any of the preset time signatures or provide a custom time signature. If you provide a custom signature, the denominator (beat unit) must be a power of two (ie. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 or 256). The use of a denominator that is not a power of two is not considered a standard practice in music theory so it is disallowed. EOF will currently allow you to otherwise specify any number between 1 and 256 for the numerator and denominator. If the "Import/Export MIDI TS" option has been enabled in Preferences (see Preferences in the Configuring EOF section for details), time signatures are exported to the MIDI that is created during save and are loaded during MIDI import. Setting up a time signature can make it easier to see where you are in the song as each measure begins with a brighter beat line. Each measure will also have its beat marker labeled with the measure's number in yellow text.
Add a beat to the song and adjust the BPM of the previous anchor to make all the beats fit evenly between the previous anchor and the next. Useful if you have two anchors and you need to add some extra beats in between so there are enough beats to match the music. This function is only available when there is at least one anchor after the selected beat.
Delete a beat and adjust the BPM of the previous anchor to make all beats fit evenly between the previous anchor and the next. Useful if you have two anchors and more beats in between them than are actually in the music. Just delete the extra beats and EOF will automatically calculate the correct BPM to make the beat markers fit between the anchors.
Move the first beat marker back one beat length based on the BPM of the first beat marker. Useful if the first audible beat occurs after the first note of the song. You can create the tempo map starting where the first beat is audible and after the tempo map is done "Push Offset Back" until the first beat marker occurs before the first note.
Delete the first beat marker and make the second beat marker the first (and so forth). Useful if you want to get rid of the first beats of a song (for instance if there is a lot of silence) after you have already synced it.
Anchor the currently selected beat to a specific location. Functions the same as dragging the beat marker to that location.
Toggle the currently selected beat between being an anchor and not being an anchor. It can be useful to set anchors every measure or two while creating a tempo map even if the beat marker is in the right location as adjusting a beat marker later in the song will adjust all beats between that beat marker and the previous anchor.
Delete the currently selected anchor and adjust all beats from the previous anchor to the next so that they fit evenly. If there is no next anchor, the BPM from the previous anchor will be applied to the rest of the song.
Delete all anchors and tempo changes, keeping the BPM from the first beat marker throughout the entire song.
Calculates the BPM based on the selected notes, assuming that the selected notes occur on sequential beats, and applies it to the selected beat marker.
Display all events for the entire song. Selecting "Find" in the "All Events" dialog will seek to the beat marker on which the selected event is defined and select that beat. See the Events section of Editing Songs for event details.
Display events associated with the selected beat marker for viewing or modification.
Erase all events from the current project.
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Display the Tutorial. If you are new to EOF, look here for a guide to making songs.
Display the Vocals Tutorial. Look here for a primer for creating vocal charts to use with FoFiX or even just scrolling or subtitle lyrics that are compatible with older versions of FoF.
Display the keyboard and mouse controls used for editing songs. Almost all EOF functions can be activated using the GUI interface but using the keys can speed up the editing process considerably.
Display the current EOF version information.