Some of you may be familiar with the game Frets On Fire; a free equivilent to the rather awesome Guitar Hero series of games. For some time now I have dreamed about having a special Frets On Fire: Severed Fifth Edition version of the game, with all Severed Fifth songs available to play. Well, this weekend I started working on exactly this.

So far the game is looking pretty cool and all branded to look like Severed Fifth. It includes the familiar artwork, the logos and other fun things. It also include a transcribed version of Edge Of Design from Denied By Reign. So far it looks like this:



I only started doing this at the weekend, but I think we are off to a great start. There is though lots to be done, and I need your help!

Transcribers Needed!

To make Frets On Fire: Severed Fifth Edition happen we need help to transcribe Severed Fifth music into songs that you can play in the game. Fortunately this is really simple, and you can do it inside Frets On Fire itself.

To do this you first need to get set up on your computer. There are two ways to do this:

This Is Fine: Download Frets On Fire

Go to the Frets On Fire website to download and install the game.

This Is Recommended If Possible: Download The ‘Frets On Fire: Severed Fifth’ code

The recommended way to do this is to download the Frets On Fire: Severed Fifth code and run that. To do this you need the bzr tool and just run:

bzr branch lp:fretsonfire-severedfifth

You can then run the game by going into the src directory and running:

python FretsOnFire.py

You are now ready to transcribe!

Transcribing The Song

If you want to transcribe a song, first pick it and then check our forum here to see if anyone has already started working on it. We don’t want to duplicate effort! If someone has picked a song and there has been response on the forum for a while, you may want to check if they are still working on it.

When you have a song to work on, to transcribe inside Frets On Fire follow these instructions:

  1. Load Frets On Fire.
  2. Go to ‘Song Editor’.
  3. If you want to work on a new song select ‘Import New Song’ and enter some basic details about the song, or if you to improve an existing Severed Fifth song select ‘Edit Existing Song’ and select the song you want to transcribe.
  4. You should now see the main transcription view. Before you start, press escape to see the main Song Editor menu and select ‘Estimate Beats Per Minute’ and follow the instructions to get the beat time right. Now press Escape to go back to the main transcription view.
  5. In the main transcription press Spacebar to toggle playback (you can use the arrow keys to move around when not playing back). Start playback and then use the normal controls to add the notes in time with the music.
  6. When you have finished, select ‘Save Song’, and quit.

Now look inside the folder where you installed Frets On Fire and look in the data/ folder, then inside the songs/ folder. In there will be a folder name with the same name as the song you transcribed. Zip up that folder and put it online somewhere (there are lots of free hosting services available). Now email jono AT severedfifth DOT com with the link and also post to the forums about your work.

Thanks for helping!