Before you start

What do you need before starting the tutorial?

Did you ever want to add a song to Ultrastar and realised that nobody has mapped it yet?

Did you request the song multiple times and nothing happened?

Well, it's time to take the matters in your own hands. Adapting a song for Ultrastar may seem complicated at the beginning but it will become easy with practice. You can do it!

This tutorial will help you go through all of the basics of the process of creating a song for Ultrastar with the help of Karedi editor.

To be able to create a song you first need to know some basic information which will be introduced in this section. Make sure to understand it before moving to the actual lessons.

Why is mapping even necessary?

If you ever tried to add some new song to Ultrastar, you probably noticed that it is not as simple as just adding the audio file. Why?

Ultrastar shows you how you should sing every line of the song's lyrics and grades your singing. To be able to do that it needs to know at least:

• the lyrics of the song,

• how the lyrics are divided into lines (phrases),

• when should each syllable of the lyrics be sung,

• what pitch should it be sung in.

Maybe someday AI will be able to answer all of these questions automatically in a reliable way based only on the audio file, but for now, somebody has to prepare all of this data in a format that Ultrastar understands.

Let's do it!

Disclaimer

Please make sure to check the local law before starting to work on some other song.

In this tutorial we will be working on a song released under Creative Commons licence. It is very rare for songs to be released with such an open license so unless you are working on your own song, be careful in order not to violate copyright laws.

Make sure to always use legally obtained audio file. Even if adapting any song for Ultrastar for your own purposes may be legal in your country, it does not mean that you can share it with anyone. Even if the law allows you to share it with your friends/family under fair use guarantees, it does not mean that you can upload it to the internet for anyone to access without consequences.

Check your country's law to know what you can and can't do.