Guitar Hero Custom Songs

This guide will teach you how to put premade custom guitar hero songs on your guitar hero 2 game for ps2. For a guide on how to actually make these custom songs yourself, look in the guides section at www.theguitarheroes.com. They also have hundreds of pre-made guitar hero songs ready for download.

All of the files needed in this guide can be found here
What you need:
1. A copy of Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 2, or Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s
2. Some way to play burned discs on a Playstation 2 (either a modded Playstation 2 or Swap Magic)
3. A DVD burner
4. CD/DVDGen
5. A program for creating ISOs (Apache2 or Apache3, preferrably Apache3)
6. A DVD burning sofware program (I recommend Alcohol 120%, DVD Decrypter, or ImgBurn. These are all relatively easy to use, but I will demonstrate how to use DVD Decrypter).
7. Blank DVD-R discs (NOT DVD-RW). Preferrably Sony DVD-Rs, because other DVD-Rs tend to not work effectively. They must be high-quality DVD-Rs, like Sonys. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.
8. Guitar Hero Explorer, and to use it you will need .NET 2.0 Framework
9. If you are using Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s, you will need Ark Expander version 1.01 and Anvil Studio.

Now, download a copy of the .chart or .mid file of the custom song or songs you wish to play. (As I said earlier, you can find hundreds of these at theguitarheroes.com in the downloads section.) Also, you need to have an MP3 copy of that song.

Next, put your copy of your Guitar Hero game in your disc drive and copy all of the files on the disc to somewhere on your computer.

IF you are using Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s, do the following (if not, skip this paragraph):
In the last step, you put all of the files from the game somewhere on your computer. Now put them all in one folder. I'll call this folder Rock the 80s. So, in the folder "Rock the 80s", or whatever you called it, you should have a folder named GEN, a folder named IOP, a folder named VIDEOS, a file named SLUS_215.86, and a file named SYSTEM.CNF. Now add a new folder in this screen and name it "Expanded ARK". Now open Ark Expander version 1.01. In the ARK FOLDER section, click BROWSE and select the GEN folder in the folder you created (the one that I called Rock the 80s). In the expanded folder section, click BROWSE and select the "Expanded ARK" folder we created. Now click the EXPAND ARK button. Next, open Anvil Studio. Go to FILE, OPEN SONG. Go to EXPANDED ARK, SONGS, SHAKIN, and select SHAKIN.MID. Now in the middle left side of the screen you will see seven tracks (PART GUITAR, PART BASS, etc.). Click the one that says TRIGGERS. Now go to VIEW, EVENT LIST. Lots of data should appear on the screen. Double-click on the third event on the list "3, Min:Sec:Frames=0:00:00, InstrumentName: USB Keystation 61es". A window should pop up. In that window, click DELETE EVENT. Now go to FILE, SAVE SONG and save shakin.mid. Close Anvil Studio. Now go back to ARK Expander. In the ARK FOLDER section, click BROWSE and select the GEN folder again. In the EXPANDED FOLDER section, click BROWSE and select "Expanded ARK" again. Click the CREATE ARK button. The program will ask if you want to overwrite the old ARCHIVE. Click yes. Now delete the folder named "Expanded ARK" and continue on with the guide.

Next, install Guitar Hero Explorer and run it. In Guitar Hero Explorer, go to FILE, ARCHIVE, and choose ADD. When that screen comes up, go to the files from the Guitar Hero disc that you copied onto your computer and go to the folder GEN and pick the file MAIN.HDR.

After Guitar Hero Explorer has loaded the archive, double-click on the MAIN tab to expand it if it is not already expanded. Then double-click on the SONGS tab to expand it.

Now pick the song that you want to replace. Note that replacing songs near the bottom (like YYZ) takes less time than replacing songs near the top of the list. I'll use YYZ as an example.

Double-click the song you want to replace to expand it. Now right-click the song's .mid file, yyz.mid, and click REPLACE. Replace the .mid file with the .mid or .chart file of the custom song you want to play that you downloaded earlier.

Now replace the first .vgs file (yyz.vgs) with the MP3 of the song you are replacing the old song with. This will bring up a box. In almost all cases, you will select the dropdown box beside the "0:" and select "#0 Channel 0", and select the dropdown box beside the "1:" and select "0 Channel 1". In this same screen: if, when you downloaded the .chart or .mid file it said that it has an "offset", you will need to right-click on the name of the song file (which is now in a box at the top of this small box screen you are in) , go to properties, and set the offset to whatever the download said to set it to.

Don't worry about the other files that may be present under that song's folder (like yyz_p50.vgs, yyz_p65.vgs, and yyz_p85.vgs).

It is now a good idea to click on the song's folder, click play, and see if the song is lined up. If it isn't, you need to adjust your offset until it is. Note that the offset is measured in milliseconds.

Repeat this process as many times as you wish. When you are done, MAKE SURE TO CLOSE GUITAR HERO EXPLORER BEFORE MOVING ON TO THE NEXT STEP!

Now, open CD/DVD Rom Generator (CD/DVD Gen). Choose CREATE NEW PROJECT and then DVD ROM MASTER DISC. Now take the files from the Guitar Hero disc that are on your computer (which have now been edited with Guitar Hero Explorer), and drag them over (in order) into the CD/DVD Gen screen. THEY MUST BE IN THE FOLLOWING ORDER:

GEN
IOP
VIDEOS (NOT INCLUDED IF USING GH1)
SLUS_214.47
SYSTEM.CNF

Click the VOLUME tab, which is close to the top of the screen. Where it says DISC NAME type SLUS 21447 (or whatever this number was if it was different). SLUS (all caps) will be on one side of the dash and 21447 will be on the other side. Where it says PRODUCER NAME, type PLAYSTATION (all caps), and where it says LICENSE AREA choose your license area, which is America in my case. Don't worry about the rest because it is not important to us. Go to FILE and click EXPORT IML FILE.

Now open Apache2 or Apache3 (preferrably Apache3).

If you are using Apache2, go to FILE, IMPORT IML FILE, select the IML file you just created, then go to FILE and BUILD ISO.

If you are using Apache3, go to FILE, CREATE, ISO FROM IML FILE, and select the IML file you just created to create the ISO.

Once your ISO has been created successfully, use your DVD burning software program (Alcohol 120%, DVD Decrypter, or ImgBurn) to burn the ISO image to the DVD. Make sure to burn it at 4X to ensure that everything works right. If you are using DVD Decrypter, go to FILE, BROWSE, and select the ISO file you just created. Then go to MODE and make sure it is on ISO, WRITE. Then simply go to FILE, WRITE.

Enjoy, and feel free to ask me any questions at hoke@theguitarheroes.com or on theguitarheroes.com forums.

Check out my blog at theguitarheroes.blogspot.com