ParEdit Guide: Setting up your Metadata - CANA-Dan/ParEdit GitHub Wiki

Once you've created a level, it will be added to the list. Its probably a good idea to star this level, just so you can find it more quickly later.
Click Edit, and youll now appear in the metadata screen. there are 4 main sections to this screen; level management, song metadata, audio files, and drum set management.

Level Management

you can create new levels here, duplicate whatever level is currently selected (intended for easier creation of lower difficulties), import a recording made in paradiddle, or delete a difficulty.

Recordings are a bit like midi files, but they are in a json format. if you are experienced in drumming by ear, recordings can be a quick way to get mapping placed down and turned into a sharable level. you can also use this to turn paradiddle recordings into midi files.
Difficulty deletion must be done with care as this operation is unrecoverable; the item isn't moved to the recycling bin, its just outright deleted.

For now, click Create or Edit on the appropriate difficulty.

Song Metadata

Songs have quite a few fields, but dont worry its not too overwhelming. heres a quick rundown of each and when to use them. if you need any help, use the tool tips for a quick reference.

Song Name is the name of the song. this doesn't include anything like feat. lil artist name or Jackie's remix. this is just the song name.

Album Name if this song only appears in one album, then just put the album name. if this song appears in multiple albums (for example, best of, or remix albums), use the original album name, unless this song is different in the album you are bulling from. Alot of classic rock artists will remix or "remaster" their songs on newer compilation or best of albums. in this case, you'd put the compilation or best of album if the song is legitimately different.

Artist Name is where you put the releasing artist name.

Additional Artists is where you put any other artists composers, musician, ect, who worked on the song. all the people that are featured essentially (feat. lil artist name).

Genres should ideally be kept simple. dont put an obscure genre in here, or its going to make your song hard to search for. use metal, rock, jazz and avoid stuff like industrial, spitter, noise. If you need to, use two genre tags, one for the obscure genre tag name and one for the more well known genre name.

Map Creator should be the name you want to be known as on ParaDB. its best to make this your discord name for recognizability.

Cover Image Name use the file name in your directory. Note, you must include the actual file in the level location. dont just point to somewhere on your hard drive.

Complexity should be set to whatever complexity the song is within its difficulty level. really technical stuff would get a high complexity, which simple stuff would get a low complexity.

Velocity Control should generally be toggled on for higher difficulties, while left off for easier ones. it forces the player to play close to the difficulty you specify in the mapping. leaving this off will allow the player to play with whatever hit strength they want.

Song description should be what you want to appear in ParaDB. you can put stuff like html in here if you want custom layout information, colors, or tables.

Audio Files

Paradiddle (and ParEdit for that matter) can support multiple audio tracks. This can be separated drum tracks (stems), or lyric and guitar tracks. Really whatever you want. there are a couple of programs out there to extract stems from audio, but the main one used by other paradiddle mappers is This one Here, Stemroller, but another good option is Ultimate Vocal Remover.

The best tracks to use with Stemroller are lossless files, so avoid just ripping from youtube and try to source the best quality music you can (BandCamp for example).
Another thing to keep in mind with stemroller is it will tear your audio to shreds, especially in the high end.
This this is where your cymbals are in the mix, and it can make them sound mushy. The main benefit of using Stemroller is the drum track for the spectrogram, or audio reference when charting. Stemrolled audio can be used as a final release for all the cool effects the game provides when you miss a note, but be warned that someone with a good pair of cans can probably hear the mushy and lacking top end.

Like the audio file, all the tracks you want to use in your project need to be in the level folder. They should also have a full second of silence or unmappable sounds before the first drum beat. This prevents "Hot Starts", allowing the player to get ready before being thrown into the map. you can use a free program like Audacity to quickly edit your audio file. most formats are usable in ParEdit and Paradiddle; you can use Flac, Wav, Mp3, and Ogg as your mapping formats. Flac (or even better, Wav) is generally recommended for mapping, and a LV8 or LV9 Ogg is generally recommended for map release.

Preview File should be ideally 10 to 20 seconds, with a 1 second fade in and out. its a sneak peak of the song before playing. it can add alot to how the user interacts with a map, and draw their attention to your song when they may otherwise not play it.

Spectrogram Tracks could be your song track, or it can be drum stems. you can have as many tracks in here as you want, but ideally you should keep it minimal. each spectrogram can take up a decent chunk of ram, so keeping this below 3 tracks is recommended.

Drum Tracks is all the drum stems you have, up to a max of 4. these tracks will be muted depending when you missed a note. the order of adding is important depending on the number of tracks;
1 Drum Tracks: All Drums.
2 Drum Tracks: Track 1 is Kick, Track 2 is all other drums.
3 Drum Tracks: Track 1 is Kick, Track 2 is Snare, Track 3 is all other drums.
4 Drum Tracks: Track 1 is Kick, Track 2 is Snare, Track 3 is Cymbals, Track 4 is Toms.
If you have a drum track that doesnt fit this order (for example you just have Toms and Kick), use a short blank audio file in the place of Snare and Cymbals. Just make sure you have those drums represented in the song tracks; dont merge them with another drum.

Audio Tracks is all the Tracks that aren't your drum tracks. this can be the entire song (ie, if the song isnt stemmed at all), or it can be lyrics, guitar, bass tracks, ect. you can have a max of 5 tracks in here.

Drum set Management

theres a bit of a process when making a kit to use for a map, but generally there are 2 parts to it.

the first is making the kit and the second is tuning it. A very easy way to make a kit (and probably what id recommend if you are inexperienced) is to just import the kit from any map you like, or import a kit that youve made previously. If you want to make something more special for the map and create the kit from scratch, you can Click Here. you can do both these operations via the Import Drum-Kit button.

later as you are mapping, if you hear anything that doesn't exist in the current kit (for example a china), you can add that via the Add Instrument button.

once you've added the instrument you want, you can modify its attributes here.
You can set the drum type from here if you want to change it, and you can set the override. Only some instruments have overrides (for example snare or Hi-hat). This is essentially a special instrument within its class and it will have a different look and sound than the base instrument.

ID allows you to have multiple drums of the same class in the same map. If you dont have multiple drums, leave it ID 0. if you have 2 or more drums, set the ID higher the less often the drum is used (or the less "core" to the song the drum is). For example, a drum that's used 80% of the time should be set to ID 0, a drum thats used 15% of the time should be ID 1, and a drum used 5% of the time should be ID 2.

Pitch and Volume can be used to tune the drum. You can tweak these values here in the metadata screen, but a much better method is to tune in the map itself or tune in game. Click Here to get a more in depth guide on how to tune drums.

Location is generally intended for debugging purposes, but scale can allow you to do some kinda wacky stuff (like make oblong drums, or super tall drums). generally you can ignore these values as they are for debugging purposes more than anything atm.

Midi IDs allows you to remap drums to other midi notes, and this is where you set center/edge midi value (as well as open/closed for hi-hat). The default values follow the midi percussion standard, but this is exposed to the user to allow them to make custom midi mappings for stuff like Midi Importing.

Alright, with all that out of the way you should hopefully have your map fully setup and it should look something like this.

If the Edit Level button is red, read the tool tip to see whats going wrong. fix any issues, and click Edit Level.

Click Here to continue to the Next Page; Placing your first Note.