The .mid file is an audio file, but it is not the music you hear as you play the song. The .mid file is the note chart, and it tells the Guitar Hero engine where to place notes, and when. All of the difficulties for the song are contained within the .mid. Also, contained in the .mid, are 'events', which are text strings that tell the game to do other things that affect the venue, such as change the lighting and other effects of the stage.

The .vgs file is the audio of the song. It holds 3 different tracks of the same song, and is the audio that you hear as you play the song. The three different tracks are the Guitar track, the Bass track (or Rhythm if the song isn't a bass song and is a Rhythm song), and the Band track. All three tracks are combined into the one file. It is important to remember that when creating and/or using custom songs for Guitar Hero, you can not replicate the game play exactly, because of this limitation. When Red Octane / Harmonix / Neversoft create Guitar Hero, they record the Guitar part separately, the Bass/Rhythm part separately, and the Band part separately. Then, they're combined in the .vgs file, and you have the audio for the song. The *click* or *plink* that you hear when you miss a note is not in the .vgs. Another big question when creating/using custom songs is "Why is that sound not as loud as the original Guitar Hero songs when I miss a note?" When you miss a note on the original Guitar Hero tracks, the Guitar part stops playing. Since you did not record the separate instrument tracks, and there is no effective way to separate the tracks with an already mixed-down song, you can not replicate the ideal game play that comes with the original Guitar Hero songs. The outcome is the *click* or *plink* noise will usually be lower in volume than the original songs.

For editing purposes, you can change all of the songs in every Guitar Hero archive(s). In Guitar Hero 2, that's a mind-blowing 64 songs. Guitar Hero 1, Guitar Hero 2, Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80's are supported. Guitar Hero 2 360, is not.

It is important to remember that when customizing Guitar Hero, the disc is a Read-Only DVD disc, and can not be modified. You can only burn data to a DVD+R / DVD-R disc once, and once it's burnt, you can't edit the data on the disc in any way. It is not possible to replace, 'copy over', or add data to the original Guitar Hero disc, since it is one of those types of discs. The only way to customize Guitar Hero is to copy the data off the original disc, modify it, and burn a new disc.

Playstation 2 only reads DVD-R or DVD+R. It can not read DVD+RW.

You may be wondering if this can damage your Guitar Hero game or your computer. The short answer is no, you can't. No program available to customize Guitar Hero can and/or will damage your computer or your Guitar Hero game.

The Guitar Hero engine also uses other files and such to produce the jaw-dropping display you see scroll across your television set. For now, you have an EXTREMELY BASIC overview of how Guitar Hero works. If you have questions, they most likely are answered in this guide. If not, they are even more likely to be answered on the forums, so search for your answer. So, without further ado, please take this time to read the rest of the guide, and the rest of the information I've spend time compiling into one place for you. Make sure you've read this entire guide inside and out (I and everybody else will know if you didn't, it's not hard). BEFORE you post a question in the guide's thread, or in the forums in general, I ask that you do two things:

1. Know exactly what you're talking about, and exactly what your question is; and the most important thing is,
2. DO NOT post a question in the guide's thread if the answer is in the guide.;

Just remember everybody, that you CAN NOT upload, or ask for, copyrighted materials on the forums. This includes: any file from the Guitar Hero archive, the Guitar Hero archive, a copyrighted audio file, or anything else that isn't allowed to be redistributed legally.

-Nick
nickb611