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Each instrument section holds one track: the notes, modifiers and phrases of one instrument at one difficulty.

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Section names

A section’s name is a difficulty followed by an instrument, such as ExpertSingle for Expert guitar. The difficulties are Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. A scanner matches names exactly, in the letter case shown. Edge case: names close to these. Clone Hero checks only some of a name’s characters, so it reads a few other names as instrument sections: [ExpertSingl] is Expert guitar there. YARG’s chart loader adds [ExpertDoubleDrums] to Expert drums when the file also has [ExpertDrums]. YARG’s song list and scan-chart match names exactly.

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Notes

A note is an N event:
The value says which note it is, and depends on the kind of instrument. The length is the note’s sustain, in ticks: the note is held from its tick to tick + length. A length of 0 means no sustain.

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5-fret

N 5 and N 6 are modifiers, not notes. See Note modifiers.

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6-fret

The 6-fret frets are in two rows: three black frets on top and three white frets below them. N 5 and N 6 are modifiers, as on 5-fret. See Note modifiers.

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Drums

Drums gives the kinds of drum chart, and the modifiers for cymbals, accents, ghosts and flams.

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Notes at one tick

  • Notes of different values at one tick form a chord. Each note of a chord keeps its own length, so a chord’s sustains can end at different ticks.
  • An open note may be in a chord with fret notes. The player holds the fret notes and strums.
  • Required: one note of each value at most at a tick.

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Range shifts

A range shift tells the player which frets a stretch of one 5-fret difficulty uses, so that their hand can move with the notes. It’s an E event in the section of that difficulty, on guitar, co-op guitar, bass, rhythm guitar or keys:
Here Easy guitar uses green, red and yellow from tick 0, and yellow, blue and orange from tick 3072.
  • Required: a position and size that end at orange or before: the position plus the size is no more than 6.
  • Required: the parts separated by single spaces, and the numbers in digits without a sign, with no brackets or quotation marks around the text. The difficulty is the section’s, and the position and size are each from 1 to 5. Range shifts go only in 5-fret sections.
  • A range shift lasts from its tick until the next range shift of its section. Before the first one, all five frets are in range.
  • Recommended: one range shift at most at a tick.
Edge case: of two range shifts at one tick, a scanner uses the later one in the file.

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Tracks

A section is a track only if it holds at least one note. How notes resolve says how a scanner turns a section’s notes into the notes a player plays. Edge case: a section without notes. A section with only modifiers, phrases or text events is allowed, for example while a charter copies phrases to every difficulty before charting its notes. It isn’t a track: a scanner doesn’t list it, and it gets no hash. scan-chart reports it as a warning.

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Ignored

  • An N value that the tables don’t list for the section’s instrument, such as N 8 in a 5-fret section.
  • A section with any other name. Older games used names such as ExpertSingleBass and ExpertDoubleDrums.

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Invalid forms

A scanner ignores it. That includes another spelling, letter case or spacing, square brackets, a sign before a number, and a size of 0. It also includes a difficulty other than the section’s, a position or size outside 1 to 5, a position and size that add up to more than 6, and a range shift outside a 5-fret section. A range shift in quotation marks is read as one without them: see Syntax. scan-chart keeps the text, and writes it back.
A scanner uses the note with the longer sustain, as Clone Hero and scan-chart do. YARG uses the one written first. On guitar, it counts the two as a chord when it decides strums and HOPOs, so the note is a strum there unless a modifier changes it. When scan-chart saves an edited song, it removes a line written twice, and keeps notes of different lengths as written.