Rust Rust instruments, and how to play them without MIDI.

One day I was browsing the steam guides on Rust for ways to play instruments, and noticed there wasn’t a whole lot. And the ones that were there wanted you to download all of these programs off the internet, or to use a MIDI keyboard. I didn’t like this, so I decided to make this guide.This will teach you how to play instruments in Rust, WITHOUT the use of programs, file downloads or MIDI. All you need is a little time, a keyboard (qwerty) and some musical talent. After this, you can show off to your friends and people you meet in the world of Rust. It is essential that you listen to crab rave while reading this, to assist in the learning.

First, the actual instruments. Crafting the instruments in game requires the instrument DLC, but you can always steal them from someone else or borrow them from a friend. Each instrument is different, and not only when it comes to hoe they sound. They all require different resources to craft, and can produce different amounts of notes. For example, a guitar can produce more notes than a trumpet, and a piano more than a guitar. Some only work as background noise or for creating a beat, and some sound best in melodies and verses.

Cowbell:

Requires: 35 metal frags
Produces: one note – bop
“It needs more cowbells!”

Canborine:

Requires: 25 metal frags
Produces: one note – rattley
“shaka shaka”

Pan flute:

Requires: 20 metal frags and 5 cloth
Produces: 7 notes – flutey
“I once killed a guy by telling him how I made pan flutes.”

Trumpet:

Requires: 75 metal frags
Produces: 8 notes – jazzy
“The favorite instrument of one halloween skeleton.”

Sousaphone:

Requires: 100 metal frags
Produces: 8 notes – Tuba-ish
“Not to toot my own horn but…”

Xylobones:

Requires: 50 bone frags
Produces: 14 notes – like a xylophone
“WELCOME TO THE BONE ZONE BABY!”

Piano:

Requires: 200 wood and 100 metal frags
Produces: too many notes – the most notes of any instrument – couldnt count them all too confusing. looks good in an old timey saloon.
“It’s 9:00 on a Saturday…”

Drumkit:

Requires: 200 wood and 100 metal frags
Produces: various bangs and bongs
“Bum, baDum bum, badum *cymbals*”

Shovel Bass:

Requires: 50 wood and 75 metal frags
Produces: 13 notes – deep and low
“It’s all about that bass.”

Jerrycan Guitar:

Requires: 25 wood and 50 metal frags
Produces: 18 notes – twang
“It’s like a guitar, but better.”

Acoustic Guitar:

Requires: 100 wood and 10 cloth (requires blueprint)
Produces: 16 notes – acoustic
“You better not take that thing to the party.”

Before we get into playing the instruments, you have to understand how they work. By pressing R ingame, you can play a held instrument with the computer’s keyboard, and this is how we will play our songs. Note you cannot move while R mode is active. This is what your keyboard should look like.

We don’t have to think about most of this though, and you only have to focus on this bit.

(the notes get higher as you move right.)

This is the part that will make the noises after you hit R. the keys from Shift to Shift, Caps to enter, and Tab to Backslash. The Enter on the numpad functions as an octave key, and the plus on the numpad works like a staccato, making the notes sharper. I like to re-bind these so that it becomes easier to use with two hands.The different notes start at Z and work their way up the scale as you move right. If the instrument can play more than 10 notes the scale continues at A after Shift. Sounds easy right?

(yes I made these in MS paint be quiet)

The piano is stupid. the lowest not you can play on the piano is 1, and the highest is right ctrl. this is dumb. the note get higher as you go down the keyboard. i will not include a crudely put together picture of a keyboard, because i don’t feel like it. this instrument is make me angy 🙁 The drums also don’t follow any of the other rules and therefore wont be explained either. i couldn’t figure out the drums at all.

I’ll write this section if enough people want it.

This is the G Major Scale, it is a set of notes, each one higher than the last. If you already know sheet music or have taken a class you should be familiar. But as you might have noticed, the names of the notes don’t match the sounds produced by the qwerty keyboard, and if you tried to play a scale it would sound very bad. So we will have to rename the notes.

There we go. The last note is a comma, and Z is always the lowest note your held instrument can play, (except for piano) so it’s easy to play chords. For larger and longer chords, you need an instrument that can produce a wider array of notes. Sometimes a song that has a whole lot of different notes can only be played on some instruments, for example, a cowbell cannot play megalovania all by itself, but a trumpet could. Here is an example of a larger G major scale, that fills all the notes of the acoustic guitar.

If you can read sheet music, and you have some sheet music you want to play in Rust remember this, If you want to translate a song into Rust/qwerty notes, first find the lowest low note and the highest high note. If the high note is higher than the low note is low, make the high note the sharpest sound your instrument can play, or close to it. and vice versa. So let’s take a look at hot cross buns, and let’s assume you’re playing a trumpet.

The lowest note in this song is G, and the highest is B, but in Rust, that won’t work. The trumpet can play 8 different notes,(the whole g major scale) and we only need to play 3, so instead of Z, G might be made into C, and B could be left as B, making A into V. This same technique can be applied to all instruments. Doing this you can make a song sound Exactly like it should, because if the lowest note is always Z the song might sound a bit too deep.

Now for something a bit more complicated. Playing an actual song. Let’s pick Crab Rave. we are going to use the jerrycan guitar because it’s the best instrument and if you think it isn’t then you’re wrong and also shut up. If you are new to sheet music, this may look very confusing, but if you are going to learn to swim, jump off the deep end. And always remember, if you can’t get it at first just slow down and try to get your fingering correct. You don’t have to blast through full speed the first try.

Now, you can’t play this in Rust yet, unless you have perfect pitch hearing, because the note names don’t match. You need to have this make more sense on a qwerty keyboard. Let’s start by finding the lowest note, A. this contrasts a lot with the highest note, a B. The Jerrycan can play 18 different notes, and there are 9 different notes that can be in the song. (A to that high B) Because the B is so high, i’m going to make it H on my keyboard, and then go down the scale of notes the guitar can play from there. Doing this will make the song high pitched, but it would sound worse if it was too low pitched.

After renaming the notes in the song, the sheet looks like this, and is now ready to play. Simply hit the letters on your keyboard that correspond to the notes in the correct time, and before you know it, you’re playing music. If you are having trouble keeping time, find the song on the internet, (Youtube, etc.) and follow the beat.

That concludes my guide on how to play Rust instruments. Thank you for reading! If you think I missed anything or would like things added please say in the comments. I had to re-learn musical theory for this. Now go find a song and impress your friends!