Guest drblow Posted April 23, 2003 Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 Hi! I'm a music composer (mostly jazz but I'm into all sorts, and can write to request in most styles!). Just offering services to game/app developers who are looking for original music. I've done film scores, but never anything for games, and would be interested to have a bash! Have a listen to one of the bands I write music in - http://monosapiens.9f.com In the 'information' page is a link to vitaminic.com - where you can listen to full tracks (or download them if you like!! only 1 pound!) Oh, and I'm still working on it, so don't start telling me about all the stuff that doesnt work! Cheers. Simon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest STuFF Posted April 23, 2003 Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 seems interresting, but music games, especially on SPV, are done using a soundtracker (producing files in .XM format, or .MOD, or .S3M) If you don't understand anything about this, forget doing spv games music... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest midnight Posted April 23, 2003 Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 yup, chip music (or music that is below 100k/tune) is indeed the best type of music for the spv, its tiny in comparison to mp3 and uses much less system resources. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest STuFF Posted April 23, 2003 Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 we have ironically gone 10 years in the past ;) (and i must admit that I love that :)) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Emad Posted April 23, 2003 Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 Heyy, people still do mods - look at modarchive.com ;)_ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drblow Posted April 23, 2003 Report Share Posted April 23, 2003 mmm... i dont know anything about these chip files. i was thinking about midi files. is it possible to convert? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drblow Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 I've been looking into this - and it certainly is possible to convert midi files to .mod or .xm - but it doesnt look easy! I likes a challenge me - so I will check it out & maybe post an example here if I can sus it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest STuFF Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 I dont know if you can have good results with conversion... The best is to compose directly with a soundtracker, but this is not really very easy for a "classic" musicien (someone told me, im not musician...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drblow Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 m8! I've been writing music on computers for years! If it can be programmed to make a noize, then I'll give it a go! I am a 'classic' musician, as you put it - but these days any composer who wants to make a buck has to be at least computer literateif not fairly advanced. Anyway, I DL'ed a converter for midi to .xm which allows settings for 31 instruments. Not too sure atm about whether it will use the midi sound, or if I need to create seperate instrument sounds for it (which would appear to be .xl files). If anyone does know about this - please give me a few clues!! I may well have to eat all of these words soon, if I fail misearbly to figure it out! Anyway, thanks for the em... support! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest STuFF Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 :oops: Hope I didn't "hurt" you with my - this is not really very easy for a "classic" musicien - That wasnt my goal, and please excuse me you've been hurted (and btw, im french, so I can't really explain what im thinking about in english) .Mod format was created on Amiga, 15 years ago. In this 'golden age', computer wasnt very powerfull (not much ram, not much cpu time, etc) I dont know what do you mean by "for years" in fact... So, on Amiga, (and ATARI ST), in the begining, a musician has to have some "programmation" skills to use his computer at the best, and composing on soundtrackers was "weird" for classical musicien. If you want to see a soundtracker, and have some tips, just go to http://www.modplug.com/modplug/tracker.php3?session= I dont know if it's the best soundtracker today... here is a soundtracker, coming out from the amiga/atari time : as you can see, this is not REALLY user friendly, but maybe for a musician, it is ;) PS : by the way I am looking for musics for games on the spv !!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drblow Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Don't worry m8 - no offence taken - I'm just telling it like it is!! ;) And you are right about the 'golden age' of computers - I started writing music on an atari ST500e with a B/W Tv as monitor. Built in midi ports rule! And that baby stayed on through hours of max temerature, sweaty bar rooms, where my PC today is doing well if it lasts 2 hours! Thanks for that link - it provides more info than I have found already. I have never even heard of soundtrackers until tonight! But from what I can see, they are essentially similar to programming midi (as I say, I may well have to eat these words at a later date!) :oops: Back in the good old days of ATARI (and also a few early KORG/ROLAND synth sequencers) midi was really considered programming because you had to enter values for every control - i.e note length, velocity, position etc. The soundtracker looks to be doing the same thing. I have an app which will create .xi instruments (only been able to make a piano so far, but I'm working on it - sub bass here we come!) and I seem to have found small apps that will convert midi & .wav to .xm / .xl. I have created a .xm file from a midi file - just can't play the bugger! So I can't tell yet whether the conversion has f**ked up the sound quality or not. I have winamplite - which I thought supported .xm - and I DL'ed a xmplayer - but nothing coming out... which is annoying after spending all night making one that won't play! Anyway, it's too late for me now... thanks for the advice there - if you can help in any way I would really appreciate it. I'm always looking for new things to do, and this actually seems like it might be quite fun actually! Obviously, if I can figure it all out in the end, then I can write you something for games! :wink: Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Emad Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 You can always try playing it in SmartAmp on your SPV ;) http://www.modarchive.com/help/ has lots of articles to help, as well as a discussion forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SmugX Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 Don't know if you know this stuff, but maybe I can help out a bit ... Mods (.xm or .mod, if you're old fashioned - hey I was doing this on an Amiga back in 88 ...) normally have instruments "built into" them, so if you're converting from midi, somehow you will need to embed instrument samples into the files. ('Cos obviously midi leaves the actually sound samples up to the output device.) Classic mods normally have sound samples (i.e. a single sample that was resampled to create the noise at different pitches), but later revisions of the format allowed more complex stuff, such as sampling the instrument at different pitches, so you may well want to look into this. Chip music normally refers to the same sort of thing, but the output format uses instruments that are synthesised on the computer, rather than samples - hence resulting in much smaller files ... Does this make sense? The main thing that may irritate you if you're moving from "proper music" to mods is the lack of fine timing control - in most tracker packages you can't do triplets without cheating. (You can cheat sometimes by changing the tempo of the song, or sometimes delaying the notes slightly ...) But hey, I haven't touched a tracker package in years, so maybe you can do this stuff now. I also haven't looked into tracking on the SPV at all, so maybe I'm just well out-of-date! Cheers, SmugX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest STuFF Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 thanks for the explantion, coming from a musician ;) Tracking for SPV doesn't seem different. We use "standard" mod ou xm files (with samples embedded in them) and usually the FMOD CE library, which come from a standard PC library. The quality replay is not very good for speed reasons (im using 11khz, 16khz, or 22khz, mono, 16bits) but the lib can virtually replay 44khz 16bits stereo. We will need some "oldschool" musicians for our games ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest midnight Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 go here for music proggies, fasttracker 2 is probably the best, saves as xm, or impulse tracker, saves as .it, both can be used by the smartphone. the demo scene still uses these formats, so, get in touch with some musicians if you need some tunes :wink: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drblow Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 The "old school musicians" are ready!!! Well, will be pretty soon! I knew I'd crack this! hehe SmugX - I dunno if the tracker I DL'ed (Modplug tracker - from modplug.com) is a new one - but it's pretty user friendly I think - if you have a vague idea about programming music - and I see what you mean about needing to embed samples etc & the timing issue. The instruments are a bit, well... pish! I can create samples from stuff I have here, but they make for quite significantly larger files & I guess that game developers are going to be willing to lose some sound quality over file size... am I right?!? Still, used within their own context, the sounds aren't too bad! I have made a few .mod files - just messing about really to see what it can do. Funny you should mention the tricks for triplets using delay - that was the first thing I tried!! On this tracker, I can apply VST effects to tracks, so can kind of get around some timing problems. Main prob ATM is I can't seem to increase the length of any tracks - I get 64 blocks (I dunno what they are called in this, but the equivalent of 64 bars). Maybe it is a limitation with this package (it was a free DL) - if you know about this please help!! I have never used this kind of stuff before, but it seems kind of fun (a bit like programming an old Korg workstation I had in the 80's with an onboard sequencer!) I can see what you mean about it being irritating - but I kind of like the challenge of these things... see what you can make it do, you know! I use soundforge & cubase sx at the moment in my studio -and really once you know the programmes, it's so easy making/recording music that it's almost no fun anymore! We could really pollute this thread with good old Muso banter, couldn't we!?! Question to STuFF - do developers want .mod files or what?? I can convert them to .xl or .xm I think - or obviously to midi or .wav or mp3 Let me know! Cheers for everybodys help! Simon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest STuFF Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 .xm is probably the best, 'coz it can be used with the "light" version of FMOD CE lib... Yes I have to get in touch with some scene musician... Im in contact with REZ (dont know if you know it... a french guy www.chiptune.com's webmaster) But he can't do any other musics, becoz he lacks of time (who doesn't ;)) However, he "gives" me the right to use all his great tunes... (if you know somebody who can do musics for me, free for freeware, but payed for shareware release, of course, please tell me !) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest midnight Posted April 24, 2003 Report Share Posted April 24, 2003 xm, mod or it for games, mp3 and wav are MUCH to big, and midi is, well, crap for games stuff. but the guys i know dont use modplug, hate it in fact, definitely fasttracker or impulse tracker are the trackers of choice for the demo scene (and more recently renoise for mp3) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SmugX Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 memory ... straining ... everything ... too ... long ... ago ... :x drblow: yes, 64 ... ur, beats? lines? was always a standard restriction in the "classic" trackers. (Heh- there was a special blank "control code" (0D?) you could use to skip to the next track if you wanted less than 64 ...) However, I'm sure that later trackers gave you the ability to increase this. Ah - from http://www.modplug.com/modplug/trackerfaq.php3 Q: How can I change the length of a pattern? A: You can click on the small button in the top-left corner of the pattern editor, where the pattern number is displayed. This will show the advanced properties of the pattern, and allow you to resize it. Note that this is only available with XM and IT formats songs. I did like FastTracker ... but wasn't it .. urr ... DOS-based? If I get some time, I do feel a bit of an urge to look into this again ... (Heh, I've got a few more musical "toys" to help than when I was tracking on the Amiga ... :wink:) Cheers, SmugX. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drblow Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 SmugX - yeah, I DL'ed impulse tracker - and it's DOS based. I dunno anything about DOS, and to be honest, as a complete beginner at this nonsense, and as a muso - I prefer to have a user interface that I can recognise as having musical structure! The modplug tracker is very similar to programming keyboards I think - create sounds, patterns & then sequence. Maybe DOS suits computer programmers better - who knows!? What other 'toys' do you have that are compatible with this?? I mostly use soundforge6 & Cubase SX - with a heap of VST instruments & directX plugins. I can use some VST plugins with the modplug tracker - with interesting results! The modplug tracker certainly seems capable of making tunes, but it would be nice to know how to create samples from .wav (I have thousands) without making massive files. Do you know anything about this? And are all the instruments .xl files? I think I have a converter which will create .xl from .wav Anyway, I think this is my new project for the foreseeable - hopefully have something worth listening to in a few weeks?? Oh, and smartamp will play the .mod files from modplug on the spv - so I guess thats as good a way to test them as any. Cheers. Simon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest midnight Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 the best of the lot is renoise, but, even tho it can import .xm, .mod, .it etc., i dont thing it can save as those file formats. Oh, and watch yourself, i have plenty of xm's from a musician called reed (of fairlight demo, some tunes on my website in the games section), and they crash fmod, works fine on the pc, but crashes the spv. Others from another musician (mick rippon of flt demo) are fine, may be a problem with effects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest drblow Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 midnight - yeah, i looked at renoise & it does load .xm, .mod etc. but wont save as them. i think its more for people programming trackers which then save as .wav or .mp3. i tested .mod files in smartamp & they play fine. dunno how else i can test them?! maybe in a while when i have something worth listening to, i could post it here & u could test it in a game?? let me know. cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest STuFF Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 smartamp use FMODCE, like a lot of game makers, so if it works in FMODCE, it works in our games ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Sim Posted April 26, 2003 Report Share Posted April 26, 2003 ahhh I used to mod (pretty poorly tho) it was so much fun, although I learnt on my pc instead of my Amiga. Irrespective to their tracker, modplug player is an awesome app and their web plugin was pretty freaking cool also. 8) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest midnight Posted April 26, 2003 Report Share Posted April 26, 2003 yeh, good player, bad tracker i'm afraid ;) oh well, whatever floats your boat (doh!, 4:24 in the morning and the love boat has just started) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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