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Castle Paradox
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Obright
Vestigial Organist
Joined: 16 Nov 2005
Posts: 70
Location: By the wayside
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 Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:11 am Post subject: |
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| spikebenimble wrote: | Not anymore, apparently. If you ever hear any of my stuff that I converted to MP3 while back from direct plays of BAMs, you'll definitely hear the 8-bit sound. It really messes me up, because now it's not mono and the voices are all different. So a carefully-plotted interplay of notes put together in such a way that they don't step on each other and sound good is pretty much completely ruined.
But I'm going to do midis from now on, so I won't concern myself with it anymore. |
I'm going throught the exact same thing right now...I made all of the BAM's
in my game. For one thing, I didn't like what midi2bam did to my MIDI
files...the quantization was wack, not to mention the voices. Also, I just
wanted to use my own music...and BAM was the way to go back then.
Now my songs sound horrible in spite of all that work. I know...at first I
was really happy about the sound quality, but later I realised that there's at
least 1 beat missing from every loop, so the timing is off...and what used
to be a drum, is now a saxaphone...  I don't have any way to edit the
MIDI, but I can change my voice allocations...but then they're wack for
everything else.
I have some editors, but they are all loop-based which annoys the piss out
of me. Say what you will about NOTATE, but it allows you to make an
entire song easily. Personally, I liked using it.
Can anybody either:
A] Recommend a good NON-loop-based MIDI editor/creator, so that I can
attempt to transpose my songs, or...
B] Tell me a better way to convert my BAM files into MIDI?
Believe me...I'd love to not have to deal with BAM's any more, but I just
have a LOT of work/time/effort invested in my 7 songs...and I want them
to sound good again.
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'I imagine that imagination is more important than knowledge, but I don't know.' |
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Setu_Firestorm
Music Composer
Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 2566
Location: Holiday. FL
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 6:53 am Post subject: |
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| Gnostic Kathar-sys wrote: | For one thing, I didn't like what midi2bam did to my MIDI
files...the quantization was wack, not to mention the voices. |
I always hated the 9-voice polyphony of Midi2Bam, but I can't say I ever ran into quantize problems. Usually, the bad quantizing, in my case, was because I sucked at keeping a tempo. 
| Gnostic Kathar-sys wrote: | I don't have any way to edit the
MIDI, but I can change my voice allocations |
This is a MIDI problem in the new OHR? I haven't honestly used it since the newest update. I'll have to take a look at that, but if Custom.exe is fudging up your MIDI file, that's definitely something that I would relay to James.
| Gnostic Kathar-sys wrote: | I have some editors, but they are all loop-based which annoys the piss out
of me. |
Hahaha! I can Sooooo relate.
As far as your requests, most people make this really big deal out of a program called "Anvil Studio", though I've only used it to reassign MIDI patches because Nuendo outputs MIDI where all channels are freaking piano. It is a MIDI creation program, however, from what I've seen of it, it operates on more of a musical notation (written music) basis, where it relies more on staving than actual key-editors.
Also, you can check some MIDI creation programs out here:
http://www.harmony-central.com/Software/Windows/sequencing.html
Now, of this list, I have used "FreeStyle" before, and it seems to be a fairly easy-to-pick-up piece of software, although I don't know what the demo limitations are for it.
As far as BAM to MIDI conversion, I'm afraid there you may be shit out of luck, since whatever BAM extraction capabilities exist are what is already with the OHR engine. In other words, you may be stuck with crappy BAm-->MIDI conversion.
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msw188
Joined: 02 Jul 2003
Posts: 1041
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 7:20 am Post subject: |
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Somebody told me that the BAM to MIDI on Stephanie's PC Piano was better than our command line function, but I never tried it. Also just wanted to agree with the general feeling here: Notate was a perfectly good composition program in my opinion (all keyboard/no mouse makes things SO much easier), the only real problem seeming to be due to BAM's inherent limitations. The lack of triplets bothered me, but you could sort of fake it. But its a real disappointment that we have lost some functionality by switching from BAM to MIDI (of course, I'm bringing up the 'no infinite loops in the middle' thing again, but it was the basis of pretty much all of my songs!). I hope that they can find a way to fix this soon.
I've been using Anvil, and I've been having to go through and re-write every song pretty much from scratch. When you import into Anvil, it has the ability to put the different voices onto different tracks automatically, but the quantization (I guess, I'm not sure if I'm using this word correctly) is horrendous. I brought my songs into Anvil, and then rewrote them by a painstaking process of looking at the old song, and then figuring out what the notes were supposed to be in terms of quarters, halfs, etc. This takes MANY MANY hours. |
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PlayerOne
Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 143
Location: UK
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 11:16 am Post subject: |
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| I must say, I thought Anvil looked quite good at first glance, but when I actually wanted to compose something in it a while ago, I found it quite horrible and went back to Jazz (which has its own problems, but at least approximates what I want). Frankly, I'm almost tempted to go back to my Atari ST, or at least try some of my ST sequencers under emulation. |
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Obright
Vestigial Organist
Joined: 16 Nov 2005
Posts: 70
Location: By the wayside
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| Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 11:50 am Post subject: |
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| Setu_Firestorm wrote: |
I always hated the 9-voice polyphony of Midi2Bam, but I can't say I ever ran into quantize problems. Usually, the bad quantizing, in my case, was because I sucked at keeping a tempo. |
It wouldn't matter if you were herbie hancock...trying to stay on the beat
without quantization is nearly impossible! I don't think I've ever heard a
MIDI2BAM output that had perfect timing.
| Setu_Firestorm wrote: | | Hahaha! I can Sooooo relate. |
It's rediculous, innit?
| Setu_Firestorm wrote: |
As far as your requests, most people make this really big deal out of a program called "Anvil Studio", though I've only used it to reassign MIDI patches because Nuendo outputs MIDI where all channels are freaking piano. It is a MIDI creation program, however, from what I've seen of it, it operates on more of a musical notation (written music) basis, where it relies more on staving than actual key-editors. |
Oohhh...sounds promising...
| Setu_Firestorm wrote: |
Also, you can check some MIDI creation programs out here:
http://www.harmony-central.com/Software/Windows/sequencing.html
Now, of this list, I have used "FreeStyle" before, and it seems to be a fairly easy-to-pick-up piece of software, although I don't know what the demo limitations are for it. |
Thanks for that! I'll check that link out...
| Setu_Firestorm wrote: |
As far as BAM to MIDI conversion, I'm afraid there you may be shit out of luck, since whatever BAM extraction capabilities exist are what is already with the OHR engine. In other words, you may be stuck with crappy BAm-->MIDI conversion. |
Eeg...well, as long as I only have to make the songs this one last time, it
will be ok. I can even open the songs in NOTATE, take screen caps, and
have a visual guide to go by when I transpose...it won't be as hard as it
was to make them originally...although taking 2-20 screen shots of an
entire song...and putting them back together again...might be a bitch. 
| msw188 wrote: | | Somebody told me that the BAM to MIDI on Stephanie's PC Piano was better than our command line function, but I never tried it. Also just wanted to agree with the general feeling here: Notate was a perfectly good composition program in my opinion (all keyboard/no mouse makes things SO much easier), the only real problem seeming to be due to BAM's inherent limitations. The lack of triplets bothered me, but you could sort of fake it. But its a real disappointment that we have lost some functionality by switching from BAM to MIDI (of course, I'm bringing up the 'no infinite loops in the middle' thing again, but it was the basis of pretty much all of my songs!). I hope that they can find a way to fix this soon. |
I never had much luck using SPCP...but I admit that I never thought of
trying to load a BAM that had already been made using NOTATE...I'll give
that a try! And I agree...I miss NOTATE :-( When I'm going to work on a
new section of my game, the first thing I do is make a new set of tunes...
which sets the mood for the whole chapter. If I can't make new music, I'm
kinda lost...and so my game continues to not get made.
| msw188 wrote: |
I've been using Anvil, and I've been having to go through and re-write every song pretty much from scratch. When you import into Anvil, it has the ability to put the different voices onto different tracks automatically, but the quantization (I guess, I'm not sure if I'm using this word correctly) is horrendous. I brought my songs into Anvil, and then rewrote them by a painstaking process of looking at the old song, and then figuring out what the notes were supposed to be in terms of quarters, halfs, etc. This takes MANY MANY hours. |
Uggghh.......I forgot about that. Even if you take screenshots as a guide, it
will be hard to decipher all those dashes.
When you record in real-time, software can line up the notes to the
nearest note. You can set this note at any increment...up to a 32nd note
(usually). This way, as long as your note is recorded within a 32nd, the
process of quantization will line it up perfectly. This same process applies
when converting sound files...and if the quantization does not jibe (as when
one file is quantized in an increment of an 8th, and another in 32nd), then
it sounds funky.
Here's something else I might try...I might add one note to my songs in
NOTATE, and then see if CUSTOM will still remove one note...making it
sound right again. That might at least fix the 'one note missing' problem.
Thanks, guys!
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'I imagine that imagination is more important than knowledge, but I don't know.' |
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Setu_Firestorm
Music Composer
Joined: 26 Mar 2003
Posts: 2566
Location: Holiday. FL
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 4:54 am Post subject: |
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Yeah, your best bet would be to compose all songs as MIDI first. If you ever decide to MP3 them later with better sound, all you'd have to do is plug into VSTi's.
MIDI is the most universal setting for any piece, so you're best off doing it that way.
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