Music Directing

[hiachi]

I know it wouldnt be as good as the real thing, thought it would be easier than the real thing...But does anyone know of a program in which you can write the music for different instruments, and then put them together, and the program generates the music for each instrument's part into an audio file?

[xyr@no]

Yes!

I can recommend www.cubase.com, it is not freeware though.
Of course, there are s bunch of other too, check out this (http://forum.midiaddict.com/) board for more info.

[cree]

Jazzware is a midi program and it's free.

http://www.jazzware.com/cgi-bin/Zope.cgi/jazzware/


Good luck

[hiachi]

that MIDI program works great! Thx, cree!

[cree]

I'm glad it worked out OK for you. Have fun and good luck. ;)

[Modron]

There are a couple of midi programs I use,...one is called 'anvil studio' (free) and the other is called quartz audio master (also free) Good programs, and both can combine midi and .wav files. Quartz is also a regular multi-tracker for making regular multi-track recordings. A simplified version that doesn't do midi is called 'quartz studio'. The main thing to remember when doing multitracking is to use your audio card settings as needed. You will want to record directly from your audiop card output in most instances. With most machines, you can access the audio cards record settings by double clicking on the little speaker icon on your taskbar, then selecting 'record properties' or the like. Here's a tip,...:

When doing multi track recordings, -always- leave a bit of space in the beginning, because you will need it for your next track to set the tempo. (the count)

[spudd86]

TiMidity is software synthesizer that can output to wav, ogg and mp3.
Get TiMidity at:
http://www.onicos.com/staff/iz/timidity/
And some patch sets at:
http://www.stardate.bc.ca/eawpatches/html/default.htm

[nozzy]

This is the baby i use, a very powerful tool ;)
Buzz machines (http://www.buzzmachines.com)

[MrNightmare]

Modplug tracker, Sk@le Tracker , and psycle used here.

[BackiZ]

I'm looking for a real instrument sound, not that midi. Is there a (free) program that gives the notes such a sound?

[Tokabola]

BackiZ, what you are looking for is called a "digital sampler".
I don't know of any freeware ones, but what they do is play a "sample), ussually a wave file, based on a midi input. There are ussually several samples (at different pitches) for each type of instrument, and notes that fall in between the samples are interpolated, so the more samples the better.

If you aren't happy with the sounds you get from your soundcard when it plays a midi file, you should consider a new soundcard. Soundblaster Audigy models, and most Macintoshes, use Soundfonts, which are digital samples and can be replaced by highr quality samples if you want.

Keep in mind that samplers use a LOT of memory, my piano sound alone is over 40 meg, and thats just one instrument. Most soundcards only use 4 to 12 meg for the whole bank (117 instruments)

Your best bets are: a soundfont capable sound card, or an external sampler (bought from a music store, expect to pay at least $500 US)
Soundfont capable soundcards can be found for as little as $50 US and there are a lot of free soundfonts available or you can make your own with software called Vienna, ussually included with the card.

I doubt you'll find a purely software sampler, since the sampling process requires a lot of digital signal processing in real time (for looping and pitch-shifting multiple notes at once) requires hardware acceleration. If you do find a software solution, expect it to be limited to one instrument at a time, and also limited in how many notes it can play at once.

Wish I could help more, but what you want to do is like trying to play the latest version of Quake on a 12 meg videocard and still get 60 frames a second.

If you have any musician friends try borrowing a sampler, or even just a quality synthesizer, and a cable to connect it's Midi ports to your game port and record the synth audio out to your soundcard. If you know a gamer with a Soundblaster Audigy or a Mac user, use theirs to "render" the midi files to wave audio. Maybe a local school will let you do it.

Leons link (synthfont) is great, I've tried it and it works better than I expected. It did get overloaded when I tried playing too many different fonts at once, but you can always "render" eanc intrument seperately, the use any mixing software (Pro tools, crystal audio, etc) to combine them. A great solution for those with lowere end or onboard sound. I think you can still find Vienna Studio (a soundfont editor) for free online.

[BackiZ]

Hey thanks for the help :D

[leon]

It should be possible to find software that doesn't need a good quality sound card to get good results.

The idea is that instead of the software playing the midi in real time using the hardware (which needs a fast card), it just "renders" to a .wav file. In a way, this is much the same as Blender's rendering - the quality of the output isn't affected by the hardware you have, it's just the time taken to get there which is different.

For an example, see here:

http://www.saunalahti.fi/kru99/About_SynthFont.htm

This software takes Soundfonts (i.e. high quality instrument synth sounds / samples you can download from the internet), and renders .wav files from MIDI without the need of a sound card.

The end result should be just as good as if you had a high quality sound card (i.e. the instruments will sound real)- it just wouldn't be produced in realtime!

[Riskbreaker]

You might want Jeskola Buzz (http://www.buzzmachines.com).

Get the updated VSTi machine for it in the site, then get SampleTank's free vsti from SampleTank. You can get Orchestra, piano, acc. drums, etc, etc.

.........Damn it. I was suppose to post something with content for my 501st post.

[traitor]

pah, i just sing along everytime. no worries :D

usefull links, thanks guys.

[Friday13]

ModPlug tracker is great! I already made two song-like thingies in it. I'll probably upload one to my site.

(Question: can i post music done in MPT in the Traditional Artwork forum? :P )

[Friday13]

BOO, just wanting to keep this thread on top, for people who are interested in making music, and to avoid further threads on the same subject.

[maxcap]

Check out the Computer Music Studio. It comes on the cover CD of every issue of the magazine. Only PC & Mac though.

http://www.computermusic.co.uk/about/aboutvst.asp

[Friday13]

Oookay, here's a low quality version of my first feature-length ultra crappy music made with MODplug Tracker.

.zip file contains an Ogg Vorbis -q -1 file. It doesn't sound as bad as it.....sounds. Anyway, here it is. When i'm done with this, I might release the source file. Read the ID tag for more info on this crappy POS :P

http://omarmodesto.tripod.com/balrog.zip

No hard comments, this is my first work! :P

Note: I'm being very sarcastic, it's just that this is nowhere near stuff like Nobuo Uematsu or other really good music artists. Still practicing...

[Modron]

balrog eh? better check this out,...
<edit> good job for an early work,...you need to work on dynamics though. I would suggest doing some volume envelops on it, and add some bigger more textured sounds and stuff.

[Friday13]

Speak english, Modron :P I'm still a music newbie, so i have no idea what you mean by 'volume envelops' and 'textured sounds' :-?

Thanks for the comment :)

[Waffler]

I have used Melody Assitant for a while now, and it is a very good peice of software. You have to pay $15 to register it before you can use all of the features, though ... but Melody Assistant is worth a lot more than $15! It's great! Real instrument files. I think you can order a CD with higher quality sound samples if you wanted. Runs on Windows and Mac.

http://www.myriad-online.com/melody.htm

Or there is Harmony Assistant for $65. It has more features, but, personally, I haven't noticed too much of a difforence between the two ... Although there was this neat ocarina tabliture mode for Harmony Assistant...

http://www.myriad-online.com/harmony.htm

[Sebastian]

REASON!
It's the easyest and best music-creation software there is!
But it has no good audio support, but two good softsynts, two samplers, one loopplayer, one mixer, some really good effects and everything is placed in a virtual rack.
I have yet too se a more intuituve piece of music software.

Oh and close your eyes when you see the price, they got a 20 minute, nonsaving demo.

[tedi]

a) you could buy (it's extremely affordable) cubasis5 (pinnacle/steinberg) - it contains probably everything (inc. wavelab lite and pinnacle studio8) to get you started and actually produce usable output (also commercially usable in multimedia field). Add EnergyXT and this combo is hard to beat for it's price. Option to direct syncing music (audio) to video (as avi).

b) there are also options to get very cheap academic cubase vst5.1 stock, do the math for upgrade path to SX1/2 costs if you are on budget.

c) you have also crossgrade path to samplitude7.x, which is absolute winner, also direct sync audio to video.

d) for free, you could play with computer muzys.

I am personally negatively biased towards reason.

[Modron]

Here are a couple of programs I have been using lately that I find to be very good.
>>Aodix: A tracker that is basically a sampler/sequencer, that will take any raw sample you give it, and treat it much in the same way as a midi instrument. You can use a number of wavs, played over a 2 or more octave scale, or if you prefer midi events, at the same time, and though I have not entirely figured it out, I have turned out some pretty good stuff with it. Great program, and free. Link>> http://www.smartelectronix.com/~arguru/
>>Sawcutter: This program takes raw samples, or built in wave data, and lets you process the sample with a wide range of envelops, delays, and filters, including cutoff frequency and resonance, and as well as allowing you to then save your creation as a wav file, you can play it on the built in sequencer. Also a great program, and free. Link>>
http://www.cuttermusic.com/
>>For making raw sound data, to be processed in this way, I use mostly soundforum synth ( free ), FM dreams ( a free FM synth ), fruityloops drumsynth ( free ), and any other soft synth, or raw sample data I can find on the web. I also use quartz audio master and audacity, also both free, as i have mentioned to master my loops and whatnot.

[Modron]

Here's a fractal music generator that does quite a nice job with a bit of tweaking. It's not even half bad without tweaking. It generates music, and even midi scores algorythmically according to various specifications or even scripts, and is not only enjoyable to listen to, but I may even use this thing in making some sound tracks. And it's easy to use. It didn't make a sound when I first started it, but I changed it to 'microsoft wavtable synth' in its options and it worked fine. I am a professional musician, and I will use this, but the real beauty of it is, if you couldn't sing jimmy crack corn to save your life, you can still make some pretty good music with this.
http://reglos.de/musinum/

[Modron]

though i haven't had much of a chance to experiment with it yet, I made this little midi file,....it also had some nice examples that came with it, but here's what i came up with anyway, so far...
http://home.att.net/~moton-toybox/CHUNK3.MID

[Friday13]

BWARG. Just wanting to keep this thread at the top, and to prevent it from disappearing into forum oblivion. This thread should be made sticky, as music is very important in professional CG animations, and making music is fun :)

[Friday13]

Okay, I really cannot believe I made this out of boredom in less than 20 minutes, but here it is:

http://omarmodesto.tripod.com/omarmod.zip

Comments? Oh, and someone PLEASE make this thread sticky, for people who need music making programs (and for anyone who wishes to post links to his/her music).

Note: I recommend downloading the Tracker's Handbook and putting it somewhere near your tracking app:

http://egnatia.ee.auth.gr/~nalevrid/enf/trackers/TheTrackersHandbook.html

Get the HTML version.