I'm a music major and it's something I end up paying a lot of attention to in games and movies and stuff like that... What's the scoop on music in Coldstone? Is there something in Coldstone for creating music or do I have to use another program and insert it? If so can anyone suggest something to look into? I hope this is the right place to be asking this question...
->Day<-
Considering making a cool RPG, maybe...
"Spoony Bard!"
So far as I know, Coldstone doesn't have an internal music creator. That you will have to do yourself. ^_^ It supports both MIDI and MP3 based music, so far as I know.
I recommend Soundforge's Acid for sample-based stuff, (url="http://"http://kuiki.net/shari/music/Shari Fedak-The Market.mp3")(Example;Yes, it's mine)(/url)
I recommend Voyetra's Midi Orchestrator Plus for MIDI. It's easy to use and it's rather cheap, too. It does the job. (url="http://"http://kuiki.net/shari/music/a_candle_in_december.mid")(Example;This one is mine too.)(/url)
I also recommend having a MIDI based keyboard for composing MIDIs, but being a music major, you probably have access to one.
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For every beautiful answer there is an even more beautiful question.
Wow. Those were both really cool! I have access to Midi keyboards, but I'd still wanna be able to work on it at home... If I didn't have a keyboard how do I input into Voyetra's program? Is it like staff paper or what? And thanks for the reply.
->Day<-
About to go see a play. ^_^
"Fun for the whole family."
(edit) Post Script: And do they have a Mac version? I run OS X on a G4 Cube. (/edit)
(This message has been edited by Day (edited 10-27-2001).)
Those are nice, Shari.
Oh, and before I forget... WOOHOO! Four-Hundreth post!
OK, anyways...
Coldstone will play Quicktime-readable files. This means that if you can drag and drop it on Quicktime player to play, Coldstone should be able to play it too. This includes MP3, MP2, AIFF, AIFC, etc.
for Cheap MIDI with a built-in sampler, check out Melody Assistant ( (url="http://"http://www.myriad-online.com/melody.htm")http://www.myriad-on....com/melody.htm(/url) ). It's $15 bucks and you get a really good bang for your buck. Its bigger brother Harmony Assistant has some neat features too.
If you're going to go the loop route (I, personally, find this to be utterly lacking in craft, but whatever), then you should know that there is no Mac version of Acid (and it is precisely for this reason that it is not endorsed by Nine Inch Nails...), but there is an equivalent: Phrazer by Bitheadz ( (url="http://"http://www.bitheadz.com")http://www.bitheadz.com(/url) ). It pretty much does everything Acid does, including reading/writing ACID-formatted files. It's a couple-hundred bucks, tho.
Anyone who wants a free digital 8-track recorder should check out Pro Tools Free ( (url="http://"http://www.digidesign.com")http://www.digidesign.com(/url) ). Pro Tools is good stuff, and the limited version can still do quite a bit. You should also keep in mind that the Beatles made Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on two four-tracks, which is just as limiting. I know that Beck and Nine Inch Nails swear by the more fully-featured versions.
My multi-tracking MIDI/Audio program of choice is Logic Audio ( (url="http://"http://www.emagic.de")http://www.emagic.de(/url) ). While Pro Tools is geared towards recording studios, Logic is geared towards artists. I know that Radiohead and Jamaraquoi use Logic.
I've used Cubase ( (url="http://"http://www.steinberg.net")http://www.steinberg.net(/url) ) a little, but in my experience it's a buggy piece of crap with a poor user-interface.
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People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too.
--
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" --Benjamin Franklin.
Heh, how soon I forget that most of the people on the forum use Macs. I wish I had one that actually worked. (My iMac is busted, hard drive was totally fried, no cash to fix it... siigh... :frown:) Voyetra Midi Orchestrator doesn't have a Mac version, so far as I know.
And you can find MIDI keyboards for 50 bucks for a nice quality one. You don't need gazillions of tones, only input. Look for something with full to mid-size keys. Never get anything with mini-keys, they are terrible. Or check eBay, you might find one for even cheaper. Mine was 100 dollars, used,but it's also rather souped up. ^^ Get one burrito at Taco Bell instead of two for a few months. MIDI keyboards add that certain "live" quality. Not so rigid, if you know what I mean.
On the other hand, most MIDI orchestration programs usually have something in the way of a piano roll or musical notation. It's how I fix things when I screw up. ^^
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For every beautiful answer there is an even more beautiful question.
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Originally posted by Shari:
**And you can find MIDI keyboards for 50 bucks for a nice quality one. You don't need gazillions of tones, only input. Look for something with full to mid-size keys. Never get anything with mini-keys, they are terrible. Or check eBay, you might find one for even cheaper. Mine was 100 dollars, used,but it's also rather souped up.^_^ Get one burrito at Taco Bell instead of two for a few months. MIDI keyboards add that certain "live" quality. Not so rigid, if you know what I mean.
**
Ah, input devices...
If anyone is interested, I have a patch I wrote in Max ( (url="http://"http://www.cycling74.com")http://www.cycling74.com(/url) ) that takes a Wacom tablet and turns it into a MIDI input device. It works with OMS. It's designed for use with my 12x12 Intuos, but I can modify it for other tablets, too. If someone has a Wacom tablet and is interested in working with me on polishing this up for more general use, let me know.
I have an inexpensive Kaysound 4902 MIDI keyboard, I got it at Musician's Friend for about a hundred bucks. This thing has been very reliable and durable for me. While I'm no keyboard virtuoso, it is nice to be able to bang out a tune as it comes to me instead of trying to program it in a sequencer.
Of course, I build my own step-sequencers in Max, too. 
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People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too.
--
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" --Benjamin Franklin.
Hmm... I'm decent on keyboard, but I really like theory and I'd rather work looking at a score. Is that what you meant by "piano roll or musical notation"? Also do most MIDI progs come with lots of "voices" as it were? Like, can I get a trumpet noise and a cello noise and, say, ... a sitar or something? I rather dislike beeps. Thanks for your help, everyone!
->Day<-
Avoiding homework.
"She's just a little crazy, but I think I can live with that."
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As for noises, it all really matters on your soundcard. With MIDI it's all hardware generated sounds... the better the card, the better the sound. If you want something more realistic sounding, you should try a software based synth, like Yamaha XG. I seem to remember that had a Mac version.
And by musical notation I mean staff. ^_^
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For every beautiful answer there is an even more beautiful question.
Okay.. So if /I/ have great hardware and I make a piece that's a cello solo with some percussion and higher strings as accompaniment and I put it in my game and post it on the internet and some downloads it... If they have, say, a factory sound card will they hear it as a cello with percussion and other strings or will they just hear beeps in the correct octave? Thanks again.
->Day<-
Trying to sort out problems with Melody Assistant X running at all.
"I want your girlfriend to be my girlfriend, too."
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Not being much of a musician I can't really comment on most of this discussion (it is interesting though), but I can offer some quick remarks about sound file format. I think MP3 format is really the only way to go for any kind of extended music. The quality is great and the file size is small. AIFF files are handy to work with because a lot of different sound editing applications can read them, and AIFF can have good quality, but the files are huge comparred to MP3s and they don't compress very well either.
If you're only an amateur at working with sounds, like me, I would suggest trying this: build your sound files as AIFFs, then after they're all mixed and edited, convert them to MP3s before loading them into Coldstone.
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Mauglir
Day: you are correct in your assumption. One of the many drawbacks of MIDI is that it sounds different on another computer. I'm trying to find a way to easily convert my MIDI diles to something wave based, myself.
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For every beautiful answer there is an even more beautiful question.
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Originally posted by Shari:
Day: you are correct in your assumption. One of the many drawbacks of MIDI is that it sounds different on another computer. I'm trying to find a way to easily convert my MIDI diles to something wave based, myself.
Well, the most obvious manner is to record the output of your computer. If you don't have an external recording device, this can be tricky, though, and I use a second computer for any recording of sound generated on my main computer.
Some MIDI software has a 'record to disk' option. If nothing else, Mac users can use Quicktime Pro to convert MIDI files to AIFF, which can then be encoded to MP3, but this will be using the Roland MIDI instruments that Apple licenses.
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People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too.
--
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" --Benjamin Franklin.
Well, I could record it to ADAT or MD through a mixer and then try to send it back via line-in or something extremely complicated like that... sigh, I'm always looking for magical buttons. I honestly have never seen a record to disk function, ever.
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For every beautiful answer there is an even more beautiful question.
I'm not a big fan of buying new hardware for my computer if I can avoid it... Is there a way to generate MP3s without having to record it into a microphone? For one I don't really have a billion instruments to record a bunch of orchestral scores a track at a time, neither do I have the skill to do so, and for two I really don't care what the file format is, I mainly want something that will let me work with a score on my computer screen and then make pretty music. I if have to give up a little control as far as exactally what the instruments sound like Oh well, but I'd prefer not to. How does a computer determine what range of sounds it has for MIDI files? Is there some kind of MIDI Sound Library or something? Like, could I inclued a file with my game they had the "right" sounds in to or something? This is a cool discussion. Thanks, all.
->Day<-
Haunting.
"Boo."
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If you just want something to notate music, and use with a wide variety of virtual synth and sampler instruments, my recommendation would be to go with Logic Audio. There are a good deal of VST instrument plug-ins out there, although most are either samplers or analogue-style synths.
Logic + a soft-sampler will take you a long way, and you can bounce all of your audio to disk for burning to CD or encoding to MP3. This setup will give you much better control over the sounds you create. It also gives you a good bank of audio effects to play around with, too.
Logic isn't the easiest program in the world to figure out, and it's not cheap, but you won't outgrow it.
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People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too.
--
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" --Benjamin Franklin.
(This message has been edited by sanehatter (edited 11-01-2001).)
Hey Sanehatter,
Im interested in how you got into MAX/MSP, its a pretty hard program to just sort of dive into (especially since next to no one knows about it). I took a course on it at CNMAT but Im not particularly good. Anyway, I remember seeing a demo of the Wacom program and was quite impressed by its ability to convert a sample into a live instrument (this occasion, it was a sax). Is it possible to take the pressure data and convert it to continuous MIDI data (Im not sure if thats the right name, its been a while since Ive fiddled around with my music programs) to be used with a regular sequenced midi track (like maybe assigning it to a cutoff value or some other filter data). If youve got a copy of the patch floating around (and it happens to be in MAX 3.6.2) and you feel like sharing it write me at master_szkandel@hotmail.com . Oh, and Im poor, so all I got is one of those graphire tablets, so it might need some fiddling.
atsumori
P.S. sorry about the lack of apostrophes, its just that japanese keyboards are entirely useless when it comes to typing English.
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my lair of things Japan: (url="http://"http://www.szkandelous.f2s.com/japan")http://www.szkandelous.f2s.com/japan(/url)
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Originally posted by atsumori:
**Hey Sanehatter,
Im interested in how you got into MAX/MSP, its a pretty hard program to just sort of dive **
Check your email.
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People who claim the sky is falling obviously aren't aware the earth is falling, too.
--
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" --Benjamin Franklin.
Quote
Originally posted by sanehatter:
**Well, the most obvious manner is to record the output of your computer. If you don't have an external recording device, this can be tricky, though, and I use a second computer for any recording of sound generated on my main computer.
Some MIDI software has a 'record to disk' option. If nothing else, Mac users can use Quicktime Pro to convert MIDI files to AIFF, which can then be encoded to MP3, but this will be using the Roland MIDI instruments that Apple licenses.
**
iTunes will do it.
amorya
