Music Directing

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?

Yes!

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

Jazzware is a midi program and it’s free.

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

Good luck

that MIDI program works great! Thx, cree!

I’m glad it worked out OK for you. Have fun and good luck. :wink:

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)

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

This is the baby i use, a very powerful tool :wink:
Buzz machines

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

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

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.

Hey thanks for the help :smiley:

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!

You might want Jeskola Buzz.

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.

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

usefull links, thanks guys.

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? :stuck_out_tongue: )

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.

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

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 :stuck_out_tongue:

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

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

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…

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.