[Guest]

I found a neat MIDI editor that allows you to produce your own music. Now you don't have to cruise the internet looking for songs from other games.
Anvil Studio.com

[Ninkazu]

MIDIs are nothing compared to impulse tracker.

[Nodtveidt]

MIDI sucks. And that is final. Anyone who disagrees is...well, wrong. :D
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[Rainer Deyke]

MIDI played with the generic/inconsistent/crappy instruments that came with your soundcard sucks. MIDI played with custom instruments can sound quite good - better than Impulse Tracker in some cases. And because the custom instruments are not embedded in the MIDI file, they can be shared among several files, resulting in less waste of disk space.

[Nephilim]

Not only that, but MIDI can serve as a general-purpose sequencing interface. It's not just for music. For instance, you could use MIDI to control lights, drive animatronics, and trigger other special effects for your haunted house on Halloween night.

[Nodtveidt]

Back when I was a part of Bizarre Creations (Kalderan, anyone?), our musician, Blurry, composed all of the tracks as a single S3M file at my recommendation. We were going to use BWSB, and as anyone who's used BWSB knows, all the samples that can be played (that includes sound effects) need to be present in whatever module is loaded...which means if you've got 20 soundtracks and 20 sound effects, those 20 sound effects have to be in every one of your 20 modules. So I asked him if he could do them all in a single file, and he did...the result was great...unfortunately, we never finished the game. :(

Libraries such as Bass make it possible for module files to also serve as a sequencing interface, the same way MIDI can be used. The innovation of the MO3 module format also makes modules much more attractive nowadays too. Sure, MIDI has its purposes, but I myself have never believed that one of those purposes should be in games. Music is the most powerful vehicle of emotional content delivery in a game, and if it's not heard how it's meant to be heard, the emotional content is either gone completely or misdelivered. MIDI gives way too much leeway for that misdelivery, whereas modules will always be conveyed as they were meant to be heard (provided your module player doesn't suck but that's another subject altogether). Save MIDI for your professional recording studio. Bring on the modules for the games. :)
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[janus]

[Nodtveidt]

Never heard of OXM...sounds interesting though (no pun intended). :)
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[tcaudilllg]

This site has all of the music editing utilities anyone could ever want, I think.

There is a book that I've been considering reading, that explains in scientific detail how a musical piece can instill feelings of ecstacy and drama in humans. It lends well with what I've already pieced together about musical perception in humans.

...I feel that the best way to generate a new musical work is to divide the main theme among several instruments, and to provide a simple, brief melody for each instrument in the ensemble. The lead should always have a harmony, although there need not be a harmony for every theme in the work. NES classics are good examples of the fundamental nature of effective musical suggestion. Only three instruments are usually used, at max four with the last acting as rhythm. Despite the small scale of its ensemble, the NES has managed some very memorable music.

I think also that the musical structures that are preferred by a person are relative to the length of the person's own decisive cycle. Perceptive individuals prefer repetitive themes that slowly build to a culmination over several minutes, in the traditional tracker style and in the frame of their analytical cycles. Decisive individuals prefer a loosely stringed set of brief, definite musical movements, each with their own climax in the decisive mind's own brief, delimiting thought cycle. Between perceptive music and perceptive thought, and decisive music and decisive thought, it's the difference between Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, the difference between a lengthly accumulation of ideas leading to a sudden, irreversible conclusion, and an equally volumnous set of determinations culminating in a sudden growth of understanding. The theme of the adventure versus the theme of the individual, as it were.

Is there agreement? Disagreement? Is there something new to be learned here, progress to be made?

[Rainer Deyke]