well, FL is all software synths... not as versatile as hardware ones, but they get the job done. (and they're cheap).

getting a trumpet synthed in FL is possible, but difficult to get right. it's really more for electronic stuff, but if you've got enough samples, i suppose anything is possible in that sucker. 

Fallout 1/2 music is great. Sets the mood and makes the game even better (I just finished replaying fall2 once again) 

about synths. does anyone know how powerful softsynth is compared to hardware. i don't mean: yeah, sounds cool bla bla. just wondering if anyone has any knowledge of the coding. my dad knows quite a lot about hardware but when i ask him how close software gets to hardware emulation his knowledge runs out. i'm just curious, nothing more. i wonder if software will be able to overtake hardware with more powerful pcs. 

I have a friend who's a hardware synths freak (He must own more than a hundred) and he was really amazed by some soft synths sounds from Gernerator and even Buzz. So it mustn't be be too bad. 

I have a friend who's a hardware synths freak (He must own more than a hundred) and he was really amazed by some soft synths sounds from Gernerator and even Buzz. So it mustn't be be too bad. 

):o 

BUzz ? haha
It sounds so dirty and noisy
Generator/reactor ontoh has great pro quality sound 

i tried using buzz sometime last year. I'm not even much of an audiophile, and i still noticed a sort of dirty/noisy sound from it. Too bad, becuase it's kind of a nice program in some ways. 

and its sound (not all); unfortunately, the sequencer is a bitch to use; anyone can point me to a good free (or *cough* hacked) sequencer?

Generator is much better though.
And much more expensive. 

fat con was recommending it some posts ago. if you really wanted something cheap, and did all your sounds in wave, you could use danceejay. ok, ok, you can start laughing now...
sequencers are just drag n drop so basically all the same... 

renoise.com <- the best tracker. VST support and great quality sound. And it has FT2-like patterns!

The basic version is free, advanced is ~45$

I may sound like a sort of shill, but it is the best tracker I`v tried. It sounds better than fruityloops and IMHO even reason. 

 

I haven't tried a lot of other things but I definitely recommend ModPlug. It's straightforward, versatile and very windows-y (although still a little different since this music after all).

Since I got into this sequnced format to make music for Cube, any tracker that doesn't output in a compatible format is useless to me. Of the progs that talk classic MOD formats, ModPlug is the most modern I think (BTW, I couldn't run FastTracker on my PC because of DOS sound issues). You will have to take care of sample *recording* seperately, however, since that's not built in.

The episode I was talking about in #6 above is released, see News. The levels can almost be classified by the music associated with them.

To bring it back to games, one possible concern to those making downloadable stuff is filesize. I did miracles with the filesize for the music for my episode (over 14 minutes worth for about 1.3 meg!), but hit counts still indicate a good possibility some balked at a download when seeing the 2.4 MB download (huge for a Cube non-conversion set, 60% music). 

I downloaded it just for the music! 

I'm using Reason and Live mainly to make music. If you wanna check some of it out, go to www.mp3.com/blitz_music and give it a listen.

I find that Reason is all you need to make music =) 

i guess i'll get round to checkin stuff but as my dj partner says: make the choons first and only then start complaining about the sound. at least you made somethin!

i cant understand how the .mod contains such accurate info but in such little space. way better than midi. so why do we use wave format? ok, for the live instruments recorded with microphones i guess. but do we need wave for dance music? 

i'll be using renoise possibly. looks interesting. cant do a websearch for "Live" realistically, so if anyone has their website, it would be useful.

the main prob i have at the moment is that with reason2 i can make 90% but for one off samples and stuff i have to use an external sequancer. also i have problems with tempo signature (3/16 in a 4/4 tempo for example).

ps remixonline is a nice site 

"i cant understand how the .mod contains such accurate info but in such little space."

Many MODs are very MP3-sized. The samples are basically WAVs. You can convert a WAV to a MOD, but the filesize is essentially the same. Two things make them small -- without lossy compression. One is if the total length of the samples is shorter than the song. If the sample is a note, it can be repeated and transposed. If the sample is a bit of something like a voice or riff, it can be repeated or played in any fraction. The second thing is that a bunch of lo-fi samples playing together sounds much better than a whole piece of music squashed into a single waveform at the same quality setting. Different quality samples can be used according to frequency of use, sample length, and volume (it's also easy to make different quality versions of the track).

You could make a huge MOD, for example if many tracks played a different hi-fi sample each as long as the song, like a conventional multitrack almost.

A MOD is basically a MIDI with samples attached and few extra frills. MIDIs use stock sounds; they can be OK, but for some reason few are... could be the composers, or those sounds don't inspire.

As you can see from the above, MODs are basically put together by hand, so conversion to that format tends to be impractical. Playback also requires a compatable player, and streaming is impossible. Since they're based on uncompressed audio, low bandwidth versions can be slightly harsh, but tighter and less homogenized than MP3. 

cheers for that. i understand it now. i know what you mean about quality of samples and stuff. often you can get them down in size quite a lot without hearing difference (not on PC anyway). 

"...i have problems with tempo signature (3/16 in a 4/4 tempo for example)."

Are you talking about dropping in samples with a beat rate of 4 to 1, in which case the loop will resolve temporally every three bars. Or have you matched the beat rate and thus require 12 bars for resolution? 

I tend to have a Electronica Playlist on when I'm playing... Quite a chunk of it is by Killjoy :) 

basically playing 3 notes in a 1/4 length. easy with a keyb. havent found a way of doing it in reason. that's NOT 3/4 tempo I agree.

I am not yet making tunes where the tempo signiture changes (unless i was making eclectic music like QUeen or something). so its just a matter of finding ODD divisions in an EVEN matrix. i'll figure it out somehow... 

have you heard Dream Theatre? 

"also i have problems with tempo signature (3/16 in a 4/4 tempo for example). "

...are you talking about sixteenth note triplets? i.e. each note getting one third of the quarter note? if so yeah, alot of music progs like acid, etc dont even consider these, and it sucks. not all music is based around 4/4 and derivitives thereof.

by the by, tempo is not the same thing as time signature. time signature is a representation of what gets the beat and how many there are. 5/8 = 8th note gets the beat, 5 of them per bar, etc. tempo is pace, the speed of which the beat is played. you might have known this, but w/e.


and yes, dream theater r4wks. if you like that sort of stuff but without the cheesey vocals check out don caballero 

Acid is loop based, so you just do a loop at 3/4
Most of the software synths let you change the length of the pattern. IE set bass machine pattern length to 6 beats and drums to 8 or 16 and there you go.