Cheapo music questions

[Proxima]

P.S. Ahribar: I'll send you what few MID's I've got but they're are probably ones you've already got.

Thanks! Gratefully received..... there was one there I didn't have yet, the one called "LEMMING5B", and I'm very pleased to have got it!

[Guest2]

This thought just struck me.

Why are we so concerned with getting the ONML music in MID format. I've got ALL of them in MP3 format. Maybe we could talk Steve into incorporating the use of MP3's as background music instead of having to use MID's?

I mean, in the days of the original Lemmings hard drive space was at a premium and smaller file sizes (MID's) were preferred but in this day and age of 250 Gb hard drives and 2Ghz processors why couldn't we just use MP3's as the background music?

Just something else to think about. Let me know what you think.

Guest2

[Guest2]

Sorry Ahribar, I was busy typing another post and didn't see yours.

I'm glad you got them. Yeah, that Lemming5B is just a variation or 'remix' of Lemmings5 but it sounds good. Not sure where I got that.

Later
Guest2

[guest]

Why are we so concerned with getting the ONML music in MID format. I've got ALL of them in MP3 format. Maybe we could talk Steve into incorporating the use of MP3's as background music instead of having to use MID's?

It's Peter actually, not Steve.  It's not a bad idea except this means we'd be talking about 20 MB style files......

I don't know how people feels about downloading that.  Certainly the 56k modem users will be very annoyed.  

[guest]

What about that "Export as MIDI" option? How in the world is that supposed to work. I've tried all sorts of things, trying to find intruments on my PC that correspond with the Amiga instruments and so on, with disastrous results. You should hear some of the garbage I've come up with!

Hmm, didn't know Modplug tracker has this.   I'll try it out and see.

when I look at the Amiga 'Holiday Lemmings' .ADF files I see 'SoundPlayer V4.05 (C) Scott Johnston &#A0;12/3/1991' which makes me wonder if those tricky fellows at DMA Design didn't use this program or some variation thereof to do/play the Original Lemmings or ONML music?

You must have not played lemmings too often.  Scott Johnston (or some name like that) is credited in the game as the person responsible for the music.    So yes, DMA Design used that program since one of their guys wrote it!

It could be true though that this player might have been used for more than just Lemmings, and so maybe someone out there would know something about it and therefore something about the format of Lemmings music.  Not me though.

[guest]

I don't know how people feels about downloading that. &#A0;Certainly the 56k modem users will be very annoyed. &#A0;

In fact, even the non-56k modem users may have some issues to deal with.  Some site hosts, such as Yahoo Geocities, put limits on the site's traffic so that if more than X MB of data was downloaded from a site they host within say an hour, the site is shut down for a certain amount of time.  And with Yahoo, I've found that you can't download more than, for example, 4 1 MB files in one sitting without triggering the shut down (an hour).

So unfortunately, even in the days and age of Ghz computers and GB hard drives, uploading and downloading hasn't quite totally caught up yet.  That being said, these issues are not insurmountable either.

[Guest2]

Yeah, hadn't thought about the style files having to contain the whole MP3. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Guest2

P.S. Sorry 'bout that Peter! Don't know where 'Steve' came from!

[guest]

Just want to update everyone that MIDIs for the ONML music and the Lemmings "special graphics levels" music are coming along quite well.  This is because I finally wrote a converter to convert the sound command capture files (*.dro) from DOSBox to MIDI.  It's not an automatic conversion but it certainly saves time from having to enter all the notes manually by hand.

I'm going to start a new post for people to comment on MIDIs that I have sequenced through this effort.  Only 1 so far (not counting the raw conversion MIDIs which is only half the work needed).

[DragonsLover]

guest, you don't need. I'm already sequencing them by hand. Ok, it would be probably very long, but the quality of the songs will be better too.
By the way, I already completed two of the special levels: "Menacing" and "A Beast of a Level I"

Want to hear them? Email-me!

[guest]

Not to be rude, but I see no reason why the creation of Lemming MIDIs has to be monopolized to you alone, DragonsLover, as you seem to be implying.

I've heard your MIDIs.  They are good, but I can definitely tell you that if I were making them I probably would have made different choices regarding various things such as instrumentation etc.  Keep in mind that MIDIs can sound quite different depending on which sound card you are playing them back on, so what sounds great on yours might or might not work as well on other ones, so it's probably best to have a diverse mix of MIDIs even of the same songs.

And as for quality, we can let people in the forums decide.  I think it would be a mistake for you to think that my work is just pressing a button.  I spend quite a lot of time afterwards in deciding on instrumentations and on balancing the volume amongst the parts.  I'll admit that as much as I'd like to, I don't have the time or resources, and to some degree the experience, to really perfect the MIDIs, but at the same time the world can't wait forever, and music is subjective anyways.

I will also like to point out that one benefit of the conversion process is that it does guarantee you won't be missing any notes or having the wrong ones by accident.  Which I have to say I've found a few in your MIDIs.  Infrequent, and certainly nothing that would be a showstopper per se, but I can definitely pinpoint them out if I'm forced to.

[guest]

Ok, I guess I overreacted at the end of a long day.  Sorry for ranting a bit harshly over this.

That being said, the point stands in that I want to emphasize I'm not merely going to do a half-ass job in order to mass-produce the MIDIs in a short time.  In fact if I were to do a half-ass job, I can already just post right now all the raw conversion MIDIs of all the "missing music" Ahribar requested and be done with it--and no one would want them because they would definitely sound half-assed.

I can understand what DragonsLover had said in the context that the MIDI apparently didn't play correctly in his sound card so that he couldn't hear the correct instruments.  And I'm sure there are plenty of improvements to anyone's MIDIs, and certainly mine.  But with the amount of time I've spent on this, I can't help but overreact a little at the end of a mediocre day over the implication that I'm trading off quality for speed.

That's simply not true.  I'm perfectly capable of doing them all by ear but getting all the notes down is for the most part not very interesting, it's like dictation.  The conversion program is simply like a dictation secretary, a way for me to quickly get me to the point where more interesting and meaningful work can be done.  As I said, it's only half the work.  The MIDIs I'm posting will have all gone through at least one round of instrumentation and balancing, and possibly more detailed work as time permits.

And I might add that although I didn't explicitly say it, the MIDIs I made are released in "public domain" (ignoring the technical legal issue that the real copyright holder is Scott/Brian Johnston), so feel free to take whatever I post and make improvements to them as you desired.

[guest]

I figured in the interest of possibly speeding everyone's work on the MIDIs, I'm going to upload a tool I've written that can playback the .dro files you get from DOSBox's OPL capture feature (Ctrl+Alt+F7).

I could upload my conversion program, but for various technical reasons I don't think it's a good idea (mainly, it's currently written to be used in such a way that you re-compile the program for each conversion; in short, not easy to use for the average user).  But if you insist you can e-mail me for the conversion program as well.

Anyway, if you download

http://www.geocities.com/guestlevels/lemmings/testdro.zip

Inside the zip file is testdro.exe, a DOS program.  You use it by invoking the program in the DOS Prompt along with the name of the .DRO file you want to playback.  For example, if the .DRO file is lemmings_000.dro, you'd enter in the DOS prompt

testdro lemmings_000.dro

The program is actually meant to be used in DOSBox.  You're not likely to hear any music if you use it in straight DOS, anymore than you'd hear music in Lemmings itself under straight DOS.

The main feature that makes this possibly useful is, you can mute and unmute individual channels as you listen.  The Adlib music synthesizer that the Lemmings music are playbacked on has 9 channels numbered 1 thru 9.  Using the corresponding keys on your keyboard, you can toggle the mute/unmute status of each channel.  In addition, the "P" key lets you pause and unpause the playback at any point (and you can do toggle the mute/unmute during a pause as well).  To stop playback, just press any other key and the program will exit.

So instead of having to tease out the notes of a particular instrument within the haystack of the 4-5 instruments that might be playing at the same time at any moment, you can now hone in to just one particular channel at a time, which generally corresponds to one specific instrument.  Depending on the music and your ears, that might be of help.  You can also try it on music other than the ones from Lemmings, but be warned that this program does not have proper support for the full features of the sound card, so .dro files captured from other games might or might not playback properly.

[Essman]

Yeah, hadn't thought about the style files having to contain the whole MP3. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Guest2

P.S. Sorry 'bout that Peter! Don't know where 'Steve' came from!

I'll investigate the usage of MP3s. Even though the size is large compared to MIDI, if someone REALLY wants to use MP3, they should be able to.

[DragonsLover]

guest,

I don't want to be "the only one" to sequence MIDIs. If you sequenced some, that's ok! Then, if you've found few mistakes in my songs, then talk me much about that to see how could I correct them.

Also, I'm interested for the conversion program. Just email-me!

[guest]

Also, I'm interested for the conversion program. Just email-me!

Okay, I'll e-mail you the conversion program, but since it sounds like the MIDI-editing program you are using have (understandably) a lot of trouble with the MIDIs my conversion program produces, I'm not sure how useful the conversion program might be for you.

And thanks for being gracious in the face of my harsh comments.  I really regretted posting some of them, I wasn't in the right frame of mind back at the moment.  X_X