I'm makin' video game tunes

[mobius]

I've recently starting making music more regularly than I used to and I'd like to try to remake some video game tunes, I'm particularly interested in songs that are more obscure or in a lesser format, like NES music or 8-bit type song etc. I'm also very interested in songs that may be very short that I'd like to try expanding upon them. For example, the world themes from Super Mario 3. I've been considering expanding upon those.
If you have any suggestions I'd be glad to hear them.

[GigaLem]

This sounds nice but a few questions?

Are you're willing to experiment with anything past 8bit?

and Do you plan on doing original compositions for Neolemmix use?

[mobius]

This sounds nice but a few questions?

Are you're willing to experiment with anything past 8bit?

and Do you plan on doing original compositions for Neolemmix use?

Yes; maybe I should've been more precise: I'm sort of looking to "modernize" 8-bit songs, that is I'd like to do some lesser format songs in standard format. But I'm open to any suggestion.
And yes, I have made 1 original composition so far, you can hear it on my soundcloud. (I have 4 in total actually but the latest one is the one I'm referring to).

https://soundcloud.com/a-tax-980147606/raindrops

[this song may not be particularly good for games but if is, fine]

[exit]

I'm looking forward to hearing what you make! 8-bit songs always make for interesting tunes when remade/modernized.

Raindrops sounds very good.

[Colorful Arty]

what program are you using? I'm trying to find a good, free piece of software for music composition.

[mobius]

The recording and mixing and everything I do with Adobe Audition, which was a birthday present to me way back in the day, probably around early 2000's. I can't be sure but I think it was a couple hundred dollars. It's actually quite outdated; I can barely keep it working on Windows 7. It's pretty similar to Audacity however. I'm sure Audacity can't do everything it can but probably enough.
Other than Audacity I have yet to find a good free program for composition. There's plenty of free versions of expensive programs but I wasn't real keen on those either like Fruityloops. I found those too complicated.

[Colorful Arty]

Do you just record actual instruments in your house, or use built-in plugins to digitally compose music?

[Dullstar]

I've done a lot of video game music covers too, although I don't usually release mine.

I do have some advice that may be helpful (general advice, not program specific, sorry!)

- Never assume someone else's super-convenient-easy-to-get-note-data-from-MIDI-version-of-the-song is correct! Verify that you feel it's at least accurate enough to use before you use it! Sometimes I've seen stupid mistakes in everybody's covers of the same song because the one person that made the MIDI made a mistake, and everyone else went along with it.

- If you're trying to use an 8-bit (or any other sound chip) style, try to use a program such as FamiTracker or Deflemask that actually emulates the hardware you're trying to mimic, rather than using soundfonts. It's really easy to tell if someone's "Super Awesome Video Game Song 8-bit Version!" is actually just a MIDI or similar recorded with a Gameboy/NES soundfont, because in addition to sounding a little off, there will usually be little things like "The NES's triangle wave doesn't support what they just did with it" and "The NES is not capable of playing that many drums at once" and "Where did you get all of those extra channels anyway?"

- Sometimes it's necessary to change a few notes around in a cover. I did a cover of Lemming 3 (Tailor Made for Blockers in the DOS version) for the NES (I mostly do NES covers using FamiTracker, though I do some other stuff too, mostly other sound chips; sounds like you're going the opposite direction, though, but this advice still applies), and had to change a few notes in one of the parts (not the melody though) since, while it sounded okay on the Amiga, it came across as very dissonant on the NES. That said, I prefer to avoid doing this unless it makes a significant improvement.


Finally, random slightly relevant thing to wrap up with:
There is a piano song in the game "Corpse Party: Blood Covered: Repeated Fear" (the PSP version; I don't know if it's in Corpse Party: Blood Covered, the earlier PC version, since I haven't played that one yet) that plays in the Music Room under some conditions (I forget exactly when; I don't think it plays the entire game, but I could be wrong).
The song contains a few very dissonant chords. So someone made a MIDI that (inaccurately, if I recall correctly) attempts to recreate these dissonant chords. Then some people tried actually playing it on the piano! But figuring it out yourself is hard, so let's use the MIDI (this is really the only explanation I can think of for so many people having the same issue)! Those chords in the midi are not actually reasonably possible to play in time. So like every single person who plays the song on the piano on YouTube pauses to move their hand to hit the dissonant chords, then moves back to play the rest of the song.

But here's the catch - if you actually check the original version of the song, the dissonant chord sounds very much like the person playing slammed one of their hands on down where it was on the keyboard and then kept playing. If you try this - you get actually quite close to what it's supposed to sound like (it won't be exactly the same, since you're probably not going to hit the exact same notes) but it gets the effect right and it allows you to continue playing without inserting a pause - just like the original song does.



I actually have an entire soundtrack worth of covers nearly complete. Maybe I should finish it and upload it somewhere.

[mobius]

Do you just record actual instruments in your house, or use built-in plugins to digitally compose music?

I have a couple of Synths/keyboards and a newly bought Alesis Drum pad, and a thing called a Presonus "USB audiobox" which allows you to plug instruments like these or a guitar directly into your PC. The audiobox was around 150$ I think; which was well worth it imo; it's worked great for me for a long time now.
But my method is by far not the most efficient or cost effective; you can get free programs like "Tone2 Firebird" for free; which is a software synth that's pretty powerful. You can use your PC keyboard or a real keyboard to control it. Plus there's things like OpenMPT which are free and I believe they come with their own sounds.
If you use stuff like Firebird; you need another program called VST host or something like that (it's also free) to play/use the software synth.

I personally prefer using a physical machine rather than doing everything on the PC; I feel like I can get better, more real-time control over what I'm doing that way. Now you can also buy real life MIDI controllers; like keyboards and boxes with buttons that are mappable to control anything on your PC. But from what I've seen with them; in the end your spending the same amount of money than doing it the other way so I guess it's a matter of preference.

@Dullstar:

good advice

I'm doing this with hardware and real-time recording, as such my songs may not always bee 100% spot on, but I think that adds "soul" [actual explination: I'm too lazy to spend more time on it to get it right].

Have you ever used OpenMPT? I'd sort of like to get into that but I'm not sure it's right for me; it seems complicated and I'm not sure I'll like all the sounds it has to offer. This, and other MIDI programs like it; can you record your own sounds into it? I'd much rather make my own sounds then emulate other sounds like NES sounds.

Also I should point out I'm not looking to make exact remakes, I'd like to put my own spin on them when it feels right.


You should upload them! I'd like to hear them. Maybe upload them on soundcloud?

[RubiX]

Great!  Making music is so fun

[Dullstar]

Have you ever used OpenMPT? I'd sort of like to get into that but I'm not sure it's right for me; it seems complicated and I'm not sure I'll like all the sounds it has to offer. This, and other MIDI programs like it; can you record your own sounds into it? I'd much rather make my own sounds then emulate other sounds like NES sounds.

I have used it; it's okay but it takes some configuring to make usable (I don't like its default keyboard setup at all). That said, it's a fairly solid tracker; though there may be better ones out there. Tracker formats generally have a pretty distinct sound. Trackers give a lot of control, but it's complicated to get good at and if you want things that don't stick to a very rigid timing grid, you'll have to get comfortable with learning about how the tempo is calculated and how ticks relate to that.

Recording your own sounds depends very much on what program you're using. Generally, yes, most trackers (OpenMPT is an example of a tracker; generally, trackers include any program with its sort of interface for music writings, although of course there's plenty of variation on the specific implementation) allow this. This is definitely true for .mod, .xm, and .it files, all of which I'm pretty sure are supported by NeoLemmix.

Some trackers are designed for specific sound chips, though, and therefore don't have this capability (e.g. FamiTracker produces NES music; Adlib Tracker 2 makes OPL3 music; these programs can only take instruments that the hardware they write for supports - trackers of this type can either be runnable on the hardware they write for or they can use emulate the sound hardware: Adlib Tracker's a DOS program, although a functional windows port that emulates the OPL3 exists, whereas FamiTracker is a Windows program that emulates an NES (but is capable of exporting files you could play on one if you had the hardware to do so)).

If you ever decide to get into chiptune production, most methods of producing them use either a tracker interface or MML, and MML is very difficult and involves files that look like this:

Spoiler

Code Select Expand

A o2 @v0 @1 l4
A r1r1r1r1 L  @q0 @v1 o4 @1
A |:[[c4&c12<g12>e-12]2 c4<g2> | {ce-g}b-2a-4&a-12g-12a-12g1]2 <{g>ce-}4g4&g12g-12a-12g8e-8<{bg>e-}4 c1:|2
(taken from a cover of Link to the Past's Death Mountain theme. Can't remember which part this corresponds to - this isn't the full file and doesn't contain all the information that would be needed for it to compile)

I've messed around with MML a bit but find FamiTracker better to use for NES covers.

I'm doing this with hardware and real-time recording, as such my songs may not always bee 100% spot on, but I think that adds "soul" [actual explination: I'm too lazy to spend more time on it to get it right].

Also I should point out I'm not looking to make exact remakes, I'd like to put my own spin on them when it feels right.

This isn't necessarily bad, but a word of caution:

If it's not 100% note-accurate, it'd better be obvious that it's not intended to be 100% note-accurate.
An analogy:
Animated films (most styles, incl. anime, Pixar-y stuff, old Disney animations, etc.) can look nice and be a fantastic viewing experience! But once they look too realistic (e.g. 2009 film adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" - they went to such lengths to make it look realistic, including basing everything off of real actors' performances, that you have to wonder why they didn't just use live action with a little bit of CGI when needed) the fact that they aren't quite perfect begins to detract from the experience and just makes you wish you were watching something that wasn't animated.

To bring this back to music, it's like the difference between listening to someone play a song in a different style than it was originally written, vs. hearing someone play the song as it was originally written but with a few noticeable wrong notes in there.

[ccexplore]

Finally, random slightly relevant thing to wrap up with:
There is a piano song in the game "Corpse Party: Blood Covered: Repeated Fear" (the PSP version; I don't know if it's in Corpse Party: Blood Covered, the earlier PC version, since I haven't played that one yet) that plays in the Music Room under some conditions (I forget exactly when; I don't think it plays the entire game, but I could be wrong).
The song contains a few very dissonant chords. So someone made a MIDI that (inaccurately, if I recall correctly) attempts to recreate these dissonant chords. Then some people tried actually playing it on the piano! But figuring it out yourself is hard, so let's use the MIDI (this is really the only explanation I can think of for so many people having the same issue)! Those chords in the midi are not actually reasonably possible to play in time. So like every single person who plays the song on the piano on YouTube pauses to move their hand to hit the dissonant chords, then moves back to play the rest of the song.

But here's the catch - if you actually check the original version of the song, the dissonant chord sounds very much like the person playing slammed one of their hands on down where it was on the keyboard and then kept playing. If you try this - you get actually quite close to what it's supposed to sound like (it won't be exactly the same, since you're probably not going to hit the exact same notes) but it gets the effect right and it allows you to continue playing without inserting a pause - just like the original song does.

Okay, you got me curious with this.  This is one version I found on Youtube, not sure how close to the original version it is since I don't play the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IfcHjjqlms

I haven't bothered to search for what you referred to as the "inaccurate" MIDI, but based on the Youtube version referenced above, it seems like the dissonant chords (which by the way are tone clusters) are at the same octave as the normal notes played by the left hand, so they should be playable by the left hand and shouldn't really require all that much of a pause to play by a competent pianist, especially given the rather moderate speed of the song.  Also, the tone clusters are played loud enough to almost drown out everything else at that moment, it actually does sound like the "normal" parts of the music momentarily disappear, kind of like a pause.

And yes, as mentioned in the Wikipedia article on tone clusters I linked to above (see the Henry Cowell section), if there are too many notes, you really would play them on the piano using your entire hand or, no joke, "sometimes with the full forearm". That said, in that particular Corpse Party song, based on what I hear, I suspect the tone clusters are actually of only 2-3 notes, or at least I think very few notes are enough to achieve the effects there.

[Dullstar]

That appears to be a rip of the original.

They are indeed playable by the left hand; I've played this before myself, although I've not recorded myself doing so.

I have absolutely no idea why so many players pause during this section. Also sometimes featuring massive tempo fluctuation! Some tempo fluctuation can make things sound more musical, but it's possible to do entirely too much, which appears to be the case in many of these. Here's an egregious one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-sLMJISIl8
I suspect the person learned from this Synthesia video, since both are mostly (note-wise, at least) accurate, they both contain the same mistake right after the first tone cluster. In the Synthesia video, the extra note appears to result from one of the tones from the cluster being accidentally duplicated into the next beat. This person appears to be doing it very intentionally (basically, blindly following the transcription without checking it for accuracy) and disrupting the flow of the song in order to do it. Most players at minimum slow down and insert a noticeable pause after the clusters. The original plows through them, so the style in the one measure ends up sounding different in a rendition that is otherwise accurate. A single change in something that's otherwise note accurate comes across as a mistake in covers.

Anyway, quality varies. I decided to look again, and noticed that the most prominent pausing location seems to be after the tone clusters. I recall seeing one a while back that seemed like someone was trying to replicate the exact same note clusters the Synthesia one was using, and taking waaaaay too much time to do it.

This one does things right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGKfxIWC8xY

---

Ib_memory is a beautiful piece from a game that I've seen mangled a lot. I am not aware of any accurate transcriptions of it, and if you don't count those as covers, any covers of it that are decent.

[ccexplore]

This one does things right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGKfxIWC8xY

It doesn't have the exaggerated pause, yes.  But both video and audio evidence show that instead of actually playing a tone cluster (of I believe C, C# and D based on the rip), it was replaced by a normal D major minor consonant chord just played slightly louder.  That very much defeats the purpose of having a dissonant sound there.

Ib_memory is a beautiful piece from a game that I've seen mangled a lot. I am not aware of any accurate transcriptions of it, and if you don't count those as covers, any covers of it that are decent.

I gave a quick try and attached is a MIDI of the first few measures (I'm too busy to do the whole thing), based on this rendition from youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzgI9I3wlpY.  The MIDI should be fairy accurate, unless you are specifically going for the slightly detuned sound of the instrument being used in the original (ie. many of the notes are actually slightly out of tune from the normal equal-temperament scale).  That's too much work for me to get that aspect right (and probably still won't sound quite right without the right instrument sound like the original, which probably can't be found in General MIDI) even though it is a key characteristic to the original's sound.