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increpare
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« Reply #40 on: October 31, 2008, 03:14:00 AM »

If I want to do 'chords' with multiple notes do I need to have multiple tracks?
Yep.  One voice per line, as the saying goes (like trackers).  You can view multiple tracks overlaid on each other by selecting several tracks on the unit tab.  Then, in the keyboard tab you can swap between currently active voices by pressing the up/down buttons.

I don't know of any other resources for pxtone.  It's not a particularly deep program though.
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Hayden Scott-Baron
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« Reply #41 on: October 31, 2008, 03:36:10 AM »

I might bug you for some guidance at the Jam, then. Smiley
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Biggerfish
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« Reply #42 on: November 02, 2008, 01:07:44 AM »

I don't agree with the idea that "music can't be taught", while you may find it hard to teach things, in the end you are following methods and doing things that can be explained.

I have been playing an instrument for several years and been learning more in-depth music theory in school for the last couple and while the things I learn can't be applied to every form of composition, they are very portable and it means I can easily sit down and compose a simple (albeit boring) melody that sounds "correct". I think the thing that can't be taught is style (has that been said before in this thread).

Unfortunately (as much as I'd like to), I don't think I'm knowledgable enough yet to make tutorials about (classical) music theory. That, and I don't really compose music that I think is good yet. There are quite a few things that I "just know" - I was taught it and I never really had to form a solid definition of it, so I find it quite hard to explain it to others. Doesn't mean it can't be done though (I was taught, so here is proof it can be done).

But about style, I think that's just something that develops over time (the same as visal arts), but I think that with music, you don't need to be able to put together "musically correct" melodies before you can go off and do whatever you want with it, I think it's just good to know at least basic music theory so you can compose simple (or not) tunes for games.
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laserghost
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« Reply #43 on: November 11, 2008, 04:14:28 PM »

I've been trying to learn myself some music-makin' lately in FL Studio and I found the tutorials on Warbeats.com a great help.

http://www.warbeats.com/Forums/tabid/59/afgroup/7/Default.aspx

On a side note, I found out about warbeats from this man, perhaps the coolest musician in history: http://www.youtube.com/user/ronaldjenkees
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« Reply #44 on: November 28, 2008, 08:40:30 AM »

Hey, if you want to get started on music theory check out Jamey Abersolds "Jazz Handbook" FREE OF CHARGE:
http://aebersold.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=JAZZ&Category_Code=_HANDBOOK
Try starting with these sections:
  • Basic Keyboard and the Chromatic Scale
  • SCALES
  • Circle of 4ths & Scales/Modes Based on the Major Scale
You'll have to know some basic knowledge to understand these, such as the staff and what whole notes/quarter notes are... pretty much if you can read music you'll be fine.
Sorry if these are confusing because they are a bit jazz oriented. Not paticularly those sections, but if you want to go more in depth and look at all of it then I hope you like jazz!
Also, even if you aren't interested in theory, make sure you go and check out his ear training article because there is some really good stuff there.
Hope these were helpful, and good luck to anyone that uses them!

*Edit* wow, this has nothing to do with games does it?
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Hayden Scott-Baron
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« Reply #45 on: November 28, 2008, 09:12:00 AM »

I've been trying to learn myself some music-makin' lately in FL Studio and I found the tutorials on Warbeats.com a great help.

http://www.warbeats.com/Forums/tabid/59/afgroup/7/Default.aspx

On a side note, I found out about warbeats from this man, perhaps the coolest musician in history: http://www.youtube.com/user/ronaldjenkees

Those seem like some amazing tutorials.

Does anyone know of any good GarageBand tutorials? That's my preferred software, and much of that seems quite FL centric.
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Gold Cray
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« Reply #46 on: December 14, 2008, 11:14:19 AM »

Trackers are pretty easy to use though.  In some sense PXtone could be just the tracker you are looking for, excepting that it only exports to its own .pxtone format Sad 

It also exports to wav, which can then be converted to just about anything else. A cross-platform pxtone library would be really nice, though.
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Trevor Dunbar
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« Reply #47 on: January 01, 2009, 02:16:00 AM »

piano playing with Torley 1:


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Hayden Scott-Baron
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« Reply #48 on: January 10, 2009, 03:40:35 AM »

piano playing with Torley 1:



Ah, that seems pretty cool!
Although my two-octave keyboard isn't really going to cut it! XD
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r.kachowski
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« Reply #49 on: February 11, 2009, 02:48:57 PM »

If anyone knows of any decent Famitracker tutorials (except the outdated .pdf they provide), I would donate any 3 vital organs in renumeration.
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increpare
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« Reply #50 on: February 11, 2009, 03:04:39 PM »

If anyone knows of any decent Famitracker tutorials (except the outdated .pdf they provide), I would donate any 3 vital organs in renumeration.
Nope, but have you had a look at MML?  i found it quite entertaining to use (though it wasn't suitable for what I wanted, alas Cry ).
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Havok
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« Reply #51 on: July 21, 2009, 12:45:03 AM »

I ran across this thread and was wondering if there is still an interest in a basic beginner's tutorial for making music. It's something I might be interested in doing to help others and to help solidify certain knowledge in my mind and explore other things I may not know much about. My initial idea is a beginning article discussing tools, techniques, and inspiration for creating music. The inclusion of a bunch of links to other resources would also be part of it. I know that there are some of you who are very good at music and probably even more qualified than me to do something like this but I'll give it a shot if there is interest.

If there is interest do you have any specific requests as to topics to be covered? I'm thinking basic overviews to tools such as trackers, sequencers, vst's and the like. Basic theory, form, and ingredients to music (very basic). And then ways to work with creativity such as motifs and using what you've written to generate more material, keeping your music interesting by not repeating yourself and other things such as that.

Any takers?
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Hayden Scott-Baron
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« Reply #52 on: July 21, 2009, 01:56:31 AM »

Havok, I'd definitely be interested in such a tutorial. It would be nice if it was less tool-specific as I think a lot of people prefer to use whichever tools are comfortable and/or convenient to them. For example, I tend to use Garage Band and Musagi, but they are essentially the same sort of thing with the piano roll.

Simple tips on keeping things in key would be helpful too. Lots of people are new to music theory as well as making game music.

On another topic: I was very disappointed this weekend to learn that PXtone didn't support midi keyboard input. This was a deal breaker unfortunately. Sad
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« Reply #53 on: July 21, 2009, 01:57:58 AM »

I ran across this thread and was wondering if there is still an interest in a basic beginner's tutorial for making music. It's something I might be interested in doing to help others and to help solidify certain knowledge in my mind and explore other things I may not know much about. My initial idea is a beginning article discussing tools, techniques, and inspiration for creating music. The inclusion of a bunch of links to other resources would also be part of it. I know that there are some of you who are very good at music and probably even more qualified than me to do something like this but I'll give it a shot if there is interest.

If there is interest do you have any specific requests as to topics to be covered? I'm thinking basic overviews to tools such as trackers, sequencers, vst's and the like. Basic theory, form, and ingredients to music (very basic). And then ways to work with creativity such as motifs and using what you've written to generate more material, keeping your music interesting by not repeating yourself and other things such as that.

Any takers?

Yes, please =)

All of what you said, really. For starters, it would be really good to have a tutorial giving some overview, about the things you mentioned and also maybe something about different genres and the basics of how to create music in them. Not so much to make you a competent musician, rather providing a basic understanding of it so you know what is interesting to look further into and how you should do it.
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Havok
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« Reply #54 on: July 21, 2009, 02:24:20 AM »

Great feedback!

In regards to the tools: I certainly wouldn't plan on going very in-depth with any of them. Just a cursory overview of what is available and how they are used with links to places that can guide a user in a comprehensive direction. There's no way I could cover everything.

Saint: Your suggestion about touching on different styles of music is a very good one. I have had experience with that this summer as I tried to figure out how to create Trance and Drum 'n Bass music. You can listen to a lot of artists and figure out their techniques but I found that if you can get a grasp of the basics of the style you can move a lot faster into the genre of music. I'll have to think about how to incorporate this idea into it and if it would be worthwhile in a beginning tutorial.

Awesome suggestions! More feedback or expressed interest would be great!
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« Reply #55 on: July 21, 2009, 08:25:15 AM »

This site may be a little more on the high end side of sound design in general. But I frequent it daily to read through all the great tips and tricks that it offers. My personal favorite audio tutorial site out there.

http://audio.tutsplus.com/
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Gold Cray
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« Reply #56 on: August 10, 2009, 01:50:46 PM »

It seems like every music writing tutorial I come across is about how to use some tool, not how to actually write music. I would love to see something about actually writing music. As it is I generally just flail about in pxtone until I've failed completely and then give up.


---------------------
free mp3 wav midi
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hyperduck
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« Reply #57 on: August 30, 2009, 02:22:55 PM »

I play drums, I play a bit of piano. And when it comes to composition, you need to have some form of musical inclination, even if it is or seems, limited.

This is a weird idea, but it's one of many, and a simple but potentially good idea for composing something new out of other tunes.


Take two great popular tunes of your liking.

Say,

1.Michael Jackson - Human Nature
2.Dave Matthews - Grey Street

Ok, you may like or hate my suggestions, make your own up, i'm just spitballing here! Now, here comes the science.

STEP 1: The melody of song 1. Sing it, whether it is just the chorus melody or the verse or the bridge melody, sing one of the melodies, they're all phrased in popular music, and people like catchy phrases of melodies. If it sticks in your head and you can whistle/sing it, then it works. So take a melody and sing it.

Now, if you can understand chords and notes, that will help. If you don't have a big grasp on this, having reference material helps. If you have a keyboard or piano or instrument of sorts, listen to the melody, and try playing the rhythm of it, for starters. If you can hit the rhythm of the melody in time with it, you're onto something.

(I'm doing this in slow steps so forgive me if this is a waste of reading by some standards, Gold Cray just wanted to see how some people compose, and this is one of the methods I use when i'm stumped, not as much but it's interesting to me.)

STEP 2: Rhythm down? Awesome, you rock. Now try playing parts of the melody, even the first two notes, or the first note, just do it slow, if you have the song on reference in your mp3 player then good, keep it handy, if you have the rhythm, this part will be easier. Try assigning each note in the phrase to the rhythm in its form. Bit by bit, rewind it back if you need more, just keep building that phrase up into a melodic phrase. Eventually you have managed to play that phrase by hearing it and playing it out on the keyboard/piano/piano roll.

If you have no instruments, I suggest tapping out the rhythm and/or getting a program with a piano roll in it. This http://www.mymusictools.com/utilities_28/pianofx_studio_20690.htm might work, it may not, but if somebody has a better non-VST source of a piano roll, then please post it.

STEP 3: SO YOU HAVE THE RHYTHM! AND THE MELODY! OF THE first phrase sorry about those caps my shift finger was sleeping. Now you want to get the chords. Now with better ear-training you can really pick out the exact chord pretty much off the bat, but when I first started, I just picked out the bass note changes underneath the melody, and then whatever that note was, in popular music, it tended to be that chord that was being played. Get the rhythm and notes down for this, you've just got yourself a chord progression with a melody to boot.

Ok, so you didn't write it yourself, but that's half the battle.

STEP FRICKIN 4: Next part, get creative. Do this with another tune, but this time, try singing the rhythm of the melody in the first tune over another tune, not the melodic part of it, chances are high it won't be in the same key. Now, take the chord progression from this second tune, and in doing so, apply the rhythm of the melody you original scored/clapped/memorized from song 1. Put it over this tune, and in correspondence to the chord progression in song 2, apply notes to the rhythm of the phrase that fit with the chords from song 2.

SO: Eventually you find yourself having a totally new song, chord progressions get used again and again, and melodic rhythms do as well, but when you take the foundations of both and shift them about, you begin to find new themes. Original & yours.

ALSO: It's good to think of this as the foundation for a theme. So you have your new melody over a different chord progression, it's yours, and you can go where ever you want with it. Take the methods above of mixing other rhythms from various tunes into different sound textures (if one rhythm in song X was on a trumpet, try putting it on a bass guitar in it's lower register in song Y).

Mixing and matching, is what is happening here. I am not suggesting to make it your sole directors choice for composing every time, but you'll be surprised at how it will improve your ear, and some of the things you will come up with, I guarantee will be awesome. Eventually you'll have such a plethora of melodic phrases and rhythms and chord progressions in your mind that you'll stop doing this consciously and it will just flow at times. Everybody get writers block though, and this is a long learning process, but it doesn't have to be a painful one.


I'm sorry, if that helps nobody then no problemo, but I figured sharing one of my many methods might at least humour you lovely people  Beer! cheers!


Chris Geehan.
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Gold Cray
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« Reply #58 on: August 30, 2009, 02:39:49 PM »

I can see that being a really useful approach. Thank you for posting.
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« Reply #59 on: November 19, 2009, 08:27:39 PM »

i would like to say, without being degrading, that this is a very silly thread in a way. im going to compare it to a request for visual tutorials: there may be some on pixel art, on 3d modeling and texturing, animation of 3d models or frame based or flash animation, but NONE on photography.

you dont get where this metaphor is going yet, probably: the visual art of computer games MUST be interactive. people who use drawn or scanned images for games generally have them as the backgrounds or certain styles of flash games where the animation is not very in depth. that said, this is off topic but i wouldnt mind seeing some more frame by frame edited but initially videotaped or photographed based art in computer games. back to this metaphor:
if you wanted to, you could grab a cheap keyboard and make music. it could be pretty freaking good, if you worked at it. but because of the nature and requirements of everything else in a game being interactive, there is an assumption here that music is "created" and or "programmed" instead of just played and recorded as is. PLAYING and WRITING music has been around for MILLENNIUMS. i mean, people go to college for it. and making music, as opposed to playing and writing, is something that people still hardly go to college for at all. you DONT have to make music with software. please, someone who doesnt know how to make music for their game, just go pick up a guitar and find a chord book. furthermore, maybe sing some thing. and the producing part of that, once you have compositional and harmonic material, goes much much further. if you just record two tracks with different effects it can sound great.
this might seem like too small a thing to make this big a deal of, but the thing about melody and harmony is that its really really hard to figure out how to articulate it and write cohesively if youve never ever played an instrument before. instruments are incredibly amazing! do not undervalue them! your sound card probably has a latency of at least 30 ms, and thats something you can hear. that means that there isnt a direct connection from when you make something and when you hear it, its such a distant thing.
all that said, if you want to learn about form and composition, which is really the heart of music, there is a way to do it. there are ways to create music without really writing anything yourself. you can sample simple melodies, use stock beats, and you can also edit it all in a modular way and use lots of effects. its a great exercise in perspective. and, i think tools can be very usefull to exxplore... all you have to do is make sure you arent creating anything other than music.
i hope this helps someone, possibly struggling with what it actually means to create music.
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