Pixelation

General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Selassin on December 04, 2013, 05:15:32 am

Title: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Selassin on December 04, 2013, 05:15:32 am
 Hey guys, I want to make some music for my game, I play Rocksmith a bit so I have a guitar, but I don't have much experience with it so I don't plan to use guitar for game soundtracks. I found FamiTracker for 8-bit musics, people make awesome musics, really good tool, though It's a bit hard for me. So what can you suggest me about this? I see some people does coding, pixel art and soundtracks at the same time and I'm wondering how are they doing that? Is there any easy tool around?
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Kasumi on December 04, 2013, 05:51:22 am
You didn't seem to ask about sound effects, but bfxr is easiest for that: http://www.bfxr.net/

For standard music...

There's click and create stuff like Otomata: http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata (Lets you record)

Circuli: http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/circuli (Less useful but is this sort of thing what you're looking for?)

iNudge: http://www.inudge.net/

etc...

There's Musagi: http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html

Super basics of Musagi: When you open Musagi, you'll see a giant grid with time at the top. This is the song. You'll have a subwindow with a keyboard. This is a "part". The song is made up of parts. Click in a part to place a note (the keyboard to the left designates which note), click and drag to make the note longer. You can right click on the song to add a part. You can click and drag the parts to move them around easily.

Beyond that read the included documents.

That said, you may find it more complicated than famitracker.

You can also take a look at the audio tools here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/tools/ Ludum Dare is based around making games solo in a weekend, so I'd assume most things there are built for quick, easy music making.

I believe trackers are the somewhat common way to do things, so what is it about Famitracker that throws you off? I can come up with a bunch of other free trackers, but all trackers are somewhat similar and I find famitracker to be pretty easy compared to most.

As for how people make music, pixel art, and code stuff... usually it's just that they've practiced all these things, not because there's any tool that makes it easy for them.
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Crow on December 04, 2013, 08:37:41 am
You could also give pxtone (http://www.cavestory.org/othergames_pxtone.php) a try, although it may be a bit difficult to get into :ouch:
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Selassin on December 04, 2013, 08:59:07 am
@Kasumi
 The turn off of the FamiTracker for me is not being able to play notes with mouse and since I don't have knowledge, I couldn't create any instrument. Anyway, I looked all of them, though I didn't understand a thing about Linux Multimedia Studio, Musagi and Sunvox looks really nice and simple, I think I'll look into them. Thank you very much!

@Crow
 It looks like I have to spend some time on it, though designing your own noise looks easier with this, which is good for me :) Thanks!
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: r4c7 on December 04, 2013, 11:52:21 pm
@Kasumi
 The turn off of the FamiTracker for me is not being able to play notes with mouse and since I don't have knowledge, I couldn't create any instrument. Anyway, I looked all of them, though I didn't understand a thing about Linux Multimedia Studio, Musagi and Sunvox looks really nice and simple, I think I'll look into them. Thank you very much!

@Crow
 It looks like I have to spend some time on it, though designing your own noise looks easier with this, which is good for me :) Thanks!
Hint for famitracker, try playing with you're computer keyboard. If you have a musical keyboard with midi capabilities, that would work well, too. I can vouch for sunvox, love it, same deal with the keyboard.

I reccomend Audiotool.com (http://Audiotool.com). It has a cool community to help you learn and it can be easy to understand for beginners.
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Lanarky on December 05, 2013, 06:10:32 pm
I've used Linux Multimedia Studio, It's free and runs on linux, windows and mac. It has lots of preset instruments, and allows you to tweak them to sound different. You just have to read the help file a couple of times to find where the presets are, and how to place notes. It handles midi input from electric keyboards.

It also has sine and square waves, which I think is used for games on the NES / GB.

Edit:

lol, didn't notice you'd already tried it!

You could try soundclub, it's also free. I used this before LMMS, and it's really simple to use. It says it's for windows 95/NT, but I've used it on XP too. You can use the mouse to plot down notes, along with midi input from a electronic keyboard too.

http://www.bluemoon.ee/history/scwin/

It's pretty old, so it was hard to find in google again, but if I wasn't using LMMS, I'd still be using this.
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Selassin on December 07, 2013, 11:21:10 am
 After playing with them more, I think famitracker is really good(though I'm still suffering to learn it), so I think I'll go on with it, thanks for your help!
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Kasumi on December 07, 2013, 06:30:04 pm
One way to learn famitracker is to check out the famitracker forums and download people's ftms. People share 'em for critique. If you find one you like, you can see how it's creating specific sounds. You can even share your own for critique. They don't sugar coat for music the way Pixelation doesn't for pixel art.

There's even a tool that will allow you to import NSFs (http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/nsfimport.html) (ripped music from actual NES games) to famitracker, but the way that it does it won't really teach you good workflow with the program. (Like... using instruments.) Covers of NES songs made by people are better, but not every song is covered of course.

Famitracker requires some understanding of hex, and there are some NES specific gotchas. (There's a column for volume for the triangle channel, but it doesn't do anything because the triangle channel volume can't be controlled on the NES. Without weird stuff, anyway...) Still one of the easier trackers I've used, though.
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Mathias on December 07, 2013, 11:30:09 pm
Whatever you do, don't bypass FL Studio during your search. That is one amazing piece of software. I love it.

And it seems to be the de facto standard among serious hobbyists, and even pro's too I think. It can certainly get you pro results. DeadMau5 and other big names apparently use, or have used, it.
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: API-Beast on December 14, 2013, 05:56:52 pm
FL Studio is pretty similar to LMMS, personally I think the LMMS interface is a lot more intuitive, however LMMS's developement is extremly slow since a few years.
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Selassin on December 17, 2013, 02:15:08 pm
@Kasumi
 Yeah, I'm looking into forums to understand more, I have some melodies in my head but I'm still struggling with it.

@Mathias
 FL Studio looks awesome, there's lots of instruments and I can add soundbanks, good interface. It seems like I'll go with FLS because it's really easy to think and do.

@Mr. Beast
 Well, my first experience with LMMS was horrible  ;D

 I think I'm happy now  :) I decided on FL Studio, thank you all!
Title: Re: Music Tools for non-musicians
Post by: Mathias on December 17, 2013, 04:43:48 pm
It is awesome. Took me a little while to warm up to it, but once I did it began to feel pretty intuitive. You'll be happier once you can quickly edit notes plotted in the piano roll window and your patterns in the playlist window. Learn all the keyboard shortcuts to switch tools quickly.
Also, use "undocked" windows if you have dual monitors. This allows you to place windows outside the main window. You can also stretch the main window to cover both mons.
FLS's window setup is different from most Windows programs. Gotta get used to it.