extracting music from the games?

[gchucky]

hey all. so i'm sitting here with copies of island of dr. brain and freddy pharkas, and i'm trying to dig the music out of them. i tried using GAP and searching through the directories, but it only picks out sound effects, and in the case of fpfp, the talking.

so i turn to you guys. anyone know how i can get the music out of these games? it's gotta be there somewhere...

[Jan]

You can only extract digital music files from games that actually use them (ex. Phantasmagoria II, Harvest of Souls). Both the games you mentioned, as far as I'm concerned, don't...

[Ari]

I don't see anywhere in his post anything that implies he's looking for digital music only.
At any rate, you cannot, as jay suggested, extract midi music from a game using GAP. There are other programs that can do that, but on a limited scale. The best way to extract the music, imo, is to record it in real-time using a sequencer program (such as cakewalk) and 2 soundcards - or better yet, 2 separate computers.
If this is the way you want to approach things, read here.

[Alistair]

I don't see anywhere in his post anything that implies he's looking for digital music only.

Neither does Jan's post imply he made such an assumption

I have the extracted MIDI files from Island of Dr. Brain, and some recorded ones as well, contact me if you like. Not much music, but there's some really nice stuff! I like Rob Atesalp.

- Alistair

[gchucky]

hm, that's a bummer. i guess the recording method would work with island of dr. brain, but not freddy pharkas - every so often, the narrator guy talks to you and is like, GET GOING or something. ah, well.

but yeah, i'll get in touch with alistair.

thanks, guys.

[Jan]

Isn't it possible to turn down or even turn off the speech so the music can be recorded?

[Tom]

If you're recording the MIDI data from a game that supports speech, it's best to install the game with NO Speech Support; tell the game you don't have a sound card capable of digital output - only MIDI.  Also, turn the game's MIDI Volume to the max before recording.   You may not have noticed that the MT-32 soundtrack for The Dagger Of Amon Ra wasn't done in this manner, and all the note velocities are very low in much of the soundtrack; this greatly affects the way the MT-32's  instruments sound.  (I probably should have included that trick in my 'Recording How To'.)

Freddy Pharkas was a bit of a bear to record.  I don't remember now if that was one that didn't follow the above 'Speech Rule' for playback.  I remember one game around that time period that no matter how it was installed, the music cut out when text or speech were used.  Had to manually edit out all the fading volume controllers.

[Alistair]

Ifyou're recording the MIDI data from a game that supports speech, it's best to install the game with NO Speech Support; tell the game you don't have a sound card capable of digital output - only MIDI

Yes, always do that. But as he says, some games don't work like that, like KQ7..

You may not have noticed that the MT-32 soundtrack for The Dagger Of Amon Ra wasn't done in this manner, and all the note velocities are very low in much of the soundtrack;

The MT-32 soundtrack is flawless, and all velocities should be correct. I checked the speakeasy track #2, for example, its' velocities on the clarinet start at 123. Can't be much wrong with that

- Alistair

[Tom]

I stand corrected.  For some reason, Digital Orchestrator Pro has decreased all of the velocities as I've edited and re-saved bits and peices of the 'Dagger' MT-32 soundtrack into smaller, MIDI files (for editing in DOS.)  This is very weird; I haven't applied any transforms before saving the smaller files, but when loaded into SpG, the highest velocity of most of the notes is about 64.  I've been upping the velocities globally in SpG to correct.

[Alistair]

Yes, I didn't think I'd make a mistake like that! Although as I tried to tell you the other day (before for some reason I lost my ability to Private Message) there are other problems with the LB2MT.MID file.

I think I used MIDI Orch Plus to edit that soundtrack, back in the days before I got DOP, which rules. So maybe that has something to do with it.

I should probably clear Tom's comment up- velocities do NOT get lowered by recording with speech playing (or even when speech is disabled and the the game plays without them). However annoying games will cut the volume. But that's easy to counter.. just delete the low 'main volume' controllers.

- Alistair