A bit more of talentless work ;)

[jbltecnicspro]

I didn't hear the original, but the remake just sounds plain bad - no matter which way you slice it.  Yeah, I'd say this work is talentless, but I don't think it's wrong to "enhance" works.  I do it all the time, in fact - most of them are unpublished though because they are meant for my own personal enjoyment.  For example, the Ecco the Dolphin series has some pretty good music, but the Genesis sound chip isn't the best.  There's lots of potential with the Genesis chiptunes, so I usually enhance them with my Roland XV and MT-32.  The results sound good to me - and it's done with respect to the composer... whatever that means.  Is it disrespectful to rearrange stuff?  I mean, seriously - some of the best works are reorchestrated all the time, as long as original credit is the actual composer's it shouldn't be that offensive.  Just my two cents

[Alistair]

I think we all have to agree to disagree here

I personally think there's a fine line. There have been notorious 'remixers' in the game music community ,for example, who got kudos for essentially playing a MT-32 MIDI piece on GM with wrong instruments, added beats, and wo na remixing contest. That's messed up and indeed 'talentless'.

Sierra people like Tom, myself and shadowfax aren't talentless in the least- it takes years to get to 'know your product' and how to remaster Sierra's scores well (in other words, to create something that is a little better than the original). I will say I think shadowfax has a hard job ahead of him because it's intensely difficult to modify some old MT-32 sounds to devices like the XR, and I think some of his work suffers from that transition being difficult- whereas since Tom and I use modules that are more basic and more similar t othe original Roland synths used for the scores, it's easier to 'translate' the music over.


But anyway. If anyone thinks it's easy to do what I or others do with Sierra music, they need to check me out- I shoulddo a YouTube video sometime, I probably spend 30 minutes on a track- and that's taking a MIDI I already perfected with an slapped on ending/etc, to be mixed digitally with multiple synths and extra bits added in, too.

Regards,
- Alistair

[Zemus]

Here's a talentless abomination for y'all:

Original

"Enhancement"

Poster Jaesun states that "Ultima VII has been in need of a musical 'face lift' so to speak, for a long time." If the expressed desire for the botoxification of classic game soundtracks isn't a sign of disrespect, I don't know what is.

...His "face lift" is a horribly loud cello (??) sample? Someone buy that man a pair of ears.

[jbltecnicspro]

I think we all have to agree to disagree here

I personally think there's a fine line. There have been notorious 'remixers' in the game music community ,for example, who got kudos for essentially playing a MT-32 MIDI piece on GM with wrong instruments, added beats, and wo na remixing contest. That's messed up and indeed 'talentless'.

Sierra people like Tom, myself and shadowfax aren't talentless in the least- it takes years to get to 'know your product' and how to remaster Sierra's scores well (in other words, to create something that is a little better than the original). I will say I think shadowfax has a hard job ahead of him because it's intensely difficult to modify some old MT-32 sounds to devices like the XR, and I think some of his work suffers from that transition being difficult- whereas since Tom and I use modules that are more basic and more similar t othe original Roland synths used for the scores, it's easier to 'translate' the music over.


But anyway. If anyone thinks it's easy to do what I or others do with Sierra music, they need to check me out- I shoulddo a YouTube video sometime, I probably spend 30 minutes on a track- and that's taking a MIDI I already perfected with an slapped on ending/etc, to be mixed digitally with multiple synths and extra bits added in, too.

Regards,
- Alistair

I'm definitely not saying it's easy.  In fact, I like pretty much all of your work - Tom's Crystal Garden from Kings Quest 5 is still one of my favorite enhancements ever... It pretty much captures the awe and beauty of discovering such things of wonder... And your Legend of Kyrandia enhancements came out well - and Shadowfax - your work is excellent as always.    I wish I had the time and patience to do that with my XV-2020... But I only have stock sounds, and cubase is a pain sometimes.  But in general - you're right - this stuff is hard, and it's a lot more than slapping songs with different program numbers.  Velocities must be changed, etc.  My definition of talented enhancements are subjective obviously - but I want the enhancement to be just that - an enhancement.  In fact, my definition of enhancements seem to be that of arranging - take the original music - keep the skeleton intact and elaborate on it and rewrite it for other instruments.  Since you talk of knowing your gear intimately - I wonder has anyone here taken any orchestration or theory classes?  I've gone away from MIDI except for game tracks (which I think should be done on the Rolands because of their fun sound), and I've thought of simply orchestrating some game tracks.  That way - you wouldn't have to know your gear intimately - just tell the ensemble what you want and it's done (most of the time  ).  Anyways - I know that most of you guys probably don't have access to an ensemble - but it's just food for thought.  Cheers. 

[NewRisingSUn]

Another "talented" individual enhancing the same game:

Fellowship: Original, "Enhancement"
Apparently, he didn't get that the Pipe Organ was there for a reason in the original, since the Fellowship is basically a church. D'oh! He's also making the same mistake that shadowfax made in his earlier "enhancements", which is way too much reverb, to the point that it drowns out the actual music.

Wall of Lights: Original, "Enhancement"
How anyone could even think that the "enhancement" is superior is beyond me.

Is it disrespectful to rearrange stuff?

I don't mind "arrangements", if by that you mean what is found on Japanese game music CDs, which is the complete in-game sound, as played by that particular system, plus a few tracks of the game's thematic material used in a completely different style made using more professional gear.
What I'm talking about is people posting "enhanced" files either for use with the actual game (like that Simon1 hack, or possibly the U7 trainwreck enhancements) or pitch it as "the digital soundtrack", as if there was anything official about it.

[Doctor Creep]

Another "talented" individual enhancing the same game:

Fellowship: Original, "Enhancement"
Apparently, he didn't get that the Pipe Organ was there for a reason in the original, since the Fellowship is basically a church. D'oh! He's also making the same mistake that shadowfax made in his earlier "enhancements", which is way too much reverb, to the point that it drowns out the actual music.

OMG 

[Zemus]

like that Simon1 hack

If I were to record the soundtracks for this and other ScummVM games that support digital tracks, like Discworld, would anyone be willing to host that? It could be called "The De-hanced Project".

I once asked the ScummVM developers if they'd add support for digital recordings to MI1 and Loom, but got a big no because I have no explicit permission from LEC to post my stuff. Those other games already got that support added because of James' "enhancements", but there's no check to see if his files are the ones used.

[Alistair]

Discworld 1 is all MIDI, and it's an excellent SC-55 score. Probably one of the best ever composed (if not my favourite because of the music style).

Zemus- I would DEFINITELY host it if you'd loop the recordings instead of just letting them cut off (alternately I'd allow it if you'd upload alll the WAV files uncompressed for me to do it).

Sadly I don't have time to hear the 'enhancements' but God I really hate it when people change instruments on me. For no good reason either (sometimes it works).

Regards,
- Alistair

[Zemus]

I got a hold of the old XMI specs and am looking into writing a converter to MID now. Working with XMI files is too impractical. Shouldn't take too long. Though the timing in those files seem to be a bit...peculiar

[NewRisingSUn]

Don't write one; I've already done one myself. I'm not going to post it publicly though, lest I become complicit in another crime of "enhancement".

[Alistair]

Oh, BTW- I have all the Discworld 1 MIDI files also if anyone wants them. Raw extracted, not edited.

- Alistair

[parazythum]

Me ! Me ! Me !
You know how to join me

[Salient]

I would like the discworld midi's as well.. Where could I get them?

[Alistair]

In fact, I got them from a website, which has the most game MIDI's of all time:

www.mirsoft.info

- Alistair

[Zemus]

Don't write one; I've already done one myself. I'm not going to post it publicly though, lest I become complicit in another crime of "enhancement".

I wasn't going to write one initially because I had to, but because I wanted to see if I could do it.

It seems to work fine now, though some XMIs have a bunch of F7s at the end that I think is just garbage. The trick to get correct tempo is to set PPQN to 72 in the MID header, remove all old meta tempo events and set the tempo to 100, right? It plays as fast as the official player with those settings at least.

[NewRisingSUn]

though some XMIs have a bunch of F7s at the end that I think is just garbage.

F7s? You mean 7Fs. Those are delta times, not garbage.

The trick to get correct tempo is to set PPQN to 72 in the MID header, remove all old meta tempo events and set the tempo to 100, right?

While the result will be the same, the correct setting according to Miles' MIDIFORM utility is PPQN to 120 and tempo to 60. Even better would be to adjust all delta times to their original values by looking at the old tempo meta events; that makes editing the files easier, with everything falling neatly into the measure-beat grid.

[Zemus]

Yeah, sorry, 7Fs..

Code:

7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 27 b6 75 7f 7f
 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f
 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f 7f
 7f 25 ff 2f 00 00 00

This is the end of one of the files. The reason why I thought it was garbage is that according to some MIDI docs I read, each delta time can only be up to 32 bits long, while these rows of 7Fs are way longer.

Edit: I fixed it now though. Forgot that XMIs add those numbers together instead of shifting the bits.

[Zemus]

Even better would be to adjust all delta times to their original values by looking at the old tempo meta events; that makes editing the files easier, with everything falling neatly into the measure-beat grid.

I attempted this, but it seems the notes still drift out of sync with the beats and measures.

To get the original delta times, I took the current ones and multiplied them with the ratio of the raw values of 60 bpm / original tempo. I got the original tempo from its meta event at tick 0 and I checked that there were no more of them. Probably some tiny error somewhere, but it looked like it would work to me.

[NewRisingSUn]

I attempted this, but it seems the notes still drift out of sync with the beats and measures.

That happens because you're not rounding properly. You should always round down while keeping track of the division rest:

Code:

       deltaOut   = (long long) (deltaIn * 1000000 + tempoMod) / tempoValue;
       tempoMod  = (long long) (deltaIn * 1000000 + tempoMod) % tempoValue;

tempoValue being the value in meta event 0x51. 1000000 being the tempo value for 60 bpm (1,000,000 µs per quarter note).

[Zemus]

I tried that too on dw9.xmi, but I still end up with the same result. It plays at the same speed as the XMI file in Miles' MIDI player, but at its original tempo of 101.01 (according to meta 0x51 at tick 0). It still drifts off. :S