Need someone who's good with music...

You can talk about almost anything that you want to on this board.

Moderator: Moderators

DementedPurple
Posts: 318
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:20 pm
Location: Colorado USA

Need someone who's good with music...

Post by DementedPurple »

Call me immature, but I like my memes. and for a meme I'm making, I'm going to have We Are Number One play with animations and everything on a real NES. Of course, I'll need someone who can take a midi and find the most important parts and narrow it down to two square waves, one triangle wave, and one noise channel. Here is the midi that I would like it to be based off of. You don't need any programming knowledge, I'll be programming it myself. Don't worry about making it into factors of V-Blanks, I can read sheet music myself and will do all of the conversion myself (You will be credited in the video!)

Edit: Sorry, phpBB doesn't support the .mid extention.
DementedPurple
Posts: 318
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:20 pm
Location: Colorado USA

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by DementedPurple »

Well, I guess if it won't let me import the midi, I'll just give you the link so you can download it yourself:
https://onlinesequencer.net/317297
User avatar
dougeff
Posts: 3079
Joined: Fri May 08, 2015 7:17 pm

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by dougeff »

There is a Japanese saying... I think it's 'Muzukashii to omoimasu'...which translates to something like 'it would be difficult'. Not just the music part, but all of your plan.

But, they say, a journey of 1000 miles begins with one step. (-Lao tzu)

Take it slowly.
nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8734
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by rainwarrior »

DementedPurple wrote:I'll need someone who can take a midi and find the most important parts and narrow it down to two square waves, one triangle wave, and one noise channel.
... You don't need any programming knowledge, I'll be programming it myself. Don't worry about making it into factors of V-Blanks, I can read sheet music myself and will do all of the conversion myself
Instead of requiring them to write in sheet music and manually converting it to your own data format, writing your own music engine, etc. it would probably be much simpler to have them use FamiTracker, and use it's engine instead. It's already a great tool for making NES music, and there's a large community of people who know how to use it.
DementedPurple
Posts: 318
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:20 pm
Location: Colorado USA

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by DementedPurple »

Yeah, I don't really know how I would apply the stuff that is made in FamiTracker to a functional ROM, and I don't think I would need an entire music engine considering it will only be playing one song. It would be a very simple program, simply counting the number of V-Blanks and then decides what note to play according to how many V-Blanks it has counted.
User avatar
pubby
Posts: 583
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2016 11:15 am

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by pubby »

The simple way to play music is to use a pre-made music engine.

The complex way to play music is to spend a week writing your own music engine (yes, that's what counting VBLANKs and playing notes means) and week converting MIDIs to whatever arcane data format you reinvent.

Just use Famitone2, like everyone else. It'll be way easier.
dougeff wrote:There is a Japanese saying...
There's another one too :P
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8734
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by rainwarrior »

DementedPurple wrote:I don't think I would need an entire music engine considering it will only be playing one song.
Why would it matter whether you're playing 1 song or 20? You need a music engine to play one either way. (I think of the Famitracker music engine probably only like 10 lines of code are dedicated to being able to play multiple songs?)
DementedPurple wrote:It would be a very simple program, simply counting the number of V-Blanks and then decides what note to play according to how many V-Blanks it has counted.
Well, this is the basic operation of a music engine, but unless you're looking for an Atari 2600 style soundtrack there's probably a little more to it than you are expecting?
DementedPurple
Posts: 318
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:20 pm
Location: Colorado USA

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by DementedPurple »

Well, It's nice that both of my parents are band-directors, so I realize that I could probably just ask them.
User avatar
dougeff
Posts: 3079
Joined: Fri May 08, 2015 7:17 pm

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by dougeff »

there's probably a little more to it than you are expecting?
Famitracker allows you to create 'instruments'. Which can do...
Volume patterns

/```--,,,___

Pitch changes, on each note
Duty cycle changes, on each note
Vibrato, pitch slides, etc.

And, it compresses the data.

At the least, you should have volume changes, since real notes fade out (unless you're playing organ or synth).

TL:DR it's hard. Try learning an existing system.
nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES
tepples
Posts: 22708
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by tepples »

Perhaps the sentiment is "I don't want to spend ROM or RAM on effects I won't use."
DementedPurple
Posts: 318
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:20 pm
Location: Colorado USA

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by DementedPurple »

tepples wrote:Perhaps the sentiment is "I don't want to spend ROM or RAM on effects I won't use."
Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to say.
tepples
Posts: 22708
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by tepples »

Then perhaps a better choice is to compose in FamiTracker with the limits of Pently in mind, convert it to Pently, and use Pently's config file to disable support for features not used.
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8734
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by rainwarrior »

tepples wrote:Perhaps the sentiment is "I don't want to spend ROM or RAM on effects I won't use."
That was the goal of FamiTone2, which still uses Famitracker to compose the music, just replaces the engine in the NES ROM with a more limited subset with a smaller footprint.

Of course, it's not you that's using it, you're asking someone else to write the music... which is exactly the problem a lot of people have with using FamiTone2: they want to do stuff that Famitracker can that FamiTone2 can't. It's based on only the set of features that shiru wants. If you want your composer to work with sticks and stones instead you can cut down the requirements pretty darn low, but your music is going to sound poorly for it.

(You haven't asked how much ROM or RAM it takes up, though, so please forgive me if I'm dubious that this is your real reason for rejecting it. It has been practical for many modest ROM/RAM budgets in real projects in the past.)


My suggestion to use Famitracker is that you can cast a wide net when looking for a composer/arranger, and it's relatively easy to integrate into a project. Much wider pool of available talent than you can draw on with "just give me sheet music and I'll type it in by hand", and much less work for you.

You sound determined to do it yourself, though, so if that's the case I wish you fun and luck learning the ropes.
User avatar
Zutano
Posts: 38
Joined: Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:22 pm
Location: Ohio, USA
Contact:

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by Zutano »

Someone on the FamiTracker forums has adapted We Are Number One for the NES:
http://forums.famitracker.com/viewtopic ... one#p19204

Just download the FTM file and use FamiTone2 to import directly into your NES project:
https://shiru.untergrund.net/code.shtml

Unfortunately you may have to remove many of the effects, since FamiTone doesn't support most effects for exported songs. But it shouldn't take too long to go through and remove the unsupported effects while still making it sound decent.
http://zutanogames.com/ <-- my dev blog
DementedPurple
Posts: 318
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 5:20 pm
Location: Colorado USA

Re: Need someone who's good with music...

Post by DementedPurple »

I also found the vocal tracks without any insturmentals here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwQu4UDVqTg I could probably get DPCM samples of "Hey!" and "We are number one!" to use in the song
Post Reply