Fanatic's Music Class #5

[Arioch]

Fanatic has updated with the results of the 5th Midi composition class, which is a download of about 7 megs. However, due to the lack of interest in the activity, this 5th class is the final Midi class he is doing.

[Guest Ike654]

Dang. I was waiting to see the next set of instruments so I could work with those instead. Oh well.

[captmellow]

I'd rather see an mp3 compo. Can't do midis myself, but I could have tracked some mods & turned them into mp3's. I liked the idea of being limited to the set of instruments, but I just couldn't meet the narrow criteria. I wasn't going to buy a midi composer just for this.

[Guest Hellspawn]

Damn it, I forgot to do mine again. I really wanted another one, too. Damn.

[Law]

Limiting the instuments wasn't that interesting anyway. Especially limiting us to annoying and similar instuments it was difficult to do anything really cool. Class 5 was very disapointing for me as Fanatic promised "HardCore" instruments, but came out with more wimpy sounds. Fanatic, how about somthing that would give us more freedom, and some more time, not to mention a lot smaller download?

[Guest Fanatic]

Whimpy sounds? What would you like to use? White noise?

Gotta remember that the point was the write something new using certain instruments, some of the submissions that just that and surpassed anything I was expecting. David Olofson's songs was amazing, so he didn't have any problems with the classes.

I'm done with the classes, it took me half a day to prepare and record everything, too much effort and not enough interest. I think everyone got out as much as they could from what I was offering. So it served it's purpose, I think at least.

[Guest Vicious]

It's true in a way that the instruments allowed, and the instrument limitations made these midi classes less appealing. It's good that we should learn to use a wide variety of instruments than distortion guitars, electric bass and those common instruments used by a lot of midi artists though.

That guitar soundfont played in the background of class 4 is incredible :)

[Guest Fanatic]

That wasn't a sound font, that was me playing real guitar.

[Lüt]

Well, I started some other songs for some classes, but never finished them. I got taken down by the Millennium stuff. It's very rare that I get a sudden burst of energy to work on it, and when I do I have to go with it and that's what I've spent most time doing the last few weeks. But I did get about all out of them that I could, all I need now is somebody here who's a cakewalk expert who could actually show me how to use the program, and possibly explain why they hired a bunch of potheads to turn out the most unusable music program ever made.

[Guest Fanatic]

heh, I had problems with Cakewalk too. It;s not very intuitive.

With Digital Orchestrator Pro, I didn't even need to read a manual, it's that damn easy to use. The same program with only MIDI (no digital audio) is the MIDI Writer Plus I referened on the classes page.

[bitstate]

I actually tried and converted the soundfonts to a format my tracking software can read but i felt that the limitation in the instruments were to ... limitating.

Apparently though, some people could do some really impressive stuff with them :)

I can understand why fanatic stops doing this but atleast it was a great idea...

[Stitches]

where is /newstuff?

[wavelength]

All you have to work with is bells and whistles for a computer-composition- You don't use musical intruments for Doom music, damnit. I don't think...

[bitstate]

stitches: the /newstuff often reffered to is a folder on ftp.cdrom.com (and it's mirrors) i think it's in like pub/pc/games/idgames or something like that.

[Stitches]

i was referring to the weekly /newstuff update that is usually posted on sundays, and it isnt posted yet.

* Stitches hunts for andrewb

[Guest Ike654]

I didn't find the instruments too limitating. I've used alot of them before (Warm Pad, Koto, Shamisen, and probably another or two). Then again, I seem to make some odd music.

I didn't get to try the soundfonts since my AWE64 is a piece of crap, it seems. All my high-hats are open, the claps/cymbals/slap/other sounds all loop (except snare and bass). No added memory. Bad sounding snares. But, I do like the idea of using only certain instruments to make a song. The challenge is what originaly pulled me to this. All I wished was that there were 1 or 2 more per set, that way I could have drums, chords, background rhythm part, and a melody all with different instruments.

Oh, Lut: I'm pretty good with CakeWalk. It's all I use/ever have used. If you've got questions on CakeWalk or need some SYSEX data for Casio WK-1630 and CTK-601 synths, drop me a line.