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A more robust Music System?

Discussion in 'Release 38 Feedback Forum' started by Sorthious, Feb 10, 2017.

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  1. Sorthious

    Sorthious Avatar

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    While I enjoy being able to play music in the game there are several problems with the current state of music in the game. The instruments, for the most part, could have a better timbre and sound more realistic. Most instruments sound nothing like their real world counterparts. The flute, in my opinion, is the most realistic sounding instrument in game. There is currently a bug with Rests being interpreted/played. Songs are not starting from their beginnings. I have noticed, in some original songs I converted to .abc, that 32nd notes have a problem playing. I'm not sure if this is to do with the conversion process or with the parser itself though. I'm sure there are other problems with the way the game interprets .abc/.mml files, but I haven't tinkered with it enough to get a full understanding of what is and what isn't working properly. I'm sure others can give additional feedback as to what else may not work correctly.

    In addition to those problems i'm wondering if we could get a more robust music system to more realistically reproduce music. For instance, I would love to be able to play MIDI(.mid/.midi) files rather than, or in addition to, .abc/.mml files. I can represent a lot more musical data in a Midi file than I can in the current file formats. Additionally, with MIDI we won't have to have a seperate conversion program to put our sheet music into a file format that the game will recognize. I'm not sure if this would create too much overhead with regards to bandwidth, as I know MIDI files are much larger than .abc/.mml files, but are still relatively small with regards to other file types.

    Things I would like to see added would include the following; Multiple-Voices(not instruments), Sustain for notes/chords, instrument specific ornamentation of notes(legato, slurs, tenuto,etc.) Eventually I would like to see other instruments added; Cello, Violin/Violla, Stand-Up Bass. Anyway, these are just a few ideas to help make for a better music system in-game. I believe that having a better way to reproduce music in game will make for a better, more immersive, gaming experience for players. I know you guys/gals are busy with fixing/enhancing other areas of the game right now, but this is something I, and others, would like to ultimately see in the game. If you are a player who is also interested in what I'm talking about, please take the time to either 'like' this or add comments/suggestions about this topic and let the Devs know that this is something that we want!
     
  2. Vas Corp Por

    Vas Corp Por Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    A lot of people are running midi-to-abc conversion programs. I think the issue is file size/complexity. Not everything translates well, and some instruments have more notes/octaves available. Sometimes the midi-to-abc converters let you play more complex/much longer songs than could be transcribed to in-game sheet music, which is a kind of cool 'live music' feature some people know how to do (I'm still learning). I'm super impressed with the functionality of the instruments as they are but I agree, more improvements would be even better!
     
  3. Sorthious

    Sorthious Avatar

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    I could forego the extra octaves if we could get Multi-Voice(one note held down, while playing other notes), having the Rests work properly, and having Sustain on appropriate instruments. The piano is a good example of an instrument that deserves sustain. Everything else would just be icing! I figured MIDI files would prob be too big for in-game playback. I use an ABC converter but its just a hassle. I have to write the music in MuseScore, save it natively, export it to MusicXML, then convert that to ABC via xml2abc. Just an awful lot of steps when I could simply save the file as MIDI in MuseScore(and, i'm guessing, every music publishing software out there), and pop it into the SHEETMUSIC folder. Anyway, thanks for the feedback! (^8
     
  4. Graynight

    Graynight Avatar

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    Ahhh, someone else having an issue with the song starting about three bars in. I quasi-fixed it (band-aid) by adding a few bars of rests in the songs that I write. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

    I haven't had trouble with the 32nd notes or rests though. Do you have an example? (Of course, I play the music, then tweak it til it sounds right, so it may just be my altering of the song)

    I definitely agree that a more robust system would be nice, but I'm actually annoyed at how many people just take music and convert it. IMO, it takes the fun out of the game just being able to download some random song and convert it. The music I play, I transposed it from sheet music directly and altered it to fit the instrument (and play system).. I would prefer that you couldn't just convert music and load it in... instead you would have to write it in game.
     
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  5. ShadeObscura

    ShadeObscura Avatar

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    I personally like that we can transpose music to bring it into the game. I have pieces of music that you can not find recordings of, much less the sheet music due to it being in an out of print old piano lesson book (maybe from the 60's or 70's, copyrights are from turn of the 20th century).
     
  6. Sorthious

    Sorthious Avatar

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    @Graynight Here is a song that I wrote that I'm having trouble getting to play correctly. I take it back, it was 16th notes not 32nds.

    Here is the original(I had to rewrite this as the game doesnt recognize multiple voices(I wrote this for guitar btw.) :

    [​IMG]

    For some reason the converter I use 'xml2abc.py'(Linux) adds %'s and $'s into files which doesn't seem to bother it and I can't figure out what they do, but I delete them anyway, as they don't change the music.
    Anyway, here is the ABC file that was converted from the above score:

    Code:
    X:1
    T:Sorthious' Theme
    L:1/8
    Q:1/4=85
    M:4/4
    K:C
    V:1 treble-8 nm="Acoustic Guitar" snm="Guit."
    V:1
     z8 z8 z8 z8 z8 [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg |
     [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd |
     [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dB[GBd] | [A,^ce]^GE^c [A,Ge]^cG[A,c] |
     [CEGBe]cGc [DB]cFc | [A,^ce]^GE^c [A,Ge]^cG[A,c] | [CEGBe]cGc [DB]c[de]c |
     [A,^ce]^GE^c [A,Ge]^cG[A,c] | [CEGBe]cGc [Dd]c[dg]c | [CEGce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg |
     [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd |
     [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg |
     [FBe]/f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dB[GBd] | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [A,FAc]4 | z4 | [G,GBdg]8 | z4 | [CEG]8- | z4 | [CEG]8 |]
    
    The 2nd bar is the part that doesnt play right in game. Maybe it's something I'm doing wrong, anyway...If need be maybe I can post a MIDI playback of this song and an ABC playback via SOTA for you to compare.
     
  7. Graynight

    Graynight Avatar

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    Ahhh, I think I see it.

    Looks like your program tries to put the information after the bracketed notes: [FBe]/

    Works great for the program, not so hot for SOTA. Try putting it in individually, even in the brackets: [F/B/e/]

    Try this, see if it's what you were looking for

    Code:
     z8 z8 z8 z8 z8 [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg |
     [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd |
     [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dB[GBd] | [A,^ce]^GE^c [A,Ge]^cG[A,c] |
     [CEGBe]cGc [DB]cFc | [A,^ce]^GE^c [A,Ge]^cG[A,c] | [CEGBe]cGc [DB]c[de]c |
     [A,^ce]^GE^c [A,Ge]^cG[A,c] | [CEGBe]cGc [Dd]c[dg]c | [CEGce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg |
     [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd |
     [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dBd | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg |
     [F/B/e/]f/c/A/ [FAf]c [Ge]dB[GBd] | [Ce]cGe [B,cg]c/B/ Gg | [A,4F4A4c4] | z4 | [G,8G8B8d8g8] | z4 |[C8E8G8] | z4 | [C8E8G8] |]
    Catchy tune.... I like it.

    *Note - I just edited the code because I missed one... sorry about that.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2017
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  8. Sorthious

    Sorthious Avatar

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    Aye..but these are the sort of things I'm talking about. Most people won't know how to manually edit ABC files to get them to work. I think the ABC Parser that the game is using might need some adjustments. I shouldnt have to designate an entire chord as 16th notes(if I understand what the issue is.) So basically I was using [FBe]/ which should play the notes FBE as a chord and cut the Standard Note Length of 1/8 by 1/2, yet SOTA wants me to reformat it to designate EVERY NOTE within that chord as dividided by half; [F/B/e/] This seems like a lot of extra work when the single forward slash designates the note value for the entire chord. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to tell the parser that either/or would be acceptable ways to describe note length of chords. Anyway, I tested your fix and it works great now! Thanks for the comment on the song...altough it's terribly stripped down from the original, which used Multi-voice, tap-on's/pull off's,etc. and I wrote other parts for cello, bass,etc.
     
  9. Daxxe Diggler

    Daxxe Diggler Avatar

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    First off, let me say that I know nothing about reading or writing sheet music. But at the same time, I love that my Avatar can play sheet music in SOTA! So these kinds of posts get my attention. There is just something about pretending to be a musician that is super fun. I could never do so in real life. As fun as it is pretending in a fantasy game world... it really bugs me when my songs don't sound right. And like I said, I'm clueless with sheet music so don't know how to fix broken songs.

    This is why I love when people who have a clue about a certain system (in this case music) provide feedback and suggestions that might lead us to improvements.

    Secondly, I'm not sure if you guys are aware... but the current music system was largely (if not almost entirely) provided by a player and integrated into the game. I could be wrong, but I don't think the Dev staff has an "expert" of music to be able to make any vast improvements to what we have now. I'm sure they have enough talent to give us something that works. But the finer details that you guys are discussing may not be their strong suit (my gut feeling only).

    I'm only posting this because even though I know they would love to give us the most robust music/instrument system ever... I just don't think they have the expertise nor the manpower to recreate it now.

    That said, if you guys or anyone else can come up with improvements or alternatives then perhaps they can work them in. Maybe if enough people chime in, we can help them make it better. So keep the good feedback coming!
     
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  10. Maus Merryjest

    Maus Merryjest Avatar

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    I'm a professional opera singer and classically-trained musician and hobbyist composer, so having a system like this in-game, where we can share our original music, is extremely thrilling for me.

    That being said, I have stumbled across some issues with how SOTA reads the .abc files- I have checked and re-checked some of my compositions with EasyABC and they read correctly, but when I bring them over to SOTA the game borks a few things- complex rhythms tend to get truncated, the game swallows some rests (omnomnom)... which is an issue for me since I have been trying my hand at writing music for instrumental consorts and syncing is very important with Renaissance-style rhythms. I haven't quite figured out how to fix the issue yet, since my brain is accustomed to sheet music and reading the abc output makes my poor tenor brain melt...
     
  11. Graynight

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    I know there is a bug right now with the sync. If you try to sync, it will eat the rests. If you're playing solo, the rests should all be there (excepting the first few measures if it decides to skip ahead). There's a new Bug Forum for Instruments and music now, so that would be a good place to mark some of the issues.

    I'd be happy to look over the truncated rhythms if you'd like a second set of eyes.
     
  12. Maus Merryjest

    Maus Merryjest Avatar

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    The truncated rhythm has happened when playing solo for me, but only for the more complex rhythm sections. This happened with the consort piece... the lute part has all sorts of anomalies, whereas the two flutes and the tabor are very much intact- I would greatly appreciate it if you can look at it for me! I am at rehearsal until later tonight, but once I get home I can send you the .abc file as well as the score, and a recording of in-world playing so you see what's going on :)
     
  13. Sorthious

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    You may be having problems with Chords that need to be told that there is a deviation from the Default Note Length. @Graynight figured out what was happening. The Parser that SOTA uses requires that notes of chords have to be noted, for every note in the chord, with the Note Length:

    The converter I use does the following chord like this: [FBe]/ This basically says take the Default note length, let's say its an 1/8 note(L= 1/8), and cuts it in 1/2, making it a 16th note. This is perfectly acceptable via ABC Notation, however the Parser that SOTA uses doesn't know how to interpret it. So I think, if I remember correctly, it plays the chord at the Default Length(1/8th in this case.) I hope this helps with your issues! Also, another tip is to use Ties to hold notes over other notes rather than using Mutiple-Voices, as SOTA will ignore everything but Voice 1. Using ties is especially helpful when writing for stringed instruments.
     
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