Music Files (ABC/MML)

I created some music files to use for playing instruments in the game, and couldn't find an already-established place in the community to share them. If you have some files you'd like to share, go ahead and post a reply with a link. If there's already an established place for sharing music files, then please point me to it and I'll post my link there.

EDIT: This post originally contained a bunch of additional information, which I kept editing as things changed and I learned more. I moved all of that to separate posts within this thread in order to tidy up a bit.

 

Thank you for this . It is very helpful and informative.

 

I'm not a composer of original music, but there is some music I really like which is available in MIDI format, which I wanted to convert into ABC format in order to enjoy it in SotA.

To convert the files from MIDI to ABC, I started by using a MIDI sequencer to simplify each song by deleting tracks that weren't absolutely essential to the song (such as percussion and harmony tracks), and then consolidating the essential tracks into a single track. Then I used a conversion utility I downloaded from the internet to convert them into ABC files for use in SotA. Unfortunately, many of the songs didn't turn out quite right: the rhythm was a bit off, with small delays here and there which gave the music a strange, stuttering feeling. The songs were still recognizable, but obviously a bit off. I tried several different conversion utilities, and they all had the same problem, so then I tried using an ABC editor to poke around inside the files and figure out the problem. I don't understand exactly what is happening, but I do have a good general idea, and I've figured out a work-around (which, unfortunately, is very time-consuming and requires at least a cursory understanding of music theory). The next paragraph is a rather long explanation of why I believe this problem is happening; if you don't care about "why" and just want to know the work-around, you might consider skipping ahead to the following paragraph.

The problem stems from the fact that the MIDI and ABC formats are structured very differently, and are intended for very different purposes; some things line up perfectly, but there are features of MIDI which have no exact equivalent in ABC, and vice-versa. The conversion utilities are designed to cope with this as best they can, but ultimately some things just don't translate well. In this case, the culprit appears to be the complex use of very short rests in conjunction with some MIDI features which don't translate to ABC at all. I believe that this is a technique used by some MIDI composers to achieve subtle variations in rhythm. Unfortunately, that subtlety doesn't translate to ABC. All of the conversion utilities I tried just dropped all of the short rests, and then apparently chose one note in each measure arbitrarily to extend in order to make up for the missing beats in that measure, which is what caused those apparent stutters. I tried manually editing the ABC file to put all of the rests back in, but without the behind-the-scenes nuances from the MIDI files the result was even worse rhythm problems.

In the end, I was able to fix the music by manually editing the files to a simplified version of the original. If I listen very carefully I can still hear some differences in the rhythm, but they are very subtle and I only notice them when I'm really listening for them.

For converting files from MIDI to ABC, I recommend EasyABC. In regards to the conversion problems described above, it's no better or worse than any of the other conversion utilities out there, but it has two big advantages. First, it produces the cleanest, simplest conversions, which made them much easier to manually clean up after the initial conversion. Second, it's not just a conversion utility, it's also an ABC editor with a GUI, which also helps with the manual clean-up.

 

When I first created this thread, I posted a link to a Google Drive folder where I had posted several songs I had converted from other formats to ABC, but all of them had the rhythm problems described above, so I took them all down until I could fix them. That process turned out to be a lot more time consuming than I had originally estimated, but I just finished cleaning up the first song, so it's time to re-share the Google Drive link.

The folder where I've stored the music is split into two sub-folders: one for solo music (where all of the key parts of the song have been consolidated for play by a single musician) and one for ensemble music (were each part has a separate ABC file so that multiple musicians can play together).

At the end of this post I'll place a list of all of the songs I've uploaded so far, which I will update as I add additional files. Before I get to that, I'd like to provide a little bit of background about some of the music I've chosen to convert from MIDI to ABC. Sierra On-Line was in their heyday of adventure games in the mid-'80s to mid-'90s, about the same time period that many of the classic Ultima games were released. I have many fond memories of playing Ultima games as well as Sierra's "Quest" games, and I would imagine that, given the overlap in timing, many others here share similar memories. Some of my favorite game music ever is from the Quest for Glory series of adventure-RPG hybrids, so I decided to bring some of that music into SotA for everyone to enjoy. The first song I converted is my absolute favorite from any game ever: Erana's Peace from Hero's Quest (aka Quest for Glory I). I'll also be converting some of my favorite classical music. For now, though, I'm going to take a little break to focus on other things before doing any more conversions.

EDIT: If you want to convert some Sierra adventure game music yourself, you can download many of the original MIDI files from the MIDI Music Adventure Show.

Songs currently in my Google Drive music folder:

• Erana's Peace from QfG I (The ensemble version currently only has files for the two guitar parts; I'll add the other parts later.)

 

How does ensemble work? Is there a mechanism to sync two people or is it just "1...2...3...GO!?"

 

This was covered in an older thread. The short version is that you have to form a party. Once in a party, the /play command with the sync option doesn't cause you to start playing, it just cues up the file you are going to play. Once everyone in the party has selected their music files, the party leader starts the song with the /playstart command.

 

been a member for 2+ years
but not often in the forums
recently back now that we've reached persistence

i'm a bassist and composer.
here is some music i wrote using Finale 2011, i'm told it would make good game music
i plan on converting the .wav files to ABC files eventually

there are 9 tunes so far (writing for 11-50 piece orchestra takes some time)

https://www.reverbnation.com/davznothere/songs


hope you enjoy them

 

You might want to get in touch with:

http://poetscircle.net/about/

to see what they have done already, and perhaps to get your music considered for inclusion in SotA @davznothere .

 

done, though i'm not sure i meet all the requirements

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...dsourced-music-final-submission-thread.12787/