action9000, how exactly do you make the non-vocal version of these songs, anyway?
I do it the old-fashioned way, my friend.
Using FL Studio and a couple of powerful virtual instruments, I manually attempt to reproduce every note and instrument present in the original song. I do this by listening to the original song and mentally separating the parts (instruments) using my ear alone. No software in existance can do this so I am forced to do all of the "grunt work" myself. I use the following two virtual instruments to generate the sound:
For Orchestra sounds,
Symphonic Orchestra Gold, Pro edition (37 GB)
For other sounds (drum kits, pianos, guitars, etc.),
Colossus (32 GB)
I need to literally figure out every instrument that is playing, how fast the song is playing, every Note that every instrument plays. In short, I listen to the song, try to pick out every sound I hear, and reproduce it as accurately as I can by entering MIDI events (note on, note off, and a huge variety of controllers for additional control and realism) into FL Studio. The MIDI events trigger the virtual instruments to play the .wav files stored within them (a full orchestra at my fingertips...this is why I have a 64-bit operating system
). A combination of MIDI events and live recordings of single notes can generate a piece of music, which I figured out the notes for entirely by ear, listening to the original song...and that's only half of it!
I also need to blend the sounds in my version of the song so it all sounds good. This means using a variety of articulations (playing styles) which come with my virtual instrument software. For example, a violin can be played hundreds of different ways. In order to reproduce the sound of a live, realistic performance, one cannot rely on a series of notes played the same way. There must be variation, however relatively subtle, to minimize the electronic sound and produce something that sounds nice and beautiful. All this takes a lot of time and effort to smooth out the "seams" between playing styles and notes to create a connected piece of music from pre-recorded single notes (from my virtual instrument).
In short, it's a painstaking process
I literally re-compose the song while trying to make my version sound as close to the original as I can get it. The only fancy things about the process are the painfully expensive virtual instruments. Everything else is grunt work and a lot of ear training. B) Half of it is figuring out the notes and instruments. The other half is putting it all together and programing the MIDI events so it sounds good.
MIDI has sure come a long way since the cheesy .mid files you find all over the internet!
