LBT Song Project: Things Change

landbeforetimelover · **Reply #80 on:** August 19, 2007, 03:02:16 AM

Oh Action, please don't cancel the project! You're so good at what you do! I really do understand how hard it is to do and I also know how stressful life is for someone who's a daytime person being forced to work nights. Not to mention that you arn't getting paid. You should be, but I'm sure no one here has those kina funds to pay for such a difficult and professional project (I do, but my mom would never let me fork out the money).

In short, we're all lucky that he's willing to do it at all. He can take his pleasant old time. It gives us all more time to practice anyways. I can't do it, so I'm not gonna complain about it so long as it does get done eventually. Speed is not paramount. It's not like one of the participants is on their death bed and they wanna sing this song with GOF before the die or something. Find something else to do with your life while you're waiting. There are plenty of other things to do than sing. I'm sure we can all wait for several months if necessary.

Petrie. · **Reply #81 on:** August 19, 2007, 07:42:34 AM

Manny I was almost ready to slap you after I read that....Tim beat me to the punch, quite literally. -_- Most don't realize what he has to go through to do this stuff. While I don't have a hand in the actual production, I do give him help in refining these projects and believe me, that takes time too. Yeah I could've done other stuff, but I decided to help him because it was fun to participate in these things and its a strong community bond to keep them going.

Tim I'm just going to say what I always say to you when helping you, you've done wonders for us and if other priorities come first, then you need to focus your time there. You know what I went through here with my tough times (and it probably will get harder before long). What is, is what must be.

Manny Cav · **Reply #82 on:** August 19, 2007, 08:50:43 AM

Quote from: Petrie,Aug 19 2007 on 06:42 AM

Manny I was almost ready to slap you after I read that....Tim beat me to the punch, quite literally. -_- Most don't realize what he has to go through to do this stuff. While I don't have a hand in the actual production, I do give him help in refining these projects and believe me, that takes time too. Yeah I could've done other stuff, but I decided to help him because it was fun to participate in these things and its a strong community bond to keep them going.

Tim I'm just going to say what I always say to you when helping you, you've done wonders for us and if other priorities come first, then you need to focus your time there. You know what I went through here with my tough times (and it probably will get harder before long). What is, is what must be.

I fail to see what the problem is. Could you be more specific? Because I wasn't rushing him or anything like that. I just don't think that there should be a projected completion date because it's too much trobule. It actually looks like action9000 got rid of it, anyway. What did I do wrong? :huh:

action9000 · **Reply #83 on:** August 19, 2007, 09:48:25 AM

First of all, let me say I agree with you, Manny Cav. B)

I set the deadline date partly for you and partly for me. I am trying to get faster with producing projects like these so I set tight deadlines to help me improve my skills as well. The problem is life and circumstance (lack of sleep, other personal things that came up as well) took over my schedule and made reaching a tight deadline all but impossible. Like I said before, in theory I should have been able to have it done but I just never ended up with the free work time I expected to have.

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What did I do wrong?

I suppose your first response sounded like you were complaining that I wasn't working as fast as you wanted, which is why Petrie and I got a bit upset. I understand what you mean now, however. I have no plans to kill this project and hopefully I'll have it complete in the near future. I won't post a date until the song is nearly complete. (Petrie, if you're still willing to critique for me, a second set of ears is always nice!

If not I'm sure I can con LF1616 into it so no worries.

)

Petrie. · **Reply #84 on:** August 19, 2007, 10:00:20 AM

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I suppose your first response sounded like you were complaining that I wasn't working as fast as you wanted, which is why Petrie and I got a bit upset.

That was exactly it. "Now it'll be like until October or November..." surely sounds like a complaint/whining to me.

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Petrie, if you're still willing to critique for me, a second set of ears is always nice!

Send me the files. B)

Manny Cav · **Reply #85 on:** August 19, 2007, 10:56:58 AM

It isn't a complaint. I was just calculating a more realistic completion date based on the amount of time it has taken to get this amount of progress done. I believe Shigeru Miyamoto once said, "A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is bad forever". The same applies here. I wouldn't dare criticize how long it's taking him to get as far as he has. If it takes until August 2008 to complete this thang and get a good quality product in the end, then I'm all for it. I was also saying that his "projected completion date" was causing more trouble than it was worth (look at what it's done, now).

Apparently, I at least got my point across to action9000, and he completely understood it. I might have sounded a bit harsh, but I certainly didn't mean it that way.

action9000 · **Reply #86 on:** August 19, 2007, 09:45:11 PM

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I was also saying that his "projected completion date" was causing more trouble than it was worth (look at what it's done, now).

I agree, the "completion date" probably wasn't the best idea on such a casual project. Oh well, nobody's perfect right? B)

action9000 · **Reply #87 on:** August 31, 2007, 02:01:40 AM

Hi, this is sort of a "topic bump" to let everyone know that the project is NOT dead.

Again, I won't give completion dates until I know them for sure, but I should have a Lot of time this weekend to work on the song. I'm actually working on it as we speak.

I honestly think whoever wrote the music for Things Change was Trying to make my life difficult!

I don't know what it is about this song but it's really making me work for decent results!
Maybe I'm just getting rusty...3 years with no formal music classes and I'm starting to slip!

:

Achillobator · **Reply #88 on:** August 31, 2007, 02:27:24 AM

Sounds like great fun......but I think I will avoid recording myself singing. We want it to sound GOOD!

I have a horrible vocal range...

Petrie. · **Reply #89 on:** August 31, 2007, 07:15:47 AM

I'll still make time to help you out with the mixing, so just send some files when they're done.

Manny Cav · **Reply #90 on:** August 31, 2007, 10:21:11 PM

action9000, how exactly do you make the non-vocal version of these songs, anyway? Do you have to spend tedious hours listening to the songs to digitally reproduce the audio as realistically as possible? Do you have a program or something that allows you to tell it to "do this, do that" where it starts to make audio?

action9000 · **Reply #91 on:** September 01, 2007, 05:18:12 AM

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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!

Manny Cav · **Reply #92 on:** September 01, 2007, 10:19:06 AM

That's pretty much what I thought it would be.

Duckie · **Reply #93 on:** September 10, 2007, 12:45:58 AM

I'm probably a little late on this, but are you still accepting vocalists?

Manny Cav · **Reply #94 on:** September 10, 2007, 12:47:40 AM

I'm pretty sure action9000 is still accepting vocalists at this time, uh, Duckie, is it?

action9000 · **Reply #95 on:** September 10, 2007, 01:03:47 AM

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I'm probably a little late on this, but are you still accepting vocalists?

Sure, I'll accept vocalists for this song until the posted cutoff date (there isn't even a date posted yet so it's still along way off)

Welcome aboard! I will try to have the music up soon.

Saftycera · **Reply #96 on:** September 16, 2007, 07:15:44 AM

Ooh I'd love to be involved too

It sounds good. I'm just a little confused about how it works since obviously there are three vocalists in the dsong originally how do we go about doing something like this?

Petrie. · **Reply #97 on:** September 16, 2007, 08:31:15 AM

Quote from: Saftycera,Sep 16 2007 on 06:15 AM

Ooh I'd love to be involved too It sounds good. I'm just a little confused about how it works since obviously there are three vocalists in the dsong originally how do we go about doing something like this?

What you'll have to do is sing the entire song and Tim and I will work out where people go or where they fit well in the song. Tim will post up the audio file you sing to...don't sing to the original song because the pitch and time are not equal to what we do.

You'll need a microphone, and a program that can record your voice. Save the file as a 16-bit .wav (it'll be large) or 192kbps (or higher) mp3 file. That's about it.

Saftycera · **Reply #98 on:** September 16, 2007, 02:52:18 PM

...Groovy

I'll have to record it was a WAV first though because for some reason my version of Goldwave won't let me convert.

Teresa · **Reply #99 on:** September 16, 2007, 05:07:58 PM

so let me make sure i've got this right. You send whoever is interested the music and we just sing the song right ? The only way i can record my singing is using my mum's camera with the voice recorded on. That would be ok wouldn't it ? :unsure: