Questions Thread - Technical Help for Art & Music

[Prawns]

Why not pick one of the songs to be the title track?

That's actually a really good idea... Thanks!

[BRPXQZME]

strike the right chord with our rather choosy lead singer and drummer.

sounds like only the guitar or keys guys’ opinions should count, then. YUK YUK YUK

No, I don’t have a better suggestion, but then I have poor self-control :\

[Fire Goliath]

Hey, guys... Feel free to ignore this if it's already been asked but It's something I wonder about.

The Art forum has a massive number of art resources in the rules thread for people interessted in painting, and I know that it's one of the first places I look when I want to draw something. However, the forum is called the "Art & Music" forum, and when I hear the brilliant compositional work this forum puts out I wonder if it would have any advice on videos/programs/guides to synthesizing or composing akin to it's art resource list. It's always sort of bugged me that the only form of art the resources catered for were drawn, when some of the best work put out by this subforum is in composition and music.

Anyway, I really was just wondering if you would know of any general musical resources I could use, or if you musicians have any recommendations of good resources to get started with.

[Superfrequency]

What kind of synthesis?

[orngjce223]

The answer depends on what you mean by "I want to make music". Points to research are tracker vs. sequencer, piano roll vs. traditional notation vs. whatever the hell trackers do, and samples vs. synthesis.

I use LMMS, but I can't recommend it to most other people yet. Mostly because it doesn't have a functioning "Undo" button yet.

[Vyro P. Dragon III]

I've got a question about Flash. I've been using this program for a while, and I've been struggling to makes lines that look even half-decent.

Every line I draw looks very lumpy due to the auto-smoother thing. I tried turning it off, but that made it worse.

How do I make my drawings look smooth like the ones in the Homestuck Beta for example?

[Elkian]

Hey, I recorded an AVI of gameplay on VisualBoy (an emulator for the GBA) and now WMM won't open or import the file and I have to compress it so I can upload it onto Youtube. Is there and easy/cheap way to do this?

[Argonaut]

Hey, I recorded an AVI of gameplay on VisualBoy (an emulator for the GBA) and now WMM won't open or import the file and I have to compress it so I can upload it onto Youtube. Is there and easy/cheap way to do this?

Virtualdub is pretty much perfect for most video jobs.

[BRPXQZME]

Hey, guys... Feel free to ignore this if it's already been asked but It's something I wonder about.

Nonono, it’s been asked multiple times in several ways and if you ask me, it hasn’t really been answered satisfactorily! I honestly think that were I musically qualified to start linking to all sorts of tutorials on getting started, I would make a thread or something strictly about how to make/compose music and put it all together onto some sort of recorded medium (it would probably also be a better WIP dump for some people).

In fact, there is a lot to cover if you were to look at every facet of this subject. If you were to go about doing it professionally, you might end up in a program like Johns Hopkins’ Recording Arts degree, which is something like a double major in music and electrical engineering. Yikes.

Anyway, I’m guessing you’re more interested in the mechanics of making music digitally than strictly the music at the moment; Radiation recently posted a very basic tutorial that gives a little bit of insight into how he personally does it.

Another good resource along that vein I’ve found is the Guides and Tutorials section of OCRemix. Some of those articles are very long (and some are slightly out of date) and their combined mass still don’t go into quite as much depth as I would like to see, but I still give partial credit....

If you are looking to make tonal music of any sort, you should also study music theory. Harmony and counterpoint are the basis of Western music like that. Even if you’re one of those blessed individuals to whom music just comes naturally and you play all the right notes and chords intuitively, not knowing the standard language for discussing those things can really hurt you. I haven’t found any great resources on this, but then I don’t consider myself to have looked very hard into this (a lot of people who know it learned it in a class).

Anyway, those are some places to start, but to get into much more of that really requires more resources than I myself know about so it’s not like I can post it.

[Stop Him]

I honestly think that were I musically qualified to start linking to all sorts of tutorials on getting started

In some ways being "unqualified" makes one very qualified indeed. If we look at a list of resources as a place to start for the beginner, someone who doesn't know their VCOs from their VSTs, then who better to select helpful material than a novice? People with experience tend to assume a lot of things as given, basic common knowledge, and often forget that some people start out knowing not one single acronym or bit of jargon. Someone who is just beginning themselves could be in a better position to judge whether something is helpful for the beginner.

One of the difficulties with approaching this subject is that there's Just So Much Stuff that to do it right, you'd probably have to take a considerable amount of time and thought into organizing it into sections - i.e., actual music theory, available software, general distinctions of types of synthesis, virtual synthesis vs. audio recording, good lord I'm already dizzy. (Not that these would necessarily be the sections, just examples of ways you could categorize the info out there.)

[Fire Goliath]

Thankyou so much! sorry, Orng juice, my question wasn't clear because I'm pretty much an absolute novice, but between you and BRPXQZME I have somewhere to start...

[orngjce223]

Well, you could always take the stupid way out and use Mario Paint Composer, but that's definitely not suitable for anything more than "how do I music?"

Also there's a huge list of Stuff that can be used in the effects department. I should probably figure out what the difference is between all-pass and delay filters myself, but there's also different kinds of low-pass, high-pass, band-pass, reverb, eq, etc. that should all be at least defined, with probably examples that show exactly what each effect does.

Also additive/subtractive synthesis, frequencies of normal music notes and why they are important to know if you're fiddling around with certain of the above effects, how the .midi format is structured and why it affects how your music sounds (the concept of having "music that sounds like midi" is something that needs to be explained), samples and how to make them not sound like some dude playing his trumpet in his bedroom even though they really actually are some dude playing his trumpet in his bedroom, someone should probably write about what pitch correction/autotune is and why some people don't like it, basic music theory and links, how to read sheet music and why it might be useful as compared to other notation styles,...

This might be worth a wiki, I think. Or a separate breakaway site, even. Depends on how much we're throwing around right now. I'll have to ask, but I might be able to negotiate with friend-of-a-friend hosting to get a subdomain that I can set up something on to host "how do I music?" articles.

[BRPXQZME]

Well, I shall compile a list of links I’ve visited in the past eight months or so that I’ve been studying this stuff. The problem is that I keep nearly ALL my “bookmarks” in my head and history-spelunking is unwieldy, so it’s not really just sitting in a dumpable format at the moment.

(also, I have my own domain. two of them. mufufu~)

[Superfrequency]

I'd really like to contibute, but "how do I music" is too broad a question to even approach. I can answer more specific questions about producing electronic music.

Also, MIDI is not a format, .mid is, and it is not a sound file. MIDI is a communication protocol. Unless you are working with hardware MIDI should not even be a concern.

[orngjce223]

So, is The Definitive Guide To Music still on? Or should I just quietly ignore it?

[konec0]

it would be SUPER COOL if it were still on
just sayin'

if there's anything i can help with in that regard let me kno~w, although my knowledge is p. limited =3

[Pious_Adjudicator]

This bastard's come a long way in about two hours.

It started with kanaya's sprite.

What the issue is, though, is that I can pixel, but I have no basis of education in actually drawing. One of the horns is off perspective wise, and the arms are obviously not going to cross properly over the chest. If someone could just give me an OUTLINE to fill in, I could totally finish this- and if this wonderfully charitable person could add some outlines for the hands too that would be GLORIOUS.

I really am stuck, guys, can anyone help a bro out? Again, just the outline, that's all I need.

[Fitzwibble]

Bluh! you left the IRC just before I had this ready :P I thought of a possible fix for the arm position, you may have to zoom in to read my illegible scrawl:



hope that helps, I aint exactly an expert :/

[Pious_Adjudicator]

Hmmm... I hadn't even considered the elbows before. Thanks fitz, I'll try this when I get home from work. Anyone else have any suggestions..?

EDIT:

ELBOW'D. But now, n3w porblems. HANDS. GAWD WHY THE HANDS



Man I suck at this. HELP???

[Zankas]

Crossed arms are generally a bit argh-worthy... especially when it comes to spriting. Sometimes you just have to mess with it until it looks right.

[Pious_Adjudicator]

That looks excellent! Except, don't the trolls have four fingers? I'm sure it wouldn't be hard for me to do that, so thanks HEAPS, but I just wanted to make sure.

[Zankas]

It depends on the art style, I think. The Alterniabound sprites have four fingers while when you get into scribble mode, they only have three. So yeah, for this you'd probably want to edit in that fourth finger. D'oh!

[Pious_Adjudicator]

SWEET. This I can definitely work with! Now I just have to shade it and figure out how to tweak the perspective on that horn, and that should be easy!! Thanks so much zankas, I really appreciate this!



What do we think?

[Zankas]

Looking sharp!

I'm not sure what you mean about the perspective of the horns being off, unless the back one is suppose to be turned a bit. They're close enough to one another that I think the perspective on each would be fairly similar. Using the eyes as a guideline, they're both placed in what looks to be the right spot. Looking closer though made me wonder about his hair though. With as long as it is, maybe some should fall over the near shoulder. Or you could shade in a dark spot to show the way it falls... I dunno, I've been scouring my work today with that eye of "what can I improve?!" so I might just be going overboard.

[Pious_Adjudicator]

The hair on the second one works! and you're right. It looks totally better that way. SWEET TITS I finally have an a-bound sprite! Just have to add muscle tone.

EDIT:

I think we're done here.

EDORT!!!:

I gotta get this on there yet.