WC1 Music

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 12:03 am

Since we're doing WC1 era craft, it struck me that we probably need the WC1 era music too

So I grabbed FLStudio, DOSBox's midi capture, and voila, music.

All music originally (c) ORIGIN

Wing Commander Theme
Scramble!
Combat
Dogfight
Desperation
Loss of a Wingman

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:35 am

My god you're multi-talented, Ferrius. I can't compare with the original music 'cause this is the first time I hear WC music other than Privateer; but it sounds well put together to my ears. Any chance we could download a good quality sound library and make it worth playing through Altec Lansing speakers?

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:42 am

If by sound library, you mean soundfont, the Merlin Vienna soundfont is a good free one.

[edit]: Here's a few of the originals for you Chuck:

Combat
Wing Commander
Scramble!

I have to dig through the files to find the others, DOSBox just labels them wc01.mid, etc, so I have to go through them.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:43 am

I think that in order to avoid horrendous copyright violation, somebody will have to redo this from scratch...

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 1:49 am

Given the sheer volume of WC remakes that use the selfsame music source (and the Ultima remakes that also use ORIGIN's music), I don't foresee that being a problem.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:22 am

SUPER shiny!

We will need to do some work with music in the VS engine so that the right playlists run... it would be funny to hear the game-appropriate music depending on which ship you are in

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:33 am

Shiny is good, right?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 4:39 am

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 11:23 pm

Some more tracks:

If you don't know this one, you don't deserve to play WCU

Mission Victory
Clash

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 4:32 am

Ah, now I can hear them; I had a strange muting flag set, donno how, that was preventing me from hearing midis and mp3's...

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 2:04 pm

Is the sound/music working OK with the last exe? For various reasons I can't check that myself, not properly.

Post by **klauss** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 2:44 pm

It should work acceptably well.
Though in linux I can only guess... all tests I did under Windows.

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 9:13 pm

Any comments on the last batch of music guys? ^_^;

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:19 pm

Oh, sorry, I though those were "some more tracks..." of original music. Sounds great. Well done musically. Excellent, in fact. Like I said, I though it was more of the original tracks.

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:33 pm

It was, but I tried to make them all shiny and orchestral sounding ... so it'd be nice to know if people think I did a good job ^_^;

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:51 pm

Sorry, I'm all confused, now... are they, or are they not, original tracks, and/or what exactly did you do? (I shouldn't be responding to this thread at all, since I'm not familiar with the original music...)

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 11:53 pm

Perhaps the best word for the tracks would be that they, themselves, are remakes.

I used the original MIDI source with SONAR and FLStudio to create tracks that sound orchestrated, as opposed to MIDI-ish. I tried to make them sound more 'real' as opposed to synthesized by a computer.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:18 am

I'm still confused; or maybe you are, or there's something I don't know...

Isn't it the case, if you give me a midi file, I'll hear it the way MY sound card wants to make it sound? You can change the sound fonts on your machine, but that only changes what you hear. No?

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:34 am

I also messed around with chorus/reverb/mixing/flanging/a whole bunch of software synth type stuff, though

I have some of the original MIDIs above, I'll upload the other MIDIs, hold on.

[edit] Here ya go, lad:

Victory.mid
Wing_Commander.mid
Kilrath.mid
Clash.mid
Scramble.mid
Desperation.mid

Also, you're only partly correct. If you use a soundfont to play the MID, then yes, it's just hwo it sounds on your card, hwoever, rendered to MP3, it'll sound the same on any computer.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:44 am

Damn! I can't hear them. No sound at all... :-/

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:49 am

Two things:

1) Go to Volume Control, and make sure you have SW Synth set to max volume.

2) What kind of sound card do you have? Integrated chips dont have SWSynth, and not all sound cards do either, such as the SoundBlaster Live. The Pro series should be fine though.

[edit]: If you'd like, Chuck, I can render MP3s of then on the GM soundfont with no special effects or anything, which would tell you how the sound as normal midi on my computer, at least.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:58 am

Privateer Ferrius wrote:Two things:

1) Go to Volume Control, and make sure you have SW Synth set to max volume.

It is.

2) What kind of sound card do you have? Integrated chips dont have SWSynth...

BINGO.

[edit]: If you'd like, Chuck, I can render MP3s of then on the GM soundfont with no special effects or anything, which would tell you how the sound as normal midi on my computer, at least.

44 KHz, plz.

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:02 am

You posted before I could finish my second edit.

Just as well, I borked the links. Here ya go, lad:

Kilrathi Theme in General MIDI: synthy_kilrathi.mp3
Orchestrated Kilrathi Theme: Kilrathi_Theme.mp3

Hope that illustrates the difference. The General MIDI one is the original, the second, my orchestrated and tweaked version.

Neither have had any post processing volume maximizing/matching done yet, going to do that when I have all the tracks done up nice so that the post-process mixing is done consitently. In the meantime, you might wanna put the volume done a bit for your ears' sake.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 1:59 am

Got mozilla crashing on me when I clicked on them; so this time I saved them first. Now I get it. Yeah, good work. I think it could use a bit more spectrum spread, like more bass and more highs. I like particularly the change of arrangement about 3/4 of the way. When the music starts, I suppose you'd want it to sound like one instrument only, but it sounds a bit like 2 or 3; maybe the reverb is doing that, or you have some vibrato on it; not sure. You could either remove the reverb, or put a long one (delay) that doesn't get confused with the sound of two tubas together. Also, I'd lower the volume of the starting tuba, so as to give a higher power to the transition to multiple instruments.

Privateer Ferrius · Post by **Privateer Ferrius** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:05 am

I didn't change anything of the songs actual composition. Trust me, it was tempting, but I'm a wee bit afraid that if I do, the WC diehards will cry bloody murder.

The mixing is another matter; the compressors can make proper mixing difficult, but I'd definetely have to tweak it. I just want to get a first version of all the tracks before I go back and tweak little details.

[edit]: It's supposed to be three instruments. A tenor brass section, a high brass section, and a french horn.