Here’s the submission that my friend TextSynth, who is a brilliant fool, gave me. They are a little wordy this time, apologies, and they went into an infinite loop at the end, so i cut them off anyways. As always the bold text is my entry, the rest is all from TextSynth.
TextSynth's Musical Synthesizer Game
April Fool’s Musical Synthesizer (The Musical Synthesizer Game)
The Musical Synthesizer Game
The Musical Synthesizer Game is a one-player project from my days as a student. The game was designed to challenge the player with its difficulty level, yet at the same time it was simple enough to allow a novice with a basic musical instrument to play the game. The game was designed for the computer to run with little programming, as most of the processing was done through the use of sound files played in tandem.
The use of sound files made the game rather easy to create, yet the challenge came with the limitations of these files, as well as the fact that you had to compose everything from the sounds you heard in the game.
Composing an Instrument
To create an instrument for the game, the basic idea is to create a sound bank that you can randomly play in the game. As you will see in this section, you will need a method to randomly play your sound banks and a means of testing the performance of your instrument. Also, you will need a means of recording your performance as well.
Let’s start by creating a sound bank that you can randomly play in the game.
First, you must choose a sound bank from the list provided.
[ Insert Random Screenshot Here ]
As shown in the screenshot above, these are the options for sound banks that you can use. You can create as many sound banks as you wish. The sound bank will function just as a musical instrument would, you will be able to use it by randomly playing it. A single bank will have at most 16 instruments, although, your choice of instruments can be expanded in size (for example, we could include more percussion and brass instruments in the bank).
If you plan on adding more instruments to your sound bank, then make sure you create a MIDI file (or a MIDI bank) for each one of your instruments (for example, a piano would require at least 3 MIDI files: 1 for the root, 1 for the left hand, and 1 for the right hand. A guitar would need more MIDI files for each string; you can always add more MIDI files to create your instrument).
To start creating a sound bank, create a new MIDI bank in a Sound Bank file (note that the Sound Bank files are available for Windows, as well as Mac OS). Then, simply click on the “Add MIDI Note”, and record the notes you hear.
Then, open up this new MIDI bank.
As shown in the screenshot above, you can simply adjust the pitch (left) or duration (right) of each instrument to your liking.
To further control the speed, you can adjust the value of the note played, as well as the speed at which you play each note.
If you plan on creating more than 16 instruments in your sound bank, then make sure you have enough MIDI files to accommodate.
To test your sound bank, click on the “Play” tab, and click on the audio file of your choice, which will be played at the same time.
Make sure the audio files of your instruments are set to a high volume, or else you may not hear them playing.
Creating an Instrument
The sound files that we have available to us in this game are the MIDI files. When you record the notes, you can also choose if the audio files will be recorded. We will need both. For the purposes of recording the audio, we will need a means of adjusting the recording settings to our needs.
The following is a general guide to making the audio files.
Recording Setup
To record the audio files, you will need two inputs (one stereo, one mono).
To record one instrument, we will need an input of 24-bit audio. You will also need some sort of audio pre-amp (for example, a guitar would be plugged into a pre-amp).
The audio pre-amp needs to be set up to a stereo input, and you will need a stereo line output for each of your audio outputs.
To record the audio files, open up the input/output settings.
As shown in the screenshot above, you can configure these inputs/outputs as you please. In our case, we will only use two audio inputs and four audio outputs.
The audio input for our keyboard (1) will be plugged into the audio pre-amp (2), and the audio output from our audio pre-amp will be plugged into our audio processor (3), which will also receive the audio input from our microphone (4).
At this point, we will be ready to record the audio files for our instrument.
The following is a brief walk-through of the recording process for each of our instruments.
Step 1: Recording for our instrument: Create a new MIDI bank and click on “Record.”
Step 2: Press the key for your instrument. You will be able to hear the audio being recorded.
Step 3: Click on the Save File button to save the recording.
Step 4: Select the instrument you want to record.
Step 5: Click on the Recording tab, and click on the “Play” button. If you are satisfied with the performance, click on the “Stop” button.
When you are done recording, you can click on the “Save File” button, and the file will be saved for you.
As you can see, the audio files for each of our instruments are recorded with the same basic format as that of MIDI files. They are in the WAV format, and the length of the audio files are set as follows:
Note length: 1.0
Pitch: 60
Volume: 70
These audio files can be played back in the game. The way to play them is to load up the WAV file, and then press the desired key on your keyboard.
The following is a brief explanation of the format:
Note length: This value determines the length of a note in milliseconds.
Pitch: This value determines the pitch of a note.
Volume: This value is the maximum volume of the note, and it will never exceed this value.
Instrument List
After you create an instrument for the game, you will be able to randomly play the sound of your instrument. To make it easier for you to listen to the notes you play, we have a list of instruments, along with a brief explanation of the notes played.
To view the Instrument List, click on the “Instrument” tab, and click on the “Info” button.
As you can see in the screenshot above, this list gives you some general information about each of your instruments. It also gives you information about the key you played in the instrument, and its duration.
The following is a list of the instructions that you can play in the game:
Note
Duration
Key
Root
Root, left hand and right hand
1 beat
Keyboard
Left hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Right hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Root
4 beats
Keyboard
Left hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Right hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Root
4 beats
Keyboard
Left hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Right hand
4 beats
Keyboard
Root
4 beats
Keyboard
Left hand
If someone has an appropriate screenshot, i’d love to see it.
