/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>>18310

Do you have experience playing instruments and composing already? The quality of your synths doesn't matter very much unless your music is already good.

>>18311

I have absolutely 0% experience in making music, I do listen to a lot of music, so I can most likely tell if my music sounds like crap, but I have no idea how to make music. I don't even have or plan to buy a keyboard since I can't afford it. It's mouse clicks and FL studio.

I have the DAW, but now I have no idea what are the best VSTs to use for all the instruments I listed. Do the quality of free synths really not matter? What if I want a free electric guitar VST? I couldn't find a good one.

>>18310

>>18315

Learn Music Theory. At this point, you are a person who wants to build a shed in your backyard with no idea how to build the shed, you seen some nice sheds in your life, even slept in one that one time. At this point your already borrowing mahogany wood when you don't even know how to hammer a nail.

Music will be much easier to write if you understand what your trying to do with your tools.

If you want a place to start.

http://i-e-i.wikispaces.com/file/view/Music_Theory_for_the_Computer_Musician.pdf

you can find the download of the CD stuff.

Once you think you got the hang of it, play around in your DAW of choice, Make some tracks with some free VSTs (Abaskos/Synth1 to name a few).

>>18319

I checked out the PDF, if I really really have to read it to make music, I'll do it. But do I really have to learn music theory? I've heard that some people can make music without knowing it.

Is this my only chance of transferring the music from my head to the software?

>>18328

But if you use just that synth can you make all sorts of music with it, like medieval music, sci fi music, action music... isn't it samey to use a single VST?

>>18333

You can make whatever you like, you just gotta dedicate some time to tweaking stuff to suit your desired outcome.

>>18333

it only gets samey if you use the most basic shit it offers, buy you can add delays and reverb to the already available delays and rev; room effects etc. to change the sound however you like.

>>18328

Can you post two songs that sound different yet are made with the same VST? Just curious to see how different it can sound.

Also do I really really have to learn music theory?

>>18341

The website shows an example of the song Rydeen with it, but really you can make it sound like anything with enough creativity. Just try it, only way to see for yourself. In fact, I feel the best way to come up with new songs is just developing sounds themselves, new sounds will give you new ideas.

>>18341

>music theory

it's always good to know new things, but depending on the game you're looking to make, maybe you don't need to learn much, perhaps if it's more of an ambient type sci-fi game for exp. you may find yourself focusing on sound texture more versus melody. If it's something more complex, then yeah, perhaps you can learn some measurements.

>>18328

While I like Synth1, I wouldn't recommend it to somebody who isn't at all familiar with analog signal processing.

>>18341

If you want to write decent tonal music then you need to study music theory. The best way to start out is to play an instrument and learn things from the music you play on it. If you do not play any instrument then you won't be able to compose for shit. If you are interested in experimental nontonal music then get some modular synths and play around with them in realtime or get some samples of machine noises and splice them to hell and back.

>>18333

You don't need a degree in music theory to write some tunes, but you better you'd better know your keys, chords, have basic skill with at least one instrument, etc. Any successful musician that says you don't need to know music theory is vastly understating their own understanding of the fundamentals; they might have acquired that knowledge through "unconventional" means rather than by reading books and taking courses, but they're still aware of what they're doing.

It's just like with art. You don't have to "master" the visual arts before you can create something, but if you don't put some effort into learning the fundamentals first, it's gonna look like autistic Deviantart shit no matter what. Basic understanding of perspective, anatomy, etc. makes an enormous difference for beginners. Of course you have to put in the hours upon hours of practice to actually git gud, but until you become aware of the fundamentals, you're just wasting your time bashing your head against a brick wall.

put up or shut up, OP.

Perhaps ask a relative or friend to help you? I asked my Dad for $1000 to buy Komplete, which was well worth it. Took a while to pay him back, but now I have Kontakt I'm saving up for Albion Spitfire.

Otherwise, you might be able to contract under a music studio and use their equipment for a profit percentage - but without a background in music theory I doubt you'd get anything other than them laughing at you.

Btw, "music theory" sounds abstract and difficult, but most music is not complex in any way (except mixing does get difficult with more simultaneous instruments, and mastering should always be done professionally). So long as you know your major and minor scales (and subsequently, keys and key components such as chord progressions; major third, fourth, fifth and seventh) on the keyboard, guitar and bass you know 99% of modern music requirements.

>>18380

> I asked my Dad for $1000 to buy Komplete

Man it's easy for you to say, the salary here is about 300 USD/month so no, buying komplete just isn't an option, and I don't even have a dad or any friend that would lend me so much money. Buying now is not an option, if Native Instruments would had offered a discount for poorer countries I would had bought it, but it's the same $1000 everywhere in the world.

Also, I guess that I have no option, I will take the advice of everyone in this thread and learn music theory from that pdf. Hopefully something will come out of it since I can only use free VSTs

>>18310

I can direct you to an acquaintance of mine who has VSTs and can compose good music with FL Studio. He leans towards orchestral although he can use other instruments too.

technocinema.bandcamp.com

You might want to work out the terms with him if you want to completely own the rights to what he creates, however.

If you're insistent on making the OST yourself then I suggest giving Sibelius a try. You can create pretty good-sounding midis if you know how to compose. Trackers are also good for making chiptunes although you'll have to learn how to use them.

>>18393

>I will take the advice of everyone in this thread and learn music theory from that pdf

Get an instrument first. It can be something cheap like a recorder or a harmonica if you can't afford anything better.

>ctrl-f: soundfont, sf2, sfz

>0 results

how?

1. Download and install this vst:

http://www.vemberaudio.se/shortcircuit.php

2. Download one of these http://www.synthfont.com/links_to_soundfonts.html

I'd recommend Arachno; it has good guitars, drums, pianos and a flute, like you wanted. And it's not huge. (~100MB)

3. Open shortcircuit in FL, and then open the soundfont in shortcircuit.

This is about the best you can do for free. Soundfonts used to be fairly standard, so most don't sound awful, and some of them are even surprisingly good. You might find that some of the individual instruments are useless, but you can always find more online.

Here's some other collections I've found.

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1200140

http://www.synthfont.com/soundfonts.html

If you need a hand, feel free to ask.

Honestly, for a lot of my music I use cgMusic (a program that creates entire music compositions using a computer algorithm) and FL Studio. I create a track using cgMusic, export the MIDI file, import it into FL Studio, and tweak it here and there to make it sound decent.

You can find cgMusic here: http://codeminion.com/blogs/maciek/2008/05/cgmusic-computers-create-music/

>>18510

Very interesting, computer generated music? I have to see how this works so I'll download it and try it and probably report back on it.

>>18507

I have no idea how shortcircuit works or supposed to help me but I'll try it, and get arachno first and then if I manage to do something I'll try the other soundfonts.

>>18404

I kinda wanted an small keyboard for my PC but I have to wait up a bit to save some money.

>>18399

I checked out his music, it sounds good, but in 3 or 4 years by the time the game is finished I would probably forget about it.

>>18510

Well, cg music is busted for me, I get an error msvcp71.dll, it doesn't work, and I won't download it from random dll sites such as dllfiles or something. Too bad.

Any other good randomly generating song programs out there that can rival cgmusic, so I could play with it?

>>18514

You could try Computoser, which is basically a web-based cgMusic. You don't get as many options as you do with cgMusic, but you can still download the MIDI files for each song you generate and you can generate as many songs as you want.

http://computoser.com/

>>18515

Well, it's kinda funny, I tried compouser for a few minutes and it's surprising to see that the computer can make better music than me, here's an mp3 of a test file

https://www.sendspace.com/file/w2za2p

>>18518

But are soundfonts better or worse than VSTs?

Well since I want to make music on my own to learn something maybe I should abandon randomly generated music. So maybe I will give soundfonts a try, they don't sound as bad as I thought, I mean sure they don't sound professional, but from what I heard they are not bad.

By the way, are there any more great soundfont banks like arachno? I like that it has all sorts of instruments in it. Any more like this, especially with some "fantasy themes" in them?

>>18522

The best I've heard is Musyng Kite, I'll try to find the download for you. If there are any others that I can remember I'll let you know.

>>18523

http://www.synthfont.com/SoundFonts/Musyng_Kite.sfpack

you'll have to use this de-compressor to unpack it.

http://www.synthfont.com/SFPACK.zip

>>18521

I've been making music with VSTs for about five years, and I can tell you that there are very few that give a usable selection of real instruments for free. The only things I've found are some nice pianos, other than that, there's very little. I use SampleTank Free (VST) for piano, and for pretty much any other instrument there are soundfonts that will blow most free vsts out of the water.

>>18524

Thanks a lot man, downloading it now.

>>18525

Sampletank free? Maybe I should download that too just to have it in case I need it, does it only have the piano or more instruments are there?

>>18521

In terms of being "better or worse," for the most part there isn't any difference in their structure. Commercial software like Kontakt, SampleTank etc. usually use samplers as engines. They play pre-recorded WAV files when a key is hit. This is the same thing a soundfont player, like shortcircuit, or FL does.

In terms of sound quality, this is really dependent on the source material. Good mics, high quality WAV recordings etc. Obviously, in most cases the more you pay the better the quality should be. So there's really reason to care if something is a VST or a soundfont, as long as it sounds the good, it's good.

The only caveat is that some VSTs can do processing that soundfont players can't. I can explain but it's not incredibly important, and it's generally very specific. Some piano VSTs don't rely solely on samples for instance, but generate sound through mathematical processes. This cuts down on the file size, but increases the CPU usage. The final result is usually pretty similar. They're also pretty much limited to their specific instrument, so they're pretty expensive.

>>18525

Actually now that you mentioned sampletank, it does look like something like I was looking for, a vst with a large selection of instruments. Should I bother to pirate it?

Also, I will use the arachno SF and try the musyng SF since you guys gave me some pretty good soundfont packs.

Maybe there is a bit of hope for me.

>>18527

Ah I see, so soundfonts are pretty good as long as they are recorded good, and they use less cpu.

>>18528

Well the free version has a pretty good selection, maybe download that to see if you want it?

>>18530

Alright then, I will try it.

>>18529

Yes, although my main point was that they're pretty much the same. Most commercial software for imitating real instruments uses nearly identical architecture to a soundfont player. CPU should be the same. The software itself is just used so that companies can better DRM their sound libraries.

>>18524

Damn it, I used the unpacker but it says that the file is not a sf pack archive, even if it actually it is. I can't unpack it.

>>18532

Although, maybe I should say that it's not all bad. The companies that create the commercial players do create some genuinely great software. However, soundfonts make up for this in usability and portability.

>>18534

I guess that then I'll stick with soundfonts and maybe a VST, or two.

>>18533

Weird... I loaded it in FL fine. Look around for a different copy maybe, it could be corrupted I guess? out of curiosity what's the file extension? FL might not support sfz.

>>18536

It's a sfpack file, I need to decompress it first before I can access it in FL from what I know, I'll search for another download.

>>18535

The best thing about VSTs is that they're basically just programs which makes them great for synthesizers, which is what they're primarily used for. That's not really what you're into starting out, so that's another reason that it's been so hard to find what you wanted.

>>18537

wait, there were two programs that I posted. You ran the decompressor, or did you not see that? After you run it, there should be an sf2 produced, and you can actually use that.

>>18539

Alright, downloaded it from here and it works. The other one was probably corrupted. The one you posted could not be decompressed.

https://docs.google.com/uc?id=0B6caGN_QlJVEUzVtX0tKOWVoWXc&export=download

>>18538

I also found a few VSTs for producing eerie/spooky/harmonic sounds, so I will use those too.

>>18540

ouch, heads up, I just loaded the soundfile in, and it loaded every instrument into memory at once, and FL crashed.

I think FL has another player called DirectWave, you might be able to load one patch at a time with that

>>18541

Well damn, mine didn't crash but it didn't load nothing.

>>18541

eh, it gave an error message, but it did work. If you're going to use some VSTs anyway, shortcircuit has been really reliable, so I'd recommend that.

>>18542

Haha that happened before it crashed. You probably just have more memory than me.

>>18545

When I exited the program it crashed, so there goes that. I can't use that.

I will try downloading it from here:

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=2b6dbe2d69541a1c&id=2B6DBE2D69541A1C!19663

>>18548

really? odd. Did you try DirectWave like I said?

>>18549

I didn't, it sounds like too much of a hassle to load each sound at a time. I imagine there are quite a lot of songs.

>>18550

no, patches are saved in the flp, so you don't need to reload them manually when you open the project each time. As long as you keep the soundfont in the same place, FL should know where to look. I'd test it once at least, to make sure.

>>18551

I guess I will try it, do you have to use directwave to work with that MK sound font? Or it works normally?

>>18553

No I couldn't get it to work normally, DW was the only way. Now that I'm looking at it, what I said might not be true. However, I know that shortcircuit will remember the patch information between sessions. I wouldn't trust DW too much because I don't use it.

http://www.vemberaudio.se/pd/shortcircuit/shortcircuit-1_1_2.exe

Just setup this VST and it should work fine.

>>18554

Okay thanks, now since all of you guys helped me with these downloads I will try and make a song, just with the mouse.

Then I will post it here to hear how horrible it is, if it's that horrible I will go and learn music theory. If not, I will keep practicing in that way.

>>18555

I look forward to hearing it haha. I was in the same position once, and I know how much of a mess starting to learn this shit is. If someone had shown me the ropes back then it would have saved too much time.

If you ever need help again feel free to email me. My address is skolskoly on google mail.

>>18556

Alright, thanks man, my first song will probably be pure shit, I fully expect that.

Well here's my first try at making a song, I created an absolute horrible disaster, I tried to make a fast song but it sounds like spaghetti. Obviously I was using the mouse.

I started with the drums and then when I got to the guitar I had no idea how to do it so it sounds good along with the drums. And the rhythm chances too fast, and it's just bad. I have to try again, but here it is if anyone wants to have his ears raped.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/juo0qs

>>18562

　　 　　　　　　＿＿＿_
　　　　　　　 ／_ノ 　ヽ､_＼
　ﾐ　ﾐ　ﾐ　　oﾟ(（●）) (（●）)ﾟo　　　　　　ﾐ　ﾐ　ﾐ
/⌒)⌒)⌒. ::::::⌒（__人__）⌒:::＼　　　/⌒)⌒)⌒)
|　/　/　/　　　　　|r┬-|　　　　|　(⌒)/　/ / /／
|　:::::::::::(⌒)　　　　|　|　 |　　 ／ 　ゝ　　:::::::::::/　　あーひゃっひゃっひゃひゃｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ
|　　　　　ノ　　 　　|　|　 |　 　＼　　/　　）　　/ 　 あーひゃっひゃっひゃひゃｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ
ヽ　　　　/　　　　　`ー'´ 　 　 　ヽ /　　　　／　　　　　　　　アッーーーーｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ
　|　　　　|　　 l||l　从人 l||l 　　　　 l||l 从人 l||l　　バンバン
　ヽ　　　 -一''''''"~~｀`'ー--､　　　-一'''''''ー-､
　　ヽ ＿＿＿＿(⌒)(⌒)⌒)　)　　(⌒＿(⌒)⌒)⌒))

>>18562

it's fast

but it's not bad, with enough practice you can get better.

>>18605

What is that thing?

>>18606

I will try to get better, at least I have the tools to do it now (except an instrument) so I am motivated to keep retrying, this will take a few years.

Have you considered using a free software synthesizer? I assume you are using Windows, so you're missing out on some good free programs, but here is a list of some worth trying.

http://freegamedev.net/wiki/Audio_software

HOW DO CHORD PROGRESSIONS WORK?

In particular, how often do I change notes? Like, if I said my song had a VI-IV-V-VI progression or whatever in 4/4 time, does that happen every bar, meaning a quarter note changes? Does each numeral indicate a full bar? Which instrument(s) does it affect?

If I do a bassline that follows that progression, do I do 1-3-5 chords, or do I have more freedom? Is it just the root note?

>>18776

So far I've tried Arachno soundfont the most. I have the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra soundfonts but I did not try them yet, I will try to make a peaceful song with it to see how it sounds. If the thread is still alive by then I will post it.

>>18791

As fast or slow as you want. Ez mode is 1 chord per bar or every other bar.

1 4 5 4 or 1 1 4 5 is ez mode generic happy song.

The chords are generally done by 1, sometimes 2 instruments. For example, guitar or piano.

For a generic bass line, yeah, use the root of the chord. So for a C chord play C a few times. To get fancier, use any note in the scale (usu starting with the chord's root at each progression change). For the C scale, that's any note with no sharps or flats. Protip: write everything in C to start. You can transpose all notes to another key later, if you want. (Entire soundtrack in same key would be shitty)

These are really basic starting rules. You'll quickly learn that making anything unique will require you break the rules constantly. In fact jazz is based on this idea.

Try diff chord progressions as you git gud. Start with chord 1 and try any 4 chords.

>>18792

Just in case, don't use the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra SF2 files, they are basically exported from the SFZ file and have some bugs because of that, like cutting off the sound right after the button was release instead of "halling" further. If you use it then go for the original SFZ file with an SFZ VST.

Also tried Arachno, Muysing and Bellatrix, even got everything from the 3GB newsground links, and despite some rare goodies, Sonatina beats everything when it comes to orchestra overall. Though it has only orchestra. For everything else you are good to go with Arachno and other SF files/Synths.

>>18310

There's a lot said here so far, but i'd like to contribute. LMMS is a good DAW if you want something free. Another cheap option is Renoise, but they charge 80 bucks for the program (even though, i already have it, and i'm fine with it).

A good book you can read is "Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio" from Mike Senior. It talks a lot about balance and how to handle the equipment for music. It won't tell you how to make music, but can help to make it sound good.

And finally, don't get too stressed on finding perfect sounds. A good composition has a lot of background instruments that alone would sound like shit (percs balanced on the high range, pads of 200-500 hz, sounds with short attacks and releaases, etc), so you don't need to have every instrument sounding like played like angels. A lot of your focus should be on overall balance.

And, yes, you should study some music theory.

>>18310

Well at the start if you lack experience all you can do is make music. Train your ears. Know what sounds good or not. Learn how to use harmonies. Don't fucking bother with thinking if your songs will sell or not. Simply make music. It will take a really long time before you will make something that people are willing to pay for since the library of royalty free music is enormous at the moment.

If you want to compose for videogames also keep in mind that you wanna make "mood music". Make songs that show emotions. That is where some music theory comes into practice. Music theory is your number 1 friend when composing. Know the difference between a major and a minor chord etc. You don't need to go so deep that you need to learn the difference between Mixolydian Mode and a Dorian Mode but it will help no doubt about it.

Also /r/ing feedback on this piece I made

http://puu.sh/kPHIo/b632dbd89b.mp3

I imagined it as a game over screen screen or as something that played during an emotional cutscene.

nobody can hear that a VST is pirated :^)

Don't fuck with VSTs.

You're putting the cart way before the horse.

If you are worried about "learning how to make music", this is not the time to focus on real-sounding VSTs, this is the time to focus on learning music theory and composition.

Wait until you can make a good sounding piece, and then switch the instrument pads out for good VSTs.

What you're talking about in nonsensical. Like "I want to learn how to drive, but how am I going to get ahold of a Maseerati GT?"

What you should be worrying about is, in this order:

1. Music theory and composition

2. A sense of melody, timing, and atmosphere

3. The ability to work around a DAW without getting lost

4. A comfortable DAW that doesn't restrict your work

5. Knowing file management to the degree that you could switch DAW if necessary

6. instrument pads