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FamiTracker
I'm always game for hearing more Battle Network covers! Your 'WWW Networks' is actually sounding very good. Ice Man's stage is good too.
However, some of the channels in Fire Man's stage are really out of sync (ie. 2A03 Square 1). 'In the Room' also has some nasty note clashes that you might want to rework. It would also be really cool if you rip the drum samples from the game and use them as DPCM.
I've recently been doing a handful of covers of tracks from other games in the Battle Network series so just let me know if you need any help with them.
Keep practicing!
Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to agree on the "In The Room" one... There are a lot of clashing and just plain incorrect notes in there, along with the fact that the notes in your version just don't have the bright, poppy sound that the original's does. It looks like a partial culprit is the fact that the Square 1 and 2 have those two frames of space before the kick in in the beginning, which sets them an entire note behind everything else, when they really aren't supposed to be. There are also some incorrect notes in there in general.
As far as ripping the drum samples... goes... oh wait, I was gonna go on some big ol' thing about how as far as I'm aware the only way to rip drum samples from a GBA games is to just record the PCM track and hope you can slice a clean sample out, which there are none for most of the drums. Then I remembered Operate Shooting Star for the DS. And how you CAN easily rip drum samples out of those. INTERESTING.
Yeah I tried ripping iceman's drum sample but the same channel plays stuff from 3 channels in my version as well, In audacity I've managed to cut it so that only a very small fragment of some high pitched sound made it into the dmc
[quote=za909]Yeah I tried ripping iceman's drum sample but the same channel plays stuff from 3 channels in my version as well, In audacity I've managed to cut it so that only a very small fragment of some high pitched sound made it into the dmc[/quote]
Yeah, like I said, trying to rip drums out of GBA music is hit and miss at best. However, ripping it out of the DS version is incredibly easy and gives perfect samples, among other wonderful things. For example, I was able to churn this out since my last post! Of course, the song is incredibly short to begin with, so that may be part of the reason why I was able to churn it out so fast...
If I had to give you any advice, I'd give you a few pointers, actually.
1) Don't rely on doubling up channels so much, if ever. It creates all sorts of phasing oddities, doesn't really sound all that good, and really isn't necessary. Besides a small amount of PCM stuff, pretty much the entire MMBN soundtrack relies almost entirely on what is basically the Gameboy soundchip, which means you can actually perfectly recreate the proper square sounds if you wanted. And as far as "In The Room" is concerned, the wave channel of the GBA original can be accurately recreated as one of the VRC6 square channels with a duty of 7. All you really need to do is play around with the duties until you get the right sound. Thankfully, it's not like you've got too many options to pick from. :D
2) Not sure what you were doing with the drums there, if you were trying to go for your own thing or just couldn't get the originals down right. I'd actually completely understand that second one, considering the originals had some overlapping samples that I actually had to layer in Audacity before I could get them into Famitracker... Which actually adds 3 more samples that wouldn't otherwise need to be there... But that's neither here nor there. Anyways. Yeah. Drums. If you were going for your own thing there, I guess I can't really give much advice. If you were trying to get the originals, I'd suggest (if you haven't already) separating the noise and PCM channels into their own separate recordings, and listening to them carefully to get it right. Obviously the noise channel carries over pretty well to the NES, and the PCM... Well, like I said, you can mostly get the proper drum beats out of that. Especially since this song didn't make use of any other sounds in the PCM other than drums.
3) To add to the thing I said in the last point about separating out the tracks... What I do is, using Foobar2000 and the foo_input_viogsf plugin, I mute all the channels but one, then convert that to a .wav file. Then I mute that channel, and unmute the next, and do the same, repeating that until I've got all the channels as separate .wav. Once I've got them all, I plop them all down into Audacity, where I can play around with them, muting and unmuting them as I please, slowing the tempo to help or whatever. If you already do that or something similar, please disregard this point!
But yeah. Overall, I'd honestly say the quality of what your doing seems to kinda jump around a lot. Some of them, while not entirely accurate, still sound pretty good, like the battle theme and such. Some of them, like In The Room, sound... Well, not as good. But yeah. I'd say, once you're finished with them, or really whenever you want, go over them all and kinda do a once through or so to make sure the quality is more equal throughout. Also, add the crash cymbals! I was wondering for a while what some of the songs were missing, and then I noticed these huge gaps in the noise channel hihats, and realized that there are no crash cymbals anywhere! Add those, dude! :D
Edit: And holy crap that post ended up HUGE. I hope it didn't come across as me being overly critical or anything of this. You've got a good start here, and I'm totally looking forward to seeing the rest of this cranked out by you!
Great job on that ftm, betasword! Your idea of getting the samples from Shooting Star is a really good idea. I imagine the samples should also be higher quality if they're taken from a DS remake.
I'd also like to add that I've recently found a great little program called gba2mid which I've been using for my own Battle Network covers. Not only does it convert gsf to midi, but it also has a feature that allows you to rip all the samples used in the track you're converting as individual .wav files. This is unbelievably helpful for anyone attempting GBA covers and it saves you the hassle of having to mute channels and 'cut out' the samples you need.
I just thought I'd share that with you guys (betasword, if you plan on doing anymore GBA related stuff in the future, I highly recommend you try this program).
[quote=psn]I'd also like to add that I've recently found a great little program called gba2mid which I've been using for my own Battle Network covers. Not only does it convert gsf to midi, but it also has a feature that allows you to rip all the samples used in the track you're converting as individual .wav files. This is unbelievably helpful for anyone attempting GBA covers and it saves you the hassle of having to mute channels and 'cut out' the samples you need.
I just thought I'd share that with you guys (betasword, if you plan on doing anymore GBA related stuff in the future, I highly recommend you try this program).[/quote]
[quote=psn]I'd also like to add that I've recently found a great little program called gba2mid which I've been using for my own Battle Network covers. Not only does it convert gsf to midi, but it also has a feature that allows you to rip all the samples used in the track you're converting as individual .wav files.[/quote]
[quote=psn]but it also has a feature that allows you to rip all the samples used in the track you're converting as individual .wav files.[/quote]
[quote=psn][b]rip all the samples used in the track you're converting as individual .wav files.[/b][/quote]
OH. MY. GOD. HOW. HAVE I MISSED THIS.
Edit: DOUBLE OH MY GOD. I FOUND IT AND IT IS INDEED INCREDIBLE, if a bit finicky and a bit trial and error. STILL. I can finally get the drums samples and stuff out of the GBA Castlevania games! YEAH!
Oh yeah, and a link, to save anyone else the Google effort: [url=]http://code.google.com/p/loveemu/downloads/detail?name=gba2midi-0.8.0.rar&can=2&q=
Well, it's new to me, that's for sure. I've been wondering for the longest time if there was any sort of tool that could do for GBA music what VGMTrans does for DS music, and this finally answered that question.
...Of course, I probably could've asked if anyone knew of anything similar long ago, but hey, whatever. At least I have it now. :D
Hmm well, with this amount of interest, it is worth it to go on I think.
Maybe I should just stop calling these 'covers' because I don't even intend to try to recreate every single sound from the originals, because then I can just post an .mp3 of the original and that's it. Don't get me wrong, I love listening to these you all make, it just feels like I should be doing them in a way that I leave my mark somehow, I know it sounds like an excuse because I'm too noobish yet to do the real thing but really...even if I could do them perfectly, I wouldn't...
Ripping the drums from game sounds like a good idea though.
(andfiremansmusicreallysucksnowsoidefinitelyneedtoworkonthat)
