I would like to contribute but have a few issues.

[Zakalwe]

Hello!

I've been playing Wesnoth for a while now and really enjoy the game and would like to help out a bit.

I wrote a few pieces of music for friends who were creating games back when I was in high school - the pieces were never used and I thought I might be able to contribute them to Wesnoth.

Please have a listen to them and let me know if they are acceptable.

http://www.geocities.com/forgot_dot/ScaryThemeMusic.MID
http://www.geocities.com/forgot_dot/Sca ... usicII.MID
http://www.geocities.com/forgot_dot/Alliance.MID

I've got a few more sitting on my hard disk as well. Please let me know if you want to hear any more.

I realise they are in midi format - is there a way of recording midi files onto .ogg format? I'm happy to do so if anyone wants to use them.

As for composing any new pieces I've got a few issues:
1. I'm currently very busy at university.
2. I no longer have the program that I used to write music so I would need to find a new one, preferably one that is free.
3. I haven't composed anything new in years so I am probably rusty as anything.

Anyway that doesn't mean I won't want to or be able to write new pieces in the future, just that I can't do so now.

Anyway, please give those three pieces a listen because although I'd like to help I am completely new to this and welcome feedback and direction. Thank you.

[gmlion]

Mmm.
I think those pieces would need a lot of work before going into Wesnoth. As now, they would be like some Gameboy sprites into a 24bit game.
ciao
Gianmarco

[West]

Zakalwe, I take it you haven't read this?

[Zakalwe]

West:
I read it in the stickied thread at the top of the forum - I more or less wanted to know if there was any point in making an effort to try and convert those pieces from .midi files into .ogg files.

Anyhow if the composition of the music itself is unsuitable for wesnoth (i.e. it's not an issue of sound quality) then I don't want to waste anyone's time, including my own. That's why I wanted a bit of feedback about the pieces themselves - I don't know if it's technically possible to re-record them in .ogg but I figured I'd get some feedback on the music first.

It was not my intention to submit the pieces in midi format.

[Jetrel]

West:
I read it in the stickied thread at the top of the forum - I more or less wanted to know if there was any point in making an effort to try and convert those pieces from .midi files into .ogg files.

Anyhow if the composition of the music itself is unsuitable for wesnoth (i.e. it's not an issue of sound quality) then I don't want to waste anyone's time, including my own. That's why I wanted a bit of feedback about the pieces themselves - I don't know if it's technically possible to re-record them in .ogg but I figured I'd get some feedback on the music first.

It was not my intention to submit the pieces in midi format.

So basically, you'd be interested in someone taking the time to take your midi melody, and record it with some better samples (most likely also doing a bunch of the work which makes high-end synthesized music sound good, which is custom tweaking of how the virtual musicians are playing their instruments during different parts of indivdual notes).

That would be feasible. However, I've got a feeling these aren't quite worth the rather significant effort.

Melodically, the last one is decent. The first two are really ... random, and have chord changes that don't make sense; ultimately they don't come off as scary, they just come off as random. Certain chord changes (which you can find better described in proper music theory books) are required for something to feel like "music", rather than a series of random notes (like a wind chime). It's kind of a lot like language - you can put a bunch of totally random words in sequence, but in order to actually have any meaning, it has to follow certain rules (in english, for example, a sentence has to have a subject and a verb).

The second thing you'd probably want to do to make the music more interesting is to have some actual "orchestration". Good orchestral music usually has more going on at once than a single melody playing at one time. It will actually have multiple "threads" of music being done at the same time, and having parts between them that line up and complement each other.


Thanks a lot for offering, though, and I wish you luck on any musical endeavors.

[West]

West:
I read it in the stickied thread at the top of the forum - I more or less wanted to know if there was any point in making an effort to try and convert those pieces from .midi files into .ogg files.

Anyhow if the composition of the music itself is unsuitable for wesnoth (i.e. it's not an issue of sound quality) then I don't want to waste anyone's time, including my own. That's why I wanted a bit of feedback about the pieces themselves - I don't know if it's technically possible to re-record them in .ogg but I figured I'd get some feedback on the music first.

It was not my intention to submit the pieces in midi format.

The problem is that I can't listen to midi files. Or more correctly, there's a bit of work involved (importing the midi file into my DAW, loading a GM soundfont and assigning the proper patches) and I'm reluctant to go through all that as midi files really tell you nothing about the quality of the original composition. Unless I can hear what it sounds like on the hard/software you created it with, I can't make an informed judgment about the music.

Turning a midi file into an ogg isn't hard though. YOu need to record the stereo output of your soundcard (when the midi tune is playing back, of course) to a wave file and convert it to ogg format. How to go about that depends entirely on what OS you're on and what software you're using. If the midi synth you're using is a software synth, it might even be possible to render it to wave directly from your DAW.