Game music technologies

[Shifty Geezer]

MIDI has so many variables and commands, it's not just "not a awful lot", it is an awful lot of them. 128 keys... how would you want more?

A MOD can set any pitch per sample. 56 thousands pitches in the case of the Amiga IIRC. You can of course do the same in MIDI if you really wanted.

128 velocities...aren't you confusing it with tempos? Because velocities are more like layers to enrich the sound of a particular instrument, and each layer represents how hard you press a key in real life. Say you play a note applying the max pressure that certain key of your piano can handle, the velocity of that key is going to be 128..

Velocities are how many divisions of 'volume' for your note. If you have a complicated synth, it may create different sounds for different velocities. A simple synth just playing back a single sample per note (typical integrated GM bank) is just going to play the same sample at one of 128 different volume levels. 128 is plenty enough resolution though.

16 channels, you are right. It's not that much, apparently. But there is more to it, you can have thousands of tracks, as long as you use them within those 16 channels. You can overcome that limitation easily. Think of your favourite band, or Michael Jackson.., how many instruments are playing at the same time?...it's obvious it's a lot less than 16.

They use multitrack recording and baking MIDI into audio tracks and maybe multiple MIDI ports. MODS can support 32, 64, and even unlimited numbers of simultaneous instruments. That said, MIDI can support multiple notes per track, so it's not quite the same. eg. You can play 8 notes on a single piano instrument in a single channel in MIDI, but require 8 individual tracks for the same in a MOD.

You can also switch channels in a single track, using MIDI commands. In the end, that's why they take so little space, it's not sound nor notes, it's just simply a series of commands saying a hardware or software synth how, when and what to play and then the synth obeys.

But when talking about game music, you need to provide those sounds! So when you say you love MIDI music in games, surely you're talking about the implementation of the tracks you are listening to? It's not the list of instructions you like about DQ's music, but the final recording of audio with the samples the musician created?

You can also use a tracker to output instructions to a MIDI interface. I did this on Amiga, creating MODs with just a list of instructions and playing them on my Roland GS sound bank.

You can also capture live performance in a mod format.

So really, MIDI is just another file format. Well, as I said it's a protocol, technically. It's not far removed from a tracker mod. When it comes to games, there's a distinction between a music format that provides no sample data and uses hardware to provide that (MIDI) and one that uses embedded samples (mod). The mod is better for many games because you can provide your own samples and be far more adventurous than a GM sound bank. You can also be sure everyone has the same experience, unlike MIDI which might sound terrible on some soundbanks.

 

[zed]

I've been using MIDI since the days of amiga/atari ST

Think of your favourite band, or Michael Jackson.., how many instruments are playing at the same time?...it's obvious it's a lot less than 16.

MJ prolly had 16 tracks just on the drums

eg heres wacko in front of a mixing desk, from the looks its about 64 channels, the reason you have so many is cause some music does use that many

Modern music is basically almost all MIDI

MIDI is very limited, ppl have realized this for a long time, thus its getting replaced, the problem is they've been working on the spec, forever (think worse than html5) and its still not done

 

[Blazkowicz]

If you use Midi in a game but the game provides the synth and samples as well, I feel like it's still Midi.

Final Fantasy VII for the PC did come with the contemporary Yamaha software synth, almost more interesting than the game itself.

 

[Exophase]

Final Fantasy VII for the PC did come with the contemporary Yamaha software synth, almost more interesting than the game itself.

Also sounded nothing like the original PS1 version, which tells you a lot about how interchangeable the music was.