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Messages - Novus

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11
Sampling / Did somebody say... free samples?
« on: November 29, 2007, 16:06:11 »
With all of the myriad message board threads out there started by people looking for free samples, I figured it would be helpful to put together a list for my own use. And then I figured it might be nice to share that list. So here. :)

http://www.novusmusic.org

It's the first entry right there, dated today.

12
Tracking / Re: Amazingly noobish question.
« on: November 29, 2007, 08:23:42 »
Instruments... wow, if I was still more of an active tracker myself, I could probably help you more with that... maybe run a search here on the board for "samples" or "instruments"? You should find some posts on sample archives that way. And then run that search on some other tracker-forums and music-forums too. It'll take a little digging, but so many people ask the "Where can I find good samples?" question that it gets answered a lot. :)

13
You're welcome! Glad I could help. ;D I'll have to grab the song when I get home later.

I actually took piano lessons when I was a kid. It didn't stick too well, but it's basically how I learned musical notation, and I still remember how a piano works and how it's supposed to be played... I just can't play it very well myself. It helped a lot when I got into tracking later on, though I had to tear myself away from musical staffs for writing song ideas. I actually developed my own little tracker-based shorthand just to make it easier on myself. And to this day, when I get a melody idea I want to save, I use that shorthand instead of a musical staff, even if I don't intend to track it out. It's just faster. ;)

14
I think you're trying to stay a little too strongly-tied to traditional musical notation. ;)

One thing to keep in mind is that traditional musical notation is for the purposes of showing a human being how to play a piece of music. But with tracking software, the computer is replacing the piano-player. Rather than showing a person how to play the song, you have to show the COMPUTER how to play the song. And that means you sometimes have to think less like a musician and more like a programmer. A musician can fill in a lot of details of tone and take little liberties and interpretations with a piece of sheet music, but a computer can't. A computer will do EXACTLY what you tell it to do, nothing more, and nothing less. But the more precise you are with your instructions, the more natural you can get the music to sound. :)

Most tracking software is composed of patterns, and each pattern is composed of rows. If it helps, you can just think of each pattern as a "measure," and each row as a "beat." There's usually 64 rows in a pattern, so the length of your note would be determined by which row you enter your first note on and how many rows go by before you enter your next note. A whole note would be 64 rows, a half-note would be 32 rows, a quarter-note would be 16 rows, an eighth-note would be 8 rows, a sixteenth-note would be 4 rows, a thirty-secondth-note would be 2 rows... well, I'm sure you can do math. ;)

Ties you can just do by treating the two tied notes as one note. Say you have two eighth-notes tied together. One-eighth plus one-eighth is two-eighths, which rounds to one-fourth, also known as a quarter note. Continuing the example from above, that quarter note would be 16 rows.

For staccato touch, you would just need to use the volume control there in the column to do a quick volume ramp down on your note, maybe playing the original note at the max volume of 64, then going 48, 32, 16, 0 in the volume column in the next 4 rows to quickly bring the volume down instead of letting the piano sample play out to the end.

For a damper pedal... that's kinda advanced. Probably the best way would be to either use piano samples that were recorded or created with the damper pedal pressed down to begin with, or use a piano sample that has a carefully-done loop at the end to create the illusion that the pedal is being held. In either case, any note that you want to have played WITHOUT the damper pedal would either need to have a cutoff command or a quick volume ramp-down (see staccato above) at the point when you want the sound of the note to end.

15
Tracking / Re: Amazingly noobish question.
« on: November 28, 2007, 09:05:48 »
Hava, your question is a little unclear. So, just some general advice. :) When I was first getting into tracking, I often found that the best way to learn how to do something was to find a track where someone had already done what I wanted to learn, open it up in a tracking program, and study it directly to see how they'd done it.

I also highly recommend reading the help file. There's a reason why RTFM is such a popular acronym. ;D

Also, once I'd gotten used to my program of choice, I still found it helpful to go back and re-read through the help file top-to-bottom from time to time, and I kept doing that even when I'd been using Impulse Tracker for 4 years. I learned something new everytime, something I'd always overlooked before.

16
Help me find that... / Basement Swingin' - by Glee
« on: October 22, 2007, 12:32:53 »
Anyone got this one? It's an old club tune circa 1999 called Basement Swingin' by a tracker named Glee. The file was an XM.

From an old long-dead file listing I've found it looks like the ZIP file for it was just under a meg.

A few years ago I tracked down Glee and e-mailed him, but he said he'd long ago lost the file in a hard drive crash. Bleah. :-\

If anyone has it, I'll be your bestest friend forever! :angel:

(Or maybe not.)

17
The Lobby / Re: Ever burnt your favourite mods on CDs?
« on: October 01, 2007, 06:59:00 »
Yep! Years and years ago, I put together a set of four CDs of tracker music and labeled them as my "On The Right Track" series. Kept them in pretty heavy rotation in my collection for a while. I keep meaning to re-do them with some of the tracks I found later, but I keep putting it off.

(Oh, and hi Alex! Long time, no see. :) )

18
Tracking / Re: TraxWeekly #002 (3-23-1995)
« on: September 19, 2007, 16:55:13 »
TraxWeekly ran from 1995 until 1998, but every issue is still up at the ol' Hornet Archive!

ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/info/traxweek/

You may also be interested in a feature on my own website called The Best Of TraxWeekly, which highlights particularly useful articles from all across TraxWeekly's run.

http://www.novusmusic.org/traxweek.html

19
The Lobby / Re: Timbaland ripped a track from demoscener
« on: September 17, 2007, 14:40:23 »
And now the case is at an end? According to the official news source it is :(

http://www.fairlight.fi/tempest/acidjazzed_evening/

That could mean that a financial settlement has been reached. I don't know how it is in other countries, but in the American legal system it is fairly common for legal matters to be resolved through a financial settlement in which the defendent pays money to the plaintiff, and the plaintiff in turn agrees not to talk about the case any more.

If that's the case, it could be that Tempest got some money but isn't even allowed to say that he got any money.

It's also possible that Tempest has realized he can't win, and just wants it all to go away.

Since he's not talking, we can't be sure. But since most legal disputes in the USA end in some sort of an out-of-court financial settlement anyway, I'd guess that what probably happened is Timbaland paid out some cash just to shut Tempest up and make the story go away.

However, I am not a lawyer, and your mileage may vary. ;)

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