Musician Archive
Thread: More songs, flourishes, and effects coming; other dev feedback
hm I don't follow. .wav files can have their pitch altered effortlessly and sound quality only takes a small hit. Latency is not an issue because there's no reason this change of key would have to be done on the fly. It would require every .wav file for musicians to have 8 copies (seven more than are currently there) which could be too much... But that way there would be no latency issue.
You_Myst wrote:
unfortunately, it wouldnt be as easy as that, the game uses a wav system, not a midi system.. all the music for each instrument is tiny wav files(each flourish, each song start, each non-flourish loop and each ending for each instrument)
a /changekey command COULD be made to work, but its a whole lot more work and latency issues will pop up with it running a digital sample that needs 'tweaked' on each wav file for each client.
agreed waho, that would be the only viable solution to changing pitch on the fly with every client able to hear the music(many different clips, found out they are actually .mp3 clips last night though so that would rule out low cpu time on-the-fly pitch changes) after doing some math, each song runs about 2.5 megs of mp3(start, non-flourish, 8 flourishes and ending) some are larger(jazz is almost 5 megs).. this is adding all the instruments involved in the songs
it CAN be done with a downloaded music patch adding new pitches in a new lfe file but keep in mind, each keychange per song is going to add roughly the original filesize, for 8pitches, thats 2.5 meg avg * 8 per song (avg of 20 megs per song to download) with 10 songs... thats a 200 meg(more than but im an optomist) lfe file to download... i can see them doing this if they start up something like they did with everquest with optional downloads, but i highly doubt it would be a required download if they took this route.
maybe if they added 2 key changes(one higher and one lower than the default) it would more likely be done.
now that i think about it... the bandfill wouldnt benifit from a keychange... no need for more than 1 in a group anyways... that would cut a nice chunk off the songsize... bandfill is the 'busiest' sound in the files...
might squeeze it down to 150-180 meg download for 8 pitches...
An easy way to do it, is to have musical scripts...
you need a music and song making tool, and the music making tool could be like the one in mario paint, which was simple and quite good 
. then when your done, you get a blueprint, which you can make and give to all your friends, peeps, etc.....but the way you make a song, the higher level a person has to be to use it....and this helps with the blue print, cause you can make an alternative solution for newbs who only know sw1 and rock.
Would THIS work?
As a RL classical musician, I have my own qualms about the systems that SOE has given us. By far, it is the best music making system in a game that I know of (unless as a good friend pointed out, you consider Sibelius or Finale a game) 
I've been enjoying playing in cantinas and in camps on hutning missions. There's enough variety to keep me at least interested-coming up with various rif combos, repetitions, 4-8 bar phrases etc..., and certainly enough to enable a non-musician to experience a musical world/life. I've thought about the idea of being able to compose things from scratch and I've decided that I cringe at the thought. Yes.. we'd be able to create some really cool stuff, but think of the amount of complete trash that would be created. What I WOULD like to see was some way to use cross-motives from tunes in a unique song and also a way to modulatebut I'm not sure how to best implement either idea
That said, I'm really looking forward to the possibility of new songs/flourishes. New instruments would also be great, but ONLY if we actually get new SOUNDS and TIMBRES to go with them. I really liked the idea about instrument crafters being able to create a "Set" of intstruments- that'd be great! We'll see what the Devs give us...
-Na
And the music making idea has a good/bad streak going, and there would be LOTS and LOTS of trash. make it a master musician skill or something, and have guidlines to help push out all the trash. ANOTHER thing is that how are the sounds gonna line up with the music? BUT like said earlier, there would be some nice pieces...but there would be people who copy new crap songs...but will have to wait and see if they add that......
ANY1 read my bouncer idea?
THAT would be a handy skill
I hate to say it but I don't think we are going to ever be able to fully write songs from scratch in this game. It wouldn't be good anyway, and those who don't realize it have way to much condifence in other players. 
So let's concentrate on ideas to make this current music system even better.
/changekey would pwn
If the flourishes were like 1/2 a measure instead of 2 measures long and there were 16 instead of 8 then that would allow a lot more creativity and freedom.
OboeWan, what a great forum handle for a classical Musician. 
And yes, I agree, we need new music sounds, not just new instrument graphics with the same old sounds.And of coursewe need new songs and flourishes. New instrument-sounds and new songs-flourishes: these remain the top two issues for Musicians as far as I can tell.
Waho,the more I learn about the legal issues surrounding player-created music, the moreconvinced I am that it won't happen. Copyright law extends not just to the copyingand distribution ofcopyrighted works, but also the public performance of them. Of course, we're alreadyfree to violate copyrights in the game, at least arguably, by typing "/sing Hey Jude, Don't Make it Bad..."in a crowded public cantina, but allowing us to "cover" Hey Jude with our instruments would bea more obvious violation that entails risk SOE probably doesn't want to take.
sadly....yes....there would be idiots who play music....
time to pull out the SNES and make some songs.....
NewJedi, got any new info on the tiime?
im in no hurry, getting up the musician tree
I wish I did. I've asked the devs whether we can expect a more detailed response, and I haven't gotten a direct reply -- only that the devs plan to jumpstart the Correspondent program once they hire the new Community Rep. Once the Rep is hired, I plan to pester him or her frequently about new songs, sounds, flourishes, better gigs, /bandtip -- all the stuff on our top-five list. Once we have the Rep, I also expect to start a new poll for top-five issues; I suspect one or two items may be changing.
SinnAsyr wrote:
NewJedi, got any new info on the tiime?
I recently put in a suggest stating this: I would like for them to allow masters to exchange experience points for new instruments/songs/flourishes. This would give us something to work for and something to use those points on that we earn but just sit there.
This could be applied to any master. For combatants, they could earn new attack moves, etc ... artisan and their branch offs ... new schematics, or "buy" more percentage toward successful creation or percentage toward experimentation ... that kind of thing.
Resa'Tor: Master Musician/Master Artisan/Architect