Musician Archive
Thread: Customizable Music System: Sheet Music
Customizable music. I think we've all probably wanted it. It's tricky, and difficult to do, but I think for those who would be really interested in it, it could be done.
These are just the thoughts unleashed upon you from someone who just found their way here.
SOE would just need to program an entire music notation program system into the game 
Being an MMOG, they are responsible for every bit of content that comes and goes. We could probably all fire up Finale and bang out music without end, but we wouldn't be able to get it into the game for all to enjoy because of the legal approval challenges.
But an ingame notation program is doable. It doesn't need to be professional grade. The hardest part, in my opinion, is having the talent to create music at all. I think the game uses 12 or 16 track MIDI? Each track has eight flourishes in them, and each flourish sounds different across different instruments. That's alot of content creation.
I think it would therefore not actually be used to it's fullest potential save by a few people. Personally, that'd be fine though. Because of this:
Music generated through an ingame notation system would generate a new type of schematic: Sheet Music. This could be traded. It would be replicated to the recipient rather than actually transferred. It would only be capable of being transferred X number of times (due to database problems ), and only the original creator could transfer it. It wouldn't need to decay if it can only be transferred X times.
What this does is add a new "song ability" to whoever is holding the sheet music in their inventory.
Quality is the big balancing factor. It's like Unreal Tournament mods. Not all are great 
Some people would spend the entirety of their SWG life writing new music and selling it. The interest in doing so likely relates to a RL challenge. Writing music by writing music notation is really tough, time consuming, and therefore like any other grind, the purview of those with above-average interest.
Down the road, there's no reason why they couldn't implement a more wider-usable "music generator" system. There are programs out now, and which may have been around for a long time for all I know, that let you create music graphically. These require mostly just an ear for music, rather than a more formalize background/experience in music theory.
I think the problem with customizable music is that in order for it to work, you'd need to get the custom song to the clients of everyone who not only is playing it, but also listening to it. I'm pretty sure the music isn't coming down the pipe from the internet when it's played. More likely there are only some sync commands coming through to each client that triggers the sound, ie trigger slither flourish 1. All of the sounds are already installed on all of the clients, either from the CD or an update.
I'm not saying it can't be done, and it would be nice if it could. I just don't see a way to do it without eating a chunk of bandwidth. I'm no MIDI expert, and I do know that MIDI files are smaller than mp3 for comparable length, but for each song you would need 9 MIDI segments for each song (a segment being a main riff or flourish) for each distinctive sounding instrument (how many of these are there currently? and we're asking for more). This data would then have to be transmitted from the server to every client that would be hearing it.
Uh, duh, hehe, I forgot entirely about the listeners!
Ah well, back to square one.
Trully, I'd love a real-time single-note-plunking on-the-fly music system That requires no real explanation though...
I like it though.