Musician Archive
Thread: Retarded Question
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PlayerKiller1
Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:00 pm
#1
I am actually planning to delete my character as soon as I help a friend do some grinding and make a musician. I am really looking forward to getting an instrument, but the problem is.. I don't know which instrument it is 
. I hear it in the cantina a lot - it sounds like a cross between a clarinet and a soprano saxophone (actually, more like a large-bore clarinet of european design). If anyone knows what this instrument is, PLEASE TELL ME. I need this 
. I hear it in the cantina a lot - it sounds like a cross between a clarinet and a soprano saxophone (actually, more like a large-bore clarinet of european design). If anyone knows what this instrument is, PLEASE TELL ME. I need this --Arael
LeBob
Mon Mar 08, 2004 4:21 pm
#2
beginner horn is the slitherhorn
then
- fizzz
- fanfar
- kloo horn
- traz
- bandfill
- chidinkalu horn
- mandoviol
- omni box
- nalargon
RoperGaran
Mon Mar 08, 2004 5:03 pm
#3
It's either the fizz, chidinkalu horn or kloo horn. They all sound the same.
Roper Garan
Roper Garan
PlayerKiller1
Tue Mar 09, 2004 8:47 pm
#4
Thank You .
.Why do all three horns sound the same? That doesn't make much sense. I'm not saying I doubt what you're saying, but why would swg do that?
Ryyger
Tue Mar 09, 2004 10:12 pm
#5
PlayerKiller1 wrote:Thank YouWhy do all three horns sound the same? That doesn't make much sense. I'm not saying I doubt what you're saying, but why would swg do that?
Easier to program.
Fragpuppie
Wed Mar 10, 2004 2:21 am
#6
Easier to program...and not the only one...there are 10 instruments and only 5 sound sets.
1) Slytherhorn/Fanfar/Traz
2) Fizzz/Kloo Horn/Chidinkalu Horn
3) Bandfill/Ommni Box
4) Mandoviol
5) Nalargon
Fragpuppie Uber
Master Entertainer, Master Musician, Master Marksman
Guild Leader - Performer United Professional Society (PUPS)
Band Leader and Booking Agent - Frag's Puppies
President and CEO - Fragpuppie Enterprises and Uber Instruments
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra
Master Entertainer, Master Musician, Master Marksman
Guild Leader - Performer United Professional Society (PUPS)
Band Leader and Booking Agent - Frag's Puppies
President and CEO - Fragpuppie Enterprises and Uber Instruments
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra
PlayerKiller1
Wed Mar 10, 2004 2:27 pm
#7
no offense, but that sounds just plain lazy to me . I'm not trying to complain, but trying to think of all of the already developed (and some very realistic) midi sounds...
One could just make an engine like Finale's or Sibelius' and merely "skin" the songs with the instrument's sounds. I mean the "easier to program thing" - yes, short term, its easier, but if you took the time to make a really good engine that had good pitch values, time values, etc, like a good composing program would use..... then in the long term, every time you want a new instrument, you just run it off that engine and the code is much easier, with much much more variety.
Of course, what do I know? I'm not really a computer programmer anyways.
But five sounds? Oh how painful to reduce all instruments down to five.
ElnAckom
Mon Feb 21, 2005 8:09 am
#8
I realize this thread is totally ancient, but I have to weigh in here, as I'm a professional music educator, so this is sort of my thing...
I wasn't all that surprised when I first learned about the five tracks, and I think SWG did a decent job of accounting for it. Instruments in similar families, even if exotic, frequently have very similar sounds. Take the alto saxophone, which is nearly ubiquitous in the United States, and the tarogato, the national instrument of Hungary, which is a conical-bore single reed instrument. They sound VERY similar to each other to the average listener. (More attuned and savvy listeners will appreciate a darker, more mellow sound from the tarogato.)
This logic applies to the Slitherhorn and the Traz, for example. Both instruments sound like clarinets or saxophones depending on the track. (One can assume that the Star Wars instruments would have timbre-adjusting devices just like an electric guitar can change voices with effect pedals.) It is likely that they would be written similar parts.
Taking out the role-play element for a moment, it is definitely NOT a wise idea in my humble opinion to include MIDI technology as part of SWG. The programs the poster is speaking of, for those of you who are not familiar with them, Finale and Sibelius, are end-user composition programs that utilize a technology called MIDI, which most gamers are going to be familiar with as the source of a great deal of game music from the "early days" of computer programming.
What we have now is a Fraunhofer-type file (better known as an MP3 to the general public) system that uses layered sounds to create the songs. SWG music composers create the songs in five distinct tracks, usually two reeds/brass, bass and percussion, strings, and steel drum/keyboard percussion. (Literally, a cantina band.) This translates then to the appropriate fictional instruments.
If MIDI technology were used in place of the Fraunhofer tracks, the drop-off in sound quality would be MASSIVE. The only people who are even close to realistic implementation of MIDI technology in software programming are the folks at Yamaha with their Sondius and SoftSynth XG technologies, both of which I have a lot of experience with. Roland made a nice external device called the SoundCanvas that they tried to totally software-synth, but the results were less than admirable. Those of you who have played Final Fantasy VII for PC will recognize the scaled-down Yamaha Soft-Synth S-YXG30 as part of the install. The results are really pretty decent... but there's no way that SOE is going to license out the Sondius S-YXG100 module from Yamaha for every copy of SWG they sell. The cost would be ridiculous, I'm sure.
Does MIDI technology have the ability to create more tunes at equal quality to what we've got now? Yeah, it really does, thanks to the XG series of software synthesizers... but should we introduce MIDI into SWG without it? NO NO NO. Play a MIDI file on your computer using the Windows-OEM sound mapper sometime and tell me you want THAT in your local cantina. Bleh.
Coincidentally, we should not look a gift-horse in the mouth here... As a composer myself, I have a lot of respect for the way the sound designers went out of their way to develop a particular style and feel to the music we play as entertainers, and a system that attempts to give non-musically-savvy players a way to control their aspiring performing artist toons.
Lazy? No, I don't think so. The focus of the game is not on the songs musicians play, and I think we're lucky to have gotten the content that we have. Would I like to see more songs? More tracks? More instruments? Absolutely! I'd like to see them separate out the percussion and the bass, for example, and give percussion to the ommni box and give bass to the bandfill and a new upright instrument. (That'd just look fantastic...)
My big suggestion? Vocal tracks. Give us two to start, in the style of Joh Yowza and Sy Snoodles, flourishes and all. Now THAT would be pretty cool!
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