Making songs with midi files - no fretting required

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Making songs with midi files - no fretting required

Postby nobby76 » Thu Jun 21, 2007 8:04 pm

Admins.. you may want to sticky this so it doesnt get buried.

Ok ill try my best to explain. Ill do this using Fruity loops as my midi editor, as ive found its the best program so far for editing midi's. you can get the demo, which i think its only limitation is you cant save... You dont want to save, you want to export!!!!

You will need .... the mp3 of the song you want, a midi of the song, a pair of scissors and an adult to help you with the difficult parts.

1: here is a brilliant place to get midi's from BTW Music robot midi seach so now you have your MP3 and you have a midi file. If you have problems with that site try this one.. Midi search UK

2: before you do any editing just play the audio track, then the midi track in a music player ( any that can play midi is fine) just to make sure the midi is the same version of the song as the audio, obviously they should be pretty much the same length.

3 kick up fruity loops, and choose File/import midi, browse for your midi file and choose ok. it will come up with a box, dont change anything here apart from deselecting "realign events" then just click the big tick.
It should now have loaded the midi and you should see the instrument tracks listed near the top. Like this
Image

4 Delete any of the instrument tracks you dont want, like drums keyboards etc. do this by right clicking on the instrument button and choosing delete.

5 if you now right click on one of the instrument buttons and choose Replace/FL keys, It will change the instrument from a midi out track to a piano , if its a midi out you wont hear it if you press play, but you will need to do, Replace/midi out before you export you song to FoF , otherwise they wont be midi tracks, and will appear empty in FoF , i didnt realise this at first and couldnt understand why all the tracks came up blank. Do this for all the instrument tracks you will use.

6 go up to the menu again and choose Channels/Add one/audio clip. If all the other tracks dissappear dont panic, just below the instrument buttons there is a little drop down box in my image it said " palladio" just change that to all. Now, L click on the audio clip button and it should pop up with a box like this
Image Click the file loader button and go browse for your MP3.

Now this next bit ill try to explain as best i can.

You may have notice that the notes track doesnt look the same for the audio track as it does for the midi tracks. Thats because the midi's are on the piano rolls and the audio is still on normal sequencer beat keys.

INSTEAD OF DOING PART 7 READ THE " ADDITIONAL " NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE AS ITS A BETTER WAY TO DO THINGS
7 left click the first beat key ( i thinks its black/dark grey) which is just to the right of the instrument button, this is so it tells fruity to actually play the audio at that point in time, and seeing as its the first note, right at the begining of the song, it will start as soon as you click play. Give it a go!!

Ooh dinner is done ill be back in 30 mins!! :D

Ok im back.. where was i , oh yeah ..

8 ok so you played the song but the audio and the midi are out of sync... 2 possible reasons...the most likely is... most songs have a small amount of silence at the begining, the silence on the audio track may be longer/ shorter than on the midi. Use an audio editor ( i prefere adobe audition) to either add or cut small amounts of silence to the audio track, then if you switch back to fruity, and reload the audio track ( by clicking on the file loader again) then press play . do this untill the first note of the midi playes as close to the same time as the audio track. now let the track play for a bit to see if it moves out of sync.
If it does then that means the tempo on the midi is slightly off. To see what the tempo is look up by the play controls.
Image

To adjust the tempo, first, click any of the piano roll tracks to call up the piano roll editor, then down in the bottom left of the piano roll screen there will be a blank section of window.. this is what i mean.....
Image

If you right click there and select " Tempo ( course ) " the bit at the bottom of the piano editor will change to this..

Image

The big pink/peach coloured area represents the tempo, if you move your mouse over that area your pointer changes to a pencil, you can actually draw the tempo like this..
Image
The way it works is.. if you adjust the tempo, the last point you edit will be the tempo for the rest of the song....this is what i mean

Image
So...if you only adjust say the first 1 or 2 pixles down by 10 BPM then the rest of the song will also drop by 10BPM, its kinda hard to explain properly, have a tinker with it and you will soon see.

9 you now have your midi in sync with the audio. This is where the fun begins!!!! now your gonna start moving notes around. seeing as you have a load of notes and they are in sync with the audio, you will not have to move the notes left or right ( back and forward in time) you just did that with the tempo and audio editing. You only have to move the notes up or down to make them fit within one of the difficulty bands.
Image
To move the notes click the select button in the top of the piano roll editor
Then just drag a box over many notes, or just L click on one note, and use L-shift + up/down to move the notes up/down by 1 note, use L-Ctrl + up/down to move notes by 1 octave.
So you want to go from something like this....
Image
To This.....
Image

Ok thats the hard part over and done with. all you really need to do now, is..right click on each instrument button and choose Replace/midi out. Then right click, Rename, each instrument to the correct names for Frets on fire to recognise. The names are...(and these are "case-sensitive") PART GUITAR = main guitar track, PART BASS = bass guitar, PART RHYTHM = rhythm guitar , PART GUITAR COOP = Lead guitar. there is also PART BASS COOP & PART RHYTHM COOP, so if you wanted you could have up to 6 different guitar tracks to play.
Just a few more little things to do then your all finished......
Right click on your audio clip button and delete it. you dont want that in there when you export. Now go to the menu and choose File/Export/Midi file. tell it where you want to save it and what filename to call it. It will then come up with an export dialog box Dont change anything here, just make sure the file type ( in the top right) is set to midi, then just click START.

Thats it your done... Congrats you just made a (multi-player if you used more than 1 track) FoF song without having to actually fret a single note.
A good way to check you midi is ok, Load it into anvil, if you see the right amount of instrument tracks, and you can see the notes on that track , then its fine.

Now just convert your MP3 to .ogg format and name it guitar.ogg, rename your midi to notes.mid, dump them in a folder , create your .INI file And then move the entire folder to your Fretsonfire/data/songs folder. Load the game and play it.

Good luck ...Nobby76

**-- ADDITIONAL --**

Ok i know a few of you have been asking about this. so i thought its about time i did an " additional" to the tutorial. How to make the audio play from any point in the song, even if you stop the music..

Firstly you need to swtich FL over from pattern playback to full song playback
This is easy to do, just find the play controls and look to the left of it for the 2 little lights... HERE. Just click the little light for SONG.
Image

Ok now what you have to do is... when you loaded in your audio file before, you added a channel for audio files then to make it play you had to stamp down a note at the start of the song i nthe step sequencer ( to make the audio play at the same time as the music ) well this time.. Add the audio channel as before, but rather than stamping down a note, you will want to call up the PLAYLIST editor NOT the PIANO ROLL editor. Heres the button layout so oyu can see which is which..
Image

As i said you want to call up the PLAYLIST editor for this bit...


OK so you have the playlist editor opened now, and it should look kinda like this ( maybe a little emptier :biggrin: )
Image

With the Audio channel ( on the step sequencer ) still selected go back to the playlist editor and just like the piano roll you have the usual icons ( select, pencil, paintbrush ) choose the pencil icon and click on the top line of the playlist as close the the left side as possible ( the top line on this image says Vocoder, it probably wont say anything on yours ) it should now have stamped down a copy of the audio file ( you should see the waveform visible in the playlist now ) If the waveform isnt all the way left, just drag it all the way left this ensures the audio will start as soon as you hit play.

OK now go ahead and hit the play button. The audio file should play fine now, if you have some fretted notes with an instrument assigned to it ( rather than midi out ) you should also hear that too. you should be able to press stop, fast forward, rewind whatever you like. the audio file should resume from whatever point its at.
Last edited by nobby76 on Mon Sep 14, 2009 8:25 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Check out the Tutorial Making songs without having to fret a single note And come check out the IRC Chatroom
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Postby nwru » Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:19 am

Very comprehensive guide, thanks!
Use the Search feature first to find answers to your questions. Chances are that they have been asked before!

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Postby Hizzout » Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:50 am

Post a song you've done using this method so people can see if it works right.

Thanks.
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Postby sinclair12 » Fri Jun 22, 2007 10:12 am

WOW! dude thats is sweet, this is like the beginner fretters dream, by the sounds of your tutorial its easy enough to follow but ill have to give it a try in a weeks time and get back to you if im successful. until then keep up the good work.
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Postby RexMundi412 » Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:53 pm

Excellent TUT, thanks Nooby!

Sticky, sticky, sticky...

Pulling for ya' bud
...
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Postby nobby76 » Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:08 pm

Hizzout wrote:Post a song you've done using this method so people can see if it works right.

Thanks.

done 2 allready, you should check tune posting more often.
Besides i shouldnt need to prove it works, its basically the same as doing a song any other way except the frets have allready been done, you just gotta move them into place thats all.
Last edited by nobby76 on Fri Jun 22, 2007 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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LONG LIVE THE NOOBS, THEY WILL OVER THROW US WITH THERE VASTLY SUPERIOR STUPIDITY.
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Postby Statice » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:11 pm

nice tutorial nobby

noobs will get a hard on after reading this
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Postby Hizzout » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:51 pm

done 2 allready, you should check tune posting more often.

Well I don't live on here so it's possible I missed it.

shouldnt need to prove it works, its basically the same as doing a song any other way except the frets have allready been done, you just gotta move them into place thats all.


Hey I wasn't being rude...I was just interested in seeing a song you've done with this method to see how well it worked. One question though, does it add sustain (tails) to the long notes, or does that have to be done manually?
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Postby Statice » Fri Jun 22, 2007 3:53 pm

you can drag the notes out
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Postby nobby76 » Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:06 pm

statice is right.
The way it works if you wanted to fret your own song using fruity. you select the pencil icon , at the top of the piano roll editor, then just draw ( more like paint really ) across the the piano roll, for what ever note length you need . The whole process can pretty much be done in anvil, the same way, its just you have more controll in fruity.

Hizzout.. it did kinda sound like you was saying "prove my method works", but from your explanation, i can see you didnt mean it like that. so i apologise for being snappy back there.
And the 2 songs i did are... the first one (and my first ever FoF song i hadnt even really tried tomake one before this) Joey Ramon - What a wonderful world..( its a cover of the Louise armstrong song ) it has 3 different guitar tracks to play :) . The 2nd is a recent classical tune ( i say recent, i mean its only about 8 years old, not 180) its called Palladio (A diamond is forever) by Karl Jenkins (it was written for a TV commercial for Debeer Diamonds (of all things :) ) and this song has 4 different instrument tracks.

Quickest way to find the threads on these songs, is do a search in tune posting for "Palladio" and then for "Ramone" BTW palladio is quite difficult but fun.
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LONG LIVE THE NOOBS, THEY WILL OVER THROW US WITH THERE VASTLY SUPERIOR STUPIDITY.
Check out the Tutorial Making songs without having to fret a single note And come check out the IRC Chatroom
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Postby zer0mavrick » Wed Jul 04, 2007 6:18 pm

how could i turn a song into a Midi? that website does not have the song i want
http://www.savefile.com/projects/808508921 my songs... in SNG file and FoF form.
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Postby Micicle » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:06 pm

Google it.
LOL
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Postby KenshinHimuraRK » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:20 pm

Great guide, it really helped me a LOT!
Thanks.

Sticky please. :p
Last edited by KenshinHimuraRK on Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Surfpup » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:28 pm

Hey, great tutorial! I have one question. Is there a way to combine two tracks (i mean, Channels) in FL Studio? I'm working on a song now, and there are some parts that I need to bring over to another channel. I could copy and paste, but then I'd have to sit there and try to get the timing right.
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Postby YMS » Fri Jul 20, 2007 5:50 am

Timing should be right (if it's been right before, of course), when that tracker bar thingie is at the beginning. So press "stop" before you select and copy (Ctrl+A + Ctrl+C) a channel, and paste it into another one (Ctrl+V ;)).

Even if it's shifted, first doubleclick the first note you want to copy, remember its exact position, copy and paste the channel, and re-shift it to its original position, which should be a matter of 2 seconds.

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