Something Unreal

Something a little different this time. I had a burst of nostalgia and got this theme stuck in my head, so I decided to try to remake it for the SC-88Pro synth. It’s the first MIDI I’ve made in less than 18 hours (including sleep)! It’s also the first I’ve made for the 88P which doesn’t use all the sound channels (4 are untouched), despite using 3 just for trying to emulate the FM snare. And the first that messes around with time signatures to keep in-sync with the original while still having the notes align sensibly in my MIDI editor…

[Watch in HD]

This is a remake of the music from the DOS version of the game “Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk”. It was released on many different platforms, and I’m sure the instruments vary a lot on the different versions, but I’ve only ever played the DOS version. It used AdLib music (technically, the Yamaha OPL2 FM synth).

I’ve seen some remixes of this, but I tried to stay faithful to the original (including overlapping notes, monophonic channels and notes that get cut because of the limitations of the AdLib hardware). Originally, I was going to use a synth trumpet sound to really match the original, but I couldn’t find a suitable FM-style harpsichord to go along with it, and synth trumpets sounded stupidly out-of-place when paired with the realistic harpsichord, so I had to go for modern-sounding brass instruments.

Yamaha music on a Roland synth… heresy!

I thought the “randomly running away” part was weird, and the freezing confirmed my suspicion.

[Watch in HD]

You sometimes have to talk to the maid with the sign 2 or 3 times to trigger the running away. The first time I tried, it happened on the first try. While recording, I needed to try 3 times (I cut the first try out of this video). Still way too easy, though.

When I have a source of money again, I think I’ll get my Vita modded so that I can capture the video directly. That way, I won’t want to have to point a camcorder at my Vita as if I’m featuring on Retsupurae.

I finally finished this MIDI for the Roland SC-88Pro synth (I abandoned it a few months ago). Gotta love those electro toms. This is the opening theme (originally performed by YURIA) to the VN 「処女はお姉さまに恋してる」.

[Watch at YouTube]

The original song has some heavy dynamic range compression so it sounds like this MIDI is lacking somewhat if you compare them, but I couldn’t actually make out any more parts than this in the original. The 88Pro has a compressor effect available, but it can only use one effect at a time, and I was already using distortion. The high-pitched sound effects on the right speaker should be faster, but the synth can’t reliably update the pitch much faster than this. There was an unexpectedly tricky selection of percussive sounds and panning needed for the toms, so I ended up using 4 separate percussion channels…

I finally finished this MIDI for the Roland SC-88Pro synth. This is Mii’s theme from the H-game “Popotan”, originally by UNDER17. Making a musical synth say “Iyaan!” was fun, amusing and surreal.

[Watch in HD at YouTube] [Watch at Niconico]

I decided to do away with the “loli voice” effect that I used in the incomplete version, because the effect broke whenever there was a strong pitch-bend.

The 3D visualisation is MIDITrail, scrolling text is BaWaMI‘s MIDI message view (my MIDI player’s interpretation of them), and in the top-right is the Sound Canvas synth’s LCD itself.

Production time took about 4 days, including time I couldn’t do anything because I was at work or dead from this cold that I have. This is, without a doubt, the new most-complicated MIDI I’ve ever made, with many SysEx messages throughout changing the routing to the Insert FX and its parameters, along with tons of control changes, some instrument changes (16 just isn’t enough), a user-defined drumkit, 3 percussion channels, and a healthy dose of pitch-bends (with varying sensitivity). My “Suwa Foughten Field” MIDI remake had some of these, but I think this sounds better, and certainly posed more challenges.

[EDIT: This is now complete. Full version is here.]

I’ve started trying to remake this as a MIDI for the Roland SC-88Pro synth. Trying to make a loli voice on it was fun. It struggles with portamento on the tiny notes at the start, but hey, that’s what you get when you’re using a 15-year-old synth. I’ll probably remove the portamento for that reason.

[Watch in HD]

I’m not certain I’ll complete this, but that’s what I thought about the Kuusou Mesorogiwi one, and uploading it here gave me motivation to complete it, so who knows?

This is Mii’s theme from the H-game “Popotan”.

This started off as a test for recording HD videos from a PSP emulator, but I ended up with actual gameplay videos, so I decided to upload them. Please forgive the stuttering game audio (even though my computer can handle screen-capturing in HD at 60 FPS, the emulator’s audio stutters whenever I screen-capture, no matter what the frame rate or resolution).

[Watch in HD]

I played as MISAKA #10032 (no partner, except for the second battle, where I called in Shirai Kuroko for a Unison Raid), and the opponents were, in order: Stiyl Magnus + Tsuchimikado Motoharu, Kamijou Touma + Misaka Mikoto, Mugino Shizuri + Shirai Kuroko. CPU difficulty was set to highest (to be honest, I was quite lucky at several times in this video). A successful Unison Raid gives a VERY satisfying feeling. It’s very rare that I add music to my videos, but I decided to for this one, as the emulator can’t decode the game’s original AC3 music and I thought it sounded like something was lacking otherwise. And that concludes today’s random facts.

The emulator’s web site is here (I recommend downloading the newest “automated build”, which will be much newer than the version I used).

EDIT: I do hate what YouTube does with audio/video sync. Not had a video with sync this far off for quite some time…

Testing accuracy of my program “StepMania Player“‘s new (in 2009) timing system by having it simulate keypresses for StepMania on an insane simfile. The program controls lights connected to a computer’s parallel port. Keypress simulation allows a common way to interact with other programs, such as GlovePIE scripts to control the 4 LEDs on a Wiimote controller.

[Watch in HD]

The song is “Vertex BETA” by Silvia. Simfile is “Vertex β vROFL” (steps by Dark Bahamut, challenge level). StepMania theme is Pop*candy 2 for StepMania 3.9.

This started as a test for screencapping PSP gameplay on RemoteJoyLite, but turned into something else for a friend.

In the gameplay, I wanted to avoid using my partner (who, confusingly, was also Mikoto).

[Watch in HD]

I’ve added support for reverbs to Bawami, my MIDI player. Also, there’s a new internal view here – scrolling text which shows every MIDI message played, and how it is interpreted. There are dozens of other changes, too, but the only other one audible in this video is support for the “maracas” percussive instrument (actually a tambourine in the original music).

[Watch in HD]

This is my MIDI software synth “BaWaMI” (Basic Waveform MIDI), so-named because it makes all its sound from one of 6 basic waveforms (sine, square, triangle up/down, saw or noise) with a low/high-pass filter applied (and now, reverb too). I’ve not yet released it yet, as there are still issues that need to be fixed before it goes public, but I’ll keep uploading these “preview” videos as I make improvements. =)

Here, it’s playing a MIDI (which I didn’t make) of the music 「空に光る」 (“Shining in the Sky”), from the anime Clannad (I believe it’s from the anime rather than the visual novel).

Channel 9 is supposed to play as percussion here, but my program currently only supports percussion on channel 10, so I told Bawami to at least play it as something percussive-sounding (a taiko drum).

I tried to create a voice based on samples of Misaka Imouto from the anime “A Certain Magical Index“. Then, I decided to make it sing the song that was stuck in my head at the moment, which happened to be Kyary Pamyu Pamyu‘s “PONPONPON” (I didn’t want to try to make such a crazy music video as the original, though). The key is lowered to suit the voice better.

[Watch in HD]

Massive thanks to DelTiger(でるたいがー) for the off-vocal version that I used here. The illustration is by tachi008.

I actually used samples from the PSP game rather than the anime, for clean recordings (so that there wasn’t music or sound effects in the background). It seems to be a long time since I’ve uploaded a video with a CG voice.

I first made a MIDI of the notes the voice sings in the original version using Anvil Studio. The voice was made with Virtual Singer (part of Melody Assistant). Screen-capturing was done with VirtualDub and the video edited in Magix Movie Edit, while the audio editing was done in Audacity.