Something Unreal

Well, I tried again… and failed again. xD

[Watch in HD]

I know the piano isn’t perfectly in tune, but it was the best I had access to. Plus, if it had been really good, I might not have been allowed to have the front cover off it.

By the way, the piano happened to be in a building attached to a church, so I thought there was a nice irony to starting the medley with the theme of a vampire.

Since someone kindly informed me that the links to the archives containing MP3s of the Touhou MIDIs playing on my FM synth were in fact dead, I’ve re-uploaded them all (to MegaUpload instead of RapidShare, this time). The page has now been updated with the new links (although you may need to press F5 to see the new links).

Enjoy~!

What a mess of a title.

Showing off the fact that this new release of BMM can, via MIDI-In, handle an unlimited number of notes at once (although it sounds silly while trying to play too many), here it is playing Flandre‘s theme straight from the MIDI file. “…What?” Oh, I explain what’s actually going on in the second video, because I promised Flan’s would be next. ;)

Here’s the fractionally-more-formal introduction and explanation of the new feature of BMM, MIDI Input, showing off 2 more MIDIs from Imperishable Night! =D

The themes are “Retribution for the Eternal Night ~ Imperishable Night” (Stage 4 theme), and “Voyage 1970″ Eirin and Kaguya‘s Last Spell theme).

As usual, you can download this latest version of Bleeper Music Maker here.

Things changed or new in this version:

- Will no longer fail on any computer to load files which contain Unicode characters.

- Ability to change channel and instrument on “MIDI Output Settings”.

- MIDI Input! (Info is in info.txt which is included in the download, under “MIDI INPUT MOD”.)

- A few typos in “info.txt” fixed.

- Now it actually shows text when you click “?” next to “Use MIDI output” (how could I have forgotten to program that? >_<)

- MSSTDFMT.DLL now included in download (many people seemed to be missing it) (info on exactly what to do with the file is near the top of info.txt, under “REQUIREMENTS / PREPARING / COMMON CAUSES OF ERRORS”) .

I felt I was playing too much NON-Touhou music lately, so I hope this little Touhou medley of mine makes up for it (it had better do, the hours I spent practising >_<).
Inspired by the great music from Touhou 08: Imperishable Night.

The keyboard is plugged into my soundcard INPUT, and my headphones are plugged into my soundcard OUTPUT. That way, you get as close to perfect audio as possible (no hiss from a microphone), and I can hear what I’m playing as I play it, without disturbing other people in the house.

I know Mystia’s part was short, but I was having so much trouble with it that I decided to just stick to what I was happy with playing.

Keyboard is a Yamaha PSR-E313.

I’m also providing an MP3 of this – should anyone want it – at 320 kbps.
Download link
(7.33 MB, 3 mins 18 secs)

The soundcard in this old computer has a very electronic-sounding, “8-Bit style” MIDI synth on it, which sounds really cool if you’re a chip-tune fan. I show it off by playing some MIDIs from “Touhou 08: Imperishable Night” (and a couple of others) using it, through my mini hi-fi. The percussion is especially electronic-sounding. =D

As I’ve said in the video, I’ve already made MP3s of all the Imperishable Night MIDIs using this synth. You can find them here:

http://somethingunreal.homeip.net/hosted_audio/AncientMIDISynth.html

The soundcard is an old Creative Sound Blaster type, by the way. It’s capable of having a maximum of 16 notes playing at any one time. However, there’s something strange about it – if there are 16 notes starting at the same time, not all will be played. It’s like it can only cope with about 4 notes starting at the exact same time. I gave a little more info about the computer at the start of the video. ;)

P.S. Don’t ask me what happened at 05:55. =P

This took the longest to transcribe, by far, of all my bleeper music compositions – about 5 hours.

The song is a remix, by IOSYS, of 2 themes from Touhou 08 “Imperishable Night”, and it’s called 「蓬莱の玉、どこまでも美しく」. Its title has been translated to “The Hourai Jewel, Ever Beautiful”.

The song was made by IOSYS in 2 parts, A and B.
- Part A: 「竹取飛翔」 “Flight of the Bamboo Cutter” (Kaguya Houraisan’s theme).
- Part B: 「Voyage 1970」 (Eirin and Kaguya’s Last Spell theme)

The chorus of Part A repeats to finish the song. So it’s like A-B-A.
Part B gave me so much hassle. The tune really is beautiful, but the beauty is complex. x_x

For those who don’t know – this is a program I made, for creating music with the internal ‘system speaker’ inside PCs. Then I made this music using it. It’s playing along with the original song on my main computer speakers.

I tried to liven things up visually this time with my 4-light sequencer. =D

I’ve made a new signature – a Touhou Project one – for a forum which I hang around on (AnimeNuke). There’s something fairly rare about it, considering I made it – no cuteness, just an attempt of showing off the Touhou games’ awesomeness. That’s by no means saying that the Touhou girls aren’t cute, it’s saying that I haven’t actually used them, and it’s even rarer that I’d choose not to use that.

Click to see it in full-size.

I was trying to make one with a really insanely hot/active feel to it. There’s not much more intense/fast-paced than the Touhou games, so I tried to recreate that feeling… and yes, I used 2 screenshots from one of the games (Imperishable Night). I tried to blur the “東方″ into both of the attack formations.

I was playing around with my keyboard (Yamaha PSR-E313) which has MIDI in and out capability, and I was thinking “I wonder how the music from Imperishable Night would sound through this thing…” (since Imperishable Night has an option of MIDI music in its Options screen). I made this little YouTube video out of the result.

The actual YouTube page is here. The idea was that the keyboard’s display would let you see the notes as they’re played (the notes on Channel 1 of the MIDI, so sometimes nothing shows up). But YouTube did as good a job as ever at making the audio and video get out of sync, so it’s hard to follow. <_<

I’m having trouble getting it to set up the channels properly, i.e. what should be PERCUSSION comes out as PIANO. That is, until I start playing a MIDI file on the keyboard itself – at that point, it sets up its channels properly. That means it’s restricted to playing the Touhou music using instrument sets from the MIDIs I have stored on the keyboard at the moment.
So what I’m doing is getting the Imperishable Night music playing on my computer as MIDI, it goes to my keyboard, then I start and immediately pause another unrelated MIDI on the keyboard itself, to force it to set its channels up properly. This means you’re hearing the Touhou music using different sets of instruments than intended to (the instruments of the unrelated MIDIs). I use a few random unrelated MIDIs, so you get to hear the music in a few different sets of instruments.When I unplugged the MIDI cable, it was to prove that it really is playing in realtime. I want to connect the MIDI out of my computer to the MIDI in of my computer, and record, to ‘extract’ the MIDI files from the game. But I need to get some little adaptor to allow me to connect 2 male cables to each other.