Something Unreal

This PS/2 keyboard accepts a maximum of 2 arrow key presses at once – if you press more, the PC speaker beeps and no keypresses are detected. The beep is sometimes 1 second in delay.

[Watch at YouTube]

From 1:52 to 1:57, I switch to my normal (Logitech G15) keyboard to see if the simfile is actually in-sync.

The song is dBu’s remix of 「月時計 ～ ルナ・ダイアル」 (Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial), the theme of Sakuya Izayoi, the stage-5 boss of Touhou 06: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. The StepMania theme is CyberiaStyle 4 for StepMania 3.9.

Although its been in a couple of my videos, I’ve not made a video dedicated to it – so, this is a demonstration of a new program I’ve been working on since February 2010. It’s called BaWaMI (Basic Waveform MIDI Software-Synthesizer), because it’s a MIDI file player that makes sound using only basic waveforms and a low-pass filter (hey, at least I was able to think up a name for once!). When I gave up working on Bleeper Music Maker, it’s basically because I started dedicating my attention to Bawami. But don’t worry! Bawami can play on the PC speaker too. =D

Here, it’s playing ZUN’s MIDI of the stage 5 boss (Sakuya Izayoi) theme, from his game “Touhou 06: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil“. Actually, it’s a slightly modified version that uses a “Synth Bass” instrument instead of “Slap Bass”, as I haven’t coded the slap bass instrument yet. Bawami misinterprets the pitch-bend sensitivity in this video, and as a result, the pitch-bends are overly exaggerated. ^^;

[Watch in HD]

By default, Bawami has 24 internal “sound channels”, meaning it can play up to 24 notes (or sounds) at once (after that, old notes will start being cut). There’s a setting to change this number, but I leave it at 24 in this video because the internal view (black window) can only show 24 sound channels at most. By the way, that internal view shows 2 tables – one shows information about each sound channel (such as the volume, panning, waveform, frequency), and the other shows information about each MIDI channel (pitch-bend, number of notes playing). Coloured lines appear between the 2 tables to show which sound channels are being used to play notes on which MIDI channel.

This program is the first one I’ve made where I focussed on trying to make it look nice from the start (although I took inspiration for the design from GASHISOFT’s “GXSCC” MIDI player).

The program is not quite ready to be released to the public yet, but I’m working on it! I’ll probably post more videos like this to show off new things that I add to the program, just as I did with Bleeper Music Maker. And, of course, I’ll record a video of it controlling the PC speaker, too. ;D

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.

Here’s a much-needed compilation video using some of the many videos I recorded at London MCM Expo (May 2009). It mainly focuses around cute things because this video was originally going to be for the Touhou cosplayers, and… well, you know, I didn’t think soldier or Alien cosplays would fit in very well. I wonder if you can call a Dalek cute though.

[Watch in HD]

The sudden song change is because Cirno’s Perfect Maths Class had so many different parts that it was too hard for me to be lazy while editing the video. I tried to at least change the song when it reached an appropriate place.

MCM Expo in London was held last Saturday and Sunday, and, quite awesomely, there was a group of people cosplaying as characters from Touhou Project! Here’s a bunch of pictures I took (some are screencaps from videos I recorded, so they generally don’t look as good). Please click an image to see a larger version of it.

In particular, the Suwako one is bad because that’s from the only video I ever got of her, from a distance while waiting in the ticket queue.

After seeing a box of doujinshi dedicated to the game series last October, but then not seeing a single piece of Touhou merchandise this May, I was disappointed, but these people more than made up for that. The group consisted of 3 guys cosplaying as Eirin, Yuyuko and Marisa, and 2 girls cosplaying as Sakuya and Iku (one of them was being Reimu on Saturday). There were also 2 other girls doing Suwako and Marisa, but they didn’t appear to be part of the group.

I may well upload some HD videos to YouTube, since videos just seem more realistic to me than photos, and I mentioned doing so on the Touhou Group thread on the MCM forum and no-one seems to be objecting to me doing so. However, that involves me not being lazy (at least cutting and joining the video files), so it will take me a while to do.

Oh, there were some cute Mikus too, which was cool to me, given that I’m pretty fond of her too.

I’ve now finished recording all themes from Touhou 06: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil in MIDI form playing on my old FM MIDI synth.

You can download MP3s of them with the other Touhou FM MIDI recordings (so far from the 6th, 7th and 8th games), here.

For those who haven’t seen (heard) any before, they’re basically very electronic-sounding versions of the music from the Touhou games (they’re not strictly 8-bit, but they certainly do often sound like they’re 8-bit). If you like chiptune music, you’ll probably really like them.

A “step up” from my previous DDR vid, using 2 cameras this time, along with audio from my camcorder and an audio stream of the game.

I wished I’d got a A+ or more on “Magical Dial” (I’ve got it before), but with all the previous recording attempts which failed, I thought I’d just go with the flow. “An A is fine too”. =P

More info about the songs is in the vid, but the 3 songs are:
- A remix of Sakuya’s theme (and stage music).
- A remix of Remilia’s theme.
- A trance song unrelated to Touhou.

Touhou StepMania pack 1 can be downloaded here (255.24 MB). “SS 2nd Style”, along with dozens of other StepMania packs, can be downloaded here (89.71 MB).

ITG2′s own difficulty is set to Medium, by the way, which I believe is identical to StepMania’s default difficulty of “4″.

I think this is the most decent-quality DDR vid I’ve made yet. At least, it was before uploading to YT.

That computer-controlled motor is back! Headaches guaranteed, or your viewing time back! (I’m sure Sakuya will sort it somehow.)

It just plays a short part of Sakuya’s theme “Tsuki Dokei ~ Luna Dial” (Moon clock) and Remilia’s theme “Naki Oujo no Seputetto” (Septette for a dead princess). Since I recently made them on BMM, I decided to challenge the motor to try to play them. Yes, it’s a useless mod for my program “Bleeper Music Maker“. In fact, it was only the first or second mod which I made for BMM, a while before I ever released BMM to the public.

I’ve changed it since last time so that now the motor doesn’t stop between notes (it was affecting being able to hit notes on time, and is no good for the power supply xD).

This time the usual motor has help from another motor which it spins via a drive belt, which adds more power to the sound (slight understatement). Amazingly, it seems it’s still strong enough to hit most of the notes.

Oh, and Yukari because… gaps are awesome.

Well, I hate to bang on about something which is not a lot of Touhou fans’ cup of tea, but I’ve updated the guide. I mean… a lot, this time. Now you can easily find the character which you want, and can easily see the date on which each mod was last updated. I updated and added several new ones – here’s the list:

Added: Shikieiki, Lunasa, Kaguya, and a new “tank-head” Reimu.

Updated to latest version: Sakuya, Hong (“China”), Patchouli, Reisen (“Udonge”), Suika, Chen, and both versions of Marisa, ze.

My usual bleeper fanatics will return very shortly, with the MIDI Input support as promised. =D

I’ve finished making revision 129 of Bleeper Music Maker, and decided to celebrate by transcribing Sakuya’s theme. “Tsuki Dokei ~Luna Dial~” playing on BMM (with the original MIDI playing along, with channels which BMM is playing MUTED). I completed it in an unusually short amount of time… hmm… ;P

EDIT: Damn, that video’s quality is rubbish. (Vital comment) If you have an account over at NicoNico, you can watch the video in decent quality there.

This one took about 2 hours 45 mins to complete (ZUN’s style of arpeggio harmonies are beautiful, but the complexity of the beauty makes it tedious to transcribe), but who knows how long it would’ve taken if Sakuya hadn’t kept slowing time. I thank her. =D (On an unrelated side-note, I am perfectly sane.)

You can grab the latest version of Bleeper Music Maker from the usual place, right here. The most important new features are IT FINALLY SUPPORTS TRIPLET (and dotted) NOTES! :D Also, the position displays (green things in bottom-right) can now be DISABLED during playback (because it can use up too much CPU time as the song gets longer, making the playback stutter and skip about a bit).

This BMM file (luna_dial.bmm) is included in the program download. It can also be downloaded from the little collection of BMM music on my site. I also did a bit of housekeeping and corrected comments in the other BMM files, correcting info such as song title and artist.