Legion303

I've been playing with Guitar Rig 2 lately (it rules!) and I was wondering if I could use the guitar signal to play VSTi synths on my system. Obviously it's not that easy because you can't expect a line signal to play well with something (e.g., Kontakt 2) that has well-defined key maps for multilayer samples, but GR2 has a nifty pitch-sensing module which can be used to affect other parameters. Does anyone know of a generic pitch-sensor that will output MIDI control notes to drive actual VST instruments? It would obviously be limited to mono input, but I can think of lots of fun things to do with something like that (think Roland guitar synth from the early 90s and the good use Pestilence made of it). -steve

And this is the problem. Strumming involves many different factors; it's not as simple as it seems. Usually the first chord of each bar is the loudest, but not always. Other chords vary in velocity rhythmically throughout the strumming, down to the individual string. Not all notes will ring out clearly with every hit, either due to rythmic semi-muting with the fretting hand (i.e., the guitarist lifts the fingers slightly on purpose for effect), rhythmic intentional missing of notes with the picking hand, or because of sloppiness or finger fatigue. Individual notes can change within a chord with no picking motion (i.e., hammer-on or pull-off of individual notes within a chord). When you figure out what strumming patterns you want to use (bearing in mind that for the most part, downstrokes are the accented and louder notes), then you have to shift individual notes accordingly. On downstrokes the lowest note in the chord is the one that sounds first, followed by the others in succession up the scale. In upstrokes, the highest note is the furst struck. If all your notes are the same distance apart from each other your piece will sound robotic, but if you vary them too much it just sounds unrealistic. I can pick up my guitar and strum out a complex pattern of chords in a few seconds. It would take me the better part of a day to simulate the same thing accurately with a computer. I should know--I've done it. -steve

http://neutronstar.org/music/guitar.it You'll need a tracker program to actually see the notes and figure out what I did for strumming. I think the kids use Modplug these days. Of course, this isn't going to help you at all if you don't know strumming patterns on a real guitar. I suggest looking at folk music or classical tablature that shows fingerings and stroke direction. -steve

It actually sucks when you're bouncing your packets through, say, Switzerland and end up on google.ch with only a limited understanding of German... -steve

Seriously, I hate Sony with a burning passion ever since multiple bad experiences with their Walkmans back in the 80s and 90s (so yes, I've hated the company forever), but the MDR series headphones really are very good. Other than my 1st-gen Playstation (which I bought used because the less of my money those fuckheads get, the better), the MDR phones zare the only Sony product in my house. -steve PS: erp, I lied, there's also the older minidisc recorder which also works fairly well (this was before all the DRM crap they added to the products). But to be fair, someone traded it to me for a Travelling Wilburys tape.

READ THIS FIRST: If you came here from a google search on corrupt FL files and couldn't be bothered to read the entire thread, at least read this part: I WILL NOT FIX YOUR FILE FOR YOU. STOP ASKING. YOU MORON. Now back to our regularly scheduled post. EDIT: Steve Laboy has come up with a more elegant and (more importantly) easier way to fix corrupted files here: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=245629&postcount=32 If that doesn't work for you and you don't mind getting your hands dirty, continue: After working on a remix for about 30 hours, I tried to load a VST effect which crashed FL Studio right after a save. I hit save again (FL was still running, it just stopped making sound) to be sure everything would be OK, and closed the program. When I restarted and tried to load my song I got this: "An error occured while reading the FLP file. It may be corrupted, or some plugin caused an error while opening." Long story short, it was a corrupt file (verified by trying to open the FLP on another computer). A google search found nothing other than forum messages like "you're fucked. Start over." But it turns out every FLP file has this in the first 32 bytes of its header: 46 4C 68 64 06 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 60 00 46 4C 64 74 B1 77 00 00 C7 06 35 2E 30 2E 31 00 C8 10 The text side looks like this: FLhd........`.FL dt±w..Ç.5.0.1.È. The first line is exactly the same in every FLP I looked at. The second line is similar, but the last half contains the FL Studio version number (5.01 in my case, as seen on the second text line above). Additionally, the first two bytes of the second line (64 74; bytes 17 and 18 of the header) are exactly the same in all files, but the third and fourth (B1 77 above) are not consistent even in files saved from the same version of FL. My corrupt file had nulls in the 19th and 20th bytes of its header, so I overwrote them with data from another FLP header. Edit: it turns out those two bytes are a pointer to an address 22 bytes from the end of the file, consistent among all files I looked at. I believe this is due to the really sloppy way FL handles files...instead of putting a pointer to various sections (i.e., "go to this address for instrument data; this one for pattern info; etc.), FL just crams information in and the program has to scan for headers to find various sections. With such small files it works, I guess, it's just weird. So what happened in my case was that the pointer to the "end" of the file was really pointing to the very first byte, before the start of data. I imagine that confused FL. Edit 2: to get the correct pointer address (see Edit 1), look at the end of the file. There should be several repetitions of "1\" with other characters (if not, the end of your file is hosed and this probably won't work). Look at the last byte of your file. That's byte #1 for our purposes. Let's say the end of your file looks like this: 0000a150h: 00 00 81 1F 00 31 5C 44 00 00 00 00 00 00 82 1F ; ..?..1\D......‚. 0000a160h: 00 31 5C 44 00 00 85 04 01 00 00 ; .1\D..….... Starting with the last byte and counting backwards, find byte #22 from the end of the file. In the example, that's the "31" in the first line. This is where you need to point. Now look at the address of that line: 0000a150h (the "h" stands for Hexadecimal). The byte "31" occurs in the fifth position of that line (counting bytes from the left, like so): 0 1 2 3 4 5 00 00 81 1F 00 31 Note that there are 16 bytes per line, and this is in hex, so if the byte you're interested in happens to be the last one on a line, its "number" is F. OK. "31" is byte 5 on that line. Add that to the line's address to get 0000a155. The last four characters (representing two bytes) are the address we want: A1 55. I don't remember my assembly programming enough to recall why, but these need to be reversed for pointer purposes (EDIT 3: it's because Little-endian systems (e.g. microcomputers) store the least-significant byte of addresses first in memory). So now we have the byte string "55 A1". Go back to the top of the file. The second line (which is always address 00000010h) Must begin with "64 74" on the left (corresponding to "dt" on the text side). The next two bytes are the address pointer you just got. Overwrite whatever two bytes come after "64 74" to get "64 74 55 A1" as the first four bytes of the second line in the file. Congratulations. If it still doesn't work, you're fucked. Start over. BEFORE: 46 4C 68 64 06 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 60 00 46 4C ; FLhd........`.FL 64 74 00 00 00 00 C7 06 35 2E 30 2E 31 00 C8 10 ; dt....Ç.5.0.1.È. AFTER: 46 4C 68 64 06 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 60 00 46 4C ; FLhd........`.FL 64 74 B1 77 00 00 C7 06 35 2E 30 2E 31 00 C8 10 ; dt±w..Ç.5.0.1.È. This brought back all of my instruments with intact settings, and all of the patterns I had written. Unfortunately, the Playlist pattern data (how you build different patterns together--don't know the right terminology) was lost, but all the parts are there and all my pattern labels were still on the playlist. In any event I'm happy it will only take me a few hours to rebuild the playlist data instead of having to start from scratch. So if you have a corrupt FLP that has data in it (i.e., you don't have a 0-byte file), this will at least let you open the damn thing. I don't know if it will work on FL 6. I'll keep comparing FLPs and post anything else I learn about the format, but at this point I'm just happy I got my shit working again. So I'll probably get lazy. EDIT: Amazing file structure analysis here: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=258055&postcount=34. You people are way too brilliant for me. Bah! -steve

Bahahahaha. DJV: you can probably still practice fingering and chords on it, but I imagine it's going to sound like crap. -steve

I followed that link, and damned if I could find anything other than three people who tried to help you... But anyway, between that thread and this one, everyone should get some decent ideas for basslines. -steve

Yes, from mic+preamp and I noticed no problems. But again, I stress that latency isn't a factor for me and I don't remember how well it went (this was very simple recording, not multitracking or anything else that would allow me to notice latency issues). -steve

I use it, but I don't do hardware sound, so I don't know much about that side of it. The ASIO panel will let me drop to 8ms of latency and still sound decent. Since I do everything in software, I cranked it up to about 50ms or so. I can work with it just fine, but it really is more of a gaming/movie device than one intended for hardcore music writing. It's up to you whether you want to spend the ~$80 or so to get decent usage out of this or spring 2X-3X as much for a dedicated music-making card. My biggest problem with it is the lack of a breakout box, and I don't believe Creative offers one yet, or ever plans to. As for your other question...don't skimp on speakers. I picked up some ridiculously cheap (like $20) 5.1 speakers from Newegg and I've regretted it since they day they arrived. You probably want to match the speakers to your other hardware in the sense of "high-end and high-end" or "cheap and cheap" if that makes sense. In other words, Don't spend all your cash on an $800 MOTU soundcard and then buy my previously mentioned $20 speakers unless you plan to upgrade them. The lowest-end components in your system will determine your overall sound, no matter how good the other stuff is. -steve

Oh, I should have mentioned that my sister got 30gig ipod (with video). Heheh. That's 60 times more space that 512 :D LOL kewlio!@!@! In the real world, that $300 I could have spent on a video ipod my wife wouldn't use except for the mp3 functionality (and she doesn't have the 7,000 mp3s it supposedly holds) is going to replace our car that may not start up again after the short trip to my mom's on Xmas night. In fact, that $300 ipod was just about our entire Christmas budget, but I guess you won't learn that spending time with a wife and son is more enjoyable than spending lots of money on things until you no longer rely on your parents to provide basic needs. -steve

Nothing directly, but I did get some early Christmas presents that I needed for various projects and my wife was kind enough to give me the green-light on: Shure SM-57 mic and stand Behringer MIC200 preamp And I got my wife a 512MB MP3 player (among other things, but that's the musical thing). -steve

I'd LOVE to do an acoustic guitar version of that, but my plate's kind of full right now with 3 other songs. Usa, when do you think the project should be finished? I know you were looking at a 2nd WIP deadline for February...I wonder if I can get away with taking my guitars in to work. -steve

At this rate, I'll be able to afford it when they do release it. -steve

That's what I had in mind, actually. This is the direction I wanted to go for Sacrifice 2: http://neutronstar.org/music/sd3-sacrifice2.mp3 I'll probably ditch the fake guitar and just go with pure percussion with metal drums for melodies, etc... -steve

If no one signs on for track 3.13 (Sacrifice part 1) by the WIP deadline, I'll take it. Also, just to clarify, is the WIP deadline for ONE song, or all songs we're signed up for? I have to re-record the guitar and Innocent Water and I'm just now starting on Sacrifice 2. :/ -steve

What are the deadlines? The private site is dead: unexpected '[' in fusion_core.php on line 25 -steve

http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1853876#1853876 -steve

Nothing to complain about here. This song sounds as atmospheric and beautiful now as it did when it was on the front page. -steve

Nah. The other one I wanted to do was already spoken for. I'll submit this to the judge's panel normally when it's finished. -steve

I read them. You said you wanted more rock remixes to go with the rest...this *will* be rock when everything's in place. Wait for the drums. Who? The slot was empty when I posted that I would do it on 8/12. Edit: I see what you mean about it not being the right style the way it is now. Do you want me to throw you another WIP with the drums I have in mind, or should I work on it as a solo submission to OCR? -steve

There's actually no hiss, because this was recorded using an acoustic contact mic. The reason it's cluttered is because I didn't bother to EQ the 4 identical guitars to take up different parts of the freq range. Didn't see much point until I get the good mic working with the rest of my gear.... -steve

Vega WIP. Imagine this with drums (I have the use of real congas, timbales, etc.) and a mic that doesn't suck (got the SM57, but I found out I need a good preamp, because the guitar processor isn't cutting it). So, this sounds like crap so far and only serves to give you an idea of the notes and rhythms I want to do, but enough excuses: http://www.neutronstar.org/music/vega-wip.mp3 -steve

I should have mentioned this when I requested my songs, but I forgot...my "remixer name" is Steve Pordon, not my nick. -steve

Slap an expander/limiter on it at -0.3 dB after regular compression if needed. -0.3 is the "standard" most audio engineers in the US use for CDs. Or at least it used to be, back when I actually kept up with it. -steve