What drum is this? (DKC2)

[Ravich]

not the timpani. I have a feeling people are going to say snare, but that's really not what it sounds like to me. Any pointers?

[timaeus222]

It's synthetic. It's not really a snare per se, but it's functioning like one while having a timbre similar to that of a tom.

[Ethan Rex]

It's synthetic. It's not really a snare per se, but it's functioning like one while having a timbre similar to that of a tom.

This right here. the Snare sounds really tight too, maybe even pitched up a bit.

[Ravich]

I know it's synthetic, but often times composers were imitating specific instruments with these kinds of sounds. Hell, the strings are synthetic, but they're definitely strings, so I was wondering if that applied here as well.

Tight snare sounds about right, since I barely hear the... snare, and pitched out sounds right. I'll start with those tips and see where I get. Thanks for the tips.

[timaeus222]

I know it's synthetic, but often times composers were imitating specific instruments with these kinds of sounds. Hell, the strings are synthetic, but they're definitely strings, so I was wondering if that applied here as well.

Tight snare sounds about right, since I barely hear the... snare, and pitched out sounds right. I'll start with those tips and see where I get. Thanks for the tips.

Synthetic as in... well... synthesized. i.e. not a drum sample or a recorded drum sound. It's not referring to whether or not it's "supposed" to sound fake, because that's not the point. Either way, the way it functions like a snare but doesn't quite sound like a snare means it's playing a drum part that could fittingly be played with a real snare drum, but it sounds tom-like in timbre. Besides, there are some people who say toms are kind of like pitched snares anyways.

Edited December 5, 2013 by timaeus222

[Ravich]

Perhaps I'm mistaken. Isnt the timpani in that track also synthesized?

[timaeus222]

Perhaps I'm mistaken. Isnt the timpani in that track also synthesized?

It could be, but I think it was just quickly sampled and compiled into a simple soundfont (one sample for every C and G per octave, perhaps, but whatever the case, it has almost no unique velocity layer samples).

[lazygecko]

Hard to tell without isolating the sound, but it's possible it could just be the same timpani sound pitched up several octaves. Tricks like that were common on the SNES to save memory.

[Ravich]

It could be, but I think it was just quickly sampled and compiled into a simple soundfont (one sample for every C and G per octave, perhaps, but whatever the case, it has almost no unique velocity layer samples).

I dont know if I'm using a midi file that is directly ripped from the game, but it has the timpani notes oscillating on semitones, as well as thirds and whatnot.

Either way, I didnt realize that they even used samples for anything other than vocals way back then. Interesting.

Interesting thought on it being a timpani pitched up. I'm not having much luck with pitching up a snare, although it does resemble the sound more it doesnt really work. I'll probably try laying a snare with a tom or something, but I might just end up using a regular snare since I'm not going for a synthesized sound anyway.

[lazygecko]

SNES is all sample playback. It doesn't do any synthesis. Apart from some kind of noise generator I think, which was very rarely used.

[Ravich]

But that just means that it samples synthesized instruments, right? I think Tim and I were referring to whether the sound source was sampled from a recording or synthetic.... though I could still be confused.

[Argle]

It doesn't really sound synthesized to me, feels like it was originally some kind of acoustic recording before being severely degraded. It was probably sampled from one of the old Roland hardware sound modules, those were de rigueur in the 16 bit era.

[Guest]

It doesn't really sound synthesized to me, feels like it was originally some kind of acoustic recording before being severely degraded. It was probably sampled from one of the old Roland hardware sound modules, those were de rigueur in the 16 bit era.

That's pretty much exactly how SNES stuff was sampled, although Chrono Trigger used some Korg M1 stuff, or just Korg in general IIRC.

[Ravich]

Is there a way to rip midi data directly from the game data? I've done it before with psf files, but never with SNES.

[Guest]

I don't know how to do it myself, but there most certainly is a way. That's why if you go to www.vgmusic.com, there is so much more music for the older systems than the new ones. Lot of lazy MIDI coders out there.