RadicalDreamers

It's just occurred to me that it may actually do for me to write a basic engraving tutorial. Then, when a style guide for sheet music is established, it can point to the tutorial for specific notation questions. To be clear, this would not be a tutorial for a specific software program (though those could be written too, I suppose), but a general purpose guide for standard notation practices. EDIT: Such a notation tutorial would I think necessitate some aptitude with theory. A separate, basic theory tutorial could also be made, but one thing at a time!

I think we are nowhere near figuring that out just yet. I imagine a formal submission process would have to be established first, as collecting things in a forum post quickly gets unwieldy.

Sorry for the radio silence, things have been busy since I got back from my trip! Rather than try and come up with a fully realized style guide on my own, for now I want to propose some general ideas and get people's feedback so we can try and codify something together. For ReMixes, we would want to determine what kind of sheet music would best serve the track. While it's absolutely possible to generate a full score for what is otherwise a pop tune (in the broadest sense) a lead sheet (usually just melody and chords) would be preferable, whereas it would be somewhat lacking for a full orchestral track where the interplay of instruments is key. In between are the solo piano arrangements, but in some ways these can be among the most difficult to execute in terms of useable sheet music, as properly notating multiple voices and the left/right hand relationships can be tricky for a beginner, with even a simple tune presenting difficulties at times. Also needing consideration are the many Remixes that are either Big Band or Jazz in nature where knowledge of chart writing would be helpful in properly capturing the music in notation. Regardless of the form the sheet music takes for any individual ReMix, certain elements would need to be included in all of them: Title of the ReMix Title of the original piece Title of the originating game Composer of the original music Name of the ReMixer (ideally their real name, or at least their handle, eg: "Arr. by Nathanael Tronerud", "Arr. by djpretzel") Either the URL to the original track, or the track ID no. on the site URL to www.ocremix.org Name of lyricist, if any, either an original lyricist from the game, or someone else, if different from the ReMixer Once we establish these things, then we can work out the nitty gritty of the notation itself.

You're welcome! And I completely agree. Especially considering how important Sugiyama was to other Japanese video game composers and to game soundtracks in general (the actual albums, if not the music). VII I enjoyed, and V is very good, but IV I think is among the most compelling story-wise, specifically because of the way the drama unfolds via the chapter system, as well as the strength of all the characters. And of course the music! While I think VI is probably the strongest overall DQ soundtrack, IV I think contains some of my favorite tunes from the series. And not only was Torneko Taloon influential, he got his own spinoff series to boot! A rogue-like kind of thing, if I recall.

It's a good idea, but as you say, the accuracy of the MIDIs there is often suspect. That's why for the score books that I envision I would want to use software like NSFtoMIDI and SPCtoMIDI in order to circumvent that problem, by going straight to the source. (Does anyone know of similar programs for Genesis/Megadrive and/or Gameboy?) If the OCRemix sheet music project is being revived, I can focus on my original idea, which was to work on these score books for early games.

I would just want to ensure that they were free of the worst problems, like notational collisions, bad spacing, inconsistent spelling, and difficult readability (and of course, errors). I don't mean that it needs to be Boosey & Hawkes or Henle or anything, but contributors should be familiar with basic engraving standards. Think the Gardner Read book (which is very inexpensive). Submissions could then be reviewed to ensure that it's clean and formatted well. We would probably want to pick one notation program, though I would personally suggest Sibelius. First, it's less fussy than Finale and others. Second, Sibelius would allow people to share the same House Style so that there was consistency across contributors. When I get back home in a couple days (out of state visiting family at the moment) I can start drafting something formal. I agree that it shouldn't be complicated though, so I will try and keep it as broad as possible.

No love for Warsong/Langrisser?

To anyone who would potentially be interested in helping, I'll keep a list! ReMixers who can and are willing to, could certainly provide official charts for their own ReMixes. But in terms of the books I envision, I am very particular when it comes to notation and engraving, and I would want to ensure that, whatever is produced, even if it is "just" sheet music, is held to the same standards as the actual music on the site. If this is something that eventually proves to be popular, I might then perhaps look into seeking help for the grunt work, though I would still want to perform the final formatting and such.

Kitty, you highlight two of things I want to address for the community. Firstly, you mention that the two versions you found had conflicting info, and that is precisely why I want to work on these books derived directly from the source, so that there are no errors like that. (In the specific case, I would be very surprised if there isn't actually an official piano book for Final Fantasy X; Squeenix tends to be on top of that sort of thing.) Secondly, you mention that you do not know much about theory. That's okay! There are many sources of music theory information out there, and providing well engraved and accurate sheet music could help people by providing examples of music they're actually enthusiastic about. I love classical music (it's one reason why I went to music school!), but people also need access to modern music, perhaps more so. EDIT: That being said, I'm sure music theory tutorials geared towards ReMixing could also be provided, if not by me, then by others. Having taught theory, I would be happy to review them.

I definitely feel like there would be a demand for sheet music, for both the original soundtracks and ReMixes on the site. For one, having the music in front of you is educational. But for anyone looking to do their own ReMixes, it also removes a potential barrier. For more pop-oriented ReMixes, people might actually be more interested in lead sheets and chord charts, rather than full notation of the arrangements. For orchestral ReMixes, seeing a full score would be enlightening, though a lot of work. I have done full scores for orchestral recording sessions, but I had access to the original DAW sessions, and so could do it from MIDI. As for solo piano works, they can theoretically be notated by ear, but it is so much easier to have the MIDI for them as well, as it removes any guesswork (and is less time consuming).

Hello everyone! My name is Nate, and my Dragon Warrior arrangement "To Endor" was posted the other day by the staff (thank you!) and, first off, I wanted to introduce myself. But I also wanted to share with people something I've been working on occasionally in my free time, namely sheet music based on early video game soundtracks. I'm actually a copyist by day, among other things, and I was interested in creating professionally notated sheet music based on the direct source of the music. Although I started off doing it by ear, I decided I wanted to be as faithful as possible and notate the music as it was originally executed by the games. Now that I have NSFtoMIDI working on my Mac (using WineBottler) I can bring the exported MIDI tracks into Logic for clean up (the music is squeezed temporally when it's exported, and it also needs quantizing). Once I've done that, I can re-export them as new MIDI tracks and import those into Sibelius or Finale, where I can then proceed to clean up the notation, add some articulations, time signatures, and basic tempo markings, as well as formatting and neatening. Below is a link to a few examples, including March of the Capricious Princess. Although I've added things like accents and slurs when appropriate, everything is as it was originally output by the system. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1snejmgq813sxvf/AAChy7jV8EmvxMyy7lDGamEMa?dl=0 Is this something that would interest people? The idea would be to produce sheet music for tracks that people requested, or even make whole music books for popular (or obscure!) games. I've seen sheet music around, but it is often filled with errors, guesswork, or is difficult to read. Comments? Questions? Hate mail? Lemme know!

It depends. What kind of percussion do you want? I'm assuming you mean orchestral percussion since we're talking orchestral samples here. Do you want general purpose orchestral percussion, or are you looking for cinematic impacts, loops, etc?

You're right, I was thinking of Spitfire Albion. The BML line is indeed quite extensive.

EWQL Symphonic Orchestra is okay for entry level, and I still use some of the patches from an old Kontakt version (current versions run in PLAY now). They're lightweight, and inexpensive, but they are not dry recorded (they were recorded on a stage, and even the closeup mics that come with the platinum edition have some of that natural stage reverb), and most of them do not have dynamic crossfading, which is really what you want. Velocity layers are important, but you also need to be able to hear the change in timbre when, say, a horn has a crescendo from p to f, which you just won't get with most of the EWQL patches. (There are some dynamic crossfade patches available, but they are limited in scope). The EWQL Strings sound super fake, and all of the samples date back to the late 90s and don't reflect the best of current recording technology. But if you're going to get it, get Gold, not Silver, which is seriously lacking in the instrument department. At least with Gold, you will have a relatively complete orchestra set. (Platinum gives you more mic positions.) Garritan Personal Orchestra (the version that comes with Finale) should not be used for sample mockups. Garritan sells other libraries which may be of some use to people, though I haven't been particularly impressed. VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) was considered the king of samples for a long time, and they're definitely very good, but they are incredibly expensive. They've also been superceded recently in many ways. Spitfire and ProjectSAM stuff sound really nice, but as mentioned they are pre-orchestrated sections, as well as effects. This may or may not be what you're looking for. EastWest has other libraries besides EWQLSO, like the Hollywood Series, Hollywood Strings and Hollywood Brass, which I'm told by colleagues sound very good. But they are heavy on the system and only run in PLAY, EastWest's proprietary sampler, which has a reputation for being difficult. Cinesamples would be an excellent choice, and all their libraries run in Kontakt, and they offer several packages for all sections of the orchestra, as well as combo packs. They're not cheap, but it may be worth it. LA Scoring Strings is a strings library that has a good reputation. A bit more intimate in scope, but it has a high learning curve (I'm still not sure I fully understand it and I've been using it for awhile). A "lite" version is available. Anything from 8dio, especially the Adagio Strings libraries. But again, not cheap.