Hello,

I'm not sure what you're talking about here.

I've looked up about GXSCC, and as I understand it, this piece of software takes a midi file (or similar) and creates a digital rendering (such as a .WAV file) using sound font data. I have at least one other package that does the same thing, but with the extra flexibility of using alternative (and better) soundfont info, and prob better resolutions too. This seems to be the opposite of what you say you WANT to do, i.e. create a midi file from a digital file.

As I understand these things, there is software that enables the generation of a midi file (and midi data) from digital data, but I've no idea of the resultant quality, or whether the resulting midi file will be anything like a REAL midi file (i.e. where the midi data can be manipulated in all the ways that a usual midi files can be handled). I suspect that a midi file generated in this way will be a fairly feeble version of a midi file created in the usual way.

Does anyone have any experience of such conversion?

Geoff

Further to the above, I can answer one of your questions.

You say you've got midi files of some of the pieces of music you want, but ask 'how were they made?'.

Well, I'd be pretty sure that the person who made the file did NOT use any sort of automated process, like GSXCC. I'd say that this person is actually a considerable musician, with an excellent ear for music. They will have listened to the piece a number of times, and deconstructed the music into it's component parts, by instruments/sounds. They will have created tracks within a sequencer, and they will have played the music in (recorded it) part by part. Then they will have listened to the whole thing, and gradually tinkered with the detail until it was as close to the original as they could get.

Some of the indiv sounds may have had to be experimented with, to achieve something close enough, maybe ending up with an instrument that was not exactly correct, but still effective. I've been listening recently to a version of Vangelis' "1492 - Conquest of Paradise" main theme, this is extremely good but there are a couple of instruments that are not 100% accurate here, but the overall effect is still great.

This is no mean feat. I could never do this myself. I can get so far working from a score and entering notes one by one, but that would leave me a LONG way short of what a REAL musician could achieve.

If you are hoping that you can do something similar using GSXCC, then you may be disappointed?

Geoff

Hi Geoff! thanks for the answer! I have figured out that i probably do need to deconstruct the tracks. It will be a pain though, but I've realised that i have to do it, after I've looked a bit more into it. GXSCC doesn't convert MIDI into WAV or something like that. It takes MIDI files, and converts the instruments, into an 8-bit version. That's why I'm using that. I also tried .mp3, .wav, and .flac to .MIDI converters. I didn't know that it was just going to be a mess of piano notes, but i know now.

This is all because I want to make a game, and that's why i need 8-bit versions. It's basically a remake of a game, but on an older console.

Thanks again!

If you've got a 16 bit version of a tune, but you need an 8 bit version (why - less data?) then why not just convert the file? Something like Audactity can prob do that? I know that the little MS utility that comes with Windows XP will do this, the prog is called SNDREC32.EXE, bacause I've used this to convert some files between different .WAV formats. You just load in the 16 bit .WAV, and then save it again as an 8 bit version. Clearly the quality will be a lot less, but the file/data is a LOT smaller. Note that different versions of this prog do different things, so I'm sure it's the XP version you should try. The W7 version doesn't allow any conversion, but may have some other pluses?

Also, if you managed to create some midi files from .WAV files, I'd be interested in seeing the resultant file - mess of piano notes notwithstanding. Might be the 'mess' of notes could be 'un-messed'? A lot easier than starting from scratch? For this forum, zip up the file(s) and attach, if you can?

Oh, on my XP machine, the prog referred to above is in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and is about 131k in size. Different version of windows have different versions. NB, the prog I have from XP works fine on a W7 laptop, and I think that the W7 prog worked under XP. The XP prog will RECORD for 60 seconds only, but I think it will load more. The W7 prog will RECORD for much longer, but no convert options.

Geoff