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To me, nothing is more boring than a completely accurate cover/re-arrangement. You're a composer, aren't you?

I am, and there's a compositions section on my site.
I can't understand why an accurate cover wouldn't deserve as much respect as an " inspired by " song !
The KV2 remake from Wolf is what i call an excellent completely-accurate arrangement.
It's often way more hard to have a song sounding close to the original SCC one than to make an inspired song and choose the sound patches you want, if you don't trust me try it yourself, and you'll understand what i mean. And i know wolf should agree with me on that !
Btw, I made "inspired by songs", listen to them.

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I'd prefer to make a real arranged version of an MSX song above a very close cover to the original, with the only modification being the kind of instruments used. If I'd want that, I would like something like J-War is suggesting, but for real arrangements you don't really need it (imho).

Basicaly that means i don't make real arrangement but instead i make covers with only different instrument assignations ?

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If I'd want that, I would like something like J-War is suggesting, but for real arrangements you don't really need it (imho).

Basicaly it seems (at least) that means jorito does real arrangement, unlike me

When i listen to 99% of the arrangements already made, i don't hear many " inspired by " songs although there are way more years you're arranging msx musics than me.
The only realy improved and " inspired by " arrange i heard was the Vampire Killer (Reprise) from Ruud van de Moosdijk. I don't know if i should count the DIA51 from junu & jorito as there was more than one person involved into it and because the most improvements came from junu's guitar playing while there aren't much synth in it.
When i listened to Jorito's REAL arrangements, i heard something very close to the original also, with different instrument assignations.
Of course i should mention he added there and there some synths chords following the bassline, some Dance/Pseudo TripHop rythm, and often the same lead sound (F1 Spririt / Mog).
I should also mention that all the REAL arranges from Jorito use the same stylistic patterns and sound textures nothing less nothing more.

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At least divide between 1:1 arrangements and 'inspired by' or 'enhanced' arrangements J-War does the first option, while you all refer to the 2nd one.

I don't agree, as far as i know my Golvellius Arrange for example is a real enhancement over the original version. Although the theme is the same there are tons of things that doesn't exists in the original. (Drums, Bassline, Solo, Chords, Breaks, Harmonizations etc...)

Furthermore, the other arranges i made features a lots of discretes enhancement over the original... Exactly like in the Wolf's arrangements no less no more... Although we have realy different equipements and methods, the arranges we both released were done with the same goal in mind.

Some arranges i made which are close to the original features although some discrete improvements over the original, like chords, breaks, rythms and other stuffs... (Hey, that's like the Jorito's real arrangements finaly)

Maybe i should let you know i arranged songs to different music kind ? You didn't noticed ? Orchestral for Space Manbow, Fusion for SD, Rock for Golvellius, Jazz for Another Bad accident, World for KV2...

Also i should say that EVEN if an arrangement is close to the original, the vibratos effect, volumes effects, accentuations, creshendos, portamentos and all expressions effects have to be created from the start to the end and it's a lots of work. And well, you should know getting the whole thing sounding fine is a damn hard task.

When someone release an arrangement, the purpose is not to hunt what's wrong in it just to find a reason why you would have done better !
The purpose isn't either to jump on the guy which released it to say " hey this part sux, this one too, why you didn't do that instead ? " just because another guy after you will just say the opposite... All is a matter of taste and your taste doesn't count over the multitude.
I still can't undestand why some ppl jumped on wolf saying the vibrato wasn't fine or there wasn't enough this or that... blah blah blah blah... Can't you just enjoy what he did ? The dragon slayer 6 arrange he released is realy TOP OF THE NOTCH, if you want him to release more then just tell him how good the work he achieved is and give him SUGGESTIONS instead of overcriticizing everything.
None of you could have done better ! Learn to like and to listen how ppl made their song and arrangement, even if it doesn't fit your taste, even if you're sure you would have done better, the arranger still did something that fit his taste not YOURS ! Just think about the time and efforts he had to put into his work the rest is horse manure. (Guyver800 style )

At least, I (We) don't do that for fame or money, i hope you understood it, it's taken directly on our free time... And NO i don't have more free time than you, but for my part i carry on doing it.
IF anyone dislike how i/we arrange please go behind your synth, start to work (Hey, no matter you're tired) and do REALY BETTER and MORE SONGS, everyone even me will be pleased with better & more arranges !
I don't have much free time but i enjoyed spending it in arranging msx songs lately and well i made a total of 16 songs ( the half in 4 hours or so, remember i posted a new each day ) which is not bad and the most important : that made people happy while contributing to the MSX music (considering the great feedbacks i had and not considering how good i am).

I realy don't think comparing yourself all the time with other people is a good attitude, if a comparison is needed then no matter how fucking lame it is just let's make a contest then... Like every one has the same PSG song which is not in KSS or in MSX PLUG format to arrange the way he want in a week. The song title is known a sunday @ 12:00 am and has to be released the next sunday @ 12:00 am then ppl will vote and choose who's the best. Quite Sad...

And don't tell me criticals are mandatory to improve yourself over years, only respectful suggestions are... the rest isn't ! This is all the difference...

Of course, please understand all of these line are IMHO.

Don't get me wrong, I love both the J-War and the Wolf remakes that recently appeared on the MRC frontpage posts. Like your posts was all IMHO, my posts all are very IMHO as well

To me, music is emotion and re-arranging music is something I like to do with my 'feelings' rather than with only theories. However, just you wait.. the GBA covers already discussed are quite close to the originals and pretty theoretical. Still, I think I managed to give the MSX feel to the songs, something which was lacking on the GBA. I will let you know as soon as these songs are released. Looking forward to hear your comments.

But, I'm also planning to do some covers in the future with a completely different approach. You'll hear from that somewhere in 2004

The emotion thingie is quite obvious... For all of us, it's a matter of love & devotion to MSX music... So there are no risk i could do msx music from theory or whatever, my memories and feelings drive me all along.

The retrieval process as a work-basis has nothing to do with emotion tho, as i said, it's up to each other to use it the right way.
As soon as one or more of our songs get a solid good feedback no need to worry about anything.

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>>I'd prefer to make a real arranged version of an MSX song above a very close cover to the original, with the only modification being the kind of instruments used. If I'd want that, I would like something like J-War is suggesting, but for real arrangements you don't really need it (imho).<< Basicaly that means i don't make real arrangement but instead i make covers with only different instrument assignations ?

Well, if you really want to read it like that, you could, but that's not what I meant... I merely said that personally, I like to make arrangements (in my case mostly a song with the same melody line and more or less the same feel) better than making very close covers with every note as accurate as possible. That way of working is both easier and more fun to me and wasn't meant as a judgement of your songs. But then again, if you really want to read it that way, you could, but we've had this discussion before so I hoped you knew what I meant by now...

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>>If I'd want that, I would like something like J-War is suggesting, but for real arrangements you don't really need it (imho). << Basicaly it seems (at least) that means jorito does real arrangement, unlike me

Again, if you want to read it like that because you feel attacked by me, you probably could. If you read properly tho, you would read that all I said was that the kind of tool you suggest would be very handy if you want to make accurate covers. For making arrangements (and NOT discussing if they're real enough or not to your liking!) you don't really need such a tool, it might come in handy for the tricky parts of a melody tho.

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>>At least divide between 1:1 arrangements and 'inspired by' or 'enhanced' arrangements

IMHO, a 1:1 arrangement is 'just' a cover, and an arrangement is something more than that. This can be adding a few chords, or a different rhythm, or whatever else you want to add, but that's just my opinion and maybe I am wrong. In that case, enlighten me!

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Furthermore, the other arranges i made features a lots of discretes enhancement over the original... Exactly like in the Wolf's arrangements no less no more... Although we have realy different equipements and methods, the arranges we both released were done with the same goal in mind.

Well, then basically our differences is just in the goal we have I just have a lot more fun when making less accurate 'covers' (if you think I don't arrange enough I'll call them covers just to please you) than when making note-for-note accurate covers.

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When someone release an arrangement, the purpose is not to hunt what's wrong in it just to find a reason why you would have done better !

Let me counter that:
When somebody releases feedback on an arrangement you made, the purpose is not to feel personally attacked and insulted, but you could actually do something with this feedback and improve the song! (if you think the feedback is useful, that is). This has absolutely NOTHING to do with me thinking I could do better (I might, but I doubt it in some cases), but it just seems to don't take criticism very well...

Anyways, since you feel personally attacked I will stop giving any feedback at all. Have it your way, I don't care enough to do something about it.

From an online dictionary,

Arrangement:
[n] a piece of music that has been adapted for performance by a particular set of voices or instruments


So it more or less requires to be a 1:1 duplicate of the original notewise, but the sounds used however may very well be totally different (at least, that's how I interpret this)

This means if you make an 'a capella' version of the introsong of spacemanbow, and every note is accurate it's STILL an arrangement
And THAT would mean the notes don't need to be accurate at all though, because the human voice most likely cannot reach all octaves needed to 'reproduce' all tones.

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..it yourself, and you'll understand what i mean. And i know wolf should agree with me on that !

scc-sounds are tricky, since they don't change their spectrum, where all other sounds in nature do. It's all a matter of finding the right balance between static replacement sounds are natural replacement sounds. As I wrote in that DS6 txtfile, some sounds are kinda punchy, you can't just replace them with good samples.

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Basicaly that means i don't make real arrangement but instead i make covers with only different instrument assignations ?

Technically I'd say that anyone who changes or adds instruments 1:1 can be called an arranger (and not much more), if you add lines that weren't in the original (and aren't just there to soup things up, but really make a significant difference) and make variations on the original theme, you're more of an arranger&composer. My MoG remakes fall in the latter category, and my kv2/ds6 covers fall in the first category (imo).

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I still can't undestand why some ppl jumped on wolf saying the vibrato wasn't fine or there wasn't enough this or that... blah blah blah blah... Can't you just enjoy what he did ?

I can stand critics, however, most of the things were things that were on my own todo list already. It's most of the time a choice of things that you can do and that you can't do. Even samples have their limits, if you expect an orchestral score, then you don't expect instruments to express that they're just samples (the machinegun effect, lack of realistic note-changes on strings etc.). In that case you choose to hide those instruments a bit (masking that they're just lousy samples!).

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The dragon slayer 6 arrange he released is realy TOP OF THE NOTCH, if you want him to release more then just tell him how good the work he achieved is and give him SUGGESTIONS instead of overcriticizing everything.

*blush*



Wasn't this topic about GETTING the right notes (as a reference) instead of USING the right notes (which is an optional choice) ?

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From an online dictionary, Arrangement: [n] a piece of music that has been adapted for performance by a particular set of voices or instruments So it more or less requires to be a 1:1 duplicate of the original notewise, but the sounds used however may very well be totally different (at least, that's how I interpret this)

An arrangement where the arranger changes the music with his own interpretation (adding an alternate melody or improvise) is usually called (at least by the japanese) Super-arranging. 'Super' meaning 'more than'.

A thread about music arranging and this is my first contribution! Weee! I must have been away today. Wait. I was away today!

Anyway, like Low_profile and some others have stated, there is a certain charm to re-arranging music just by ears. For years I have worked that way, all the arranger musicdisks were made that way and so was Arranger Gold. Only for one song on Arranger 1 (taken from Illusion City) I actually ripped the complete music data out and printed it on a thermic printer, it took me longer to interpret what was printed than that it would have costed me to just listen, so that was also the last time I did that

But honestly, I have to admit I would not have made my arrangement of Triumphal Arch as good as I think it is without the mute-channel-option in KSS. With complex music such as the SD-Snatcher songs it is nearly impossible to hear all the things happening in the underlying layers. Of course Low Profile is right when he says practise makes perfect but without sounding arrogant: I do have a trained ear, but I also feel that even a trained ear cannot hear everything that is going on when the song gets more complex.

Now with the arrangement of Auf Wiedersehen Monty I am back to listening again, since there is no player that has that song and the optuion to mute channels, if there was, yes I would use it. It helps greatly to create an accurate template of the original in little time. And I think THAT is what J-War is also talking about. I don't have as much spare time as I used to, but I still love to arrange. If there are tools available to make my life easier, why not use them? I used to make websites solely in notepad too, but it was too timeconsuming so now I use a webdesign package. Same thing imho.

As far as arranging and composing goes, I learned how to compose my own music thanks to doing remakes. If I had never done the Arranger series I would never have learned to write music, like most things I am able to do, I learned by "stealing" other people's stuff. I strongly disagree that knowing the exact notes means that the arrangement will be an exact remake, it is STILL dependant on the creativity of the arranger how it sounds. I have original scoresheets of all the YS songs, but I can still choose to make a techno version, or an orchestrated version. Like Triumphal Arch I can still choose to change the bassline, change the buildup, make it more or less lively, add a few improvisations or variations. I can still choose to make the secondary melody line the primary melody like I did on "Be Careful" (Ys-3). Like Bach & Mozart wrote entire symphonies based on one two-beat-long theme and arranged them in 1200 different forms, you wish to call them bad composers? I think not.

I totaly agree with Rudy, i done enough arrangement by ears and i am too much busy now to retrieve notes that are hard to find each time i am in mood to cover an MSX song.

I earn money from music all year long, it's my work, so at least when i get back to my hobby i'd like it to be a bit less boring for the retrieval part. That was just to make things easier and nothing more... hey, i live from music, i don't need to entertain my ears anymore...

Everyone use the same tricks here, but noone seems able to admitt how cool it would be to have such a prog. Seems everyone want to be know as "guys that don't need anything "...

Everyone would still be free to not use it tho, no matter the reasons. It's not like i put a knife under your throat !

So here is the original topic again :

" something that allow channel muting, maybe wav file output & why not midi log out "
" it's just to have a basis to achieve a more accurate work if needed... (too complex part, leads, sounds too much hidden behind something...)"
" Studying the score via the midi log and see how the guy worked, yes that's interesting to improve knowledges... "

I realy don't see the point in all this arguing, i can't imagine Jorito, Rudi, LowProfile, Wolf or Myself cheating by using a midifile and just assigning instruments... Even for our closest covers there's still a lot of stuffs and details added...

The REAL point is here : i see ppl not realy woring on arrangements anymore and that could help some of you to get back to work easily, accurately and with more pleasure than ever. C'mon you won't have to face a trial if you use it when you need it !

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Could you explain me what it means ? It's a bit too technical for me hehe

Well J-War,... remember -logsnd option...
like that ,.... recording/capture the scc/psg/ect. registers to a data file.
From there you can use your imagination how use it for you music.
Filter out channels for example and/or converter them to wav or translate the data to midi.
Well this is that i had in mind....

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Well J-War,... remember -logsnd option... like that ,.... recording/capture the scc/psg/ect. registers to a data file. From there you can use your imagination how use it for you music. Filter out channels for example and/or converter them to wav or translate the data to midi. Well this is that i had in mind....

Hmm, sounds realy great... Would it be difficult to do such a program ?

It's possible ... working on a proggie that 'captures' raw psg/scc data from an emu that have no logging option but emulate psg.scc very good.
But ,.. like i said before.. i'm not a great programmer so it can take a while.

There is also problems... but thats not applicable on the moment.

I guess by now everyone has noticed that the next version of MSXPlug (www102.sakura.ne.jp/~ok/psa/) has a "mask" dialog. Looks to me like one can solo/mute every available channel.

Now i'd like to understand how to bring this muting channels dialog box

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Now i'd like to understand how to bring this muting channels dialog box

It's actually explained in the news item on the site. However, both MSXPlug archives seem to contain v0.27, as opposed to v0.28 where the "mask" dialog has been implemented. ?

EDIT: Okay, as mentioned by OK the author the plugin in the archives IS v0.28. He only forgot to change the version number. To get to the mask dialog, press ALT+3 or use plugin info. There should then be a drop down-menu from where you can select the mask dialog.
Or in short: RTFM!