divVerent wrote: so one should play as safe as possible.

Not live one's life on the knife's edge of oblivion? Comon man, life ends at 30, live fast die hard!

If a fully opensource synth is needed zynaddsubfx can be used and, in addition to all the instruments it does have allready, these gpl ones can be added: http://www.musically.me.uk/stuff.html (the ZynBank). ZynAddSubFX is available in most linux distributions and windows etc.


http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/
"Synthesizer with two engines, realtime polyphonic, Midi support, microtonal capability, effects."

Wow man, I extremely like this music, awesome job! Added to my playlist I really hope it will be used as material on some maps, or the even for the mainpage video.

this song is HOT!!!

yoW! the hotness burns!

Seriously i'd really like to use it in a Nexuiz frag video if I may?

I will credit you

So can it be used?

tundramagi wrote:So can it be used?

Well, I believe the creator mentioned something earlier about this GPL release but we're still waiting for a definite answer, and also if possible, some MIDI for the source or if there is some other better solution.

Decided to check this thread again to see if there's been any more activity since I last checked-- there has!

Here's where I got with it: I declared that the songs are under GPL2 (although listening back to the first one I posted, it's a bit rough, but I think stairs is still good), I burnt the stem tracks of stairs to a CD, ready to be copied if anyone requests the multi-tracks, I also exported the MIDI track, ready for the same reason. To my knowledge that's all I need to do, and from the posts on this thread it seems everyone's stumbling around not quite sure entirely what is required, but that is what I've done, and I personally think that is enough. If there's some sort of problem (I really can't see how there could be a problem) with this not being an applicable "sourcecode" and someone complains, is it not easy to just remove the music?

Also, whoever mentioned ZynAddSubFX, I've had a go with it lately and it's an excellent synth(s). I'm also considering switching to linux as an audio production platform (the only reason I've been keeping windows around) so any future songs (assuming I do stick with Linux) I make for Nexuiz will be easier to implement, since they would of been made on an opensource platform with opensource software, and the opensource sequences and opensource compositions will be opensource, along with the opensource multi-tracks for the opensource DAW.

I hope I've atleast cleared something up. ack.

Well, I haven't read that you had done that... but good, that's great then. I may request the MIDI soon though (which, for this style of music, should indeed be sufficient, as it's "melody-based")... but it looks like the legal issues are cleared out now.

In my opinion, brokenlight would be a great into theme for Nexuiz, while stairs could be great on some space maps (thinking of starship).

Any comments on this?

divVerent wrote:
In my opinion, brokenlight would be a great into theme for Nexuiz, while stairs could be great on some space maps (thinking of starship).

Any comments on this?

Sounds good.

Need to reboot into Windows to render the MIDI files, but shall upload them soon. I might also do some tweaks to brokenlight, I'm not happy with a lot of it (drums, for example)-- A lot of the engineering decisions on it seemed quite clever at the time. Will re-upload if I decide to alter it.

Hey, glad to have made some progress, can't wait to hear these in-game.

Alright, rendered the stairs multitrack to MIDI (again), also layed the guitar bits down in MIDI as well, and labeled the tracks (please note they're not "mapped" to general midi, so they will all just come out as piano if you play it in a media player). The midi file contains all composition data.

Screenshot of the loaded MIDI file is followed:


And the MIDI file itself is here. If multitracks are needed, I can convert the lossless files to Mp3s, and stick them on an FTP somewhere.

As for brokenlight the multitrack file is a mess, and the changes I want to do to it I can't, due to stem tracking. Rendering to midi is going to take some work, and I'm not even happy with how it sounds, so I'm going to leave that out until I have the patience to make it sound good, but at the moment doing any work on it is frustrating-- this will sound silly, but I've gotten used to linux, and windows mouse acceleration (or lack of) feels extremely dodgey, plus I'm having some soundcard issues.

What is stem tracking?

And the MIDI doesn't have to be perfect.

I assigned instruments in some okay-ish way, here is the MusE project file for that:
http://emptyset.endoftheinternet.org/~r ... stairs.med

I think that's good enough to count as source.

As for brokenlight, how broken IS the MIDI? It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't matter if it sounds bad in synthesizers, it's just important that all notes are there and properly separated to instruments so e.g. an orchestra could play it if they wanted to. Actually, the stairs track is good enough for that, sure, the conductor would have some work regarding finding the right dynamics, but well, that's his choice then

divVerent wrote:What is stem tracking? ... As for brokenlight, how broken IS the MIDI?

Stem tracking is mixing through channel groups, so sending all the instruments to separate groups, for example, all the drum channels to a stereo drum group, and then mixing just the group channels. I've rendered the MIDI output from the instruments onto stem tracks for brokenlight, and got rid of the original MIDI data.

I'm also not happy with how brokenlight sounds, and would much rather do a new mix of it, but this is very difficult, since my Windows install currently has a lot of adware and crap which is effecting it's usability in audio programs (I dualboot, and have been 100% linux for about a month).

Also, would you mind recording the output from the MuSE file to an OGG? I don't have MuSE installed and I'm curious to how it sounds.

I was thinking of working on another song for Nexuiz, I want some excuses to try out Linux's range of audio software (LMMS is great, and there are a lot of brilliant free soundfonts), but I want some specifics, more strings stuff? more electronicy? just some guide lines of what we think the game needs.

I don't like to record it yet, as the instruments still are far from good. Freepats simply are bad. I'll later try getting it to work with fluidsynth instead of timidity, though.

http://emptyset.endoftheinternet.org/~r ... irs_mt.zip

Fluidsynth isn't THAT bad, plus, I could assign the instruments more correctly.

I think one could work from this MED file and even with this synth, and just add dynamics to the MIDI events. And even if not, it's perfect to learn from, which - in case of music - is the purpose of the "source".

Now all we need is similar stuff (doesn't need to be perfect) for the other track. Or do you really not have the original MIDI any more? Is there any way you can reconstruct or recover it, other than by recreating it from scratch?

In case you can't provide that for the other track, maybe it isn't even a problem as these two tracks DO sound very similar (wouldn't be surprised if you even reused parts, but you certainly did the same thing with the main theme that repeats all the time). Nothing wrong with that, I just say that the "how did he do it" question should have the same answer for both tracks.

Heard the songs in SVN today... awesome is all I can say great job It's the style of music I always thought Nexuiz is missing and would need, especially for Assault and Onslaught maps once their day will come. If you could make more songs of the same style in time I'm sure everyone would be happy

divVerent wrote:... Or do you really not have the original MIDI any more? Is there any way you can reconstruct or recover it, other than by recreating it from scratch?

I have some of the MIDI data, but a lot of it would have to be created from scratch. I'm also not happy with the quality of brokenstairs. I might redo the drums in it later in the week (or next week) at some point, and if I'm happy with how it turns out, I'll recreate the MIDI that needs doing for the strings

Where's stairs being used, if it's in the SVN? (My net is quite slow, so I haven't got round to grabbing the SVN version yet).

Also, is there any more call for electronicy music in Nexuiz, since I've been working on some more songs, some of which I feel would be fitting, though they're not in an orchestral style.

Well, post those songs you are willing to include in Nexuiz and we'll see what people say. In my personal opinion I think it's nice with varieties of music. Some electronical, some with up beat, some spooky/eerie, industrial, I also believe some with lower tempo would fit well as long as it's made correctly and fit the style.

Taking maps into considerations such as Bloodprison, Ruiner and Warefare.

ai wrote:Well, post those songs you are willing to include in Nexuiz and we'll see what people say. In my personal opinion I think it's nice with varieties of music. Some electronical, some with up beat, some spooky/eerie, industrial, I also believe some with lower tempo would fit well as long as it's made correctly and fit the style.

Taking maps into considerations such as Bloodprison, Ruiner and Warefare.

Ha. I'm working on a song at the moment.. think 4x4 808 drums, with 303 bass, orchestral hits and orchestral ensemble soundfonts. It's a bit.. out there... I shall post it's done, but it's most the way there at the moment, also one of the first big songs I've worked on in Linux, so hopefully people find it fitting, since it isn't that ordinary, and it's quite different to the other songs I've posted.

blkrbt wrote:Where's stairs being used, if it's in the SVN? (My net is quite slow, so I haven't got round to grabbing the SVN version yet).

Also, is there any more call for electronicy music in Nexuiz, since I've been working on some more songs, some of which I feel would be fitting, though they're not in an orchestral style.

Currently Brokenlight is used as the menu theme and Stairs is used in Soylent Space. I think Starship should use Stairs as well though... the song Starship currently has is used in Silvercity so it wouldn't get lost.

And what I believe would be welcome are songs that make an atmosphere... songs which keep you in suspense and make a feeling. Something similar to the music on UT2k4 assault maps, but more rhythmic and modern (and electric). If you could post what you have of these songs so far we could give an opinion more easily.

Well, as for the MIDI file - the thing is simply, the current interpretation of the GPL is left open to what courts decide in these cases.

In case there is ever a ruling that for music, source is required, we'd have to delete all music tracks of Nexuiz except Stairs.

And in your own interest, it would be great to have some safety in that regard for your other tracks

Also, we don't want such a ruling to be devastating for Nexuiz and to require us to basically delete half the game and start almost from scratch to get the missing parts. That is why all new content should have some sort of source, unless it's unlikely that a court would ever say it needs it (like, in the case of textures and sound effects, because of the way they are made is lossy and generates no "project files").

I only accepted brokenlight because you promised to provide that file, so please do so soon (in about two weeks). It does not have to perfectly match the brokenlight track, if you checked out my zip file with the med and the ogg file, you see that it's sure a close enough match already.

Can you perhaps export brokenlight to another format that retains the notes and their durations, and the tracks they were assigned to? It doesn't HAVE to be MIDI.

divVerent wrote:I only accepted brokenlight because you promised to provide that file, so please do so soon (in about two weeks). It does not have to perfectly match the brokenlight track, if you checked out my zip file with the med and the ogg file, you see that it's sure a close enough match already.

It's the fact that the note data doesn't exist, only the audio renditions of the strings, now. I shall rework-them out and make a MIDI file at some point, though.

Also! I worked on a new song, It's different to the other two I submitted (I don't want to keep submitting the same genre)-- anyway, here it is, I made this one knowing that the source would have to be provided in mind, but it was made in LMMS, anyway, so I could just provide the project file if it's used. Tell me what you think, and feel free to make suggestions if anyone thinks it needs alterations.

Actually, this one is quite good, just... the orchestra hit sample isn't really good

As you used LMMS - where are the strings etc. from? They sound really good actually.

As for brokenlight... well in that case, it might still be okay, I won't remove it until there is legal evidence (a court ruling) that the score MUST be provided. However, in the future this exception shouldn't be made any more, as it can lead to us having to suddenly remove almost all music at once.

Is this for the desertfactory map, maybe? Fits industrial style maps well, I think.

divVerent wrote:Actually, this one is quite good, just... the orchestra hit sample isn't really good

I'm really glad that got noticed. I didn't want to mention it, as not to put it into everyone's head. I thought the sample was quite nice itself, the problem being that it seems to start a bit late (the soundfont itself, so it sounds a bit out of time) the sample itself reminded me of that song off fifth element, which starts off with the opera singer and goes into crazy-futuristic-electro.

The strings are soundfonts from Hammersound (as is the hit), and I was using LMMS0.4.

I did look for some nicer orchestral hit soundfonts, but I can't seem to find any! The one I'm using is called "chinahit". Does anyone have any orchestral hit samples by any chance? or can point me to a better one ?

edit: apparently when I decide to spell things right I find them more easily . Will rework it with a better hit sample

Also, please check if the samples you are using forbid commercial use. The ones by Hammer himself do not, as he says on his website. In case some sample does not allow commercial use, please ask the author of the sample for permission to use it in a song released with a license that does allow some limited commercial use, i.e. the GPL (which you can count on him giving it to you, given that the GPL only works for some limited kind of commercial use, e.g. packaging Nexuiz as part of a Linux distribution that's being sold).

divVerent wrote:Well, as for the MIDI file - the thing is simply, the current interpretation of the GPL is left open to what courts decide in these cases.

In case there is ever a ruling that for music, source is required, we'd have to delete all music tracks of Nexuiz except Stairs.

And in your own interest, it would be great to have some safety in that regard for your other tracks

Also, we don't want such a ruling to be devastating for Nexuiz and to require us to basically delete half the game and start almost from scratch to get the missing parts. That is why all new content should have some sort of source, unless it's unlikely that a court would ever say it needs it (like, in the case of textures and sound effects, because of the way they are made is lossy and generates no "project files").

I only accepted brokenlight because you promised to provide that file, so please do so soon (in about two weeks). It does not have to perfectly match the brokenlight track, if you checked out my zip file with the med and the ogg file, you see that it's sure a close enough match already.

Can you perhaps export brokenlight to another format that retains the notes and their durations, and the tracks they were assigned to? It doesn't HAVE to be MIDI.

My urge to ask is too high: There is actually a risk of having the law and government crack down on Nexuiz just because we don't provide the sources for some songs or content? What country does such a thing happen in... the US? I can't believe how out of control the law has gotten recently Hope Nexuiz is safe from these people.

And I hope having to remove brokenlight or stairs will never happen, cuz I think they're currently some of very the best songs in the game and that would be just sad.

Well, stairs is now for sure safe.

And no, the government would NOT crack down on Nexuiz - a copyright holder on other GPL licensed parts of Nexuiz, e.g. id Software, could. Which is unlikely to happen as long as neither Microsoft nor Valve buy them.

However, just because nobody is there who'd sue you doesn't mean you're not doing anything illegal.

Hmm... wasn't the Quake 1 engine released as "use however you want" years ago? Anyway I hope that will never happen, and that we can be ready for any situation (like having to buy some parts from ID software in an extreme case, or replacing parts of the game still belonging to them with parts made by us). I couldn't even imagine seeing this game go because of legal junk, so I hope there's nothing wrong with it legally or anything.

divVerent wrote:Also, please check if the samples you are using forbid commercial use...

I changed the hit sample in the song to a different one (this one sounds less delayed) and reuploaded. I've also emailed the author of the ensemble soundfont I used for the strings, asking if the use of it in this context is alright, though since it is on Hammer's site, and was submitted by Hammer (though not created by Hammer) for the time being I think it's safe to assume it's safe; I imagine the soundfont is quite old, and I'm not even sure if the author's email address is still in use by the author.

edit:

email reply wrote:This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently

Well, the email address isn't even active anymore, so I think the best bet is to assume that the soundfont is alright to be used for this kind of purpose, I feel that is a safe and probable assumption to make.

MirceaKitsune wrote:Hmm... wasn't the Quake 1 engine released as "use however you want" years ago? Anyway I hope that will never happen, and that we can be ready for any situation (like having to buy some parts from ID software in an extreme case, or replacing parts of the game still belonging to them with parts made by us). I couldn't even imagine seeing this game go because of legal junk, so I hope there's nothing wrong with it legally or anything.

Quake was NOT released in such a way, but this does not matter.

Yet another constellation would be: Nexuiz released with songs that are only allowed to be distributed noncommercially.

Some commercial vendor takes the song, and uses it in GPL compatible manner (e.g. on a Debian conference, or as part of an advertisement spot (as long as that spot is released to the general public in editable form, that's okay)).

Now the original author of the sample sues Debian, as he gave them no permission to use the song in that way.

Debian would in turn sue us for the amount of damages the original author sued off Debian, as we caused the damage, by falsely labelling it as GPL.

thats some seriously epic music blkrbt. keep up the good work my friend