The ABCs of Player Music Sharing

[Northwoods]

Great synopsis, Northman.

The double slash // will generate an "unexpected token" error. Easy (obvious) fix is to replace // with /4

[AmonaugTruehammer]

[chords] I always get an line error message or saying chords aren't supported.

[Giddily]

Northman, great post!!

It just confirmed that changing the Key or Tempo in the middle will only happen if it is rewritten :'( I was hoping there would be a hidden command I could use. Would love to do the Reels properly with them increasing in speed each time it is repeated *sigh*.

Gid

[WornTraveler]

K, so let me see if I am reading all of this straight:


Can't change tempo in the middle of a file.

No triplets?

Dotted quarter note is either (when L:1/8) C3 or (when L:1/4) C2/3 (do these both work?)

I don't have Roheryn on this computer so I really can't test it out. I've been writing some stuff out but having a hard time seeing if it actually works since I have to send the files to my brother and have him play on his toon on his computer.

Also, will there be any changes to the system after the upcoming patch (for instance, allowing tempo changes in the middle of a song)? Just wondered if Turbine had commented on this.

[Northwoods]

K, so let me see if I am reading all of this straight:


Can't change tempo in the middle of a file.

Correct,

No triplets?

Not directly, but you can mimic them easy enough

Dotted quarter note is either (when L:1/8) C3 or (when L:1/4) C2/3 (do these both work?)

It'd be C3/2 rather than C2/3. Simple fractions.

Also, will there be any changes to the system after the upcoming patch (for instance, allowing tempo changes in the middle of a song)? Just wondered if Turbine had commented on this.

I haven't seen any more comments from the devs (and I follow the postings pretty regularly), but I'd be surprised if it didn't grow some more.

Comments in orange

[Northman]

I updated the post above with my findings from tonight.

Please find out what works and doesn't and I'll add them until we get an official guide from Turbine.


Off to bed I go again...

[WornTraveler]

Comments in orange

Right, 3/2. Hehe, my mistake. I typed that in for a little song (intending 3/2 but typing 2/3) and learned the hard way that one fraction equals not another. Thanks for the clarification.

Oh, and good posts in here.

[Northman]

WornTraveler,
I noticed that you have "K:Cmin." in your song here. Does that play correctly in Cminor in LotRO? I know that Dm doesn't seem to work for me as it played in Dmajor instead (so I changed to K:F).

I would check, but I'm procrastinating at work while waiting on a huge file transfer over a terrible network connection.

[WornTraveler]

I dunno, I think so, I have to send everything to my brother who has Roheryn on his computer to actually listen to it (makes testing things clunky). Sounds ok, I was kind of rusty on ABC so I was trying K:Cm, then K:Cmin and finally K:Cmin. worked.

[Giddily]

I am a bit baffled. All the songs I have play correctly and beautifully on the test server. I went to Silverlode today for the first time in awhile to visit with friends and played several songs. They all sounded differently and didn't play like they should. I tried checking and unchecking the latency but didn't change anything. They seem to have stops and goes as if lag but in very short bursts. Anyone else have this problem and am I not finding a fix? Other than not being able to play an even scale of quarter notes, let alone any of my songs.....

Gid

[MorganM2]

I noticed some weirdness too, seemed to get worse the longer I played. It started doubling my notes like stacatto or something, I figured it was probably lag but I'm no music guru *shrug*

On a related note, how do most of you get your tunes into ABC notation? Manually by ear? or do you have a music keyboard hooked up to the PC? I don't have one, so I'm doing it manually by ear, and I have to say I think a Great Barrows run while naked would probably be a bit less painful.

[Northman]

I noticed some weirdness too, seemed to get worse the longer I played. It started doubling my notes like stacatto or something, I figured it was probably lag but I'm no music guru *shrug*

On a related note, how do most of you get your tunes into ABC notation? Manually by ear? or do you have a music keyboard hooked up to the PC? I don't have one, so I'm doing it manually by ear, and I have to say I think a Great Barrows run while naked would probably be a bit less painful.

I do it manually by ear to a keyboard first, then to LotRO ABC.

I had the stuttering problem, too, but I found that pitching the camera to look straight down while playing ABC fixed it for me, but I don't ABC in highly-populated places, however.

[Devire]

How do I download MIDI files off of sites without getting QuickTime Pro?

[Lichbane]

This REALLY needs to be stickied!!

[roballan]

oK So I'm new to this and have some questions.

The first thing is that I tried to delve into ABC notation by converting midis because I figured I would understand it more quickly that way. This seems to have worked, but I have noticed that things annotated as such:

C,,D

don't play because ",," produces the "note too low" error. Easy enough to change the ,, to something else but I'm not really sure what I should be changing it to? Any thoughts would be appreciated because I'm not sure what the "," is doing.

Thanks

[Northwoods]

oK So I'm new to this and have some questions.

The first thing is that I tried to delve into ABC notation by converting midis because I figured I would understand it more quickly that way. This seems to have worked, but I have noticed that things annotated as such:

C,,D

don't play because ",," produces the "note too low" error. Easy enough to change the ,, to something else but I'm not really sure what I should be changing it to? Any thoughts would be appreciated because I'm not sure what the "," is doing.

Thanks

The C,, is the note C two octaves below middle C.

C,, D,, E,, F,, G,, A,, B,, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c' d' e' f' g' a' b' c'' etc.

The range in orange is what's supported.

[Devire]

Why aren't the rest supported?

[roballan]

The C,, is the note C two octaves below middle C.

C,, D,, E,, F,, G,, A,, B,, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c' d' e' f' g' a' b' c'' etc.

The range in orange is what's supported.

So should I bump the standard key up to the lower-case laters (I'm assuming this is an octave higher) and then reduce the ",," to "," ? Is that musically sound do we think?

[Northwoods]

Why aren't the rest supported?

Because the system only supports three octaves

So should I bump the standard key up to the lower-case laters (I'm assuming this is an octave higher) and then reduce the ",," to "," ? Is that musically sound do we think?

What you need to do is transpose the whole score up an octave, assuming this won't put you past the high end of the range. It should sound correct, albeit at a higher pitch.

[koraann]

Thanks for this information Northwoods. I'm still rather confused, but you explained it further than anything else I've seen.

[lastalliance]

I just can't get the Midi-ABC converter to work! Do you guys know how to work it?

[koraann]

I can't get this to work, I have a song, i put it into notepad, then saved it as an .abc file under mydocuments/lordoftheringsonline/music. I go to play it and it says song not found. I know its there though.

[Lichbane]

I just can't get the Midi-ABC converter to work! Do you guys know how to work it?

Don't bother. For the most part you'll get chords which are unplayable with the /play command.

[Northwoods]

IF you want to convert from MIDI, your best bet is to pick simple folk melodies written for one voice, preferably something like a whistle. That'd start you off closer to the LotRO implementation than anything else.

One thing you can't get around with editing ABC files is that it requires at least some music know-how. It might not take a ton for simple melodies, but you can't do it (well) without any. The nice thing is, what you need is pretty easy to learn and you can find descriptions of the basics on Wiki, amongst other places.

As mentioned, chords aren't supported. Somewhere earlier in the thread was a suggestion for mimicing chords by "strumming" them. A lot of other non-supported constructs can be simulated in supported ways as well. You just need to do a little reading and put a little work into it.

I've learned more about music notation reading up on ABC than I ever did before, and I haven't looked at sheet music since high school (a looong time ago). If I can figure this out, it can't be that difficult to grasp. You just have to want to.

And for those who want to, you can learn more about music trying to create a beautiful-sounding ABC file than you could just typing notes on your keyboard. Figuring out the ABC is figuring out what makes music work. From there, you can go anywhere. Have fun.

[Giddily]

The C,, is the note C two octaves below middle C.

C,, D,, E,, F,, G,, A,, B,, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C D E F G A B c d e f g a b c' d' e' f' g' a' b' c'' etc.

The range in orange is what's supported.

Northman, the c' doesn't work for me. Nice posts btw. All the time spent with ABC has been great, brings back all the music classes I had in college some 30 years ago. Since I don't play an instrument (vocal major) but do know the piano keyboard, playing live in the game was a struggle. I love ABC and glad we have it. A lot of my measures are off in the math, basically because after fixing it to work I am about done in to go back and become a mathematician. Something you are very good at. Thank you for all your posts, they are very helpful.

Gid