II: Changing an idea into reality

A) Picking a music format

When writing music for a game, you want to make sure that the game players hear exactly what you heard when you wrote the music. For example, say you wrote a sad song where the violins play the main theme and the drums accompany it. It might be possible that the computer will play it wrong, making the drums too loud, the violins too soft, making the song too fast, etc. That would definetely ruin the mood.

Such is usually not the case, but with midi files (*.mid) that case is very common. Midi files are just files that tell the computer to play certain notes at certain frequencies, for certain amounts of time. It does this and makes it sound like music. Problem is, that you usually have to be a professional midi programmer to make the midi files sound exactly how you want. Even if you do use a program that makes notes into midi files, you would have to be very experienced in the program if you want the midi file to sound exactly how you want. If you're not too worried about perfection, or if you are worried about disk space, then go ahead and use a midi for your game. However, if you want perfect music, then continue reading.

Come then, and join me, for a healthy new fresh alternative to the tiring artificial sounds of midi files. The alternatives to midi are: Wave files, and MP3 files. There are others, but these two are the most commonly used. For music, MP3 files are used more, Wave files are usually sound effects. Still, your choice.

Alrighty, now. MP3 and WAV(wave) files are very space-consuming, so if you're not worried about that, then you can use these formats. What these are, are usually recordings of actual instruments playing your music. If you have lots of money, then here's what you can do. Write down the music, then hire an orchestra. (or a band. If you're only looking to spend under $5000, then try asking the local highschool or college band or orchestra.) They'll play it, and then you record it, and then it is changed into the file you want. Of course, you'll need high-quality recorders in order to capture the music.

To record the orchestra/band's performance, you would either need it to be professionally recorded at a recording studio, or attatch a microphone to the back of your sound card, open your "Sound" program, and record. You could also look for other sound programs that would help you manipulate the file after it is recorded. This usually changes the file into a wav file. There are programs that can also change them into MP3s, if you want.

If you don't want to go through the trouble of hiring a group to play your music, then you can try to do it yourself. You'll need to get yourself a good synthesizer, or a Wave Table. These are things that play midi files. However, they have pre-recorded sounds installed. So if you play a midi file with these synthesizers, and the midi file says for a trombone to play, you would hear an actual trombone sound playing that midi file. It seems like magic, but it's really just common sense. Synthesizers are usually expensive. All you have to do now, is record your synthesizer playing the midi file, and then change that into a WAV or MP3. If you're a programmer, I've heard that DirectMusic has a built-in wave table, so if you can program, learn DirectX and DirectMusic.

If your computer already has a built in synthesizer that sounds like an actual recording, then don't assume that all other computers do. My two computers both don't have a good synthesizer, they just have the same, lame old synthesizer that has obviously artificial sounds. My friends do...why don't I?

Using the right program