Dance Music Midi Files

[Enrique Fats]

Im writing an application using C#/Windows Presentation Foundation.It is visualizing the steps of a dance with foot shapes.Currently I'm playing the music as WAV-file and timing the steps with a Timer.

I already looked at NAudio. I found tutorials for playing MP3-files which don't help me. I created a MidiFile-object but I don't know how to play it. I know that a MIDI-file contains information on how to play the music (for synthesizers) but I don't want to implement my own player.

So browsing the 'identify that Doom song' thread made me realise how much I enjoy coming across my music being used in other wads, and although it's easy enough to copy the music from the internal structure of wads it would certainly make it easier if I just went ahead and gave everyone the original midi files. Which I don't think I've done yet. So, here you go! Please reuse as you see fit (and maybe give credit somewhere of course) :)

Ancient Aliens_midis.zip

Edit: I have now attached a zip of almost everything I have in my midi folder spanning my entire decade of midi composition, excluding the ones from AA and Resurgence and also excluding ones that are either too horrible to release or are being used in current projects. This pack also includes a few midis which I'm fairly sure I have never uploaded anywhere here or actually showed anyone else in this community at all (like 1.mid or the very corny march.mid, and a few others). A few are also from midi battles over at battleofthebits.org (midiville, dance of the reindeer, rub a dub dub, overture, escher's garden, cloudrunner). Also included is my doom 2 midi mashup which you can listen to here. If you find any sort of use for them then knock yourself out :)

There'll be a few (eg, risk.mid) which probably break the windows poly limit because I never bothered to optimize them for modern systems and I'm happy to fix any midi which does that if anyone wants me to.

Hey, much appreciation for this release! There are lots of nice pieces in Ancient Aliens. I'm especially fond of the ones used for Magenta Heat (Web of Steel) and Grey Dwarf (Tribal Dance). Managing to get something to sound decent through the default Microsoft GS/Roland Sound Canvas synth is not very common these days. I always found using it a challenge to sound good back when I was an active MIDI composer, but this is coming from somebody who started off with using the Creative 4MB soundfont and the Yamaha XG softsynth.

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Ultrabeat is the obvious choice there, but it's not a full drum synth it's more a half sampler - half drum machine. If you're into synthing your own drums, for instance ES2 is very good at making a mean kick sound. start with a low sine wave. 0 attack, sustain, release, maximum decay for the amp env. set an lfo or another envelope to pitch shift rapidly down. add a high passed square/pulse to add the click. gate it, see how it goes.

the rules for making your own are the same as with any other synth really. e.g. you want to start with straight noise for a hi hat, filter it and modulate to taste, add fm for a metallic tinge. you can def get decent drum sounds out of Logic's bundled soft-synths. saying that most people without a hardware beat machine will go for a drum loop from a sample CD (or another record even), cut it up & rearrange to taste. lazy yet easy...

There's no one magic answer as to how to program drums in Logic. Do you want to play in the parts in real time? Or do you want to draw them in with a mouse? Do you need to have individual mix control for each of the individual drums that are part of the overall groove? These are some questions to ask yourself that will dictate how to start programming.

If you want to play in parts in real time, try setting up a cycle and recording each indiviual drum separately on it's own pass. If you want to try drawing in a part, start off with either the Piano Roll or Hyper Editor and drawing the parts in with the mouse. To create a snare roll effect, use the hyper editor with the quantize value for that lane set to a small resolution, like maybe 32nd notes - or whatever works best at the tempo you are working at.

It's simple: a 4-on-the-floor kick drum is simply 4 quarter notes in a measure. You can play them in or step-enter them or pencil them in. You can make a 1-measure loop and you're done. Just be sure that the velocity of the notes is all the same.

You say everyone has to start somewhere, so I suggest that if you want to know how to make dance music then you need to learn about rhythmic values (i.e., learn some things about music like the difference between quarters, 8ths, 16ths, dotted values...) It's not clear to me that you know these things because 4-on-the-floor is a very simple rhythm, and if you knew about rhythmic values you'd have been able to answer your own question.

You can always try and imitate things you hear in other tracks to learn. Take a track and listen to the kick drum (for example) and try to imitate that rhythm by playing it on your keyboard along with the track. But learning like that is going to take far longer than if you got yourself a rhythm training book or took some basic music lessons so that you could learn to understand what you hear in other tracks.

As a summary: I have the theoretical background and the general knowledge about Logic, but only the practical midi-programming knowledge is missing. But now and because of the above mentioned tutorials I am on the road now.

Seems you understand my problem. I always do not know how to import finished pattern into Logic. I can tell you an example. I use the D16 stuff. I have the possibility to built my own pattern e.g. with Nithonat, Nepheton or Phoscyon. All plugs have an integrated sequenzer as Ultrabeat, too. But how to import these pattern into Logic? With Ultrabeat it it possible and I did it already, but what is with the other plugs? This seems a general lack of knowledge. I know I can record my pattern as audio. But what for example I do with the pattern of the D16 stuff?

Lets say you have already build you beat and you you want to add only a funk hihat shuffle. You browse your funk midi library with Ezplayer Pro and Ezplayer pro lets you select only the hihats of every midi file and plays theme back in sync with your beat and logic.

If the plugins that you use offer a midi export you will be able to use them in Logic. If not, your only option is to bounce the audio and to try your luck with logics audio to midi feature. But i can tell you that this ain't workin fast it is better to program the midi direct into logic using the piano roll and hyper editor.

Me myself i dont like to use drum plugins with a built in sequencer or program beats into them cause i see and feel no advantage of using them. Logic offers me everything i need and don't have to deal with nested structures and limited outputs.

the D16 plugins are emulations....goldbaby offers sample librarys of the same drum machines ...and i can tell you those librarys sound better than the originals. i would always prefer to work with Goldbaby librarys.

If you like the Ultrabeat interface and method of working it might be worth investigating D16 Groups Nepheton (808) and Drumazon (909) plugins. If you're mainly making dance/electronic music these are a great way of getting the classic Roland XOX sounds without using sample packs or actually buying the hardware. Very simple interfaces, quick to learn, fast to program patterns and sound fantastic.

If it's only the midi notes and data you're after prob best just to stick with Ultrabeat and drag the pattern to the arrangement (using the button next to where it says 'pattern' in the bottom left corner). You can always use the data with an instance of Drumazon in host mode or another au. I find using UB a much quicker way of working than drawing notes into the piano roll because I pretty much always ramp up the swing and draw velocity.

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