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David Javelosa
javelosa_david@smc.edu

Copyright © 2001-2020, David Javelosa unless otherwise stated.

 
week 14 - Cross-Discipline Creativity/Designing - Art, Sound, and Music

Rapid Project Prototyping Revisited:

 

Creating a Skill/Difficulty Ramp:

               Using the provided example of a side animated shooting gallery:

             Add the dropping objects that create additional targets as well as increases possibility of destruction:

Finally, by adding the BOSS object, the difficulty becomes the most challenging in trying to hit the BOSS enough times to destroy; while trying to evade the missiles that detract from your life; creating the next level in difficulty:

 

WORKING WITH 2D TOOLS IN UNITY

ET13 – Week 14
Understanding the basics Game Audio in Unity

 

 

Select Looper audio resource

Select Boink; uncheck play on awake; uncheck loop
Drag in Audio Script to Platform Sprite; Investigate C# script.

 

Notes on MIDI:

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface): MIDI file format

A Tool For The Digital Entertainment Age

One of the most common questions in producing games and multimedia for digital technology is "What about MIDI?" Rarely has there been a more used, abused, misused and misunderstood term. To those of us who have been living and breathing MIDI from its beginnings in 1983, it seems almost comical that a specification that was born from musicians' common needs could turn into such a buzz word and power tool for the new media. To quote the MIDI Manufacturers Association, "MIDI - the Musical Instrument Digital Interface- is computer code which enables people to use multimedia computers and electronic musical instruments to create, enjoy and learn about music." One mission of the organization, among other things, is to promote the fact that "MIDI is also the primary source of music in popular PC games and CD-ROM entertainment titles."

Understanding the fundamentals of music synthesis is the fist step in understanding the need and applications of MIDI. The simple tone module of a sound source, sound modifiers, and control input is the basis for all digital sound source. Manipulation of the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) generators is primary in what gives each synthesized sound it's individual characteristic. The control of pitch and expression in a multi-timberal setting is where MIDI control comes into play.

On the creative side of software production, the two most specialized needs that have called for outside talent are the practical knowledge of the MIDI specification and digital audio techniques. If the difference between these two forms of digital sound can be expressed, it would be the difference between the punched paper roll of an old-time player piano and an actual tape recording. Another way to look at it is, a MIDI file is the numbered sketch for a "paint-by-numbers" painting and a digital audio file is a photograph of that painting.

But just what are the practical applications for this thing called MIDI? It is the way two musical instruments from different manufacturers can be made to talk to one another, control each other, and function as parts of a larger system. It is a way to create a local area network of musical and audio modules under the control of a central server and/or controlling workstation. It is a way to record all activity on this network in a time-based language that can be edited in non-real-time, with a number of different graphic interfaces. It is also a way to create a musical score so accurate, and with such detail and expression that it is virtually identical to a live performance or professional recording. All this, and it is still a computer protocol that is usable or convertible to producing sound and music on virtually every form digital home entertainment from game consoles to personal computers.

MIDI is both a computer language and a musical language that has successfully migrated from the isolated labs of experimental electronic music, to the highly lucrative fields of musical instrument manufacturing and merchandising, to the professional stages and production studios of the broadcasting and recording industries, and finally to the home studios and living rooms of the media consuming public. How a relatively simple system of control can be so widespread and transparent, and yet so misunderstood is perhaps the mystery of rocket science itself.

A Need For A Musical Instrument Standard

Long before there were personal computers, sequencers and stacks of interface-less modules, there was the synthesizer. As mentioned in the previous part of this book, the early synthesizers were strictly collections of analog circuits cleverly designed to squeeze out as many flavors of noise as possible. As digital memory was developed these analog systems were enhanced with the ability to capture and retain series of patch information allowing the musician to instantaneously switch from one meticulously programmed sound to another. These were still analog synthesizers but had become hybrid systems under digital control.

Stepping back to the truly modular synthesizer systems, when every function was a separate module (oscillators, filters, controllers, etc.), there was an infinite versatility in being able to patch these components together in any order or combination. The functionality of one control source could yield desirable results controlling the unusual or seldom used parameter of another module. As synthesizer systems became streamlined in their manufacturing, and standardized in their configuration of components, there was an attempt to maintain some openness in their design by allowing the keyboard, sequencer and other control functions to have output jacks on the casing. Likewise, there were input jacks allowing similar control to come from external gear to control parameters within the system.

This was indeed a gracious gesture on the part of the instrument manufacturers with the one big catch. The analog, voltage-based specifications for connecting these systems were specific as per the manufacturer. In other words, though all systems were using similar technology, the keyboard output from one make of synthesizer would not be compatible with the control input on a synthesizer of another company. For professional musicians that relied on a variety of instruments to create their sound, this was a major inconvenience.

Though some third party systems were available to translate control voltages from one to another, there rarely could accommodate more than a couple of makes, and there few interfaces or synchronization boxes that could match all of them. With the advent of stand-alone dedicated hardware sequencers, this became more than an inconvenience, it was a major frustration. As the concept of the software sequencer loomed on the horizon, it became evident to the heads of the musical instrument industry that something had do be done.

The addition of the personal computer to the multi-instrument control formula pointed to the need for this new standard to be a digital based protocol that could be configured to all applicable electronic devices: musical instruments, signal effect boxes, studio mixers and recorders, and even live-performance technology such as lighting. With the existence of this protocol as a computer language, it would be usable in all digital processing environments and versatile to be generated and edited in an infinitely creative environment: that of computer software.

Equating digital control to the established technology of musical synthesizers was a fairly easy connection in the light of the several hybrid systems already using digital technology for parameter management and patch memory storage. Although the standards of volts-per-octave and plus/minus values differed from manufacturer to manufacturer, regarding the way pitch/frequency was controlled, when translating the incremental pitch control to the digital world, it was obvious that there were very few ways to accomplish this. The establishment of the extended 128 step keyboard as a structure for addressing pitch in this digital specification became the backbone of the MIDI standard. Beyond that, the definition of an open number of different kinds of controls and the agreement to support up to 16 channels per network connection contributed to a workable standard that could be widely implemented in the electronic music world.

At this point, it is very rare to find any computer platform that does not have provisions for supporting the MIDI specification, either with an add-on MIDI interface or actually including it in the hardware. Also, virtually every electronic music instrument released since the specification, with the exception of very low-end consumer products, has included a MIDI interface and some level of functionality allowing it to communicate with the outside world. Once the leading musical instrument manufacturers agreed on these specifications, a cross-platform network protocol was established for music years before anything like it was a reality for the general desk-top computer industry.


Copyright © 2001-2014, David Javelosa unless otherwise stated.