V-Note's Chronicle

Welcome to Vnoteschronicle.com!

V-Note's Chronicle - So You Don't Have To!

Music & Sounds

Video Game music can come in many formats. Some are...

MP3
WAV
MIDI
MOD

Classic Video Game MIDI

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the most widely used of editable audio formats, it's like digital sheet music. Part if the MIDI standard is that it has 16 tracks, one of which (Channel 10) contains a varied drum set.

Tempo is very important. I hear many game theme renderings that have usually a slightly slower tempo. The higher quality MIDI files will be timed properly with tempos to match the original. iNES for the Mac OS 9 is able to record/write MIDI files as you are playing a ROM, and save it to a .MID file. Again, a correct tempo is embedded into a quality MIDI file. Otherwise you can use a real or downloadable desktop metronome to determine a song's tempo.

Track number is a consideration. Most NES game themes and music use only three monophonic tracks, so an accurate MIDI rendering would also have 3 tracks representing 3 instruments. Note that with a good MIDI device you can change the instrument, or patch, midway through a program.

Arrangement is the fun part. Although it is arguable that simply changing the voice of a MIDI track is actually a rearrangement, a good hardware or software MIDI device would be the tool to add to or otherwise rearrange tracks or add tracks. Some MIDI devices are...