[Exandriel]

A simple title for the thread, for some simple ways to make really great Mabinogi Compositions!

It All looks really complicated but I Promise it isn't . Just read the guide. Try it out. And you'll have it down in no time. Promise.

And make sure you follow EVERY step. Noooo skipping.

In this thread I will lay out a step-by-step process for you to turn almost any song into a very well-made Mabinogi masterpiece, but for the purpose of this Tutorial, we will be working with the song "Yoshi's Athletic" (The Air Platform Music), from Super Mario World.

Important tools you will need:
3ML:
http://mabi.milkteamedia.com/downloa...0b20-Setup.exe
A midi editor of your choosing:
ftp://ftp.voyetra.com/pub/voy/rpmidi/rpmidi.exe (this is the one I use)
This is a trial version. You won't be able to use it after 30 days, unless you buy the full version or well... find it (or the serial code for it) online. I'll post it here if I get the thumbs up from the forum admins.
A MIDI file of the song you want:
Video Games - VGMusic - 25,000+ Game Music MIDI files
Anime - Anime Midis.Net - The Largest Collection Of Anime Midis and Anime Music On The Net
Bands - ETPlanet.com - Midi
101 Popular MIDI • HamieNET.com

If you can't find your midi through those sites or google, look to the end of the tutorial for advice on finding, or CREATING, your midi. *soon to come. will have it tommorow*

So lets get started!

1) Open up your midi editor, hopefully it won't look TOO different from mine.
2) Open up the song in the midi editor. It should look something like this:


The area highlighted in red, are "Tracks", Tracks are usually seperated by instrument
The area highlighted in blue, under "Patch", shows what instrument is being used in the track.
The area in green are the notes, each block represents a measure, a group of notes.
The area in yellow is the volume control for each track.

Here's your first problem. Mabinogi scrolls only have room for 3 “Tracks” and 2 of them are very limited in the amount of notes it can have. So keeping this in mind, You must prioritize what tracks you want. Always delete the drum tracks first, since you can't use them in mabinogi (yet). Play the song, and turn the volume on and off for different tracks, to figure out which ones you need the most, You can have more than 3 tracks right now because you can simply drag and drop the bricks/notes you want into other tracks, but we'll talk about that in a moment.

With this particular song I was able to cut it into only 2 tracks. Most of the time you'll get it down to about 4-5 tracks. The other tracks were just additional notes to make it sound fancier. But we still have a while to go!

4) Double-click the beginning of one of the tracks you've got now, on the very first block of notes. It should look something like this:


Each one of those lines are a note.
Now this is one of the integral parts of making GOOD music. As opposed to ****ty music.

The areas highlighted in red are a problem. This is because that when you convert the midi, If two notes overlap eachother in a track, it only plays one of them. This will often make the music sound COMPLETELY different, and wrong. So we're gonna have to do something with all of the notes that overlap. Sometimes you need to delete them, other times you need to MOVE them to another track, and SOMETIMES, the work is already done for you and there are no notes that overlap .

So now it's time for more prioritizing. And where real musical ability may come into play.

5) Play the song, and pay attention to what notes you think are the most important and get rid of the ones you don't need by using the eraser tool from the tool bar. Now since I only have 2 tracks, I don't really need to delete anything right now, I can just move the overlapping notes onto the third track.

To move notes-

Look at the previous screenshot, the area in green is important for putting your notes in the right place. Make sure you place the notes you move in the EXACT same place as they were on the other track. The best way is to put the cursor at the beginning of one of the vertical lines and then drag the cursor to highlight the notes you want,
then ctrl + x to cut them. After that, go to the track you want to move them to, click the SAME vertical line, and ctrl + v to paste the notes!


Some times you'll have notes in places more difficult to get to. Just use the same principle but with a diffierent line. YOU SHOULD ALMOST ALWAYS KEEP THE HIGHEST OVERLAPPING NOTES IN THE SAME TRACK, AND THE LOWER ONES IN ANOTHER. Because as I'm about to discuss, the higher ones are the most important

To delete notes, and knowing which you should delete-

Almost all of the red highlighted notes in the previous example could be deleted (it would make it sound less good, but they could be deleted and the song would still sound correct).

More often than not, The very highest note is the only really needed note. So you can go through a track, and delete all the lower overlapping notes and see how it sounds, if it sounds fine, you've saved yourself a lot of time, if not you need to undo some of what you deleted and see what notes are more important than the highest ones.

So whether it's deleting or moving. KEEP THE HIGHEST NOTES ON THE SAME TRACK THEY WERE ORIGINALLY ON

6) So you need to do this over and over until you've compressed everything you want into 3 different tracks.

We have 3 tracks with no overlapping notes now, with 1 track having the complicated part, and 2 other lesser-part tracks.

It all sounds really complicated, but often, it's really really simple. Of course if you have a song with 20 different tracks, and all of them have overlapping notes, you're gonna have to do a lot of editing and thinking. That's why extremely complicated songs aren't often played in mabinogi.

To anyone who can't hear their midi in the editor, Open up it up, click "Options", then "Midi Port Setup" and make sure Port number 1, under "MIDI Output" is "Microsoft MIDI Mapper". If it's not, click on it and change it. (If Microsoft MIDI Mapper isn't there. Just try the other available options). And I can almost guarantee you'll have this problem with other editors. (I've tried many)

That should fix it.

YOU'RE DONE THE HARD PART.

[Exandriel]

(well.. depending on the song, maybe the easy part, But anyway...)

Save your song. It's a good idea that you save a new file every time you make a big change to your song. In this case I made my files called “yoshi1” “yoshi2” “yoshi3” and so forth. It's a good idea, because you might make a mistake and have to go back to a previous version, and you don't want to have to start over again.

7) Open up 3ML now.
8) Import your MIDI and click “(Curtail) Save Rest(R)”


This will make every note play until the next note plays. In most cases, this shortens how much space the song takes up on a scroll DRAMATICALLY. Because having rests throughout the song takes up space. A LOT of space.
9) Press the play button and listen to how your song turned out. Sound completely wrong? Then you'll have to re-edit it. You must missed some notes that overlapped.

If your songs DEPENDS on rests, then you can go into the song end edit them back in where they're most important. The “&” symbol in the MML code means to continue the note. So you would change a2&a16 into a2r16. To make it the note shorter, and to add the rest.

So Now for some last touches.

Click on the pink “Track 1”, it will have “t” with a number after it. In this case, it's t150. That's the tempo. Remember this number.

10) Press F7 to export the song to the clipboard, and select the appropriate tracks you want exported. Do not have track 1 checked. And make sure you have “Optimize and Export” checked (this will shorten your songs the most), and “Mabinogi Style” checked. Click "Copy MML" to export it to the clipboard now.Check the screenshot.

You're almost done.

11) Now this will sound silly but it's useful. Still using 3ML, IMPORT from the clipboard (not from the midi again). That will bring your song back into the program, but in a different layout. This way you'll be able to see how much space your tracks are taking up easier.

The first thing you'll notice is your song will either sound faster or slower. You need to add that t# from before to the very beginning of one of the tracks (whatever one has any space left over)

To Add some Volume to your song, put v1-15 at the beginning of EVERY track. 15, being the loudest.



Now those numbers at the top of the bar represent the amount of space your tracks are taking up. With Rank D compose, your tracks can have 600 spaces for one, 250 for another, and 150 for the third. Everything in the code takes up one of these spaces. Whether it's a rest, a number, the volume, the tempo, or a note.

Now for your LAST STEP! (woo!)

It's time to tie up your song so that you won't have one part going on forever and ever. So scroll to the right on the code, and cap off your tracks at their note limits. You can see my one track for this song goes way beyond the “600” limit.


As well did the other tracks.

12) So go and delete everything after 600 for one, 250 for the other, and 150 for the third.
13) Then Listen to the song. The odds are your song will still have a part that goes on much longer than another. So cut the song where you think it's time to end. It might still sound good with only 2 tracks playing, But you should really the rest of the notes after it starts playing only 1 track. In my personal experience, people seem to prefer songs that are short and sound good, over songs that go on for a while; or ones that contain the whole song, but with only 1 track most of the time.

So that's It! Hopefully this Guide has helped at least one person. As a bonus, here's the song that was made for the purpose of this tutorial!

Melody

MML@t150v15l16bafb8.afe8>e8e4&e<<a>aega8eac+ea8.<a8.a>a<a>da8<a>a<a>da8.<a8.g>gdfg8dgdfg8.<g8.g>gceg8cg8g8f+8f8.<a>aega8eac+ea8.<a8.a>a<a>da8<a>a<a>da8.<a8.b>bc-gb8c-bc-gb8.c-8.cb+<g8>gabb+8b8>c4e4c8.<ga>c8c4<ag8>c8c8g8e8.d4<g>e4c8.<ga>c8c4<ag8>c8fedc2&ce4c8.<ga>c8c4<ag8>c8c8g8e8.d4<g>e4c8.<ga>c8c4<ag8>c8fedc2&cl8.ec<g8>el16c4&cd+c<g8>d+8.d2&dl8.ec<g8>el16c4&cd+c<g8>g2.e4c8.<ga>c8c4dec<g8a8.>c4.&cl8<a>gagag.l16<g>fed8c1&c<<

Chord 1

v15<c+8.c+&c+16d8>g+8g+.l8.c+c+c+c+4.&c+16ffff4.&f16<bbbb4.&b16>cc<e8e8d+8d4>c+c+c+c+4.&c+16ffff4.&f16fffl16f4.&fec8ccdl8edel4<v12eeeff+eeffeeff+fgeeeeff+eeffeeff+fgeeffeed+d+ffffeed+d+ffer8<<bba+a+aag2.a8b8>l8rl16>b+e8b+e8b+e8>c4.&cl8.

Chord 2

v15o2f8.f&f16e2<a>e<a>ed<a>d<agbgbb+gl8>cc<ba+l4a>e<a>ed<a>d<ag>d<g>dc<gl8b+g>ccl4ceff+ed+d<g>ceff+dgccceff+ed+d<g>ceff+dgccffeed+d+d<g>ffeed+d+d<g>cc;

I know it all sounds really complicated but once you start practicing, it becomes REALLY easy. The song in this tutorial took me about a half hour tops, and you'll breeze through most of your songs once you get it nailed down, and hopefully move onto to really complex songs that will take you longer .

Please please please please Leave Comments, Questions, Thanks or Whatever. If you have any more questions about composing I will add them to this tutorial! Thanks, everyone. Look out for my Guide to ADVANCED composing sometime later on~

[Isularu]

Hi, when I was done with making my song, I noticed something...

It wasn't showing any of the scroll notes..it just said [EOF] any clue how to fix it?

[Exandriel]

Could be you a little more descriptive? Where did it say EOF? and was this after you copied to the clipboard, after you put the notes onto the scroll, or what?

[Freudas]

Firstly, I'd like to say thanks for this excellent guide. As a complete MIDI newb this has been IMMENSELY helpful. Thank you for taking the time to put this together for the schmucks like me

Secondly, I think I'm having the same problem.. when I go to import the MML from clipboard it's not coming up in that different layout where you can actually see all of the characters.

I'm not sure if this is because I'm exporting it incorrectly or something else - after I hit f7 to export it I'm making sure I have Mabinogi style selected, as well as having Optimize and Export checked, and having tracks 2, 3 and 4 checked as well.

I then am clicking Copy MML to actually export it, and that may be where we're going wrong somehow as you didn't actually specify what to click to export after making sure everything is checked (this is not a criticism btw, this is an awesome tutorial and I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as far as I did without it, you rock!). Which leads to this screen coming up:





After that I click Close, and then try to import it from the clipboard as you say, but it isn't showing the actual MML code, it just looks the same as before albeit playing at a slower (in this case at least) tempo. If you have any idea how to fix that, please lemme know, and thanks again!

***ETA***
Also if you (or anyone) has any advice on how to get a song into MIDI that isn't already, it would be greatly appreciated!

[Freudas]

No love on how to get 3ML showing the MIDI as MML characters still?

[Exandriel]

Sorry for the late response. I'll make adjustments in my tutorial . You'll find what you're looking for at the bottom of the screen.



the "10" "20" "30" "40" markers above the mml code are how many characters the code is taking up. (The screenshot shows 43).

Normally it looks like this:



And in case you're wondering, the original layout is arranged by Measure. Each line is 1 measure. (Or one block in the midi editor, if you want to think of it that way.)

I'm really glad my tutorial has helped you. I appreciate the comments.

Btw you were correct in assuming "Copy MML" was the right button.

[Freudas]

I think we're still getting some wires crossed here

The problem I am having is when I 'Import From Clipboard' it's *not* showing those MML characters in the bottom part of the window like it is in your screen-shot. And I don't know how to make it so I can see them.. I tried going to 3ML's website to find out how but I can't read Korean

***Edit to add screen-shot illustrating what I am seeing once I 'Import From Clipboard'

[Exandriel]

Oh dear. That's odd. I'm going to investigate to see if i can get the same results as you are. I'll report back soon.

**
Edit/Update: So far I have no idea what's wrong with it. I can't reproduce the same result no matter what options I have checked off or anything. Is it possible you have a different version of 3ML than the one I provided?

And just so we're clear. Make sure you're importing by going to File - > Import MML From Clipboard.

**

As for getting songs into MIDI format. There is no good way to convert an mp3 into a midi. But I have some tricks up my sleeve for getting/producing midis. I'll release them publicly soon.

[Freudas]

Originally Posted by Exandriel

And just so we're clear. Make sure you're importing by going to File - > Import MML From Clipboard.

Sure am

The version I am using is 3ML Editor 1.9.1.0 Beta 20, acquired through the link you had provided

I really wish I could get it to work, I've spent quite a few hours over the last couple of days working on getting stuff sounding nice Thanks again for your help btw, even if we don't get this figured out I still learned something new