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Archive for June, 2011
This is a great way for buskers and pub performers to make their own backing music absolutely free rather than paying for the service. With this method you can create your own great sounding backing tracks for your performances without having to have any musical skill or knowledge whatsoever. To do this we utilise freely available midi (musical instrument digital interface) software and files to work with.
It basically works using this step-by-step procedure:
1 Get a music score or sheet music from your local library or online
2 Copy the position and duration of the notes into a midi notation editor
3 Play about with the different instuments to creat the desired sound
4 Save as midi music file or convert into mp3, wav or wma audio
Midi is the format used by all electronic keyboard manufacturers and is the standard universally compatible format. Electronic keyboard manufacturers use midi to create different instrument sounds to play on the keyboard and to add pre-programmed music tracks to their equipment.
Midi is a very small file, taking only a few kilobytes of memory as opposed to many megabytes such as mp3, wma and wav. This invariably means that you could store hundreds of midi files in only a few megabytes of storage. For example just one standard cd-rom can store thousands of midi files; so a 4 gigabyte memory stick will therefore hold millions.
The biggest advantage is that although only small, many midi files will still offer great instrumental sound quality. I say instrumental because midi is not able to work with vocals.
The basic procedure in a little more detail:
1 Using your normal public library membership you can borrow sheet music or music score books to read and use at home for no cost. Alternatively you can sometimes download sheet music for the tune you require, search the title of the song or tune and free sheet music into a decent search engine such as Google.
Noteworthy Composer in action
2 You will need to copy the music into a midi notation editor (I recommend Noteworthy Composer, it’s free and does the job quite well. Once downloaded and unzipped click on NWC32 to use). A midi notation editor will show you the standard five horizontal lines close together that is used for music composition, just copy what you see on the sheet music or music score. This is easy to do but can be somewhat time-consuming and you will need to pay particular attention to detail. Alternatively you could download a pre-recorded midi file from the internet and edit it to your requirements. Search for the name of the tune followed by mid or midi in a good search engine.
3 Standard midi notation will use piano type sounds as the default so you may want to change this to different instrument sounds to create the desired effect. Pre-recorded midi files will also load into the notation editor with ease. Your notation editor will make changes easy to do. Not only will you be able to edit the instruments but also the tempo, pitch and many other aspects.
4 Once you have what you want you can save the result as a midi file for use later. If however you wish to play it back using standard audio playback equipment you will need to convert your midi file into a different audio format such as mp3 or wav, there are plenty of free downloadable applications that will do this for you.
I will be releasing a tutorial eBook and accompanying tutorial videos that will take you by the hand and guide you through the exact procedure. Look out for them soon.
Anyone can do it using free stuff available of the internet.
Here’s my very first attempt at video creation. It’s not great but I think it’s OK for a very first attempt. Let me know what you think, I have a lot to learn yet.
Click on this link and check it out or go to http://youtu.be/-7BpW3iawzs
I’m sure you know that you’re at risk from viruses if you use p2p programs for getting hold of your videos, music, pictures, and other files, and although modern anti-virus protection goes a long way to help stop malicious files and programs getting into your system nothing is 100% guaranteed.
So what is the best way to get around the problem? Well here’s one way you can avoid risking it but still get the free music and videos you desire.
I remember spending hours in front of the PC years ago slowly downloading mp3 music (and several viruses also) from ‘Napster’ through a dial up connection.
Thankfully nowadays things have changed for the better; with super fast broadband connection and mega efficient anti-virus software downloading anything has become commonplace because it’s now easier, quicker, and safer.
First though let me briefly explain what p2p is about (just in case you don’t know).
P2p is short for ‘peer to peer’ and basically this means a software program that allows you to connect directly with other p2p users and download or upload files direct from and to the other user without the need of a middle-man, so to speak (for example: ‘winmx‘, ‘limewire‘ etc. but there are many others). It can be likened to having a connection direct to your friends computer without nothing in between, then you can access each others files without anything else getting involved. So effectively if you or the other user have any virus files on their system there’s nothing in between to stop them.
As I mentioned earlier, modern anti-virus protection will in most cases stop any virus entering your system, or at the very least warn you about any impending viral issues, but like most contraception methods nothing is 100% guaranteed protection.
So what’s another way?
How about using internet video sites. The biggest and most famous of course is ‘YouTube’ which is owned by ‘Google’ so you know you’re dealing with the big guys; but there are lots of others out there, you just need to sign up (or if for example the site is adult orientated, you just need to confirm you’re over 18 years of age) and you have access to thousands or even millions of free streamed flash videos (known as flv. files). The big advantage for us is that with these sites files are automatically checked for virus before they are permitted on the site (just what we need, safe files).
“Yes that’s OK Pete but don’t you need to watch these vids sort of live as they’re streaming?”
As a general rule, yes you do, that’s what you’re meant to do! But do you know that with the right software – available totally free through the internet – you can download these videos to your computer, convert them to almost any format (such as ‘mpg’, ‘avi‘, ‘mp4’, ‘3g’ for example), copy only the audio part of the video to use as ‘wav’ or ‘mp3’ music/sound file, or even get a ‘codec’ to use with ‘windows media player’ so that you can actually watch the flv. streamed video through ‘media player’.
So there you have it, though only briefly; download the vid and save it on your computer, watch it whenever you want (with help from the codec) through ‘media player’, perhaps convert it to dvd or mpg or whatever, or if you like, copy the audio from it and use it as a music file.
Just type: ‘free video downloader’, ‘free flv codec for media player’, ‘free video converter’, ‘free video audio extractor’ or similar into a good search engine (I suggest ‘Google’) and check them out.
Instead of that why not buy my new ebook that guides you step-by-step through the whole process?
Media Tailor 