Unit 5 – Sound and Music Design
Items In This Unit
- Sound & Audio Design
- MIDI
- MIDI Software
Sound & Music Design
Early PCs didn’t have great audio- Music artists used Mac and Amiga computers to compose computer-generated music
- While game audio is not a strict requirement, most games enrich their experience with rich audio
- There are no limits today as to what kind of music or sound effects you can use in your games
- You can record your own music or create electronic music freely online
- You don’t have to be a musician to create your own sound effects and game song soundtracks
MIDI
MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface- It was designed by Roland and Dave Smith with the help of Tom Oberheim, and Adrian Scott.
- The MIDI file format contains notes stacked in rows for each instrument for a musical song or composition.
- A MIDI song requires much less disk space when compared to .MP3, .OGG or .WAV files as it does not store the actual audio
- You cannot record voice in MIDI files
MIDI Software
Here is a couple of great MIDI online free tools to create songs and sound effects for your games:
- Google Song Maker
https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/ - Online Sequencer
https://onlinesequencer.net/
You can use free online services such as https://www.zamzar.com/ to convert your MIDI song or sound creations to the popular .MP3 format.