607's Arrangements

[607]

Well, here we go again.
I have got back to my old Wario Land medley, starting by redoing all my arrangements by ear and making transcriptions.
I'm wondering if NinSheetMusic would be interested in the transcriptions?
I didn't look at note data, this time, or even listen to individual channels: I did listen to a rip very many times, including replaying one part a few times in a row, and in some cases playing back at half speed using Audacity's 'Change Tempo' effect. Also, as far as I know, my transcriptions are accurate. I do not take artistic liberties unless needed.
Here is an example of part of a recently done arrangement.

Through the Thorny Maze from Wario Land II

What do you think? Do these cross the line also?

[Dekkadeci]

I did listen to a rip very many times, including replaying one part a few times in a row, and in some cases playing back at half speed using Audacity's 'Change Tempo' effect.

<snip>

What do you think? Do these cross the line also?

The only rips I trust for transcription purposes are ones straight from the makers (e.g. the OST for the original Shovel Knight, the OST of early Incredible Machine games, Team Fortress 2 OST music, La-Mulana's OST, Cohen's Masterpiece from Bioshock, whatever .nsf's you can find at www.zophar.net). If the rip was fan-made, treat it with several grains of salt, especially the moment it diverges from the original music. (Let's put it this way: I generally cannot trust MIDIs from VGMusic after repeatedly finding inaccuracies in them.)

[607]

The only rips I trust for transcription purposes are ones straight from the makers (e.g. the OST for the original Shovel Knight, the OST of early Incredible Machine games, Team Fortress 2 OST music, La-Mulana's OST, Cohen's Masterpiece from Bioshock, whatever .nsf's you can find at www.zophar.net). If the rip was fan-made, treat it with several grains of salt, especially the moment it diverges from the original music. (Let's put it this way: I generally cannot trust MIDIs from VGMusic after repeatedly finding inaccuracies in them.)

Music you find at Zophar's Domain isn't straight from the makers. Nevertheless, in my experience Game Boy rips from Zophar are usually accurate, and I have no doubt that these are. Also, VGMusic doesn't host rips, only fan-made MIDIs. These are not useful in the arrangement process except to novices, as indeed they usually are inaccurate.
That's not relevant to my question, though. When I previously used a rip in an arrangement, Levi and Maestro explained that this was not allowed. However, in that case I directly used the rip in my arrangement. This time, I 'only' used a WAV render of it. I did not even listen to the separate channels, let alone use MIDI data obtained from them. So I'm wondering if maybe this is allowed.
And if not, I would be curious what is, even though I don't think I'm ever going to do arrangements by listening to the tracks in the game itself once or twice, and then doing everything from memory.

[Dekkadeci]

Music you find at Zophar's Domain isn't straight from the makers. Nevertheless, in my experience Game Boy rips from Zophar are usually accurate, and I have no doubt that these are. Also, VGMusic doesn't host rips, only fan-made MIDIs. These are not useful in the arrangement process except to novices, as indeed they usually are inaccurate.
That's not relevant to my question, though. When I previously used a rip in an arrangement, Levi and Maestro explained that this was not allowed. However, in that case I directly used the rip in my arrangement. This time, I 'only' used a WAV render of it. I did not even listen to the separate channels, let alone use MIDI data obtained from them. So I'm wondering if maybe this is allowed.
And if not, I would be curious what is, even though I don't think I'm ever going to do arrangements by listening to the tracks in the game itself once or twice, and then doing everything from memory.

I find listening to a rip (presumably ad nauseam) to be useless for transcription purposes compared to listening to the original ad nauseam. Rips are always less trustworthy than the original. When even renditions of the original uploaded by different users have differences (e.g. one sounds blurrier), what hope does a rip have?

If you're not looking at a rip, I personally find using it as a resource useless.

I hope you checked your work by listening to the original at least once. If your transcription and the original diverge too far, it really better be for good reason (and I generally accept only playability reasons). If your transcription sounds too little like the original, seriously reconsider publishing it. (I've shelved two of my transcriptions so far as a result.)

I personally do transcriptions of video game music I cannot find reliable sheet music and/or a reliable sound file (MIDI/.nsf) for by listening to a YouTube video of it as many times as necessary, picking out its parts by ear, and possibly octave-shifting those parts. In order to make the transcription playable, I often end up ignoring the quietest accompaniment parts. (I generally add extra repeated notes for drum beats because I value preserving the momentum of the original.) I generally listen to that video - or at least some portions of it - 5 or more times when transcribing for solo piano, often at 50% speed or even slower.

If what you mean by "rip" is YouTube video, then I apologize. My understanding of the word "rip" is that it means any attempt at transcription or rearrangement that does not involve simply recording the audio from the game.

[607]

[I had responded to the rest of Dekkadeci's post first, but it turned out to be useless due to the confusion hopefully cleared up below.]

If what you mean by "rip" is YouTube video, then I apologize. My understanding of the word "rip" is that it means any attempt at transcription or rearrangement that does not involve simply recording the audio from the game.

Okay, I should have read this before. That explains the confusion.
Here's some info!
A rip is data copied from another medium, such as a cd. In this case, the rips were done from Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. This is generally more reliable than recording from the console, because when you are recording, you might also record static, or have sound effects obscure the recording, or just have poor equipment, etc. You mentioned nsf: this is a format for NES and Famicom rips. NES rips are almost always accurate, in my experience, as long as you get them from a reliable source (eg. Zophar's Domain). So are Game Boy rips (gbs), which is relevant here. Of course it is still indeed important to check against the original console, as for example, all rips you'll find of The Smurfs for Game Boy are in mono, while in the game there is an option to have the music play in stereo instead. Note that ripping is only reliable for platforms that have a sound chip. It is very hard to rip GBA games, and when you do manage, the result often ends up sounding slightly different (mostly higher quality) than it does in game. This is because the GBA does not have a sound chip, and sound is managed by the CPU.

If your arrangements are accepted, it seems likely that mine would too! Especially because you also use slowing down of the video.
It could still be that my arrangements are too accurate, though. You mention arrangement choices, but I don't have to make these in this case, as I'm arranging tracks that can be played on piano with two hands without leaving out any notes (except the percussion on tracks that have it), so it's probably more of a transcription than an arrangement.

[607]

I'm still intending to submit the Wario Land arrangements/transcriptions at some point. However, in some kind of envy I don't want to do so before I publish my performances, and I have been practising very rarely lately (I've been playing worship instead). As mentioned before, I've arranged the entire Lucky Luke soundtrack for piano, and now and then I've been writing those down in MuseScore (I only did two during the arrangement process).
I might submit some of those soon, after getting into Finale Notepad. However, with quite some of them I find it challenging to figure out what rhythmic notation I should use. I might get into drumming, maybe that will give me more of a feel for it. I have most trouble with deciding between two speeds, e.g. 172 bpm with the melody in 8th notes or 86 bpm with the melody in 16th notes. Anyway, there are some where I was able to decide on a tempo to notate in! (and hopefully I was right )
Here's one of the scores, do you see any issues with it, other than the formatting?

Let me know if it'd be better to attach a pdf or MusicXML file, rather than an image.

[Maelstrom]

This one feels much better as you have it written. Drum experience isn't required to figure this out, just time playing sheet music and transcribing it. It lets you figure out what feels most natural to notate and, most importantly, what will feel most natural for the performer.

First glance looks pretty decent. Most people share their arrangements by uploading them to dropbox or google drive and sharing links since the forum file attach system isn't really that versatile or good.

Anyway, it's great to finally see some alberto gonzalez sheets being arranged, love that guy's work.