Question about making MIDIs

Hey Guys, I was wondering how you all got into making midis? How do you come up with ideas for midis? Making midis seems fun, but I'm afraid of running out of ideas or making "boring" midis?  I'm not sure how important it is to have a musical background, though I do have it if it's important.

When I played old DOS games, especially Doom, at my pre kindergarten age, I liked the music, wanted to make something similar. At Primary school I discovered an freeware called "Midi Maker", an simple enough program to make midi music.

I time I discovered FLStudio which I'm still studying, but, I dare that moving onto another soundworld changed my skill to compose.

Irl I play guitar and due to that I've read some music theory. I've listened to various game soundtracks and try to study them.

So all in all it just takes time like everything. Being musical and musical background is certainly helpful. I guess the bottom line is to express yourself, meaning, making music that you think is good.

A lot of people here, myself included, use the program Sekaiju to write their midis. As for music theory etc, it's not something you can just "get" overnight, but the best way to learn is to start making music for yourself. :) 

3 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

A lot of people here, myself included, use the program Sekaiju to write their midis. As for music theory etc, it's not something you can just "get" overnight, but the best way to learn is to start making music for yourself. :) 

Thanks for the tip

3 hours ago, Sonikkumania said:

When I played old DOS games, especially Doom, at my pre kindergarten age, I liked the music, wanted to make something similar. At Primary school I discovered an freeware called "Midi Maker", an simple enough program to make midi music.

 

I time I discovered FLStudio which I'm still studying, but, I dare that moving onto another soundworld changed my skill to compose.

 

Irl I play guitar and due to that I've read some music theory. I've listened to various game soundtracks and try to study them.

 

So all in all it just takes time like everything. Being musical and musical background is certainly helpful. I guess the bottom line is to express yourself, meaning, making music that you think is good.

Thanks for the tip.  

Hi there.

Me personally, I had very little background knowledge of music, mostly some guitar lessons in middle school, but they didn't amount to anything, so I basically started from a blank canvas, and while inputting notes that sound good together is nice and all, learning some music theory can lead to many interesting compositions, which is something I'd like to do in the future. As for how I got into making them, it just kinda happened when I found out I could load MIDI files into FL Studio and play with the instruments, it revealed itself to be a fun way to use the program before I discovered soundfonts, VSTs and other plugins. Of course, I had never composed before, so my early works were obviously not great, as I was also trying to learn how FL Studio works (there's a bit of a learning curve, but I have provided a brief explanation here: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/122904-how-do-you-create-custom-midis-in-fl-studio/?tab=comments#comment-2340453), that said, I kept at it, and I can safely say that I am quite proud of how much I evolved, however, do keep in mind that everyone can create a "boring" MIDI when they don't have enough inspiration or drive to create, in those cases, it's best to compose some basic tracks and come back once you find a way to develop them further, or wait until a catchy melody pops up in your mind. There's no such thing as running out of ideas, so long as you push your creativity to the fullest, humming a tune also helps.

I hope I was comprehensive enough, don't be afraid of showing off your work, and remember that constructive criticism serves to help.

Good luck!

Back in the late 90's we were all making websites on places like geocities. If we wanted background music on our personal websites, because of the slow internet, MIDI was the only feasible way to make that happen. I would get MIDIs from Duke Nukem 3D or ones people transcribe from pro-wrestling to add as background music. Eventually I would want them to be more metal focused or even down-pitched, so I learned how to edit midis. Eventually I got more and more into making my own.

When I first started out, I had no music background what-so-ever. Popular music and music in school didn't really interest me, but video game music did, so I felt inspired by MIDI. Keep in mind this is when games had already moved on for the most part. When I started I would mostly try to emulate metal music, but eventually I would try all kinds of styles, just to see what midi was capable of. Now to emulate a style, music theory will get you there much faster. And these days there's a good collection of music theory videos on youtube thankfully.

If you don't find a style that intrigues you right away, experiment with making various midi sounds! See what comes of it! Over time, I eventually nailed down what I really wanted to do and have been sticking to that. I guess the process for me was never what others would find interesting, rather what I found interesting myself.

ah, midis

I always love making my own midis and put it on every level of my mapsets, it's like showing the pride of "I made everything myself"

as classical music is concerned, I'm very bad at them, like I failed my music class, my piano teacher kick me out of the classroom, and my guitar teacher just gave up on me, only thing that I can somehow play is recorder, but only some slow arse folks songs or else i'll get panic.

but as digital music is concerned, I can say Im pretty good at it

my song is always chord based, so I start with chord, often I do C major, E minor, B minor, D major or C major, D major, B minor, E minor, both I take heavy influence from Jpop

and than melody, I can't get any tip here, I just put random notes inside the range of chord

and than bass, just get some low pitch string instrument and again put it in the range of chord to make rhyms

finally it's drum, just get some comfortable beats, nothing to complicated

so I just follow these to make songs, sometime add some extra instrument to spice things up

although if you wanna make those bad arse heavy metal songs this method is ill-suited for that.

I often have ideas for short musical fragments, which can be short melodies, chord progressions, or rhythmic fragments. Sometimes when I play guitar, but often also in situations where I can't just open the editor and make it into a song, under the shower, at work, when going out etc. So I may use an old school sheet notebook and pencil to annotate these ideas. :)

For a Doom MIDI, one of these ideas might be enough if you can add variations, a buildup etc.. Think of short songs like At Doom's Gate (E1M1), or Suspense (E1M5), which are based on a single melody and variations of it. Some may have noticed that many Doom songs use blues harmonies, which is actually an excellent way to "stretch" a single idea without making it sound too boring.

But for longer maps at least two contrasting ideas or melodies are better. So sometimes I combine several ideas from my sheet notebooks, and they come handy when I have composer's block.

Another interesting variant is starting with longer chord progressions as a base like fai1025 explained. But also here, often you may want to apply a verse-chorus structure, which are also often two different, sometimes contrasting, ideas.

A good exercise is also to try to make "speedmidis". Try to compose a song in an hour. First one will almost likely not be your masterpiece but finishing a song in such a short time is very satisfying and helpful to overcome mental blocks.

On 10/11/2022 at 12:27 PM, TheBlueBalloon said:

Hey Guys, I was wondering how you all got into making midis?

It all started on the Summer of '89...

Well, not exactly, It just started by searching for videogame music to make remixes on other console chip and starting to make my own midis when I cant find one. At first used FL Studio, but after realizing that FL is the worst DAW to making midis I started to search other midi program, and finding the holy grail of Midi Daws in Domino

 

On 10/11/2022 at 12:27 PM, TheBlueBalloon said:

How do you come up with ideas for midis?

I normally start humming melodies and using the virtual piano to making something (but I ended playing the evangelion op first 5 notes lol)

 

On 10/11/2022 at 12:27 PM, TheBlueBalloon said:

I'm not sure how important it is to have a musical background

90% of the new gen musicians doesn't have any musical background nor musical theory knowings (Like me, I don't even know what the hell a High Q means :D), in big part, thanks to the accesibility of the piano roll, tracker based programs and FL Studio. So yeah, is not a big deal if you are a beginner (Hell, people makes full games without knowing a quarter-shit heh)

On 10/12/2022 at 5:27 AM, TheBlueBalloon said:

Making midis seems fun, but I'm afraid of running out of ideas or making "boring" midis?

My advice is, practice will continue to make you better. Don't let 10 or 100 song ideas you don't like put you off. Just keep churning it out and you will gradually get better and better.

Started playing bass in high school, took a music theory class also in high school, got interested in writing music and then make Doom levels as an excuse to write more music.

Honestly, just fart around on whatever instrument you play to get spontaneous inspiration for riffs, motifs, etc., use music theory to fill out any harmonies, set up a tonal framework for your song (key, mode, etc.) and whatever else. Remember that drummers only have 4 limbs when tracking percussion.

On 10/13/2022 at 1:03 PM, Herr Dethnout said:

(Like me, I don't even know what the hell a High Q means :D)

Q refers to filter resonance, High Q means a high resonance filter sweep, it ends up sounding like an old timey laser beam sound effect (which were, indeed, probably made on old analogue synths). If you were curious. I got really into DAWs and VSTs during COVID lol.