[S2E25] B.B.B.F.F.

[Renard]

Imported from Smilley's work.

The TXT is incomplete - it lacks the ending. If anyone wants to complete it?

[Renard]

Completed it.

[Smilley]

Could you upload it? Or am I merely blind?

[Renard]

It's in the /Songs-WIP/MLP_Season2_EN/ folder ;)

[Smilley]

For some inexplicable reason Dropbox won't download that one folder. I can still DL it through the website, though.
EDIT: OK, this is getting ever more wierd. I tried to download the BBBFF folder and put it into my Dropbox folder that it may recognize it, but now I see there's two on the website. I'll put a textfile into the one that works for me. Could you delete the other one?

[Smilley]

Synced in the reprise, improved the overall sync (that got just a tiny bit off during convertion), and changed a pitch or two.

[Renard]

I'm looking into that Dropbox issue. Weird stuff.
EDIT: This should be okay now.

[Smilley]

Reduced the pitch of the reprise to match the rest of the song. Didn't change anything in USDX, but a scrolling interface like Performous' would have shown a 2 octave jump. I fixed both the normal and the instrumental version.

[Profpatsch]

This one has some serious timing problems.
And a few pitch mistakes, too.

[Smilley]

Actually, now that I revised it, I found that all but the reprise was one note too low. I also adjusted some timings, too.
It actually pays to have others critically review your work. I would probably not have noticed this for a long time.

[Profpatsch]

Yep, that's what I noticed when I sang over it.
I guess you made a mistake when adjusting the octaves.
I will go over it again and see if I can find something else.

Btw, the Ctrl+S shortcut in Performous (while playing a song) is a real gem. You can run Pf and the US editor at the same time to easily find pitch mistakes. (Somehow the midi playback in USDX doesn't work.)

[Smilley]

Check your speaker sound volumes. For whatever reason, those are set to minimal sometimes when importing MIDIs with USDX.

[Profpatsch]

i'm on Ubuntu, maybe something with midi-synthesis.

So, I'm going through BBFFF and I notice one thing: You use way too many irregular note-lengths (bar that begin one 1/16 earlier etc.) but the song itself is really straightforward 4/4. In 90% of the time you can use simple qarter notes and it is perfect. Bear in mind that the tone itself most often doesn't begin on the first letter of a word, but on the first vocal, so fitting a note to the bar is most often better than fitting it on the exact moment the word begins in the audio.

I noticed that because it was nearly impossible for me to hit the beginning of notes most of the time, even though my setup has a fairly low amount of lag.
i.e. look at the "peas":

The note begins exactly on 'p', but the tone of the voice jumps in later.

[Profpatsch]

Ok, I fixed a lot of timings and when I sang it after that, I instantly got A LOT more perfect timings than before. Try it.
The funny thing in music is that simple and strict is oftentimes way better than complicated.

[Smilley]

 I just played your version against mine, back to back. Got 9790 on yours, 9820 on mine. Haven't really noticed much of a change. Would definitely not call it "serious timing problems". Download Elton John's "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" from Ultrastar-Base. THAT's serious timing problem.

[Profpatsch]

It's not really about the points. Start up performous where you get to see your voice in realtime, sing it without looking at the screen and then Scroll back with Ctrl+Arrows.
If you sang everything like in the song, you should have hit the beginning of each note.

[Renard]

And that's how I learned you can use Ctrl+arrows to scroll back in Performous.

Mind=blown.

[Smilley]

It's not really about the points.

Isn't it, though? First of all, the points represent how well you can hit the notes. Also, it's a game. The score is what most people will see. And the fact that I can get as close as humanly possible to a perfect score means that the song it pretty darn accurate.

Start up performous where you get to see your voice in realtime, sing it without looking at the screen and then Scroll back with Ctrl+Arrows.
If you sang everything like in the song, you should have hit the beginning of each note.

I tried it, and Performous bugged out several times before I could get the two versions done, so I'll likely not use it as a regular tool.
It is definitely less forgiving than USDX, and it's good to see the actual pitch being sung, but I think it also handles some pitches differently than USDX. That, and my PC can't run it at full FPS, leading to awkwardly misplaced notes, either way.

Also, I'd like to object some pitch changes you've made:
I know that the first pitch of the line "We shared our hopes..." is understressed as is, and it isn't helped that it's swallowed up by the backup choir, but I think the higher pitch (1 instead of -4) comes more naturally there. I could even opt for a freestyle note there, since it's really not all there.

The other is the last "Big Brother Best Friend" line, before the reprise. I went back and realised it's probably sung by two voices, one of which trails off by half a note. I guess one can make an arguement for either.

[Profpatsch]

@Renard: I guess I searched for a way to scroll and tried all meta-keys. Lucky me. That's one of the reasons I preferably use Pf for checking the songs in realtime. What I hate though are the big fat freestyle marks.

@Smilley:
It's a shame that Performous doesn't work on your PC because it perfectly completes USDX when building songs.

"We shared ...": This is debatable, but when I sing the note's always exactly on that note.
"... best Friend": The change is clearly from the background voice.

[Smilley]

 

"We shared ...": This is debatable, but when I sing the note's always exactly on that note.

It was my first approach, too, but after a few tries, the higher pitch just seemed better. As said, given the circumstances, a freestyle note might be the best compromise.

Other than that, I'm OK with the changes.