Music Piano Tutorials For Half Of The Ost

Hi guys, you may remember my noteblock music recorder: https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/note-block-music-midi-recorder-forge-mod.276690/
So since then I've been recording the 2nd half of the OST (everything that Xeoran doesn't have here: https://musescore.com/user/7400466/sets/5090208) and making piano tutorials, so you can find all Gavel quest music, dungeon music, boss music, Silent Expanse music and more here, organized in the same order as in XavierEXE's playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDa4Vj43E2e-mCukFLGM5xTLILNZ_daaI

MIDI download: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ga9nTBblcy4ssXA5m4E2PEmXRmAXh4zF , you can now make all the remixes you want! It also works okay in Musescore (if you're interested in a score) after a bit of tweaking: turn off Show staccato, Clef changes, Split staff, and change contrabass to acoustic bass, you may also need to tweak time signatures / pickup measures.

Also, NBS file downloads coming soon if I'm not prohibited to do it (it's not exactly the original, but I believe the only difference is in the order of the noteblocks), I have already written the converter. (WC team, tell me if this is not allowed.)

Also also, If someone's interested in a "complementary" Wynncraft Noteblock OST, I could upload the 4 missing pieces + Energetic encounter "official remix" (Giant rat) to Youtube, in I believe the exact same format, exported from ONBS to mp3, otherwise you can find a download link here: https://github.com/Wynntils/WynncraftOST/pull/3 .

However, I'd like to kindly ask a VIP+ or above, who is interested in this, to record these pieces from the Jukebox with my mod (it isn't a problem if you lag quite a bit, but it's better if you don't :D):
[129] Unyielding Influence (The Nether) (it doesn't play in-game, but it would be pretty bad to leave out a piece that's this good)
[130] Begin the Siege! (Guild Wars) (even though I was in a few guild wars, nothing played)
[135] Party Blues (Party Bomb) (I was looking at bomb tracker, but somehow no one seems to throw party bombs :D, also idk if this is in Jukebox)

Plus I'd really appreciate if they recorded these 3 pieces, if the missing parts play when playing back from jukebox (you can look at the video to see which part is missing), I tried recording these multiple times and some parts are always missing:
[133] The Last Hope (886 AP) (Bob's theme is missing a whole beat)
[148] A Day to Remember (Boss Battle 13) (Phase 1's ending is missing literally at most 3 16th notes at the end)
[152] A Family Fractured (570 AP) (closing note of part 3 with echo is missing)
I don't actually know if the playback from Jukebox is different from the playback in-game.

Tell me if someone's interested to help, but in short you'd need to do this:
Put the mod next to Wynntils (if you play with it) (version: 1.12.2, Forge)
Record 3 loops of the pieces (e.g. record 5:15 from Unyielding influence), if lag is really bad, maybe 4 loops too
If the playback for the 2nd batch is different (I really hope it is), then 1 loop is enough of those

 

I cannot imagine how much time it took to do this
As a supporter of the Wynncraft ost I wish forum awards were a thing, or at least a double like

 

Damn amazing work.

Slightly off-topic issue do people actually learn based off the midi piano rolls? I've seen these adverts for programs that seem to teach based off that and it sorta blows my mind as someone who can read sheet music but has absolutely no idea how people read it based off piano rolls.

 

do these not exist on wynntils music?

 

I've recorded four of those pieces (four times each) [EDIT: Removed link to the files]
I couldn't find [135] Party Blues (Party Bomb) in the jukebox, as well as [152] A Family Fractured (570 AP). The pieces I recorded had two different versions, in one of them the song looped once.

Yeah, I also think that playing sheet music is much easier than trying to follow such a tutorial, especially since you can write stuff in sheet music such as what fingers to use or basically any dynamic / articulation changes. But I also know people who can play a song just by listening to it once, so I guess there's quite a big variety in learning methods. If you play a more advanced classical piano song though, there's no way such a tutorial can replace sheet music.

 

Well I don't really know, I can imagine that someone who can't read sheet music could read these better, but I don't think they can play piano well anyways. (There was 1 comment on a video saying that these help them to play, so there are some people using it that way.)
I named them piano tutorials because I didn't want to name them Synthesia because this isn't actually Synthesia :D, but I didn't necessarily intend them to be played, they are like full of 1.5 or 2 octave ranges. I just thought it's a cool visualization, and making scores like what Xeoran did would take much longer. I also like sheet music better, and I tried making the midi files as compatible with Musescore as possible.

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They do but that's "just" the mp3 copied from youtube (probably): https://github.com/Wynntils/WynncraftOST

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OMG thank you so soo much!! I'll be uploading them soon!

 

this is awesome i wouldve been thrilled at this if i wasnt already a composer

i notice there are some weird volumes that sound different from the xavier uploads
this is mostly because wynn just likes to mess up a lot of the volumes for no apparent reason. ive actually been trying to figure out why but as of now i just hope it reads the volumes properly

and also sorry for the inconsistent loops for some songs x) we have to play songs that arent 100/150 bpm differently than normally so i have to get my friend jbip to loop the songs on a timer (which isnt always consistent due to server lag)

i learned music thru piano roll first so id say im more proficient in that x) i know how to read sheet music though but about as fast as a 2nd grader would read english

 

Well volumes were alright and very consistent for me, though (obviously) I can't see what was intended in the original NBS file. The only place where I found that the volume is really funnily broken is the Discovery Jingle where it tries to fade in and fade out at the same time.
Which ones do you mean that sound different from Xavier's upload? I exported a few songs (one was Genesis of the End) from ONBS to mp3, and "compared" it with the uploaded one in Audacity, I inverted one of them, and precisely aligned them and after that I could hear the exact difference (apart from a few youtube artifacts). There were parts that were the exact same, and there were others where I could hear the main melody, meaning it got louder or quieter. I was pretty sure you adjusted the volume after XavierEXE uploaded it and that caused the volume difference, because when I record them, the volume is always, exactly the same, though now that you say that that may not be the case.

Also, now I antilagged The Last Hope that @Pianoplayer1 recorded for me, and I compared that with my recording, both of them were very consistent, but comparing the 2 they were very different volume-wise: the one played while the cutscene vs the one played from the jukebox. Those are clearly 2 different versions (jukebox version is 1 NBS file, the other is 4), and I thought Xavi modified one of them and then no one updated the other, but now that you say that, it may not be the case.

Also, if you're trying to figure out the problem, I would love to help if I can by recording what the player actually hears, and maybe analyzing it.

Wait, there are only 2 pieces that doesn't use 100 nor 150 bpm, right? The Family Fractured part 1 and part 4 (1st and last part) (with 7.75 tps)? I was like what the hell is that :DD

Yeah I was pretty mad at that system because serverlag / not perfect timing made that the end was always cut off in some songs XD. That was the system that plays during cutscenes (886AP, 570AP) and bossfights that have multiple phases (giant rat, Aledar+Tasim, Eye). I wanted to suggest that those boss phases could use the normal looping where there isn't a boss phase change, because now when it loops, it uses the fade-in as if it was a new song (making the beginning always quiet), but otherwise it's the same song from the beginning so it could theoretically loop normally like territorial music would (though ofc I don't know how the code works and how hard would that be to implement).

 

a good example is in the a day to remember transcription, the accompanying part is VERY quiet, you can barely hear it
however in xaviers upload/the actual nbs, the accompanying part is pretty audible
it can also be heard in some songs where the echo notes are a little louder/quieter than in the xavier upload
and thats because it actually does sound like that in game. thats what i was referrin to by volume, not at all your fault though x)
not much i can do about that though E:

if you can actually find out whats happening thatd be WONDERFUL!!!

songs with tick rates that are not 6.75 and 10.00 need to use this shoddy looping system otherwise it cant play
its also the reason why some songs arent in the jukebox

if you decide to transcribe the new update songs, you got a lot of "out of bpm" songs awaiting ya ;)

 

oh gosh :DD well I'll see, it's certainly nice to have some variety, and it's not like it will sound worse, while recording many pieces, I found that 100bpm songs tend to lag this way: (1 tick = 1/20 s) instead of 2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2 ticks they sometimes do this for an actually longer period of time: 3,1,3,1,3,1,3,1, for 150bpm songs the same: instead of 3,3,3,3,3,3, they "get out of rhythm" and play 4,2,3,4,2,3,2,4 etc.

Well I have a theory now, though it may be incorrect.
Here's what I/we know:
The bug is very consistent, so it always plays the same (wrong) volumes
It seems like in different songs the volume difference is on the same layer / melody / thing
So my theory is that the program reading the NBS file is not reading the layer volume properly / applying the volume to the wrong note sometimes
You use layer volumes a lot, right? (of course because there was no other way to change volume back then)

+ an extra thing that would support this theory, (I have just written the to-NBS converter) is that in the NBS (binary) format the notes and the layers are separated and it's not that straight-forward to get the layer of the note, so that would help mess it up.
+another extra thing I don't know how well wynn's nbs player supports different NBS file format versions:
This is the old one: https://www.stuffbydavid.com/mcnbs/format
And the openNBS one: https://opennbs.org/nbs
And some parts are different: e.g. the old one doesn't seem to have note-volume, only layer-volume, and the order of some values is different. + the ONBS version has different format versions too (e.g. 3.7.0 and above uses version 4, and in the changelog for 3.8.1: „NBS version changed to 5.”, idk about the differences between them yet, but if that seems to be the problem I could try to look into that)
Edit #42 (jk): after reading a bit I see that note-volume was added in version 4 which is quite recent (1 year old), so the Silent Expanse music is older.

So I was looking at different pieces and if I'm correct I got this:
A day to remember has this volume problem for the whole piece, it seems like harp is the main difference (with that accompanying part being pretty noticable).
In Where they wandered (as you said) the echo is pretty different (I can't tell 100% but the XavierEXE upload/original piece seems to start "losing volume" quicker but more consistently)
Mind of a pirate (Galleon's graveyard) doesn't seem to have this problem, even though it also has echos (and probably layer volumes as well), though it doesn't have as many echos
Weirding doesn't seem to have any difference either
I could send you the differences if you want to listen to them.

Oh and does someone know how layer volume with the note volume is supposed to work? My guess is that if the layer volume is 0.8 (80) and the note volume is 0.6 (60) then the actual note should be 0.8*0.6=0.48 (48) in-game, right? (Also, is there any piece in the OST that uses both of these, or do they use only one of them? just because everything that I recorded has it's volume rounded to 1 digit (0.1, 0.2, 0.3 etc), apart from the fade-in). Edit #infinite: I know now that note volume wasn't present when these pieces were written, so this isn't important here.

I'm thinking that Where they wandered seems to be a good choice for analyzing, @corpe could you please send a screenshot of the beginning with the note volumes overlay + tell which layers what volume% have, maybe we could figure out where/how the math is wrong. Here's what I see (and people hear) there (all layer volumes are 100% here) (I spaced out the notes so it's easier to see):
+another edit: could you tell me which noteblock studio version you (and/or XavierEXE) used when finishing these "problematic" pieces? (also, OpenNBS or the older Stuffbydavid one?) I guess the newest one available. If so then can you look up the file's last modified date, so we could see which ONBS format version playback is broken? Format version 1: ONBS 3.4.0 may 11 2019, format version 2: ONBS 3.5.0 jul 7 2019, format version 3: ONBS 3.6.0 aug 8 2019 (this is probably the one you used), format version 4: ONBS 3.7.0 jan 1 2020, format version 5: ONBS 3.8.1 15 days ago.

 

I transcribed Unyielding Influence a while back so here's the link. (Some notes need to switch locations but it's decent)
https://musescore.com/user/29106511/scores/6142201
I'm working on To the Sky! (Letvus Airbase), Dance of Memory (Caritat Manor), and Glorious Illusions (Trippy Forest) right now to fill some gaps in Xeoran's playlist.

Edit: Apparently you have most of those. (rip me)

 

Wow, good work!
Never noticed that the melody seems so simple btw...

 

(Actually, Xeoran did transcribe To the Sky!, he just forgot to put it into the playlist: https://musescore.com/xeoran/wynncraft_-_to_the_sky_letvus_airbase)
But transcriptions are kinda different, you could use my midi files to create playable scores, if you are interested (if you don't mind skipping the guessing part)!
Btw, good job on the Unyielding Influence (especially if that's your first one), I think I've searched scores for that before and found that yours is the most accurate!

 

So sad news for myself, I recorded House of Twain and found that the volume is scuffed there as well... especially the bass

And I don't think they touched it since it was written (or at least since it was uploaded), why would they have touched it? So this means that NOT JUST MY SE MUSIC IS BAD BUT ALL OF THEM ;( Now I hope more that they don't fix it so my recordings are accurate :DD
@corpe On a more serious note this means (if the file is in the old format) that the problem is not with the NBS format reader, but with something else... Also, is this bug also noticable in the 1.20 music / ONBS format 4 music?
Btw, I created a bug report here about this: https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/music-note-volume-is-messed-up.281761/

 

After quite a bit of detective work and with Xavi's help I'm pretty sure we figured out what's happening:
the volumes shift if there are fully empty layers in the nbs file, so if you remove every layer that doesn't have anything in it, everything should play perfectly ;D
Even though I'd rather they fix it in the music player itself, in the meantime it's fixable on the composer end too.

 

I tried to do this before, but I couldn't think of a way to convert the generated csv files to midi/nbs files due to the inevitable lag, and therefore resorted to manually mapping the notes (and gave up). Nice job!