Two piano Cave Story medley

Jan 8, 2009 at 10:22 PM
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I started arranging a medley of a ton of Cave Story songs for two pianos. Right now, I already have quite a bit and it's only about 20% of what I hope to have eventually (it's eventually going to be HUGE once it's finished). The songs are more or less in the order you hear them in Cave Story.

=======UNFINISHED VERSIONS=======

Here's a link to a midi file of what I have so far. The recording isn't great; the page turning screwed me up in a few places and I played it slower than it should go, but hopefully I'll post a better recording once I have more progress.

EDIT: better recording

EDITATION: even better recording and PDF sheet music
(links fixed, both should work now. I zipped the recording even though it's just one file because it was so big.)


Okay, finally got a working link. It's a single zip file containing both the mp3 recording and the pdf sheet music.

=======FINISHED VERSION=======

http://www.cavestory.org/works/cave_story_medley.zip

The file contains both a *.wma recording and *.pdf sheet music.
 
Jan 9, 2009 at 5:50 AM
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Finale can open .Midi files and convert them into a music sheet for ya.
 
Jan 9, 2009 at 5:53 AM
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I'd recommend instead of recording from a keyboard, to just place the notes in a midi editor so they were balanced, because playing it can cause imperfections (especially with the page flipping and all) and the notes seem less together.

There was one spot where i thought i heard a sour note, haven't gotten through the whole piece yet however.
 
Jan 9, 2009 at 12:26 PM
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Zephro said:
Finale can open .Midi files and convert them into a music sheet for ya.


The only problem is that the tempo of the peice doesn't follow the midi metronome, so if I did that, the rhythm would be totally screwed. I'll eventually probably just write the whole thing out in finale by hand, and I think finale also allows me to do the opposite of what you said and convert the sheet music to midi format
 
Jan 9, 2009 at 5:57 PM
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Finale is a wonderful program unless you forget how to use it like a certain avatarless person around here *shifty eyes*

I was able to edit the tempo from the start and any measure from then on by using the tempo tool... only problem is, I forgot where it was xD
 
Jan 9, 2009 at 10:50 PM
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I have to agree that while tempo is nice to have, there's more than enough human error in here to make the machine version the better option anyways. There might be a few specific points that the computer can't do that you need to splice in yourself for, but otherwise you'd need to become a lot better at playing before you could do the music you wrote justice. There were a lot of places where you just plain got stuck, and even in the best spots there was constant stuttering and uneven pacing. Certain parts were faster than others besides what you intended, and I'm fairly sure there were a couple incorrect ones in there.

On the plus side, the music you wrote is awesome. But why did you include eyes of flame but not gravity?
 
Jan 9, 2009 at 11:01 PM
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I'm not a big fan of gravity, actually (lol I prefer when things just fly off the earth into space xD). I might decide to include it later, but I probably won't.

Also, the level of human error is mostly due to the fact that I hardly practiced at all before recording, and that I had to turn my own pages. With more practice, and a page turner, I'm sure I could actually do a good recording. I'm still probably going to do a machine version, though. It depends on how easy/hard it is to do tempo/meter changes in finale.
 
Jan 10, 2009 at 7:26 AM
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Oo. I've been outdone. This is pretty awesome so far. Your versions have a more personal touch with a few different harmonics- which work quite well. I love Mimiga Town.. and that ending/transposition of Grass Town: awesome. The only thing I could say so far... voicing. The melody seems to get lost in harmonics at time. Of course that'll all depend on whoever's ultimately playing the arrangement.

As far as Finale goes... ew. Give Sibelius a try.. it's both fun and easy to use. I've tried Finale several times now, each involving a higher degree of frustration. </blurb>
 
Jan 10, 2009 at 5:12 PM
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wedge of cheese said:
It depends on how easy/hard it is to do tempo/meter changes in finale.
Metre changes are really easy – just select the section of music with the time signature tool and double-click. Tempo changes are pretty simple too – you can use the tempo tool, or you can use the expression tool to place a tempo marking such as Allegro.
 
Jan 10, 2009 at 8:03 PM
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Celtic Minstrel said:
Metre changes are really easy – just select the section of music with the time signature tool and double-click. Tempo changes are pretty simple too – you can use the tempo tool, or you can use the expression tool to place a tempo marking such as Allegro.

The things I'm worried about is will it play at the correct tempo after the meter change? However, if it doesn't, I think I know a way to make it do so.
 
Jan 11, 2009 at 12:18 AM
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this sounds great
 
Jan 13, 2009 at 1:28 PM
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wedge of cheese said:
The things I'm worried about is will it play at the correct tempo after the meter change? However, if it doesn't, I think I know a way to make it do so.
Changing the meter should not affect the tempo at all. The tempo is stored in terms of "note type = beats per minute" where "note type" is by default "quarter note/crotchet". It's not based on the beats of the metre.
 
Feb 1, 2009 at 9:02 AM
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i woulden't mind playing this can you send me the sheet music if possiable
 
Feb 1, 2009 at 6:58 PM
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I'm going to post the sheet music as well as a better recording on this forum fairly soon, probably within the next two weeks.
 
Feb 2, 2009 at 8:19 AM
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wedge of cheese said:
I'm going to post the sheet music as well as a better recording on this forum fairly soon, probably within the next two weeks.

cool thanks
 
Feb 6, 2009 at 12:55 AM
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Ok, I'm having a bit of trouble exporting the sheet music to a readable format. I printed to a file using the "Microsoft Office Document Image Writer", but it didn't tell me what format the file was in.

I am unable to open the file because I don't know what program to open it with. If anyone knows how the document image writer works and could tell me what program to open the file with or what extension the file should have (I just made it a *.dat), that would be much appreciated.

Here is a link to the file

EDIT: Never mind, it's a *.TIFF image, just change the file extension from "dat" to "tiff" and it should be openable.
 
Feb 6, 2009 at 3:28 AM
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Yes, TIFF is the visual format that Finale usually exports as. I however generally "print" as a PDF. But on Windows that requires a special driver.
 
Feb 13, 2009 at 5:04 PM
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Ok, I have a much better recording, now. I was able to circumvent the page turning dilemma by recording one hand at a time, so I could play with one hand, and turn pages with the other.

link
 
Feb 14, 2009 at 8:11 PM
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It sounds MUCH better now. Like, amazingly better. You have to listen to both versions just to appreciate it. Still parts need work.

  • The transition into pulse feels like you were searching for the keys and hitting them as soon as you found them, rather than obeying the tempo.
  • Pulse feels like a huge lull in the music. It's a pretty boring two minutes, especially sandwiched inbetween two hyperactive songs.
  • The start of Grasstown could use some work.
  • The Grasstown partfeels like it could be improved slightly in places, but not that much; there's a couple slips here and there, but it's mostly good.
  • The transition to eyes of flame at about 7:35 sounds like it should've been awesome, but you stumbled through it.
  • Much of eyes of flame is sloppy and mistake prone. Again, feels excellently written but it's the poorest-sounding part of the whole thing.
  • I think eyes of flame really could've done with ending at about the nine minute mark rather than dragging on for another full minute. It's spending too long on one song as is.
  • 10:20-10:28 sounds offkey.
  • The part that's clearly supposed to be "Jenka 2", actually everything from 11:15 onward, is badly executed.

Then again, Jenka up to 11:15 sounds super-awesome now, as does everything before Pulse, and the transition into Grasstown. I especially love the first cave song, the mimiga village song, and the egg corridor song (and especially the transition into and beginning of the egg corridor one). I think that the egg corridor song might sound better, though, if you play the entire section from about 3:05 to 3:40 as forte as you can, to help give the thing the feel of a broadway showstopper.

Are you going to return to the first cave song for a few bars after every few levels? I can't say I think it's a bad idea; it'd help pull everything together and feels like a nice, safe, familiar theme to keep coming back to.

Anyways, I'd suggest finding points at which you can get away with cutting the recording and splicing two together, because you're not going to get everything sounding as good in one playthrough as you could get smaller segments of it. Though more practice was probably part of it this sounds like you tried it a bunch of times before finally getting the first half to sound so good that you were willing to take anything from the second half so you wouldn't have to reproduce it.
 
Feb 14, 2009 at 11:44 PM
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Brickman said:
The transition into pulse feels like you were searching for the keys and hitting them as soon as you found them, rather than obeying the tempo.
This is mainly because playing the tracks in tempo with each other is a real pain in the ass. It goes much more smoothly when you perform it with two people. My dad and I actually tried playing through everything I have so far, and many parts were much smoother because we could listen to each other and coordinate our playing. It definitely wasn't recording-worthy, though, because the page-turning royally screwed us up.

Brickman said:
Pulse feels like a huge lull in the music. It's a pretty boring two minutes, especially sandwiched inbetween two hyperactive songs.
It sounds a lot better on real pianos, the computer MIDI piano doesn't do it justice.

Brickman said:
The transition to eyes of flame at about 7:35 sounds like it should've been awesome, but you stumbled through it.

Much of eyes of flame is sloppy and mistake prone. Again, feels excellently written but it's the poorest-sounding part of the whole thing.
More track-coordination problems. Would be better if I had someone to turn pages for me, so I only had to coordinate two tracks instead of four.

Brickman said:
I think eyes of flame really could've done with ending at about the nine minute mark rather than dragging on for another full minute. It's spending too long on one song as is.
This is another part that sounds much better on real pianos. When my dad and I played the second part of Eyes of Flame is was totally epic.

Brickman said:
10:20-10:28 sounds offkey.
Probably because, in the transition from Gestation to Jenka, Gestation goes into minor which is a bit odd.

Brickman said:
The part that's clearly supposed to be "Jenka 2", actually everything from 11:15 onward, is badly executed.
Heh, heh, yeah, when I wrote that part, I didn't think it would be that hard. Then I tried to play it and it was that hard.

Brickman said:
Are you going to return to the first cave song for a few bars after every few levels? I can't say I think it's a bad idea; it'd help pull everything together and feels like a nice, safe, familiar theme to keep coming back to.
Well, I'm currently thinking that the two occurances of Gestation that you've heard so far will be the only two. However, the whole thing might not be as large as I originally had intended (I think what I have so far constitutes about 40-50%).
 
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