Alright, here's a version for those of you who want to try it:
http://www.mediafire.com/?y64nklu2i2cwp3zRemember: you need Sound_Extendedpiano2.0 for this to work.
So what's new in this version? Notes are now written like this:
C4/2. Let me explain.
- The C is the note you wanna play, in this case C. A lower case c refers to the sharp note C#. Likewise, d means D#, f means F#, g means G# and a means A#.
- The number after the note indicates which octave is going to be played. C4 is the middle C on the piano keyboard.
- The last part tells something about how long the delay between this note and the next one will be. The default value can be set in the second input box (default 500 ms). Use
* followed by a number to make the delay longer. Use
/ followed by a number to make the delay longer. For example, C5*4 will last four times longer than C5, while C5/2 only lasts half as long. Easy, right?
- Chords can be played by writing multiple notes with a comma between them. The delay modifier is added at the very end of the string of notes, like so: C4,E4,G4/2
- Rest or pause is basically any word that isn't recognized as a note or chord. However, the notation R- / or *xxx should be used. That is a capital R followed by a minus and a(n optional) delay modifier.
Okay. So that's how the input works. It is quite intuitively once you get the hold of it.
My next problem was that you can only save 200 characters per event. That's only enough for about 40 notes or so. Not really enough for a composition. So I added the event
PianoSynthRFF (
read
from
file) as well. It does what the name says: it takes in the name of a file, and plays said file. Files are better for very long series of notes because you won't run out of characters. You can make the file as long as you want!
So how do you make a file? Easy. Just copy/paste your notes into a .txt file and save it in
Blockland/config/server/musicFiles . If the folder doesn't exist, make it. You can access the file in-game by entering the name of the file, followed by .txt, in the big input field. So if your .txt file is called "MyPianoSong", you just write "MyPianoSong.txt" into the field. Easy peasy.
There is a third part to this add-on as well. That is a script that generates text files that can be imported with PianoSynthRFF. The problem is that it doesn't work properly. It struggles with tied notes, it cannot effectively handle multiple voices (they are played in sucsession, rather than simultaneously) and it had to be written in Python. So in other words, its use is quite limited. First of all, you need to have a program that converts your midi file to a music xml file. Most midi programs can do that, so that's not really a problem. Second of all, you need Python to compile the script. There's no reason why you shouldn't have Python on your computer, so that's not really an issue, either.
Last, but not at least, you have to be selective about which songs you feed into the program. It doesn't like songs with lots of voices and tied-notes, as mentioned earlier. Since the soundpacks don't have sustainable notes, your song will sound very staccato. So don't pick a song with lots of sustained notes (let's say Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven).
Due to these limitations, I'm not sure if I should bother uploading the converter. Tell me what you think.
