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So allow me to make a small dissertation. MIDI music. According to some sources, it's outdated. The example that got me thinking was an older Zero Punctuation video, as well as newer comments by Yahtzee Croshaw. I'm going to have to question that. Old? Very. The protocol is five years older than I am. But does it still have a place in the games world? I think it still does.
To be clear, traditional MIDI music has little place in the console or computer markets. Unless, like me, there is an indie developer who needs an easy way to make a cheap game, there are better alternatives. As much as I love Anvil Studio, a better choice for those with the money to drop on it would be FruityLoops for MP3 creation. Mind you, MIDI is still being improved. Planning to take MIDI into HD has been going on since 2005. But while MIDI is still being improved, MP3 is still probably going to take over, since it's a compression of real sound with minimal quality loss in an era where sound quality is a sales factor and storage is becoming less and less of an issue.
On the other hand, the handheld and cellular markets will be safe bets into the future. The pond is shrinking as technology improves, especially as CD technology finds its way into the handheld market as with the PSP, but for Nintendo's cartridge-based systems, MIDI, currently, still has a home, barring an upset with the upcoming 3DS. Why? Well, MIDI is small and can provide quality that's good enough for that kind of thing. MIDI doesn't provide CD-quality sound. It takes samples and mathematically modifies them. MIDI tells a wavetable how to make the music, rather than storing actual sound data. The quality of the sound relies on the quality of the sounds on the chip, plus whatever distortion is incurred by changing them.
So why do I think it still has a place? Again, cartridge storage. Cartridges store less data than optical technology. So long as their storage is limited, using less space will be desirable. The DS library makes extensive use of MIDI. You can hear it in Pokemon or Final Fantasy III or any number of popular titles. And no one's complaining. The music is still quite nice or even outright beautiful. The three Final Fantasy titles on the PS1 all used MIDI music and didn't suffer for it. Yes, they sound different to the fully-orchestrated Final Fantasy XIII, even structurally. There are fewer solo instruments and only a handful of vocal tracks between all three. Even the PS2 used MIDI music a mere console generation ago. There's nothing wrong with the music from Final Fantasy X, Tales of the Abyss, or any number of other games from that era. The unfortunate association of MIDI music sounding tinny or simply not like real music falls apart when considering some of these games, which, really, aren't all that old. MIDI provides nice sound for minimal data.
Will MIDI as it is now be around forever? No, and it has no reason to be. Neither will MP3, likely well within our lifetimes. MIDI does have limitations to its sound and a trained ear is able to recognize the difference between orchestrated music and MIDI easily. I say MIDI isn't tinny in the sense that it's not so tinny as to sound bad in general, but the sound is more "mechanical" in general. The composition is much more inherently mathematical unless effort is made to insert subtle variations to make it more organic and the sound itself has a different tonal quality which, yes, is tinnier than a real instrument in a side-by-side comparison.
But even without taking it into HD, I'm going to say it's not quite dead yet, and might not be for a while. With the indie market getting into the swing of things, MIDI will probably continue to see a smattering just because it's better-supported for looping purposes than MP3 in things like Microsoft's XNA line. With Nintendo still using cartridges in the 3DS, the resource focus is probably going to go more to graphics than sound and MIDI will provide a way to save space. MIDI music may even survive the same way as chiptunes as a style. With friendly sequencers like Anvil Studio on the market, there will be those who choose MIDI not because of a lack of better technology, but for a more nostalgic sound. I myself am using it for that purpose in most of my games, which range from DOS-style to one designed after a handheld system.
MIDI is a workable format with several benefits. There's no reason to declare it dead just yet.
Dex_Black · Wed Oct 06, 2010 @ 04:54pm · 0 Comments |
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