Anvil Studios

Does anybody use it? I just downloaded, and I think it seems pretty good, by my imaginary standards. Although, I don't really understand how to use it. Could anybody sorta give me a briefing on how to use it?

Anyways, back to people using it. Do you like using Anvil Studios, if you have it? Dicuss!

I use it, and I think it's about as good as you're gonna get for writing MIDI music for free. Actually, I've brought this up before; I don't think it's possible to have a "good" music writing interface. There are too many dimensions to consider at once, and any possible form of default input for notes (and rests) would not be the writers intention over half the time, it seems to me.

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I am Srime

You lost me at Default Input.

But, it's good to see a fellow user of Anvil. I still don't really know how to use the program decently, though. I just try random notes and see if I get lucky. But I would like to know how to speed up or slow down notes.

I have it, but haven't been able to do much with it aside from making half-assed remixes of midis I already had.

Of course, I'm completely incapable of making music from scratch (every time I've tried so far, it sounds more like a 4-year-old plonking randomly on a piano than video game music), so that probably has nothing to do with the program.

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FYS:AHS -- Swapping out some step-on NPCs for zones + each step script
Puckamon -- Not until the reserve party is expanded.[/size]

By "default input", I mean, what happens when you click the mouse on the ledger? How does the program know precisely where you are trying to input a note? And how does it know what to do with the other notes already there? Are you trying to insert a note and get the notes already there to move over? What about the rests that were already there? Are you overwriting a rest, or trying to move that over too? Or are you simply trying to stack this newly input note on top of what was already there, so as to make a chord?

Notes have tone, duration, and placement (starting time). Having to tell the computer all three things at once is not an easy interface to make, it seems to me. And it is NOT fun to continually have to move a mouse back and forth between these various options just to input a four measure melody, ESPECIALLY if you are trying to experiment with it (rather than having something already written on paper, say, and simply transferring it to MIDI).

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I am Srime

I've been using Anvil for a while now and I've got into the nasty habit of only doing 18~30 second long loops. I understand that I can make things sound good but unless it's longer (at least 1~2 minutes) it just becomes grating.

So as advise I'd recommend not falling into that trap, it can turn what could of been a decent piece into a short mess.

The day the OHR has support for MIDI loop-points (if it doesn't already have this) I'll finally be able to feel comfortable of doing an intro to a song without the loop point being so obvious.