Is XNA an entirely different programming language?

Trying to separate out the vocals, guitars, bass, and drums from a single audio file is like trying to separate out the flour, eggs, and sugar from a cake. It's not going to happen, unfortunately.

I think that where the original Guitar Hero didn't have access to the original masters, they'd get session musicians to re-record the song, so they had the separate tracks ready.

XNA uses the C# programming language, yes.

How much different is C# from C++? Is it a big step to learn if I already know the basics of C++? (I know most of the theory of things like inheritance, polymorphism, OOP, etc, but I haven't practiced with them very much.)

Quote:Original post by Kylotan
Trying to separate out the vocals, guitars, bass, and drums from a single audio file is like trying to separate out the flour, eggs, and sugar from a cake. It's not going to happen, unfortunately.

Unfortunately!? Cake is delicious, you cad!

It actually is sometimes possible to pull individual tracks out of audio, in a rather hamfisted manner. Basically, you take a stereo recording and subtract L-R. Anything that's stereo center gets canceled out, leaving everything else. It doesn't work with music that has had any sort of lossy compression, and what gets pulled out is sort of pot luck; generally vocals will disappear, but lead guitar might be center for a primarily instrumental song. Give it a try... it probably won't fit your needs, but it might, and your options are limited.

How do I go about doing that subtraction? I've got the stereo recording set up in my little wave editor program, what's next?

[Edited by - Barrow Boy on August 14, 2008 2:47:11 PM]

If you notice while playing guitar hero, The tracks are displayed like so
Iron Man
As Made Famous By: Black Sabbath

they re recorded every song (mostly with studio musicians, and in some cases the original musicians, I know the sex pistols did their own)
You can really notice in the vocals, and sometimes in the guitar tones in the recordings.

I have thought about taking on a project like this as well, and simply planned on recreating the songs myself with myself or friends playing the instruments through the recording gear that we already have.

I'd say that you're two most viable options would be
midi (lower quality but can be done yourself if you have a bit of music experience)
or just looking around town for some local musicians to record the tracks individually.



This is not a project I would take on if you do not have any musical experience, as even writing the player tracks is going to be very similar to translating the actual songs to midi

I would say whatever direction you go (except writing your own midis) is really going to add up.

cost of recording yourself in a studio (A lot)
cost of paying other musicians to record it for you in a studio (even more)
cost of purchasing your own recording equipment and recording it yourself (varies, but for quality your looking at over 5k)
cost of purchasing your own recording equipment and paying someone else to play while you record (too much to be realistic)

Also, due to copyrights being a pain in the ass, distribution of the project with commercial music (yes even re-recorded by different musicians) could pose issues

[Edited by - A dam on August 14, 2008 8:37:42 PM]

These guys are doing some pretty impressive things with audio: http://www.celemony.com/cms/ Watch the videos.

Quote:Original post by smcameron
These guys are doing some pretty impressive things with audio: http://www.celemony.com/cms/ Watch the videos.

I was considering posting about Melodyne myself. However, it's worth bearing in mind that almost all of their examples work with single tracks of one instrument, where it's a lot easier to isolate individual notes. They also tend to work with non-distorted instruments which have fewer harmonics. A single low note played on a guitar which typically has overdrive, distortion, chorus, and reverb on it is going to have significant frequency components across the board from 100Hz up to 22KHz, and not just at the predictable intervals but all over the place. It becomes next to impossible to isolate one such note like that when mixed in with everything else.