The Clan Lord Sentinel

It hit me today that I would be more productive if I could be lazy at work whilst being productive on the music-writing front! Unfortunately, my company is heathen-like and uses WINDOZE.

Is there a tool to write CL music on a PC??

The only thing close to CLTH that works on a PC is still Arindal's Java version as far as I know. The instruments sound goofy sometimes but still better than nothing.

Greetings Ayella, and other famous bards from "the other world"!

You are in luck! I am currently developing a MIDI-to-CLTF converter for Windoze/Linux, and the first alpha version matured just enough to be released into the wild. You can grab it here:
http://wkresse.de/WekaDev/mid2cl/

Please have a look at the Arindal forum for a more detailed description of what it can and cannot do (yet):
http://www.arindal.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2368

Since there are already many very good and professional tools out there to compose songs and that can already produce standard MIDI files, I found the best approach to create a simple converter, instead of trying to build yet another composing and score writing utility. In the link above there are a few pointers to MIDI software out there.

I'd be grateful for any feedback concerning bugs, missing features, etc.

Cheers,
Newt the healer bard

Ah, yeah, that doesn't really help me alas.

But it's pretty and I'm sure PC people might find a use for it

Ayella wrote:Ah, yeah, that doesn't really help me alas.

Hm? But then I don't understand what kind of tool you need.
Agreed, there is no equivalent of mTooth for the PC, but instead you can now simply create (and test and play) your music with any of the comfortable standard PC programs, such as Anvil Studio, or Melody Assistant, or similar. Then you just export to .mid, and convert that to CL-format using mid2cl. You can then test the result of that (with strange instruments ) in the Arindal TuneHelper.
mid2cl is written with the intention that there is no need to manually modify the CLTF-output afterwards, so you can do all the work in the scorewriting program.
I admit that you will not be able to reproduce the "true" sound of the CL instruments on the PC. Does mTooth do that?

Well, I don't use those programs I use mTooth. WEll, actually, Clan Lord Tune Helper. I don't write in those other programs because I don't know how to, hence how I asked for a PC version of mTooth, hence how I said what you supplied wasn't what I needed.

I can't try this out because I don't have Windows/Linux, but it looks pretty useful. Just curious since I was looking at the features that are not yet included but will be, how are you going to create support for triplets in CLTH format? Are you going to make a new notation for triplets (which would be awesome) or is the program going to compensate for triplets by changing tempo? (Although the latter of which won't work while a chord is playing ) Anyways, keep up the good work.

P.S. PARTYBEACH!!! is great.

Ayella wrote:Well, I don't use those programs :) I use mTooth. WEll, actually, Clan Lord Tune Helper. I don't write in those other programs because I don't know how to

Well, I can only suggest to try one of the programs mentioned, such as Melody Assistant, Anvil Studio, or similar, they are really easy to use, and very powerful in their possibilities to create and compose songs.
However, I must admit I don't know anything about the editing powers of mTooth/CLTH, since I cannot use them and I haven't seen any screenshots, so I have no idea of what they are capable, except what's written in the user's guide.
If you are in the situation where you want to edit or change songs you already worked on in mTooth/CLTH, things will be more complicated. As I understand it, mTooth uses its own file format? Maybe if one of you sends me an example mTooth file (or 2-3 files), I might be able to write a parser for them, so that you can use some features of the converter that mTooth doesn't have (such as polyphony limitation). Depending on how difficult the format is, it might even be possible to export the result back into mTooth format. But I cannot make any promises concerning the mTooth-import/-export, since it will be a lot of work based on an (undocumented) file format...
How does CLTH differ from mTooth?

Rakshasa wrote:I can't try this out because I don't have Windows/Linux, but it looks pretty useful.

If you are lucky, there might be a MacOS version within the next days.

Rakshasa wrote:how are you going to create support for triplets in CLTH format? Are you going to make a new notation for triplets (which would be awesome) or is the program going to compensate for triplets by changing tempo?

Yep, the latter, with all the nasty limitations...
What do you mean by "a new notation for triplets"?

Rakshasa wrote:P.S. PARTYBEACH!!! is great.

aa purrs happily :o)
Thanks, glad you like it. All I need is a Kassrole now :-/



---> I just finished a new version of the converter. This one can merge and select channels, transpose songs, and especially automatic polyphony limitation, so that all songs can be played on any instrument - even the Bone Flute.

Have Fun!
Newt

Newt wrote:Well, I can only suggest to try one of the programs mentioned, such as Melody Assistant, Anvil Studio, or similar, they are really easy to use, and very powerful in their possibilities to create and compose songs.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't use Melody Assistant or Anvil Studio (whatever that is) because I don't know how to write music in actual notation. I write everything using the keyboard in CLTH and humming/finding the appropriate note. I learned about music in Clan Lord, about writing it, and Coriakin will attest to me not knowing anything about music theory. I can read music, I can play a number of instruments, but I'll be damned if I can turn songs into that.

So while your suggestions are nice, I also find them mildly insulting.

Newt wrote: What do you mean by "a new notation for triplets"?

Was thinking of something way too fancy like going into the CLTH code and messing with it, and adding another symbol that hasn't been used yet such as & or * to mean "play this note at 1/3 the length of the duration specified". But I think that is too hard to do and I would prefer the other way with its limitations.

Thanks for the Mac version, going to go download it and play with it later.