c&c.wv: C&C music factory - Everybody dance now

Note: this is the first 30 seconds or so. I cannot make either the midi
file with custom patches nor the complete song available, even if i have
done it, because of legal reason. This short, low-quality (16 bit from tape,
22050Hz, mono) falls into the fair use prescription of the copyright law.
This is to give an idea of what can be done on a Gravis with custom patches.

A friend called me and asked for a crash course on making dance music with
the GUS. So, i took my custom patches collection, my midi files (.wrk, .mid
and .pow) and went to do the demonstration, which ended up far more
complex than i had bargained for.

After listening to a few "pop" midi files, she chose L1003_01.MID which is
Roland's rendition of "everybody dance now", mostly because it seemed
complete but lacked vocals and cryed for a better guitar. I checked my
disks and only found the guitar sample and the "everybody dance now" sample.
I went home to sample the other vocals and brought back my mixer and the
CD so we could compare the final product. Good thing, cause it helped a lot
in getting the good timing. Now, back to the midi file. The guitar track had
nothing to do with the distorted guitar in the song, so we zapped it. We
zapped the percussive organ, the woodblock etc... We kept the brass, bass
lines and percussions but had to rearrange them a bit, use custom sounds
and remove some things that were not in the song. I added the guitar track
which was easy to do using the custom .pat. In the process we used every
trick in the book to manipulate the midi data, even using some .cal programs
and i even ventured at redoing the percussions in powerchords but didn't
have the time to finish, so i used the original one i had spiced up.

What, however, was really tough, was adding the vocals. Not all were added
because it would have been too long, but the middle rap could be easily
added entirely with a .wav file. Those that were added were a pain, except
for the everybody dance now. I rapidly noticed (a chance, else i would
have spent much longer) that the bpm was not precisely correct. It is 114,
but the real bpm is 114.61 (well, it holds at least 2:30). Once i corrected
that and also upped the ppq to 120 from 96 i got enough resolution to be
perfectly in sync (it is much easier than i would have tought to beat
match a sequencer to a CD player). My suggestion: use at least 120 ppq if
you want to sync your typical dance song. I suppose # ppq >= # bpm is a
good rule of thumb when dealing with samples (particularly those that may
have some elements of beat).

When it was finished, it was put on a cassette tape (no fx, no equalisation)
and when i got back home, i sampled it in 16 bit mono 22KHz. The original
sounds much better but would take much more space. Also, by going to tape
it lost a lot of clarity, but the point is not the sound quality, but how
much closer it sounds with custom samples.

It is my third song reproduction i attempt (i have done remixes... these are
much easier to do) and it is not an easy job. If i have to do another, i'll
do it, but even with what i now know, it would probably take one full day
from scratch.

Ciao,
Francois Dion
