The New Music System Has Arrived – To A Mixed Reception.

Dear LOTRO Players,

With eager, cautious anticipation did I await my games client update this afternoon. I was waiting to log in and see what had been done to my favourite gaming hobby. Yes I love Fishing but I am talking MUSIC!

I didn’t even wait to hurry to Bree to find friends to gossip with! I ran scales on all instruments right in front of Old Flourdumpling the Mayor of the Four Farthings.

Luckily I had a four part Do-Re-Mi still on my Songbook 🙂

One by one I took out each instrument and blew or plucked or hit each note… and listened intently.

I was prepared for the very worst… This may have helped matters. It wasn’t as bad as I had imagined it could be. Although as a Tolkien reader you must expect I have a very vivid imagination.

I wasn’t to keen on the top register of the Horn, I loved the lower 2/3rds, very smooth

Flute… Nicer in the higher range but what is with all the heavy breathing? We want to hear a flute played not a milk bottle! – Top register, in tune and very sweet!

Clarinet – Over all an improvement but again, there are notes that need attention. At least one in each register and one of the notes has a very weird reverb.

Bagpipes – Still overly clipped and now with added click at the end of each played note… Too quiet I think. I need to await the new Maestro but I would like to see how the bottom range of the Pipes compares to the top.

Pib – Well not so shabby, still a few sharp notes in that top range but I am looking forward to using this instrument. Tuning better and those range jumps and squeaks gone 🙂

Percussion great!

Strings – Lute… Yeah they fixed what wasn’t broken. There are notes which need fixing, one or two in each section of range, same for the Theorbo.

Harp – We love the Harp sounds like running water.

After having a solo listen I took myself to Bree where I listened and participated in many hours of testing different styles of music.

I did note a lot of snap and crackle, I like it in my Rice Crispies but not poured over my music. Bagpipes really let us down, probably the poorest developed of all the instruments, even the Lute!

There was more of an issue than I had noted before regarding the placement of my Character in respect to the Bands position. To get best results one needs to stand fairly close and center to the playing group. To get optimum results nip round the back of the band and stand just behind the middle player there. Now listen… dosn’t it sound nicer? I really wonder why this is…? Why it is that effect cannot be placed over a wider area so the entire audience can hear. /shrug. It was fun wandering around listening, turning this way and that. It altered greatly what can be heard through headphones and what cannot be heard.

This is not to be mistaken with the dropping of notes from over-sampling. My good friend Bruzo checked his figures and whizzed his magic, told me it is pretty much as it was before. This is good news – it’s not worse. He did tell me there was an issue with separate instruments both playing the same melody. For me to listen out for some in the air clashing and weird effects.

Toward the end of my play today I managed to get a fair crowd of musicians together and we ran through my bigger files. From 11 to 14 part songs.

I will have to do some work on updating some of these files, but if the fixes are made (see above) I think we will have a much better system than we had before.

I am of the opinion that the show can go on, we may need to use caution for now, we may need a polite campaign to get our changes in game in a timely fashion. Let us hope for the notes and pipes to be fixed by Weatherstock. We can hope also for some advice as to what can be done regarding directional and placement of listeners.

If you and your band suffer from Overloading Samples then consider learning to use Bruzo’s converter BruTE – Free on the internet. If you need assistance I would be glad to guide you through the basics and share how I use this converter.

All that leaves me to do is thank the Devs/Techs and send encouragement for them to keep going! Once we have a solid basic system in place mayhap we get something new to play with.

The new music system is a work in progress – let us help Turbine to finish the job. Bug report, politely. Post on the forums – but be courteous. Ask and not demand. I think together we can make this a system for us to enjoy for many years to come.