Jordan Wong
12/13/13
Jack and the Cornstalk Documentation
I was in charge of sound for the final project, so I used the open source music
composition software, Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS). Below, you can see that I
ripped Bert the Turtle's music intro from the original video and converted it into .wav in
order for it to play in the track listing. There are other instruments accompanying the
melody of Bert the Turtle, such as Fretless, Steel, and Synth Bass. The other instruments:
Prophesy and Thin Pipe are just fancy names for horn sounding instruments, as these
instruments can be customized, in which I will explain at the end.
Surprisingly, Bert the Turtle's theme is fast at 152 BPM! I had to track the speed of
the theme by listening to how fast the "dum dum dum" tune played and matched it to its
correct BPM by using my instruments to track its speed.
This is what the music editor looks like below. Imagine playing the piano, except you
are playing on a computer keyboard. Then, imagine piano sheet music and that whenever
you press a computer key, LMMS records what you press and it comes like these green
rectangles depending on how long you hold the computer key for.
When composing Bert the Turtle, I had to listen very carefully on what the music
intro played, so that I can duplicate the same notes into LMMS. After placing my notes, I
can change the note volume during post-production, which is why some green bars are
shorter in height than its neighboring bars. The reason why I did this is because Bert the
Turtle sometimes played quieter notes, so I matched the volume of these notes by
adjusting them.
These are a few examples of customizing the instruments in the settings. The sound
of the Fretless Bass can be altered by modifying the instruments frequency, FM Gain,
resonation, etc. In order to get the desired sound for these instruments, I had to change the
different sort of pitches in what is called ZynAddSubFX. This is one example of changing
an instrument's overall sound.
On the right, is the Sheep FX a.k.a the "bahhhh" of the sheep heard in the beginning
of Bert the Turtle. The beginning second of the bahhhh is silent, so there would have been
a delay when the sheep bahhhhs. What I did to change this effect is move the line over the
wave length, so that the sheep bahhhhs immediately. Using the piano keys below, I could
have also changed the pitch of the sheep whenever I wished.