I've been arranging music in FamiTracker since 2009, but there's one little problem. I've been using the DPCM samples of SMB3 which are under copyright of Nintendo and which I'm not allowed to use because of the copyright as Fair Use won't save me. Has anyone had this problem? What have you used as a replacement? Since I've got used to the sound of my compositions with the samples, it will be hard to get used to some new samples so I'd need to have them sound with as little difference as possible while being enough different to not be infringing of Nintendo's copyright.
Of the synths i have, there might be something similar to the percussive sounds on maybe yamaha sy 77 or alesis d4. I can check sometime but can't leave guarantee on when.
It wouldn't surprise me if the samples nintendo used originally came from some yamaha or roland synth or some sampler deck diskette. It makes it hypothetically possible to get something equal in appearance but still recorded and conditioned by yourself or someone to provide a new copy. Else, a sample of the same instrument type ought to do.
It wouldn't surprise me if the samples nintendo used originally came from some yamaha or roland synth or some sampler deck diskette. It makes it hypothetically possible to get something equal in appearance but still recorded and conditioned by yourself or someone to provide a new copy. Else, a sample of the same instrument type ought to do.
Please do and then send the samples to me so that I can use them. And thank you in advance 
There are large repositories of freely licensed sound samples out there, for example:
https://freesound.org/
https://www.audioblocks.com/royalty-free-audio/timpani
Try and look up similar samples by name of instrument, and keep in mind that you can edit them too, reshape the envelopes, etc.
https://freesound.org/
https://www.audioblocks.com/royalty-free-audio/timpani
Try and look up similar samples by name of instrument, and keep in mind that you can edit them too, reshape the envelopes, etc.
Are all the samples from nintendo-licensed games still protected under copyright?
Copyright law is such that they're certainly not any differently protected now than when the games came out.
But it's also not clear that all of the original samples are copyrightable, or that using them wouldn't count as fair use.
But it's also not clear that all of the original samples are copyrightable, or that using them wouldn't count as fair use.
Sogona wrote:
Are all the samples from nintendo-licensed games still protected under copyright?
For another 40 years, yes.
I guess it’s not as big of a deal as I thought it would be. I was able to find a snare drum on freesound that sounds pretty nice after being converted to DPCM. I did have a fondness for Palamedes’s drums, though.
Edit: Might as well share it if anyone's interested.
Edit: Might as well share it if anyone's interested.
Attachment:
At last, here you go. Had to scrounge for a lousy ac adapter before i could get to it. 
The samples need to be cut and conditioned, but then you have the freedom to try different conditioning methods to your taste, rather than being forced to stick with my preferences.
Each file includes 2-4 hits since my home made drum trigger set sometimes gets false positives on neighboring triggers due to vibration. You'll find at least one clean hit per file.
https://frankengraphics.files.wordpress ... ssion1.zip
(a 15mb download)
The samples need to be cut and conditioned, but then you have the freedom to try different conditioning methods to your taste, rather than being forced to stick with my preferences.
Each file includes 2-4 hits since my home made drum trigger set sometimes gets false positives on neighboring triggers due to vibration. You'll find at least one clean hit per file.
https://frankengraphics.files.wordpress ... ssion1.zip
(a 15mb download)
Thanks! I'm not sure what you mean by cutting. Do I need to open it up in Audacity and trim it or do I need to use some click suppression or something? I'm not good at audio processing.
Yeah basically i recorded a number of hits on each sound. So you'll find something like three or four hits in each .wav file (of which some hits are corrupt sounding, hence why i made sure to record several), but you only want one hit.
So if you use audacity, open the .wav file you're interested in using, and cut out the best sounding hit by removing everything else, using click-drag and the delete key. It may help to zoom in a bit so you see the actual start of the vibration on each hit.
You want to make sure that the sample starts at 0 or very close to 0 volume to avoid a click-sounding artifact, but at the same time being close enough to the peak to get it rhythmically tight.
It is quite easy to browse the sounds in vlc, windows media player, winamp, grooves, or whatever, so i'd do that before examining them in audacity. Just note that these apps sometimes make a pop sound when opening a new file - this sound is not part of the wav file itself.
With conditioning, i simply meant the conversion to a NES-friendly binary. If a sample sounds awful after the conversion, it may help to use a compressor to reduce the dynamic width prior to conversion. You might also want to use a bandpass filter/eq in some cases to exclude nonessential frequencies that might mess up the lo-fi representation of the sound.
There was a thread quite recently about methods for better downsampling.
So if you use audacity, open the .wav file you're interested in using, and cut out the best sounding hit by removing everything else, using click-drag and the delete key. It may help to zoom in a bit so you see the actual start of the vibration on each hit.
You want to make sure that the sample starts at 0 or very close to 0 volume to avoid a click-sounding artifact, but at the same time being close enough to the peak to get it rhythmically tight.
It is quite easy to browse the sounds in vlc, windows media player, winamp, grooves, or whatever, so i'd do that before examining them in audacity. Just note that these apps sometimes make a pop sound when opening a new file - this sound is not part of the wav file itself.
With conditioning, i simply meant the conversion to a NES-friendly binary. If a sample sounds awful after the conversion, it may help to use a compressor to reduce the dynamic width prior to conversion. You might also want to use a bandpass filter/eq in some cases to exclude nonessential frequencies that might mess up the lo-fi representation of the sound.
There was a thread quite recently about methods for better downsampling.