I had a dev catch the end of me botching Guns and Roses’ “Don’t Cry” and all of Pink Floyd’s "Another brick in the wall part 2)! I wonder how it sounded for him.
Anyway a while back I posted about a Midi Keyboard interface I wrote to play music in GW2. I took it further towards the multibox side and bought 3 other accounts to play with.
The result is the Pelenoria Sisters, a cover band that does some original jams. I play most nights at divinity’s reach near the dwayna statue. I occasionally run the twitch channel where you can hear some of the songs:.
http://www.twitch.tv/xliokaqiaox/profile/highlights.
Some of those highlights may have the midi keyboard sound coming through.
I’m planning to do another performance tonight. My playlist typically includes:
Journey:
- Open Arms
- Lights (when the lights go down in the city)
Disney:
- Can you feel the love tonight
- Part of your world
Andrew Lloyd weber
- Think of me, All i ask of you, Music of the night from Phantom of the Opera
- Memory from cats
Pink Floyd
- Mother (natural key, not transposed)
- Hey You
- Another brick in the wall part 2
I know Lynard Skynard’s Freebird and can relatively fake the solo sometimes. This one is done in natural key as well (avoiding that F# as much as possible)
Some nights include:
- Select sight reading from a fairly large set of sheet music
- Rush: Closer to the Heart
- Bob Sieger: Turn the Page
- Garnet’s Lullaby from FF9
Original stuff:
Doodle in Am: I play an 8 bar chord sequence of A minor and G with F, G, A at the end of the bar. Bridge typically includes E minor. I jam with the melody half during this thing.
March to battle: Transposed out of E minor key (wish i could play that key ANET its so cool of a key. That and G minor is perfect for spooky Halloween stuff.) it will sound similar to the doodle in Am until I throw in the 16th note chord sweeps (think the server can’t handle it sometimes).
Band members:
Lioka Pelenoria: Lead, “vocals”, High range harp. Sometimes does mid/high range bell.
Zuei Pelenoria: Chords, Low harp.
Evalee Pelenoria: Chords, mid harp. Part of the melody most of the time.
Vespa Pelenoria: Bass
Why multiboxing:
I did multiboxing to get around a piece of lag that occurs when switching octaves. The full range of notes in GW2 including the bass is also accessible with at least 2 characters playing. The Bass goes from C1 through B2. The harp goes from C3 through C6. The octave switch thing doesn’t really matter for the bass as it usually plays in the C2-C3 range. The harp octave switching can be lethal to a piece when lag spikes hard. The octave switch lag seems to be that the client tells the server what octave it will be playing in and the server has to respond back before it can switch octave again. If you switch faster than this then the second switch is not registered. For my midi interface this means it de-synchronizes with the GW2 client and notes sound an octave off. I can impose a lag to compensate for this but that prevents fast pieces and chord inversions which cross octaves. Am and G chords are particulary susceptible to this lag.
By splitting the octaves among multiple characters I avoid this switching lag and am able to play these chords without issues. I can also do arpeggios between low and high harp without breaking octave sync.
I personally would love if a midi interface were part of the actual game client but I’ve made do with what’s possible. I’ll be on 8pm EDT till late tonight where i mentioned. Hope to have you listening!
edit: Octave switching
(edited by lioka qiao.8734)