Creating your own music

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Creating Music for your mod

There are a variety of tools that are useful for creating or converting music files for use in the source engine. The engine itself has certain requirements for a file to work properly which should be noted.

Format

PCM 16bit at 44KHz is the highest quality available. Both WAV files and MP3 files should use this standard to work in the source engine. Monaural or monophonic audio is NOT supported.

To add music to the hammer sound browser, simply place the WAV or MP3 file into the game's sound folder, or make one if there is none.

Note:Music should be flagged as music with the '#' character before the sound path (e.g. #music/song01.wav) and placed in "sound/music/..." directory in order for it to be affected by the "Music Volume" slider in the options menu.

Software

Programs for creating music are available in both free and paid versions from many sources. Below is a short list of popular paid programs for making music, which often have various versions and price-points for users.

Popular Music Software

Software	Information	Systems
Pro Tools	Uses subscription model	Windows 10, MacOS
FL Studio	One Time Purchase	Windows 10, MacOS
MAGIX Music Maker	One Time Purchase	Windows 10, MacOS
Logic Pro	One Time Purchase	MacOS

Freeware

Audacity Audacity is a powerful freeware sound editor. It allows you to record, edit, and mix audio together. It has many of the basic tools necessary to edit music as well as a variety of effects and filters. Audacity does not have instruments for making music, but has a small selection of sound generators. This program will require you to import or record instruments tracks.

Wavosaur Wavosaur is another freeware sound editor. Like audacity, it allows you to record, edit, and mix audio. The advantage of Wavosaur over audacity is the support of VST and ASIO Sound driver, a means of reducing latency in audio recording.

Recommended VST

REfx Nexus East West/ Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Gold

Demo Song

This song was made using only fl studio and pro tools Click to listen