Introduction This guide it made for the purpose of supplying those who explore the stars the ability to share their songs from even the farthest reaches of the universe. What you will need LOTRO MIDI Player (or any similar program) *I'm using LotroMidiPlayer-1.1.0.5 for my conversions* Tux Guitar (optional) MIDI files for conversion GP5/PTB files for conversion (if using Tux guitar also) Conversion Method 1 Download any form of LOTRO ABC converter (it's a free program) Download an MIDI file of the song you want to convert. Open the MIDI file into LOTRO. Choose what instruments are to be played or not (by default drums are disabled) Edit the track for specific instruments, else save as .abc in the "Starbound/assets/user/songs" folder. Load up Starbound and play your song. If need be, delete the song and re-edit to perfect it. Conversion Method 2 This method is for those who have made their own guitar tabs or are using guitar tabs to import into Starbound. Download the guitar tabs you want. Open Tux Guitar. Load the tab into the program. Press play to see how it sounds within the program itself. Click "File>Export>Export MIDI". Save in a folder of your choice. Follow steps 3 through 7 of Conversion Method 1. This method is quite useful for those who want to use self-written songs, say for example a song you composed for a loved one on their birthday or for Valentine's Day, or for songs that are extremely hard to find on the internet, or to help the Starbound community by creating the .abc files for players to use.
The LOTRO ABC converter is not the idea tool for making ABCs for Starbound. It has a 3 octave limit, and often produces ABCs that are off-beat, especially when importing MIDIs that have tempo changes. I hate to do a 'shameless plug', but you want to take a look at this: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?resources/starbound-composer.1207/
This is just the "bare minimum" if you will. I use the LOTRO player because its fairly easy to use for new comers to the modding scene so they grow accustomed to how these programs work before branching out. But yes, there are other programs that do an infinitely better job, though from personal experience nothing is easier than sticking a MIDI in and file>save as .abc
The reason I mentioned it because the process of converting a song in Starbound Composer is just about the same: Drag a MIDI file in, save out the tracks you wanna keep (and possibly merge some together). The main difference is that you don't have to deal with the limitations of LOTRO (which do not apply to Starbound) and you generally get a better sounding ABC with the same amount of effort.
Yes, while there are lots and lots of midi to abc converters out there for starbound and other MMOs that use abc files, I'm still sticking with the fact that LOTRO's MIDI player is more user friendly for the inexperienced modder. It's got a simple UI (which is pretty user friendly, no add ons or other gizmos or gadgets to confuse people). This guide's mainly to get people set up, I could pretty much care less if they go out and buy some $20+ piece of software with all the bells and whistles possible. And because this is a beginner's guide, simplicity is key. I've looked into Starbound Composer's screenshots, and while I agree it's better for more in-depth editing, the LOTRO one's simpler for "getting the hang of things" to put it mildly. And after they've got the hang of things, they could move onto more "large scale" projects using better software, and not just confining them to the limited amount of features LOTRO provides. In other words, I chose LOTRO specifically for the guide as it's the simplest converter in terms of features and usability. If I had to place the Starbound Composer somewhere in my guide, I'd put it as an intermediate program, so a borderline between the simple ones and the high-end music editing programs that cost $15 or more on average. Grasping the basics is what I intended when I wrote this guide while following the rule of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Everyone has different skill levels and scale differently, thus I used the simple midi converter. There's also the musically inclined who wrote their own song (I wrote a simple tab on my guitar to test this) that they want in starbound (like some insane riff they made) and I used Tux guitar because of it's support for most Power Tab formats while including PDF documents as well.
Alright, I see your point . The only reason I brought it up is because of the quirks the generated files exhibit, but I understand your reasoning for choosing it nonetheless.
I can't open the download links because bit.ly links aren't accessbile in China, so I can't test it yet. I'm very impatiently waiting for my friend to download this for me. If it does everything you said it should, it should be immensely simpler than the LOTRO editor. Especially for a newbie who doesn't know how to edit problematic issues in ABC's generated by Maestro and other LOTRO converters. Furthermore, if it really allows you to test what the playback in Starbound should sound like without actually loading Starbound, this would be hands-down the best option, by far. Looking forward to testing it out.