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Music Production => Tracking => Topic started by: Oliwerko on December 11, 2008, 07:28:48

Title: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 11, 2008, 07:28:48
Hi lads,

I am pretty much familiar with the methods of modern tracking and its techniques.

However, even after some intensive search, I am still missing some points about the old-school tracking:

I love the C64 music. I tried to search for some C64 VSTis so I could use them in Renoise, but these had usually only some "partial functionality" or how to say it.
Is there a way to re-create the C64 music? Which software to use? (PC only, sorry)
Or am I just half-dumb saying that these VSTis have half-functionality? Are there any of them that can be used to create fully-flegded C64 music? I simply don't believe that the VSTis and samples is the way to do it.

What about Amiga?
Same things there, how to re-create the sound? Through samples, VSTis, emulators? What to use?

Maybe some of you know the old adventure game called Beneath a Steel Sky. It was available for DOS (on floppys, later the talkie version on CD32) and for Amiga. The music in them was a bit different (PC music in itsounded pretty different than Amiga music). For me, this is the second best soundtrack (after Turrican series) and would love to know some more info on how it was created. (If I am not mistaken, the Amiga music was made by Dave Lowe and the PC one by Dave Cummins)
Anyone? Do you know anything about it?

This info is pretty much hard to find by me, hence I was born in 1990, so I have pretty much no first-hand experience.
I hope someone can tell me more.

I really appreciate your effort.
Thanks in advance.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 11, 2008, 14:00:34
For cross-platform SID (C64) composing, try Goattracker. ("Tools" section at http://covertbitops.c64.org/)

Trackers started on the Amiga and you can use many of the current PC/multi-platform trackers to save MOD files. In MilkyTracker, you can get a pretty authentic Amiga sound and save compatible files although you still need to pay attention to things that would break compatibility. Ask further instructions if/when you're ready to go there. The basic guidelines are: 4 channel polyphony, 8-bit samples max 128kB each.

Sure we know BaSS, it was actually available on PC CD-ROM as well. And currently it's released as freeware so you can freely download and play it using ScummVM. The music on PC is MIDI and how it sounds can vary greatly on what MIDI synthesizer hardware/software you're using. The way you've probably originally heard it, would have been through the Yamaha OPL2/3 FM synthesis chip on some Creative SoundBlaster board, de facto standard of PC sound of the era. Nostalgia is one thing, but wavetable synthesis does wonders to the score. The music on the Amiga side comes from a custom player, probably very similar to MOD trackers/players because of the Amiga sound hardware, capable of playing 4 digital sounds samples simultaneously. I'm not sure which came first, but if I had to guess, Lowe probably rearranged Cummins' score for the Amiga.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 11, 2008, 16:58:30
Thanks for reply!

I surely check that link out.

I have already been poking around in Milky and got an idea of chiptune creation, white noise snares and wave drawing. But I have been wondering what was the differences between the C64 and Amiga and PC and modern trackers. Simply how did they compose music back then. Sure, it was similar to MOD format (reminds me of prefixes on amiga music ?). Did they draw their own waves with the limitations you mentioned?
Or did they have say 20 different waveforms ready, which they could not edit?

I get the idea of how different hardware affects how the music in BASS sounds. Does this mean that you have one MIDI track that you can play on different hardware and the same track actually sounds differetly then? And how was the MIDI created?
I've first heard the BASS music version that comes with that free download you mentioned. I have also found some recordings that sounded differently, however (probably the Amiga ones - downloaded from http://www.exotica.org.uk/wiki/Main_Page - prefix file format again played using DeliPlayer). So the PC version is MIDI and Amiga is tracker-based?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 11, 2008, 18:55:46
On the C64 you have the the SID chip, which is a synth providing noise, triangle, saw and variable width pulse waves plus you have the filters and ring modulation for that extra bit of sweetness. At first, people just straight up programmed the computer to produce tones, noises and ultimately, music. I gather the next step would be programming an actual editor for yourself to write music and finally coming up with something that would actually be usable enough for other people as well. C64 music editors have started to look more like Amiga trackers much later, after the UI style was popularized on other platforms. Before that, a typical SID editor screen would resemble (or BE) a hex editor even more.

I never had an Amiga as a kid nor did I use it back in the day, but knowing the Paula chip has its characteristics just like the SID does, and there being a butt load of these "custom format" Amiga tunes floating around the tubes, it's straightforward to assume the development progressing similarly. With a custom program and the Paula chip, you could create music from digital sounds sampled from external sources (all the rage back then, made possible by the new technology) or (probably to a greater extent) synthesize (rather than draw) your own. Trackers started from the Ultimate SoundTracker by programmer/musician Karsten Obarski and it (and the horde of hacked versions of it) then popularized the MOD format. But even then, custom players/editors could be preferred by musicians because of more comfortable UIs or improved functionality/features.

You're correct about one MIDI track sounding different on different setups. A tracker analogy would be exchanging the samples of your module on different sound cards (and that's one of the reasons why modules could compete with MIDI on the PC at all: the music sounded the same on different setups). MIDI music is created using a hardware or software sequencer, for nearly three decades already. You are correct for the last part. UnExoticA archives Amiga music, BaSS music on the Amiga is technically similar to trackers and the PC version uses MIDI tracks.

A modern tracker, while still usually capable of sample playback, is nowadays used more like a traditional sequencer (triggering and controlling external instruments and effects) or an audio package with its integrated synthesis and DSP features.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 11, 2008, 20:50:45
With a custom program and the Paula chip, you could create music from digital sounds sampled from external sources (all the rage back then, made possible by the new technology) or (probably to a greater extent) synthesize (rather than draw) your own.
I don't quite understand this part. It's similar to SID having its own characteristics, I get that. What are possible external sources, how did they synthesize?

From what I've read so far, If I understood correctly:

C64 - realtime sound synthesis (no samples) provided by SID - limited cound of different ready-made waveforms you can more or less edit using modulation and filters.
Editors were custom made by the individual musicians and later started to look like trackers for their comfortable UI, while still keeping the SID characteristics and all that.

Amiga - realtime synthesis too (or was it also samples?), Paula chip with its own characteristics. Then the part I don't understand comes. Later, Ultimate SoundTracker made by Obarski - popularization of MODs continued and was followed by PC trackers (with sample-based synthesis?).

So basically the old tunes were small in its size because the limited options of the SID/Paula featuring only realtime synthesis and when sample-based synthesis came, it introduced sample-based music as we know it in modern trackers, thus incerasing the file size due to the samples.
And MIDI music is to music what vector graphics to graphics if I understood.
That means that you only tell what note is played by what instrument and when, but the sound depends on the sound of the instruments, which sound differently on different hardware.

And to the re-creation of the old tunes:
C64 can be most accurately re-created by the program in the link you provided?
Amiga - pretty much no way of any kind of emulation, you make that tunes rather by trying to stick to the Paula limitations. Are there custom drawn waveforms (Milky-like?)?
And MIDI can be made like it is made for ages - in a software sequencer. But what about the playback? How do you play it? You choose from a selection of chips available? Or?

P.S. Thanks for the invaluable info you're giving me here, again.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 11, 2008, 20:58:35
Quote
Amiga - realtime synthesis too (or was it also samples?)
amiga uses only samples. the "mod" formated was created on / for the amiga, so it uses samples.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 11, 2008, 21:44:57
I might have led you astray by comparing the Paula to the SID. Paula is all about the samples. And I wouldn't call it synthesis really, but playback. As I understand, any actual synthesis on the Amiga would have to be software based, waveforms calculated in a program and the results routed as digital samples to Paula's channels for outputting. That's how I think AHX works. (A little help here, Amiga peeps?)

Then there's chiptunes, which might sound like the music on older, 8-bit systems, but are actually sample based modules using tiny looped sample fragments to create sound wave forms. So, chiptunes and basic synthesis on the Amiga is actually the first wave of C64 nostalgia in music. "Real" sounding digital music came first.

Goattracker integrates a SID emulation engine, so it should be pretty close to the real thing. And sure there's Amiga emulation, in form of (Win)UAE. Just like you can run a C64 music editor in a C64 emulator on the PC, you can do the same with Amiga. But most people don't feel the need to as tracking already moved on to the PC in the 1990s, Amiga emulation requires a lot of CPU power which isn't available on older comps and portable devices and using native apps just generally is a whole lot smoother.

I think you got it already, but there's no difference between custom drawn waveforms and regular samples. Drawing is just another way of creating samples, a feature copied over from Fasttracker II, one of the most popular DOS trackers.

MIDI playback on PC depended for a long time on solely the sound card. For most people this meant the Yamaha OPL FM chip on SoundBlaster and Adlib sound cards which could be compared to the Sega Mega Drive (having another Yamaha FM chip) or the previous generation mobile phone polyphonic ringtones, you know before MP3s got there too. If nothing special was done, the MIDI music would be played with an FM approximation of the General MIDI bank. Some game developers/musicians would go through the trouble of coming up with a proper music drivers for the OPL chip and programming the chip's register to create custom instrument patches and as a result, more inspired FM arrangements of the score. A good example of this is the PC version of the game Dune 2. A lot of PC game music was optimally targeted for MIDI sound modules like the MT-32 and Sound Canvas manufactured by Roland but the cheaper all-in-one consumer solution, SoundBlaster, is what most people had. As the OPL chip was the prominent music source in PCs of the first half of the 1990s, the demoscene got there too. There are plenty of trackers for that synth chip too, but that action is about programming the OPL registers and has nothing to with MIDI.

On the other hand, demoscene people got their taste of MIDI music with Wavetable synthesis when Gravis released their Ultrasound sound card and gave them away to people at demo parties. But the scene people would be more interested in the digital sound mixing that the card was able to do itself without taxing the CPU. So, soon we had demos with digital tracker music played with high sound quality and visual effects running on the screen blazing fast thanks to the sound card having taken the sound mixing load off the CPU.Wavetable synthesis is what you hear on a run-of-the-mill Windows PC today, although the default sound bank in DirectMusic (a Microsoft DirectX component handling MIDI music) is low quality and pretty effin' horrible.

Lastly, I understood you essentially asked how a musician chooses or dictates what their MIDI music sounds like. Well, they don't. As MIDI is only musical information, the sound of the playback always depends on the hardware/software setup.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: m0d on December 11, 2008, 22:50:52
I might have led you astray by comparing the Paula to the SID. Paula is all about the samples. And I wouldn't call it synthesis really, but playback. As I understand, any actual synthesis on the Amiga would have to be software based, waveforms calculated in a program and the results routed as digital samples to Paula's channels for outputting. That's how I think AHX works. (A little help here, Amiga peeps?)

Correct
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 12, 2008, 07:39:11
Oh, that means that there's practically no difference between Amiga music made on Paula and modern tracking (aside from the limitations you mentioned)?
That's why emulation is not needed?

I didn't know how huge was the jump from FM cards to Wavetable synthesis.
So MIDI music is controlled by a part of DirectX no matter what sound card do you have? And what can you do when it's crappy, buy some old MT-32? Or just some kind of software emulation?
I've also found the BASS soundtrack on one website divided into two categories - MT-32 and Soundblaster AWE 64 and man, the differences were big.

Oh, and I've found some HW SID sound cards being produced. Why, when we have software emulation? Because there's no way to have 100% accurate emulation?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: m0d on December 12, 2008, 12:46:18
Oh, and I've found some HW SID sound cards being produced. Why, when we have software emulation? Because there's no way to have 100% accurate emulation?

SID chips aren't entirely digital. There have some analogue parts in them. Emulation, while it exists, often just isn't good enough because it has to be modelled and that leads to variances in place of the real deal, especially for purists. HardSIDs use salvaged SID chips from C64s.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 12, 2008, 13:12:50
Quote
So MIDI music is controlled by a part of DirectX no matter what sound card do you have?
no. just as long as your soundcard has no own wavetable (and most soundcards don't have one), the wavetable emulation jumps in. SoundBlasters are maybe one of the only mainstream soundcard series which still can use their own soundfonts, but I don't think that this is handled on the hardware.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 12, 2008, 20:22:34
So the wavetable is actually some kind of storage of ready-made waveforms that are combined and modified to produce sound? That's how modern sound cards work?

And are the differences between emulated SID and real SID (like the ones from HardSID or HyperSID) big? Or is it more or less just for the die-hard people hearing every little difference?

I know I have probably too many questions, but the info I've found on the internet is either very in-depth or detail-less. I really enjoy reading what you write me here. Thanks, really.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 12, 2008, 20:52:48
Quote
So the wavetable is actually some kind of storage of ready-made waveforms that are combined and modified to produce sound? That's how modern sound cards work?
as i said, no. it doesn't work like that anymore, because more advanced techology is used now that we have enough space for mp3 and ogg and whatever. it was common to use a wavetable, but nowadays, noone really uses it anymore.

Quote
And are the differences between emulated SID and real SID (like the ones from HardSID or HyperSID) big? Or is it more or less just for the die-hard people hearing every little difference?
That really, really depends on your emulator. Some are good (libsidplay2 and similar stuff), some are just utter crap (littlesid or whatever it was called).
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 14, 2008, 09:51:36
So the sound equipment worked in this order:
Real-time synthesis (SID), Sample-based (Paula), FM synthesis (SoundBlaster), Wavetable synthesis (Ultrasound), and now we have modern soundcards using some of these plus some modern technologies like DSP?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 14, 2008, 13:12:33
Sound Blasters also had a digital channel, later two for stereo. And the Ultrasound was able to play any digital sounds on its 32 hardware channels (14 at CD quality), not just a MIDI preset bank. Sound Blaster AWE cards took wavetable synthesis further by supporting soundfonts (GUS's .PAT patch format is simpler and closer to to Fasttracker II .XI instruments).

But generally you're right, that's about how it was for consumer hardware before. And you shouldn't forget the other, competing or just different machines of each era. It's interesting stuff.

Nowadays it isn't about sound cards, it's about software. When the computers themselves became powerful enough to handle sound processing while still being able to handle game graphics or application multitasking, sound hardware became less important. (And interestingly, at about the same time they were starting to outsource graphics to so called 3D accelerator display daughter boards. Later the functionality was integrated with the actual graphics adapter eventually making it one of the top-3 most important components when talking about PC performance.)

Of course hardware still matters to prosumers and musicians but keeping in canon with the thread topic, the demoscene and tracking began on consumer hardware, the most widespread machine automatically having the largest potential reserve of sceners around.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 14, 2008, 15:40:28
You may also be interested in the article "phonomenal" (http://www.crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en&what=articles&name=showarticle.htm&article=soundcards) by crossfire designs which covers a whole lot of the "musical history" of IBM computers.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 14, 2008, 16:11:26
Thanks for the extensive info, I really appreciate it, gonna read some more on wiki  ;D

Anyway,
what re-creation ways of SID and Amiga sound do you recommend?
I've found out that for SID, one option is to buy a HW real SID (HardSID or HyperSID?), the other option may be a software synth (I've only found QuadraSID being said to be the best one out there).

And for Amiga sounds, what are the limitations again?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 14, 2008, 22:20:00
You may also be interested in the article "phonomenal" (http://www.crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en&what=articles&name=showarticle.htm&article=soundcards) by crossfire designs which covers a whole lot of the "musical history" of IBM computers.

Seems like a nice read, thanks saga. Bookmarked!
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 15, 2008, 15:23:04
You're welcome. The article is really worth reading, that's why I've also linked it on one of my websites.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 15, 2008, 20:05:43
Yay!
That will surely consume much of my time in next few days  ;D

Thx
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 17, 2008, 18:40:06
Sorry if I'm getting too much off topic, let me know if that's the case, I simply don't know with who else to discuss these things.

I have read a bit and I am still a little confused:

If I get it right, Paula was a totally advanced piece of hardware for its time for its capability of playback of digital audio, while SID was only a real-time partly analog partly digital synth with one DAC converter and PC sound cards having only the OPL2 frequency modulation synthesis used for MIDI playback, right?

I assume that first PC sound card that was capable of something else than simple FM synthesis (AdLib) or multiple PC-speaker-like playback (GameBlaster) was the Roland LAPC-1 featuring the MT-32 synth, which was in fact even more than simple wavetable synthesizer. Is this right?

And then, the first PC sound card capable of playing digital samples was the 1989-90 SoundBlaster. So it took PCs practically 5 years to catch on what was implemented (!) in Amiga back then.

So the "big jump" was actually the digital sample playability (before which we had only FM and wavetable synthesis)? (Which is in fact playing a digital recording which was recorded using pulse-code modulation making use of a DAC?)

And could you please explain the wavetable synthesis to me? I still don't get it. Is it a library of pre-recorded samples that are just combined and played on different volume/pitch to produce sound? Or are they synthesized real-time? And how do the "patches" function? (I am referring particulary to the LAPC-1, that is the most confusing part for me)
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 17, 2008, 20:32:28
Wavetable is samples. It doesn't involve generating waves, but may contain effects like reverb and chorus. I'm not that familiar with Roland MIDI modules, but since you mention MT-32 being more than simple wavetable, you're right. I think generally it goes like this: the note attacks of patches are samples and the it's mixed with a synthesized waveform, which takes over entirely by the sustain part of a note.

You are also correct about the PC being lame and years behind of technical development when it started to gain momentum as anything else than a boring business computer.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 17, 2008, 21:49:16
Wavetable synthesis is generally a fixed-sample synthesis; you have instruments provided by the manufacturer and you can make music with them. Just like with a synthesizer and its preset voices. Some soundcards (like the MT-32, i think) allowed you to load custom patches (which was used by games like Monkey Island), but still, this was mostly limited to your 128 bog-standard midi instruments.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 17, 2008, 21:55:23
So FM is real-time synth only and wavetable is only samples...

So the only difference between wavetable synthesis (introduced by MT-32) and actual digital sample playback (introduced by SoundBlaster) is that in case of MT-32 you have a fixed number of ROM-stored instruments (which you can alter/add more to some extent with patches) and in case of SoundBlaster you can play whatever digital sample you want (making it the first card to be able to work correctly under the "modern" DOS trackers?)?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 18, 2008, 18:29:10
basically, yes.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 18, 2008, 21:30:06
And what's the difference between the capability of playing a wavetable sample and any digital sample then?

Oh, and which was the first soundcard you could use to play audio CDs on PC?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 18, 2008, 22:11:48
No real difference but the first wavetable synthesizers were probably built to use a static sound bank, thus they could not function as a general purpose sample player.

BTW, DOS trackers were used also used with PC speaker Covox Speech Thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing) output before Sound Blaster got really popular.

About the CD, Sound Blaster Pro was the first Creative slab to provide a CD line input. Don't know if others beat them to it..  But you could listen to CDs before that as well. CD-ROM drives weren't originally connected to the computer via IDE cable but with a proprietary controller card. Mine had RCA audio jacks on the back which I could have used, if it weren't for the bulk SB 16 already providing a CD input. Could have gotten better audio quality through that, who knows, but it was a convenience choice to have all the sound the computer made come out of a single output. And the horrible little speakers wouldn't have revealed any differences anyway...
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 19, 2008, 12:40:41
As raina pointed out, there's no real difference in playing them, but wavetable data was mostly kept on a ROM or RAM on the soundcard, whereas "sound effects" (aka digital samples) were mostly played from convential memory (or EMS / XMS of course).
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 20, 2008, 11:34:48
Thanks for response, It's mostly clear to me now.
I wouldn't expect these things will interest me so much  :D

Thanks many many times again for the invaluable and extensive info you've given.
I appreciate that.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 20, 2008, 14:33:02
You're welcome. This is quite an intersting topic indeed, especially if you're interested in retro gaming and similar activities.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 21, 2008, 10:24:00
Today I realized some interesting thing. I own a SoundBlaster X-fi, and in the audio devices settings in the control panel, in the MIDI device selector, I have the default Microsft GS Wavetable SW synth and two other options: X-Fi Synth A and B.
In comparison - the default one gives some weird sounds while the others (A and B sound equally) have some nice output. Does this mean that the card has its own wavetable?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 21, 2008, 12:36:01
I'm not sure, but I think it's emulated (at least it was on other new soundblasters). The soundblaster midi is still superiour to the directmusic variant, though.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 21, 2008, 13:11:14
It's hard to find any advanced details about the card, quite surprisingly.

Anyway, I've found some cool AdLib stuff while searching through the web yesterday, maybe some of you don't know it yet:

AdLib tracker II, which seems pretty good: http://stano.korex.sk/ (Anyone have any esperience?)

AdPlug, which can play tons of AdLib formats even in winamp (but haven't worked for majority of my MIDIs though): http://adplug.sourceforge.net/

And probably the most valuable one, the AdLib Visual Composer along with the Instrument Editor can be found on this site: http://darrinsweirdworld.blogspot.com/2007/10/excuse-me-while-i-ad-lib-this.html (Not sure if it's legal, I take no responsibility)
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 21, 2008, 13:16:58
adlib tracker II is maybe the most widespread adlib tracker, but i myself am not composing adlib tunes anymore, so i never used it (i just made a few tools with a qbasic adlib tracker).

i also use AdPlug in xmplay, but it certainly has not the best adlib emulation. i still prefer recording the tunes from my AWE-64 in this case.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 21, 2008, 14:25:43
When I first saw Adlib Tracker II and especially GoatTracker, I finally understood what does "user-friendly" mean. ;D

There are so many different interesting genres ranging from amiga and SID to AdLib and MT-32. One would like to do all of them, which is, sadly, not possible.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 21, 2008, 15:00:27
Adlib Tracker II is a good and powerful adlib editor. The inteface has some Scream Tracker 3 influence, so I agree it's a bit of a bitch. But to me, so is almost every other tracker apart from Fasttracker, MilkyTracker and Renoise (which has also become worse since v1.5).
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 21, 2008, 16:53:18
In which way worse? I've begun with the 1.90, haven't experienced the older ones.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 21, 2008, 18:42:54
Before, the keyboard layout used to be fully configurable but they've gone the way of hardcoding some keyboard functions since then, which is not a deal breaker but certainly an annoyance when you're using multiple trackers. It's a weird step back when the rest of the development seems to be going forward at a nice pace.

Oh, forgot to mention: There's an ADT2 based player plugin as well as other neat stuff at Da!Nyl's Workspace (http://dawork.synchronus.de/).
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 21, 2008, 21:00:32
AdLib seems to be popular as hell even nowadays. At least compared to the MT-32, for which I have not seen any editing software yet (except the first google result when searching for "MT-32 tracker", haven't tried it yet)
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on December 21, 2008, 21:50:55
Adlib is popular now, because it was dominant then. You have to realize how much more common the OPL was. Roland MIDI modules can fetch high prices on online auctions today while the common old sound cards with an OPL chip are thrown away as garbage. The contrast in price grows higher, which means you can get OPL hardware for pennies/free. Also, the emulation is much further than with MT-32.

Also, MT-32 is more pro => musicians => MIDI
while OPL is more common => hobbyists => trackers
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on December 21, 2008, 23:19:41
Also, MT-32 is more pro => musicians => MIDI
while OPL is more common => hobbyists => trackers

That explained a lot, I did not really realize that.

Today I searched for more trackers for SID and OPL and found quite a few.
I also found people saying that AdLib Tracker II is shit and Reality Adlib Tracker or
FM-Kingtracker is a better option. I've also found ninjatracker and odin tracker for C64 (native for 64 though).

Is there any real difference between all these trackers, or is it all the same with little differences which make people prefer one over another?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 22, 2008, 00:13:02
i don't know any of the trackers, but all of them have to have quite something in common: The FM synthesis. You have to build your own FM samples or load presets. It's mostly the inteface that is different, and some editor may only support OPL2 and not OPL3 (8 vs. 16 voices, mono vs. stereo). So some of them are indeed advanced, but they all have a lot in common.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on January 01, 2009, 16:14:44
Today I was astonished having found out that new MilkyTracker version supports amiga resampling. Does that mean that using 4-channel milkytracker MODs with amiga resampling turned on sounds like if it was played on real amiga hardware?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on January 01, 2009, 23:40:34
That's the idea, but what's even more important is that you're playing the song the song in either ProTracker mode instead of Fasttracker II mode. You can control this in Options. I personally prefer the ProTracker 2 mode for MOD tracking because it enables an on-the-fly sample change technique not available in other modes.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on January 03, 2009, 12:13:03
on-the-fly sample change?

I also noticed the panning setting, which allows realistic amiga panning, that's great.
I'm getting fond of Milky more and more, I guess  ;D

Actually, milkytracker was the thing that made me start tracking anyway.
I wonder how did you get samples in '91 or so, when internet wasn't everywhere. Did you have to buy samples? But in old modules, much of the samples are simple/lower quality, but complicated enough to be hard to draw. What options did you have back then?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: m0d on January 03, 2009, 12:24:23
Quote
I wonder how did you get samples in '91 or so, when internet wasn't everywhere. Did you have to buy samples? But in old modules, much of the samples are simple/lower quality, but complicated enough to be hard to draw. What options did you have back then?

Quite a variety of sources, there are more than this of course :)
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on January 03, 2009, 22:39:53
on-the-fly sample change?

Means, if you track like this:
Code: [Select]
C-4 ·1 ·· ···
··· ·· ·· ···
··· ·2 ·· ···
··· ·· ·· ···

...sample (instrument in MT) number 2 starts playing on the third row from the same position where sample 1 left off. It's a very powerful method for chipping and doing effects on samples which have only slight differences (different filter settings for example).

It's a poorly supported technique overall, since it was dropped in ProTracker 3, and I believe DOS trackers never supported it. To my knowledge, it's currently supported by MilkyTracker, XMPlay (in PT1 MOD mode), DeliPlayer, UADE and possibly OpenMPT. (Just waiting for saga to pounce and confirm the latter. ;))
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on January 03, 2009, 23:01:56
OpenMPT only seems to support this for .it modules, as far as quick tests show. So I suppose this behaviour is also valid for XM/MOD? (btw, I just fixed a .xm-related bug. and spotted a .mod-related bug in milkytracker at the same time :P)
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on January 03, 2009, 23:18:03
Ah, it's seen nice in the code. Quite a powerful feature, I guess. But, I have to admit - I have no idea where I would use it - another sign of insufficient experience :P
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on January 04, 2009, 02:31:25
@Saga, to my knowledge this is strictly a MOD feature, although I can't be sure about IT. XM never supported it and neither should any XM replay.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on January 04, 2009, 15:12:47
Well, I just checked and Impulse Tracker supports this as well. :)
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on January 05, 2009, 00:20:58
IT is a nice file format...
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on January 05, 2009, 00:46:24
sure it is ;p
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on February 14, 2009, 09:18:04
Okay guys, holidays are here and I have plenty of free time to experiment, so I'm gonna ask some further questions, if you don't mind. I'm in the phase I understand what is what, but I am not yet sure how to get hang of things. Specifically, what is the best approach to making chiptunes, Amiga tunes and SID tunes?

I recon there are many possible ways, but I would like to know what are the most popular ones. For SID, I've found this QuadraSID thing some time ago. Do you have any experience with it? For now it seems to me that buying this thingy can be the best you can do for SID composing, on modern platforms, that is. I know I could always do SID in odintracker or so, but it's more...comfortable to do it in modern trackers. But is it worth it?

What about chiptunes? Do chip-artists draw everything themselves? Do they use some basic VSTs or what?

And the greatest question mark for me is Amiga. I simply don't know how to achieve that Amiga sound. I know, 4 channels, 8-bit samples, but what else? This limitation does not give it that recognizable sound. Where can I get samples that sound like that? (I love that deathjester sound)

I would be grateful for any help you could share.
Thanks.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: raina on February 14, 2009, 15:33:16
The best approach is what suits you the best.

SID sound cards are an interesting subject. Sweet things for anybody to own for sure, and if it gets your creative juices flowing, certainly worth it. (For an example on how to not use SID hardware, see Timbaland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Timbaland_plagiarism_controversy).)

What about chiptunes? Be more specific. Whether we like it or not, the term is now more wide-ranging than ever. It can mean many things, I think it means all of them at once. The key is the easily generateable basic sound waveforms we all know and love from our belowed 8-bit systems, and things that sound like that.

Do artists draw everything themselves? No. In many cases that's not even an option and you're stuck with whatever parameters you can control on a sound chip. If you're using a sample based tracker, you have that option, or you can use generators, synths, whatever to produce the sound you like. Using a VST, why not? Enforcing specific platform limitations might become harder with more advanced tools but that's not always the point either, you can just make chip-influenced-whatever-tunes (still falling under the broad definition of chiptune). Just as there is no set destination, there is no one path there. You decide what you want to make and how. If it's not working, you'll know, or somebody will come and tell you.

The classic Amiga sound you're probably thinking of is not a chiptune sound. The hardware specs contribute to sound quality but since it's already all sample based and realistic the sound is defined by the unforgettable, cheesy, lovable and godawful '80s/'90s samples. Dig in: http://aminet.net/search?query=st-%3F%3F.lha
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on February 14, 2009, 17:02:36
I guess the hardware SIDs are a bit too much for me as a beginner in this stuff, so I thought I would try some payware software first and perhaps then move on HW...

About the chiptunes, I was just wondering how and where do artists get those 8-bit sounds. I guess that these sources are just like with everything else - simple waveform generators/VSTs/drawing. Good point with the fact it does not have to fulfill the limitation specifications though.

And yes, I know that the Amiga sound is not the chiptune one. But I was wondering, what actually makes that sound. The hardware? The limitations? Or just the 80s/90s samples? So thank you, for you enlightened me with the knowledge that it's the samples. And that packs on the link you provided look kind of huge  :D
I love that. If you have any other good sources, please share.

Thanks
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: m0d on March 19, 2009, 09:05:53
Oli: I would like to make a suggestion; write this up into a full article, it's a pretty cool article all by itself already, and it would be a nice addition to post up on the archive article section (coming soon). What do you think?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Oliwerko on March 21, 2009, 08:55:25
Yeah, that's a good idea, maybe some kind of FAQ-form?
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: eldorado on April 23, 2009, 01:57:50
to me Old School tracking

there is nothing like a good neat

AMIGA 500,

or a old Pentium loaded with the magic of a SB16... plus FT II 2.04 or 2.06

for maximum power...

A commodore C64. even though it may limit a bit more on the memory and etc...

but hey get one of each???

( i dont know much about c64 so rant on! )

peace and love...

john
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on April 23, 2009, 14:57:44
Quote
A commodore C64. even though it may limit a bit more on the memory and etc...
writing music on a C64 is normally a completely different approach as you program a synthesizer and not a sampler, so memory is not important there.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: eldorado on April 23, 2009, 20:22:34
Quote
A commodore C64. even though it may limit a bit more on the memory and etc...
writing music on a C64 is normally a completely different approach as you program a synthesizer and not a sampler, so memory is not important there.

nice to know.

when i get one, less to learn :)

thankssssss
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: jivatma on December 25, 2010, 10:33:16
Well, to get that typical C64 Sound, you can use an other Option too:

A Tracker for the C64 as a .d64 file and a C64 Emulator. I don't know much about that, startet only Huelsbecks Soundmonitor a few Times and listened to the Demo Song/s, etc. - and i don't know, how to create a .sid file from that, what you create e. g. in Soundmonitor on the C64.

For the Amiga Part: same thing here: Get Soundtracker, Protracker or whatever Tracker you like and a Copy of (Win)UAE and the Kickstart File/s from Cloanto or a Real Amiga 500. And don't forget the rom.key file.

Greetings,
Ingo
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on December 25, 2010, 12:11:44
.sid files are no modules but basically they contain executable code (a playback routine) for the C64.
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: therealvertighost on September 29, 2011, 14:31:54
old school is very much still alive in my mind..I personally use 8bit in some creations vs. 16/
Title: Re: A little dip into the old-school tracking
Post by: Saga Musix on September 29, 2011, 15:14:30
8-Bit sampels certainly don't make a track more oldschool than it already is. It's funny, "back then" when people were only able to use 8-Bit samples on their Amiga, people actually tried to get the maximum quality out of their samples, so that the lack of dynamic range would actually not be noticable - and nowadays, people intentionally create "bad" samples that often don't even sound as good as those old samples...