Mod Archive Forums

Music Production => Tracking => Topic started by: IsaacNorman on July 09, 2014, 05:40:13

Title: Tracker Speed vs. Pitch confliction?
Post by: IsaacNorman on July 09, 2014, 05:40:13
This is something that I just ran into, as not many people create songs that go this fast to begin with...

I finished an .xm I have, and I was not happy with the pitch sliding on one of the instruments. When I made the instrument go solo, I heard that the frequencies seemed to "stair step" rather than smoothly glide from the starting frequency to the end frequency. (End of use with the portamento effect) I knew there was a way to smooth it out, speed up the song. Originally, my tracker was running at 150 bpm and a speed of 2.

Here's where the issue arises.

I sped my song up to a speed of 1, keeping the bpm the same, however, when the instrument got the portamento effects, to pitch slide it up and/or down, they were ignored. Now, I have thought of whether it was just Milky tracker screwing with me, or not, but when I exported the .xm and tried it in Open MPT tracker, it had the same issue. So I went to the manual and maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why neither of the programs read the portamento effects. Is there a reason for this that I just didn't see, or is it literally "too fast" for the coding in the programs to detect?

If only my instrument didn't have the "stair step" frequency shifting, this wouldn't be a problem.
Title: Re: Tracker Speed vs. Pitch confliction?
Post by: Saga Musix on July 09, 2014, 12:20:34
Due to historic reasons, "slide effects" are only applied on all ticks but the first. This means that at a speed of 2, only every other tick is used for sliding, and at a speed of 1... well you only have a "first" tick so there won't be any sliding. For super smooth sliding, you need to both increase the tempo and increase the speed.
Title: Re: Tracker Speed vs. Pitch confliction?
Post by: IsaacNorman on July 09, 2014, 17:59:47
Wow, thanks for your help man, it fixed the issue. I was curious on that myself, why pitch shifting is ignored at speed 1, but it looks like it goes back further than I thought it did.

For super smooth sliding, you need to both increase the tempo and increase the speed.

When I sped up the song, you know, after changing the speed to 3, and the bpm to 215, the song ran the same speed as before, however, I noticed the pitch shifting was more "deeper" than before. (Larger pitch wheel) The pitch shot up and down way further than I intended to, so I had to manually change the values myself.

What causes that? Is it something with the code, or is the effect being applied more per tick, since it's running slower?
Title: Re: Tracker Speed vs. Pitch confliction?
Post by: Saga Musix on July 09, 2014, 21:41:37
No, you simply have more ticks (speed 3 = 3 ticks, so 2 ticks to apply the effect on). In return, you will have to lower the parameter of your slide effect.