Level42 Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 (edited) Sorry but I loved this one when I got it....of course it was the "funny" version with the "slightly altered" text... I also loved the demo's which used the piano keyboard on screen which visually showed the notes being played. IIRC it was actually done by Avery Lee and there were lots of songs for it but Flight of the Bumble Bee stuck out for me. (why isn't this on Youtube yet ?) Yes simple basic POKEY programming....but I liked it....just like I love this one: Sadly, this one is running way too slow, but I loved the clear open sounds on this one, combined with the great bass....try to get clear open sound like that on a SID.... I bet this is full of "false" notes....but we came from beeps and chearps like the 2600 produced..... Edited February 8, 2018 by Level42 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 The sad truth is that if you play any 8-bit computer music to a musician who is not into synthesizers or computer music, they think all of it is unlistenable blips and blops, irregardless which chip or programmer composed it. I am speaking from own experience here, with several friends who are semi or professional orchestra musicians who even shy the MIDI output from modern software synthesizers found on 21th century sound cards, much less POKEY, SID, AY, SN etc. Besides, while that Passionately song had some "interesting" instruments, to most part it avoided to fall out of tune. I heard perhaps one or two notes that didn't work out. Generally once you have measured which notes can be playable - depending on which technique you use to generate notes in the first place - you will try to adjust the key of the music to fit the available notes. You soon learn which keys are preferred and which should be avoided. That is how I've gotten through 20 years of VIC-20 musicianship, which has an even more detuned sound chip than what POKEY offers. Anyone who doesn't understand the relation between keys and playable notes are bound to failure. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 8, 2018 Author Share Posted February 8, 2018 @Carlsson... VIC20? Interesting... played with Fisichella etc? @all anybody any idea why One man and his droid, Action Bilker SAP are not in Hubbard's Folder in ASMA archive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 Anyone who doesn't understand the relation between keys and playable notes are bound to failure. This days it is easy to explain the right key. The base frequency in standard is the 440 or more 432Hz. All other played notes need the correct "distance". That's why you can play media faster or slower, and the music still is "in tune" by itself. Even, if the base tone (A relative) changes to 500Hz or 800Hz.... the relative distance of all notes stays the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 I believe I used Fisichella once. Its structure with 16 line blocks was a little too limiting for me. I've also used tlr's VIC-Tracker which is more capable but a bit cumbersome to work with. Asger Alstrup wrote a music routine for Veni Vidi VIC!, then I wrote my own player in several iterations used in Vici Iterum MM and so on. Nothing fancy, just 3+1 channels of music, some simple vibrato, arpeggio and portamento, perhaps I implemented glissando as well. In all those years, I have developed a somewhat unusual method of composing where I write my music in OctaMED on the Amiga using very simple square wave samples, then use the print function to print the music blocks as text, then manually adjust and use own made tools to convert it into a macro based format which DASM will accept, producing binary data for my player. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 anybody any idea why One man and his droid, Action Bilker SAP are not in Hubbard's Folder in ASMA archive? Are they confirmed to be Rob's work/driver? Atarimania doesn't credit him for them and OMAHD isn't the same tune as the C64; it appears to be a loose cover of a tune from Final Synth Sample 2 (tune 3) which also contains a prototype of the C64 OMAHD theme (tune 2). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 @Carlsson... VIC20? Interesting... played with Fisichella etc? @all anybody any idea why One man and his droid, Action Bilker SAP are not in Hubbard's Folder in ASMA archive? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTSjgCkNDQw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 Could be interesting to create the Finders Keepers tune more like the SID one and to make One Man And His Droid a nice game on the Atari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 That YouTube video represents David Dunn's SID version of the original ZX Spectrum tune. Rob Hubbard did his own take of the same song in Final Synth Sample II, which is what OMAHD on the Atari 8-bit in its turn is covering. Rob did a couple of those, perhaps the most striking one is when he made a cover of A Musical Joke by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but Software Projects were afraid they would get sued by BBC due to their own TV program Show Jumping used the very same classical piece (which in its pure form was outside of copyright, but perhaps not the particular arrangement). Instead Software Projects used Horn Concerto number 4 also by Mozart, since BBC had not claimed the "horserights" to that music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 OK... but there is not much in common. The note arrangement is rather different. .... compared to the Finders Keepers tune. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 8, 2018 Share Posted February 8, 2018 Just a reminder how sweet POKEY could sound. (older recordings were lower at volume) 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 (edited) At the risk of sounding as if my mind has left me, maybe it has... What was the screen shot of, and what song was that? Edited February 9, 2018 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 9, 2018 Author Share Posted February 9, 2018 The dungeon pic is a nice example of a8 highres and PM to color up and thanks to the palette it can create depths. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 At the risk of sounding as if my mind has left me, maybe it has... What was the screen shot of, and what song was that? It's the Elite tune Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 By "own take", I meant a cover version that shares the basics of the tune but not neccessarily is the same arrangement. Rob did something similar with his own tunes, the Amstrad CPC version of Formula 1 Simulator is also present in one of his Synth Samples on the C64, while the actual C64 version of Formula 1 Simulator has a much more "discofied" version of the same tune. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R0ger Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Of course if there was to be 'the one and only' tracker, it would have to allow for anything. In other words you would have to be able to program your own instruments on assembler level, and then just feed musical data into it. Not rigid instrument model. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Of course if there was to be 'the one and only' tracker, it would have to allow for anything. In other words you would have to be able to program your own instruments on assembler level, and then just feed musical data into it. Not rigid instrument model. The "one and only" Tracker should allow to create Instruments via Assembler. But it also should give a full "Interface" to musicians, and allow easy first results for music creation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R0ger Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 The "one and only" Tracker should allow to create Instruments via Assembler. But it also should give a full "Interface" to musicians, and allow easy first results for music creation. Sure. Btw. what is this 'volume problem' with POKEY ? I'm not aware of any .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 Btw. what is this 'volume problem' with POKEY ? I'm not aware of any .. Seems so. Or is it intentionally adjusted to a continuous level of distortion, to prevent the ears from going deeper into the music and hear the off tune that sometimes appears? I know, it sounds rude again, but it's exactly the point, why I cannot have fun watching those videos. When using two POKEYs it offers the possibility of using one mainly at 64kHz and one mainly at 15khz. A 16 Bit channel has it's base clocking on both POKEYs the same. So it is possible to use high sounds on one and deep sounds on the other (temporary 6 channels) , AND clean stereo FX for the main voice at 16 bit. 2 channel won't run easily into the volume trap. But the real challenge was to have the thing on a single POKEY... my results, using RMT show what's possible. Using the filter voice for adjusting volume and pitch to the best possible value, needs 100% of POKEY "correctness" referring to the thresholds of everything there. Actually, sometimes the distortion fits, then it was also easy to create that , for special instruments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 If someone could provide me the real SID 3 channel notation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R0ger Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 Oh, you mean what's named 'non-linear audio mixing' in Altirra ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 Oh, you mean what's named 'non-linear audio mixing' in Altirra ? That feature aims to get a real channel mixing via software. Depending on the architecture, POKEY seems the only sound chip that is able to distort itself. I guess you know of the volume limit of 32 of all channels ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivop Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 I have seen that number mentioned before, but IMHO it's more like 36 or even 40 before it distorts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 (edited) That feature aims to get a real channel mixing via software. Depending on the architecture, POKEY seems the only sound chip that is able to distort itself. I guess you know of the volume limit of 32 of all channels ? Not too surprisingly, TIA also distorts http://atariage.com/forums/topic/271920-tia-sound-abnormalities/?do=findComment&comment=3936913 Odd that 2600 emulators have only just started emulating this. Coders have to do "in tune" music with samples anyway, so maybe it isn't noticed much. Edited February 10, 2018 by Sheddy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted February 10, 2018 Share Posted February 10, 2018 Here's my 3 cents (warning, very honest!): I've met Rob Hubbard in person during Pixel Heaven 2017 Festival. There was interview with him. But the guy's speech wasn't very interesting. He claimed that he was amazed with Assembler (Editor?) for 8-bit Atari but also said that making music on POKEY was real pain in the ass, unlike on SID. Even when Jakub Husak asked him why he judged POKEY so bad, Rob just treated his question as childlish one. So... Let's remember his music but rather forget about Rob himself. PERIOD. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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