best tools for music for 2600?

[kisrael]

A long while back I wrote do re bB about making music on the Atari.

 

The aging editor VisualbB has a "Music and Sound Editor" that is pretty cool - the idea of showing you what notes are more or less available encourages better thinking and play than webTune2600's approach of "put in some notes and we'll hunt for matches".  Also going straight from fooling around w/ the virtual piano to output music is sweet.

(If I can figure out a way of recording atari sounds from an emulator, maybe I'll try to make something even more dynamic...)
 

But in general, I wonder... what are the tools and/or guides game makers use when trying to make music and/or sound effects?

[+splendidnut]

TIATracker (by @Kylearan) is excellent:

 

Also there's a module created by @mksmith for using the results within batariBasic programs:

 

[RevEng]

When it comes to TIA composition, have a look at the Perceptual Tuning Primer.

[KevKelley]

There is Miditari.

 

It looks and sounds amazing. I have yet to learn it but the results I have seen are great.

[Mr SQL]

Great thread!

 

RT's online music page with the available notes you can click and hear shown on the keyboards for the different wave forms is excellent for chiptune composers.

 

And I like the tracker sequencers and fit a very small one into SuperCharger BASIC that does some interesting Fx and can be overridden/resequenced by BASIC, heres an example with a game:

 

This is a fascinating topic, in the 80's I released a digital sample sequencer aftermarket kit for Microsoft Color BASIC that was different.

Some ideas discussed here with @MemberAtarian in context with his digital sampling routines for the Atari.  

You can download the kit to try it out here with more BASIC examples if you have a CoCo emulator or run it via the online emulator mocha to see the concept of BASIC being able to control and resequence a sequencer; hard to describe kind of like putting a tracker sequencer on a tracker sequencer or something else, because BASIC can be so many things with an API to the sequencer.

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Mr SQL
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[freshbrood]

I can't figure out music with bankswitching. It seems to work fine when all the code is in the same bank, but the timing gets thrown off and breaks when bankswitching. Does anyone have any sample .bas of a bankswitched game with tunes?

[+MarcoJ]

16 hours ago, freshbrood said:

I can't figure out music with bankswitching.

It should behave the same. As long as the music update routine gets its chance (usually once per frame) it should be the same as non-bankswitched. Perhaps on some frames the music routine is being skipped over, or is inside another bank that was not visited that frame?

[freshbrood]

Nothing I've tried has worked. I sure would love to see a simple 2 bank .bas sample.