tschak909 Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 I did this as a palette cleanser after an intense amount of hacking on #Apple2 FujiNet. Decided to see what Raster Music Tracker could do, so arranged this. I hadn't ever used RMT before I started. #Atari8bit #retrocomputing #chiptune #YMO #retromusic #electronica @Kjmann Rydeen.rmt rydeen.xex 14 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Nice sounding tune! Have you written any music before? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted December 1, 2022 Author Share Posted December 1, 2022 (edited) 4 minutes ago, Stephen said: Nice sounding tune! Have you written any music before? Yes. a lot. (this is a cover of a tune by Yellow Magic Orchestra) I spent my teens working as a studio musician and synth programmer on a huge host of gear (my specialty was sound design on Synclaviers, I could recreate a sound entirely using the additive and FM engines on the Synclavier using Fourier resynthesis, and wrote a lot of code to help with that.). I was also an early composer using the Amiga and Ultimate Soundtracker. -Thom Edited December 1, 2022 by tschak909 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Westphal Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 Please don’t stop making music again 😀🥂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deffroe Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 (edited) If that is your first attempt, with a bit of practice just think how good you will get......😁 Seriously, what a great tune! Edited December 1, 2022 by deffroe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 5 hours ago, tschak909 said: I spent my teens working as a studio musician and synth programmer on a huge host of gear (my specialty was sound design on Synclaviers, I could recreate a sound entirely using the additive and FM engines on the Synclavier using Fourier resynthesis, and wrote a lot of code to help with that.). I remember Zappa was into the Synclavier in the early to mid 80's. He did a couple all-Synclavier releases (in addition to other production uses for it on various albums of the period). There is a video of him demonstrating and talking about its use. I can't find it ATM; I'm only finding one where he talks about it, but no demoing. I think the video (I have in mind) is part of a longer documentary type thing on him. Anyway... I wonder what happened to it after he died -- maybe ended up with Dweezil. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 11 hours ago, tschak909 said: Yes. a lot. (this is a cover of a tune by Yellow Magic Orchestra) I spent my teens working as a studio musician and synth programmer on a huge host of gear (my specialty was sound design on Synclaviers, I could recreate a sound entirely using the additive and FM engines on the Synclavier using Fourier resynthesis, and wrote a lot of code to help with that.). I was also an early composer using the Amiga and Ultimate Soundtracker. -Thom Awesome! I am listening to an entire YMO album now ( ). One or two songs have a very Kraftwerk flavour but the rest is quite unique. Youtube gave this as a suggestion from your tune. I agree - you should do more tunes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 @tschak909 what aren't you able to do? 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted December 1, 2022 Author Share Posted December 1, 2022 15 minutes ago, Philsan said: @tschak909 what aren't you able to do? 😂 as it turns out? walk properly. I have cerebral palsy. -Thom 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted December 2, 2022 Author Share Posted December 2, 2022 I just submitted to SillyVenture, bc why not? -Thom 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted December 2, 2022 Author Share Posted December 2, 2022 (edited) 18 hours ago, MrFish said: I remember Zappa was into the Synclavier in the early to mid 80's. He did a couple all-Synclavier releases (in addition to other production uses for it on various albums of the period). There is a video of him demonstrating and talking about its use. I can't find it ATM; I'm only finding one where he talks about it, but no demoing. I think the video (I have in mind) is part of a longer documentary type thing on him. Anyway... I wonder what happened to it after he died -- maybe ended up with Dweezil. He used a Synclavier extensively from the mid 80s onward into the 90s, probably his most extensive use came from Jazz on Hell, which was released in 1987, but he did do a complete arrangement of The Black Page using his Synclavier as well. The Sync was a beast of a machine. It had a very powerful additive synthesis engine which could be used in different combination of linear additive and FM modes, and you could split those uses across four partial timbres that each had their own settings (frequency/ratio, envelopes, etc.), so you could create sounds that had evolving timbre shifts, very quickly. While the later Synclaviers did have Sample-to-disk (and later still, the polyphonic sample to memory) options, the crazy flexibility came when the resynthesizer was used to do fourier analysis and resynthesis on sampled sounds, turning them back into sounds that could be entirely played on the additive/fm side. This was critical, because the sampling in the early systems could only play one sound at a time, and the poly-sampling voices were seperate from the additive voices, and the required poly-RAM was ridiculously fast and expensive. A typical PSMT had anywhere from 8 to 32 poly sample voices, and anywhere from 8 to 64 additive voices. You would mark sections of a sound with timbre frames to represent when important changes to the sound had taken place that needed fourier analysis to break the sound into sine/amplitude pairs, and the ABLE (the computer) would then crunch those areas, creating the new sine tables, and do simple interpolation to the next timbral frame. The more frames you added, the longer the computation time, and depending on the harmonic complexity at the frame intersection, the more voices would be needed to approximate the timbre, so the trick was to know exactly how many timbre frames you needed and no more, especially because the process of selecting timbre frames had to be done at the terminal, and watching the terminal draw waveforms using the Tektronix 4010 emulation on the VT640 required some patience, to say the least....sooooo.... ...since the Synclavier software was written in a language called Scientific XP/L (a weird cousin on PL/I), and NED provided a compiler and manual upon request (at a *cough* nominal fee. everything from NED was expensive, even a fucking single 1.2MB superfloppy drive was $1500!), you could write your own software. I wrote a quick piece of software which would analyze a signal and mark loud transient shifts, and wrote another to analyze significant frequency shifts. Since the Resynthesizer had a reverse compiler that produced a text file you could edit, I wrote the software to output to that format. The result could be compiled back into the resynthesizer, and I could concentrate on removing the frames I did not want. This was the power of these early workstations in the right hands. (no, I can't even find the printed listings of that software any more) -Thom Edited December 2, 2022 by tschak909 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted December 2, 2022 Share Posted December 2, 2022 5 hours ago, tschak909 said: He used a Synclavier extensively from the mid 80s onward into the 90s, probably his most extensive use came from Jazz on Hell, which was released in 1987, but he did do a complete arrangement of The Black Page using his Synclavier as well. He also released an album called "Francesco Zappa" (1984), which was entirely Synclavier. The compositions weren't his though: they were by a classical composer (living 1717 - 1803) who the album was named after. Sounds entirely out of character for Zappa, considering his particular taste in classical music. I like it, though. The album name is "Jazz from Hell" and was released in 1986, btw. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted December 2, 2022 Share Posted December 2, 2022 Interestingly, Synclavier is on the verge of releasing their first piece of hardware in 30 years: Synclavier Regen. Expensive bugger, though, as you would expect (although nothing compared to the original); but their software is more down-to-earth: Synclavier V (Arturia) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted December 2, 2022 Author Share Posted December 2, 2022 (edited) Yup, I've used Synclavier V, and it is fantastic. Some nice improvements including being able to use other waveforms for the modulator. Regen looks fantastic too, but I don't buy hardware anymore. (in fact my next iteration of my music studio will be built entirely around Max 8.5, and a few controllers (e.g. a Roli board, and a Linnstrument) no hardware instruments, will write everything myself.) (I will say this has been precipitated by the entire synthesizer market going into crazy-town, save for Behringer. Moog wants $4000 for a Minimoog Model D reissue. No thanks.) -Thom Edited December 2, 2022 by tschak909 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted December 3, 2022 Share Posted December 3, 2022 (edited) On 11/30/2022 at 10:00 PM, tschak909 said: I could recreate a sound entirely using the additive and FM engines on the Synclavier using Fourier resynthesis, and wrote a lot of code to help with that.). That is UBER-cool! Wonder why you did not end up working with Jean-Michel Jarre! Bring it on! 👍💪💪 Edited December 3, 2022 by Faicuai Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted December 21, 2022 Author Share Posted December 21, 2022 Welp, my cover of #YMO's Rydeen placed 10th at #Sillyventure2022 #sillyventure #retrocomputing #chiptune #retromusic 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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