HermChase Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 I'm going on vacation this weekend, so I decided to release a prealpha so you guys know what I'm working on. 'Tis just a prealpha, "proof of concept", in development, etc. But, anyway, I'm creating a development environment, or a GUI, for Paul Slocum's Music Sequencer Kit for the 2600. I know the site says "newsflash 7.16.03: GUI front end coming soon!", but that was over a year ago. So, I've spent every night this week toiling over REALBasic making my own little editor for it. I hope someone reads this, cause not many read this forum. Please, tell me if you are interested, any feature suggestions, any bugs (there will be a few, remember...prealpha ). Also, tell me how this thing works on Windows, as I'm on a Mac. Thanks everyone! I now present to you, for it's official 0.1prealpha release: SabaKey VCS! (Note: I don't think there is enough of a group who would use this on Mac Classic, but if anyone needs a version for that, I can compile one for you) Remember, all, this is heavily in development, and doesn't make actual files yet. This is just to show my work I've done, gather interest and info and opinions, and stuff. I'll stop blabbering and repeating myself now. ------- Chase Hermsen P.S. Wow. No .sit's allowed on this board. Mac users, you'll have to deal with a zip. sabakey_vcs__mac_os_x_.zip sabakey_vcs.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Slocum Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 Looks cool! Something I've always really wanted in a front end is an integration of Ekhard's sound guide and my music guide into the front end. So the actual note and tuning are displayed alongside each pitch setting. And I think it'd be nice to have palettes of notes, so it's easy to pick notes that are in tune with each other, or sounds that are good for drums and other effects. -paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HermChase Posted August 5, 2004 Author Share Posted August 5, 2004 Wow! A post from the master! Yeah, I want to eventually record each sound seperately, and have them play when you choose or have a "click and play" or something. So people know what they are getting. I also wasn't completely sure about all of the tunings, so I left them out for now... Like, what note is H? My music theory knowledge is kind of low, dispite me being having piano lessons for 8 years and counting. I also thought of implementing a simple MIDI system to the snare somehow, so that you can hear what your snare's pattern will sound like, since that is very important to the flow of a song. ------- Chase Hermsen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gulag picture radio Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 ROCK ON! I must admit that I have been hoping for something like this for a long time! I can hardly wait to foool around with it some. SOme sort of MIDI implementation in the way that you describe would be great. Wouldn't it be cool if there were alittle program out there that could take a MIDI (single note) sequence, and convert it to the closest notes on the Atari? Boy, that would simplify doing covers a lot, eh? Ah well, just a dream. Enjoy your vacation, and thanks for working on this project! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HermChase Posted August 5, 2004 Author Share Posted August 5, 2004 Thanks! Off topic: Yeah, it will a good vacation. I'm going to Mori no Ike, which is a Japanese immersion camp for two weeks in Minnesota. It's sponsored by Concordia University, and I went last year. 'Twas quite fun. Can't wait to go again! Then, maybe I'll work on this little one when I come back. On Topic: I like the MIDI idea. I'd definately have to do some research on MIDI format, but...That would be quite an amazing little tool. ------- Chase Hermsen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gulag picture radio Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 Well, I barely understand anything... and even what little there is is called into question, but... It seems to me that it would be a case of taking the numeric value of a MIDI note in a file, then the program would figure out which note it's closest to, then output that in the Slocum Sequencer format. I'm probably oversimplifying this task by a lot, I'm sure. That's one of the menefits of not knowing anything. Perhaps once it's converted from MIDI, there could be some sort of preview stage so as to hear the conversion before commiting it to cartridge? That way if there's a note that's not working, you can decide to change it. Just a thought. Seriously, I should have hung onto these perverse idea until after your vacation. Just make sure to have a lot of fun. I'ev got a little vacation that I'm looking forward to myself... I haven't had any time off in simply ages. Take it easy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gulag picture radio Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 Clearly it's past my bedtime given the number of typos above. Yeesh. Sorry to drag you all down with me. I'll jus say nighty-night and be done with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Slocum Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 In Rasty's front end, he put play buttons everywhere that assemble a ROM and automatically start the emulator. So if you hit the play button next to the high hat section, it builds a ROM that just plays the high hat. If you hit the play button next to the pattern section, you can hear the current pattern. If you hit the play button in the song section, it builds the whole song and plays it. I thought this was a really nice (and simple) way to quickly hear what you're working on. Being able to immediately hear individual notes through MIDI would be nice too. Personally I'd prefer to hear samples of a real Atari, but that would probably be more complicated. -paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
herr professor Posted August 6, 2004 Share Posted August 6, 2004 This is quite cool. I have made some simple scala files for the scales in the main synthcart keys that would allow a monophonic midi score to be force pitched shifted to the atari scale. The Files are on the synthcart yahoo group. ITs pretty limited to one scale, but the work can be done to either: Do the entire producable scale per voice (the math is done, I just need to do the work in scala) Make each octave on a key a diffrenet scale..... I found that just playing a sound in the odd tuning with a bit reducded synth goes a LONG way towards getting the 2600 sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted August 6, 2004 Share Posted August 6, 2004 Did you actually try running the OS X version as uploaded? By making a regular zip file of it, any unix flags (like execute) disappear, and if it's Carbon (which I think it may be), the resource fork will disappear too. If I give it a "chmod +x", I still can't get it to do anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
herr professor Posted August 6, 2004 Share Posted August 6, 2004 This is quite cool. I have made some simple scala files for the scales in the main synthcart keys that would allow a monophonic midi score to be force pitched shifted to the atari scale. The Files are on the synthcart yahoo group. ITs pretty limited to one scale, but the work can be done to either: I found that just playing a sound in the odd tuning with a bit reducded synth goes a LONG way towards getting the 2600 sound. http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/ here is scala. Ideally you can drag and drop a midi file into scala, force convert it and hear how bad the average song sounds You would have to have some kind of intelligent choices going on in the conversion to get it to work. My idea was to use the scala files to writes songs in a sequencer so you can get the general idea, and just dump the notes into something. I can think it might be possible to have the porgram generate midi to the wavetable synth that comes with windows or whatever, and use scala to get the pitches being converted using pitch bend information. You would still have to lsited to the rom in emulator, but at least compositionally it would make sense... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HermChase Posted August 6, 2004 Author Share Posted August 6, 2004 Argh. Darn this boards lack of .sit support. I'm uploading the OS X one on a freesite. http://www.freewebs.com/miscfiles715/SabaKeyVCS.app Try it now. Thanks for the suggestions, all! I'm quite busy getting ready for my trip, but I will research more in detail when I come back! ---------- Chase Hermsen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LifeInABox Posted August 12, 2004 Share Posted August 12, 2004 Is anyone successfully using the mac application. I tried multiple downloads to no avail. Getting a code error -3, any suggestions?? - KBud Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LifeInABox Posted August 12, 2004 Share Posted August 12, 2004 Code error -39 sorry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted August 27, 2004 Share Posted August 27, 2004 I tried the OS X version (both downloads), but got nothing when I launched it. I'm really looking forward to trying this out, since I've worked with Paul's Music Kit, and while I can get it to work, it takes considerable effort to get the results I'm looking for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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