Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

On the creation of AY or Beeper music, including the packages used to do so.
OMFG
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by OMFG »

Never really had the knowledge back in the day to get a decent tune out of the speccy... or even the BBC Micro's at school.

Only found out recently that AY chip had 3 channels of sound and one of noise, not sure if the hardware implimentation of the Speccy stopped the other 2 sound channels being used... only multi channel sound game I remember was Zombie Zombie (less known sequal to Ant Attack), seem to recall that sent the sound through the TV from what little I saw of it, you had to tweak the TV channel slightly to make the sound clear at which point the picture went slightly off. :lol:

Not my demo... this is an interesting little vid of a synth using 2 AY chips for 6 voices of bleepy goodness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0KcA41SUHI
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Ralf »

not sure if the hardware implimentation of the Speccy stopped the other 2 sound channels being used.
Man, you believe in some terrible superstitions :o Or you are confusing AY with beeper - later models of Zx Spectrum have two different sources of sound.

99% of program using AY play on all 3 channels.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by hikoki »

you can find video tutorials about Vortex Tracker, midi to pt3 conversion, placing music on AGD, etc on David Saphier's youtube channel:
www.youtube.com/user/ChuckBleedinNorris/videos
Last edited by hikoki on Tue Jan 23, 2018 8:42 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Seven.FFF »

Tagging David here :) [mention]emook[/mention]
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utz
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by utz »

Ralf wrote: Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:17 pm
not sure if the hardware implimentation of the Speccy stopped the other 2 sound channels being used.
Man, you believe in some terrible superstitions :o Or you are confusing AY with beeper - later models of Zx Spectrum have two different sources of sound.

99% of program using AY play on all 3 channels.
Well Zombie Zombie certainly uses beeper. One of the first games to do multi-channel beeper, if not the first. Which reminds me - I still haven't investigated if it's using an early version of Mark Alexander's WHAM driver or if the ladies wrote their own. In terms of sound it is very similar, at least.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Joefish »

How do games balance music and sound effects?
My first thought would be to keep the tune to two channels with pitch/volume effects only, no noise. Then use the last channel and the noise generator for sound effects.
But are there games that hijack music channels to play effects then return them to the tune?
Or are there 128K games that still use the beeper for the in-game effects, leaving the tune to play on the AY chip?
I've seen games that cop-out and make you choose either a tune or effects.

P.S. I too am entirely hopeless at music. What I did find that might be useful is some places on the internet provide notation for playing well-known tunes on kiddy xylophones, which obviously have a limited set of notes and don't rely on awkward chords (which I suspect are the real enemy of chiptunes).
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Nomad »

If you can find them the Schillinger correspondence course is a good way to learn how to compose music. He was famous for being able to give his students techniques that could let them generate music quickly and that still sounded good. A lot of it was based on maths and creating functions that ensured that the music produced was pleasing to the ear but had enough variation to be interesting.

It was used a lot by jobbers in Hollywood who needed to turn in music for the studios and TV consistently. His course was fairly scare because of its cost in today's money he was charging over $230 per lesson for a correspondence course. Still the guy was never poor and always in demand so...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schillinger_System

I'll see if I can find the course/books there around the house somewhere...
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

Joefish wrote: Fri Jan 26, 2018 12:15 pm Or are there 128K games that still use the beeper for the in-game effects, leaving the tune to play on the AY chip?
I've seen games that cop-out and make you choose either a tune or effects.
Slubberdegullion 128k keeps the 48k beeper effects and plonks one of my favourite AY tracks on top. It seems the obvious choice but many seem to choose just AY fx - Bedlam wasted an opportunity by opting for AY fx that are passable at best.

I was a bit dissapointed Vallation 128 didn't have AY music, but the AY effects are among the best I've heard.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by MatGubbins »

Cybernoid manages to have a AY tune and squeeze in AY FX. by overwriting the music on one channel.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by DenisGrachev »

Joefish wrote: Fri Jan 26, 2018 12:15 pm How do games balance music and sound effects?
My first thought would be to keep the tune to two channels with pitch/volume effects only, no noise. Then use the last channel and the noise generator for sound effects.
But are there games that hijack music channels to play effects then return them to the tune?
Or are there 128K games that still use the beeper for the in-game effects, leaving the tune to play on the AY chip?
I've seen games that cop-out and make you choose either a tune or effects.

P.S. I too am entirely hopeless at music. What I did find that might be useful is some places on the internet provide notation for playing well-known tunes on kiddy xylophones, which obviously have a limited set of notes and don't rely on awkward chords (which I suspect are the real enemy of chiptunes).
Latest Crystal Kingdom Dizzy remake use a nice system to mix music + fx on AY chip absolutely perfect! Actually it based on standart pt3 player and shiru's ayfx. Also i'm use a same system based on Eugene Barsky code in my game Twinlight but we are replace a standart pt3 player with a very fast ay player since there is no musch time with dat multicolor.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Sokurah »

R-Tape wrote: Fri Jan 26, 2018 1:50 pm I was a bit dissapointed Vallation 128 didn't have AY music, but the AY effects are among the best I've heard.
Well, there was AY music on the main menu, but I know what you mean ;)
I did try to have music in-game, but there was too much slowdown and an annoying pause everytime you changed screen. Not as efficiently coded as Cybernoid - and many others, I guess. I'll try to do better next time :)
Website: Tardis Remakes / Mostly remakes of Arcade and ZX Spectrum games.
My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation & Sqij.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

Sokurah wrote: Tue Feb 13, 2018 3:47 pm I did try to have music in-game, but there was too much slowdown and an annoying pause everytime you changed screen.
Does that mean you didn't have the AY as part of an interrupt or that you had to DI when drawing the screen?
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Sokurah »

R-Tape wrote: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:21 pm Does that mean you didn't have the AY as part of an interrupt or that you had to DI when drawing the screen?
Yes and no (don't you just love a clear answer, lol). The game - as it is now - doesn't use interrupts. I did implement interrupts when trying to add music in-game, but this in itself caused a bit of a slowdown, but to make the transition betwen screens as fast as possible I'm using DI as I'm doing a lot of work between screens - pre-shifting all needed enemies every time the screen changes as well as unpacking the compressed screens - which used bankswitching in the 128K version, so I didn't want the music player to interfere with that. I guess I could've moved the interrupt table down below $C000, but I didn't in the end because of the slowdown.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Seven.FFF »

DenisGrachev wrote: Tue Feb 13, 2018 2:59 pm Latest Crystal Kingdom Dizzy remake use a nice system to mix music + fx on AY chip absolutely perfect! Actually it based on standart pt3 player and shiru's ayfx. Also i'm use a same system based on Eugene Barsky code in my game Twinlight but we are replace a standart pt3 player with a very fast ay player since there is no musch time with dat multicolor.
[mention]DenisGrachev[/mention], can you give me some more details about this, please?

I'm very unhappy with the sound and ay fx in my multicolour games, and I'd like to completely rework it if I can.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by DenisGrachev »

Seven.FFF wrote: Wed Feb 14, 2018 3:30 pm can you give me some more details about this, please?

I'm very unhappy with the sound and ay fx in my multicolour games, and I'd like to completely rework it if I can.
I'll recomend just a use AYFX without music right after multicolor render loop in interupts. Music+AYFX is a more complex and have a few restrictions. You need a special fast player since there is not enought tstates for regular player. So it usable only with 128k machines since we need a lot of memory (approx 16kb per 1m20s track)

Music must be converted to psg format(wit ay-emul or so) and packed with tbk packer by psndcj,spke.
FXs can be create with a AYFX as always and plays with special version of ayfx fixed by dr.bars and shiru.

Anyway, here is a test we made during a twinlight dev: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8dc05gkloidx5 ... t.zip?dl=0
A green raster shows how much music+fx costs of cpu time. use a key 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 to play fx

Good luck
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by emook »

Great stuff Denis!

Only just realised I channel got a tag after logging in :D
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Seven.FFF »

I also forgot to thank Denis. My problematic Music+AYFX has been parked for a whil, but eventually I will have to resurrect this!
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

Bump.



I really like this video. I'm still a long way away from understanding music, but it helps to properly visualise the range of notes and durations. And thanks to this link, I'm starting to make AY sounds that aren't entirely awful (though I still wouldn't call them music).

And while we've got this Mozart Video of Rondo Alla Turca, what better time to reflect on just how good Rod Bowkett's beeper version on Dynamite Dan is. He's been really inventive to get the effect of note strength and overall feel, rather than just try to copy it. Amazing.
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