Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

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

Post by R-Tape »

Bear with me.

I'm a complete musical duffer, I know what I like, but have never found a way in that has given me an affinity for sound - it's just magic and not something I can do. I guess it's similar to people that say they can't draw. I'd be interested in musicians' opinions on this.

1 - How did you learn to make music and then Speccy music (or vice versa)? Do you need to understand chords etc before attempting?

2 - Describe the creative process of making a new tune (beeper, AY whatever). I know this is a version of the question that everybody thinks is dumb* - "where do you get your ideas".*


*For the record I think it's a good question, and all too often lazily rebuffed. There have been a lot of famous sarky replies from writers, though I did like Neil Gaiman's "I look inside my head".
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Ast A. Moore »

The best person to answer your questions would be Tim Follin, obviously. ;) He managed to successfully marry art rock and computer music—the two genres that normally don’t mix well (at least when dealing with the limited capacity of 8-bit platforms). He was, if memory serves, only writing music; his brother actually did all the coding.

Many styles of music are very texture-driven: you can’t simply take a piece, transcribe it, and arbitrarily replace the instruments with “squeaky” or “growly” sounds. The art, then, lies in the composer’s ability to find a compromise.

Having said that, my approach to writing Speccy music has always been different from writing music for “real” instruments. I don’t think having extensive knowledge of music theory is necessary for creating a catchy game tune. If you have any taste in music, it alone will suffice.

I usually start by examining my tools. Grab a music editor, place a few notes here and there, play around with effects, see what works. This will likely give you a musical idea or a phrase right away. Build on it. In a way, it’s like playing a game: you set a goal, then you press control keys to move your character over there. It takes a few tries, but if you persevere, the actual process will become second nature to you.

I never had a MIDI keyboard connected to my Speccy, so all the tunes I made were done using the Speccy’s keyboard or the mouse (when I worked in Beepola). This is another limitation—the editors/tackers have a very idiosyncratic interface, which has always put me off. I’d much rather work with a standard piano roll view, or input notes from a MIDI keyboard. That also affects how I write music for the Spectrum.

The TL;DR version is—just start tinkering, and you’ll eventually come up with something. Forget about music theory, “creative process,” “getting your ideas from somewhere,” or “looking inside your head.”
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Ralf »

A very interesting topic. I hope something comes out of it.

Personally I'm in a very similar position to R-Tape. I can write some code, I learnt to make some acceptable (I hope so ) graphics to be used in my games but with music on Spectrum I'm totally a dead duck.

And actually I'm not totally crap at music. I don't know chords but I like singing and most people say that I'm all right. I can memorise most of tunes correctly. I can even think up some tune in my head.

Many years ago I tried to play the guitar but here unfortunately I failed ;)

Now when it comes to Spectrum I don't even know how to begin.

So there are these things called trackers. They are unfriendly as hell, usually with very little documentation. But I think with some effort I could learn all these obscure shortcuts.

But now what should I do? Think up a tune in my head and try to write it down? I can't do it, I don't know what keys should I press to get correct sounds from my head. Or should I bang some random keys and see what comes out of it? Should I purchase some proper piano keyboard or using computer keyboard would be enough?

I can't also of course hear music in my head when I see this notes like A3 or B4 in tracker. Should I?

And another thing are tracks. When I think of a tune, I think of the "main track", something which makes the melody which you recognise as "We are the champions" or "Oops I did it again" ;) But there are also other tracks, AY on Spectrum has 3 tracks and with some tricks you can have them more. What should be on these other tracks? How should it be made so it was in "harmony" with other tracks? Completely no idea.

And the last thing. Several times I met with opinions that skill of making music is something that can't be learnt. That you either are born with it and don't need any explanations then or you don't have it and no explanations will help you. True or not?
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Nomad »

This is a great tutorial series, its using milkyracker but you can apply the principles to soundtracker.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/N2s04YYO0Wg[/youtube]
https://youtu.be/lDHFoZxeY4Y
https://youtu.be/TsZtoalF80I
https://youtu.be/u4AdKhNK02g
https://youtu.be/95NNAKurP6I
https://youtu.be/1K1fxPPltzc
https://youtu.be/b6JML-i0lyU
https://youtu.be/H_wrn2lt8aY
https://youtu.be/6wmYZQXa__4
https://youtu.be/nH6HyiAKCYA

Admin edit - embed overkill! Changed some to urls.

When I listened to this for the first time I couldn't believe a tracker could have done this..

https://youtu.be/mt8Jt2-WjpM

For me its the most technically impressive protracker work.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Wall_Axe »

i pressed some random keys in beepola and got a nice little tune,
whats the best way of posting the .wav file here?
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Wall_Axe wrote: Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:05 pm i pressed some random keys in beepola and got a nice little tune,
whats the best way of posting the .wav file here?
Better save it as a TAP file with a BASIC loader in Beepola and upload it somewhere.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

Yep, or make the .bbsong available. Interested to know if it sounds as progressive as the last time I tried random keys in beepola.

(It was a bloody racket)
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Wall_Axe »

listening to it a few hours later it doesnt sound too good actually

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mbz80yqbi ... mysong.tap

I think this is where you need musical training to take that idea and develop it into something
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Hikaru »

Sound itself conveys a mood. If you pay attention to it, you will see (hear) that, before there is even a melody or a sense of progression, even the simplest case of having a continuously playing 'sound' of 2~3 notes put together might sound happy, or sad, or scary/awkward/menacing. Or something else entirely. Whichever it's going to be is governed by the frequency ratios (intervals) between those notes comprising the 'sound'. This is known as playing chords.
Similarly, the overall sound 'feel' itself of pop music is different from that of jazz/blues, which is different from Japanese or Arabic national music, and so on. This is because these genres use different underlying subsets of relative pitches, aka scales.

The traditional musical notation is a way of writing things down that preserves this tonal relationship as well as the rhythmic patterns visually. For instance, a drummer learns to see the musical sheet broadly in terms of 'known figures', akin to hieroglyphs. So as a general rule, rather than the question of 'what to play' it becomes more a question of 'how to play it' (same figures might be used in louder/softer passages, include rolls and so on). I can't say how well it relates to the idea of hearing yourself in advance literally, I think it's not quite the same and is more a mental sort of thing, but either way we normally have an idea of what to do, and/or what it's going to be, because that is sort of the whole point after all.
The same naturally holds true for tonal instruments as well. Here, the vertical positioning becomes just as, if not more important. The same sequence of notes in a melody, whether they're played together as a chord, or follow each other, appears as a kind of 'pattern' which looks the same spatially. You can take the whole thing 'higher' or 'lower', which is called transposition, and you will find it sounds somehow different (e.g. it begins from a higher note, and overall it sounds kinda higher in pitch) - but at the same time it is also the exact same melody. This is because the intervals (frequency ratios) of those notes remain the same.

Now as you probably know, there are two very different types of music editor interfaces.
The type of music editor known as the piano roll is similar to the traditional music notation in the way it reflects these tonal relationships visually. The same melody is going to have the same 'visual shape' no matter where you put it. You can do things like for instance picking one or two individual notes within a chord and moving them up/down the scale, resulting in another type of chord, and this is reflected in the visual representation in a way that is easy to understand and identify.
On the other hand, you have the 'tracker' type of interface. The origin of this is entirely different, it's perhaps appropriate to say it is the 'MIDI-keyboard-less, musically inclined programmer demoscene coder's interface'. The primary advantage here is that it enables blazingly fast editing using just the basic keyboard and mouse (if you know what you're doing). However, the price for this is losing the aforementioned visual representation of tonal relationships that is characteristic of the piano roll interface. The rhythmic arrangement of things is preserved by and large, and it is still easy to see for instance what your drum pattern is, but the notes themselves are represented as 'A-4', 'C-5' and so on.

Personally, I must admit I hate the piano roll interface with a passion lol. Simply put, it's not what I grew up with, I find it awkward to work with and am just overall uncomfortable with it. Nevertheless, I think this is the right choice for someone making their first steps in music. - Unfortunately, most 'reasonable' native or crossplatform music editors for the Speccy are of the tracker type.
Regardless, it should be possible to get started with a tracker as well. Download Beepola and try out one of the simpler, classic music engines, like Wham! or Music Studio, without any fancy-schmancy envelopes or duty cycle controls or whatnot. Just your basic notes and maybe a few percussion sounds. Gradually move on to something like Special FX with more complex sound. Then Phaser/Tritone, then Savage, until a while later when you are prepared for the ultimate in business, Utz's engines. ;)

For the AY side of things. I think there are several simpler AY trackers in existence, like WYZ, which may or may not represent the appropriate next step. However, mainstream AY trackers like Vortex typically tend to be fairly complex creations with quite a few specific concepts, like ornaments or the hardware envelope, that might be difficult to understand for a beginner.

Another way is to look past all that and begin with one of the modern music editors/DAWs instead. I can assure you they will appear intimidating at first due to all the knobs/meters going on and whatnot. However, ultimately these tend to be MUCH more comfortable to work with that their Speccy oriented brethern, and once you have acquired a hang of it, as well as a song going on, it is typically not too much of a problem to rewrite history and 'downscale' it then for the Speccy. As well, you will be learning to write real music, using a real musical application, not a niche one *gets coat (tm)*, which might just end up having a broader reach than your Speccy interests alone and so on, who knows. x) Another advantage here is of course the fact that these are predominantly piano roll-based.

Ast A. Moore wrote: Sat Jan 13, 2018 12:37 pm I don’t think having extensive knowledge of music theory is necessary for creating a catchy game tune. If you have any taste in music, it alone will suffice.
<...>
Forget about music theory, “creative process,” “getting your ideas from somewhere,” or “looking inside your head.”

Well, why not have both?

Music theory is not some sort of a dogmatic rulebook that states in absolute terms, 'you shall do things This One Way lest you fail' people sometimes think it is. Rather, it is akin to a series of observations. 'If you put together X and Y, it will produce the effect of Z'. 'If your progression is from X to Y, it naturally leans to a resolution in Z'. It doesn't state anything more than that. It doesn't say doing the complete opposite is somehow incorrect, either. You can simply refer to some of these concepts as a source of inspiration, for something you haven't thought of that someone else have. Above all, you can normally try it all for yourself and decide if you agree with what it says - because after all, you can hear the result. And if you find that you don't agree with something it says, and/or you have a specific reason not to follow it, then you're free to not follow it. I think it's entirely worth learning some of that language.

On that note, I entirely recommend everyone to watch this channel. Michael's explanations about these concepts are the easiest to follow from anything I've seen, and they make full sense. (I'm also learning a lot from this).

Ralf wrote: Sat Jan 13, 2018 1:10 pm And the last thing. Several times I met with opinions that skill of making music is something that can't be learnt. That you either are born with it and don't need any explanations then or you don't have it and no explanations will help you. True or not?

Complete bs.

(Gah, the youtube bombardment from above is killing my poor laptop here)
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Ast A. Moore »

Hikaru wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:17 am Sound itself conveys a mood. If you pay attention to it, you will see (hear) that, before there is even a melody or a sense of progression, even the simplest case of having a continuously playing 'sound' of 2~3 notes put together might sound happy, or sad, or scary/awkward/menacing. Or something else entirely.
Only within a particular culture, though. One man’s “happy” is another man’s “awkward.” The jump between a flat 2 and a natural 3 in most contexts annoys me to no end, for example. For many cultures, however, it’s as natural and happy-sounding as the ii-V-I turnaround is for us. Besides, not all cultures use the same 12-TET scale or naturally start to tap their foot to a 4/4 beat.
Hikaru wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:17 am
Ast A. Moore wrote: Sat Jan 13, 2018 12:37 pm I don’t think having extensive knowledge of music theory is necessary for creating a catchy game tune. If you have any taste in music, it alone will suffice.
<...>
Forget about music theory, “creative process,” “getting your ideas from somewhere,” or “looking inside your head.”
Well, why not have both?
I never argued against having both. I, myself, have both. That was not, however, what Dave was asking. He just didn’t know where to start and was (probably) having reservations about it because he’d thought “you must know chords and stuff” in order to do music. I offered encouragement by stating that the knowledge of music theory is most certainly not a must.
Hikaru wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:17 amMusic theory is not some sort of a dogmatic rulebook
As someone who’s taught music for a few decades, I can assure you, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. ;)

“I hear that beat, I jump out of my seat, but I can’t compete . . .”

[youtube]https://youtu.be/96sOeh3ng5A[/youtube]
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Hikaru »

Ast A. Moore wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:42 am
Hikaru wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:17 am Sound itself conveys a mood. If you pay attention to it, you will see (hear) that, before there is even a melody or a sense of progression, even the simplest case of having a continuously playing 'sound' of 2~3 notes put together might sound happy, or sad, or scary/awkward/menacing. Or something else entirely.
Only within a particular culture, though. One man’s “happy” is another man’s “awkward.” The jump between a flat 2 and a natural 3 in most contexts annoys me to no end, for example. For many cultures, however, it’s as natural and happy-sounding as the ii-V-I turnaround is for us. Besides, not all cultures use the same 12-TET scale or naturally start to tap their foot to a 4/4 beat.

I'm pretty sure every culture have their notions of 'happy', 'awkward' and everything else in between. You're arguing with something that wasn't in my post.

Ast A. Moore wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:42 am I never argued against having both. I, myself, have both. That was not, however, what Dave was asking. He just didn’t know where to start and was (probably) having reservations about it because he’d thought “you must know chords and stuff” in order to do music. I offered encouragement by stating that the knowledge of music theory is most certainly not a must.

My point was that it is a more productive approach to try and get the best of both worlds rather than simply hitting random keys and seeing what happens (nothing wrong with that in itself), as well as the fact that it most certainly won't bite even if you try.

- You seem familiar with the concepts yourself, too. Idk really. :lol:

Ast A. Moore wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 10:42 am
Hikaru wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:17 amMusic theory is not some sort of a dogmatic rulebook
As someone who’s taught music for a few decades, I can assure you, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. ;)

“I hear that beat, I jump out of my seat, but I can’t compete . . .”

Now that is just 3deep5me good sir.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

Thanks all, great posts/PMs here. To sum up my understanding of the points made:

A 'normal' catchy tune follows a variation on a limited pattern, there's nothing forcing you to stick to this but it's maybe the best way in for a beginner.

Not understanding musical notation is not a big hindrance, but why not learn the rudiments.

Tinker, tinker, tinker. As long as you're interested enough and have natural curiosity to try and sculpt your initial random wibblings you might get somewhere. Unfocussed random notes are not enough though, just a starting point. I think sound is much harder than visual art, to go from a childish scribble (nay abstract?) to a wobbly round smiley face is much easier than the musical equivalent, and it's harder to recognise when and how you've done so.

I think I'm getting somewhere with this, but I'm still at the stage that I feel I got lucky that it sounds okay. I've had some success with Jonathan Cauldwell's AY Tracker, which would be a perfect way in but it doesn't do percussion (and it's everyone's favourite piano roll :-p).

This is my best effort so far (from last year), but I reached the point that every time I tried to add or change something I made it worse and I didn't understand why.

I might get in trouble for this but I suspect the impenetrable nature of the trackers is actually holding AY music back. I've read up how the AY chip works and after numerous hours trying I think I'm closer to writing my own AY engine than getting Vortex Tracker to make the simplest of sounds. I can't remember why but I couldn't get WYZ to work, maybe that's one to revisit.

Would anyone be willing to write a short piece on how to make Vortex Tracker do the simplest of AY tunes from scratch? Say assume channel a,b are for notes and c is a drum?

Taking [mention]Wall_Axe[/mention] 's repeating note as a start, where would you go from there? (Or would you go from there?!). More depth, an accompanying channel, more spaces?
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by bob_fossil »

I don't have anything clever to add regarding composition techniques but I wanted R-Tape to know he's not alone in having some some of tracker block. :) When YS put Sound Tracker on one of their covertapes, the initial excitement was soon replaced with confusion and then disappointment as it seemed you had to construct waveforms and then write a song using blocks of letters and numbers.

Now, this should be ideal for me as I'm quite happy using blocks of letters and numbers to write code but for some unknown reason it just doesn't click with me. I'm not particularly gifted artistically either but I've always been able to cobble something together with drawing packages (Art Studio, Deluxe Paint III, Paintshop Pro 5). In a drawing package you can rubber band lines and various different shapes rather than having to type in commands like LOGO to get something on the screen.

The tracker approach - certainly on modern machines - seems a throw back to when you had to do it that way due to the limitations of the hardware back then.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Ast A. Moore »

R-Tape wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2018 12:18 pm To sum up my understanding of the points made:

Tinker, tinker, tinker. As long as you're interested enough and have natural curiosity to try and sculpt your initial random wibblings you might get somewhere. Unfocussed random notes are not enough though, just a starting point.
Yup, that’s the gist of it.

As a general development exercise, I highly recommend the practice of transcribing music. Now, I don’t mean it in the technical term of writing down a piece of music you hear, but as a start, listen to any (preferably familiar) piece of music, and try to focus on a single part or instrument. The melody might seem like an obvious choice, but go beyond that: listen to the bass line, the harmony, the drum kit, or even individual pieces of the drum kit. See if you can hum along with, say, the bass, not the melody.

Then it’s just a matter of converting your humming to a single music track and laying it down with whatever tools you have and know how to use. It’s a good way of learning your tools, too, as you have a concrete goal in mind. The idea is to match whatever sounds the tool can produce to your humming. With practice, you’ll be able to “hear the humming” in your head, and that’s when composing begins. (Most people do it anyway; they just don’t bother committing the “humming” in their heads to paper or disk.) Then you add another track, and another one. Keep changing note pitches and durations until it all just “sounds right.”

Transcribing is one of my favorite exercises. And it, too, doesn’t require a whole lot of knowledge of music theory. It’s mostly a “monkey see, monkey do” kind of task.

By way of example, I’m not classically trained, and I never took classical composition or orchestration classes, yet with just the right amount of determination and a certain degree of familiarity with my tools, I was able to transcribe and create a passable approximation of a piece that should ring a bell to a least some of this forum’s members. It’s far from being identical to the original (and only about 90–95 percent finished), but I think I managed to capture all the important nuances for it to be recognizable. Mind you, all of this was done with a mouse and a standard computer keyboard in a piano roll editor in Logic:

Have a listen.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Wall_Axe »

good rendition of voyager :)
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by hikoki »

Could any ay file be edited with a speccy tracker?
You can find Midi2Ay on WoS. I think it was used for Pietro Bros. You may ask his author how he improved the initial result obtained with Midi2Ay.
Also there are android apps and PC programs that allows creating midi music from your hum. For example, this app is said to work well: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... uis.hum_on
Maybe you can find it useful for your compositions as a first step to translate midi to ay.
There is also a program for desktop PC which is free (unlike the phone version) that I mentioned on WoS ( I can look for the name later)

Edit:

see this post where I did a bit of research on tools to work with midi composing : https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... ent_902473
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

I'm going to try and learn the basics of musical notation, transcribe something very simple, keep tinkering and hope something clicks, because at the moment I don't feel any closer to a musical eureka. Deciding which way into an AY tracker is another obstacle, at least Beepola and AY tracker are manageable.

I've converted my best efforts to WAV files and shared them on soundcloud. I think the AY track (morningsun) could pass as a congratulations tune on something like Rainbow Islands, but I'm not sure about the beepola track (marsdust), could it pass as experimental or does it just make you wince?

Is it obvious that both are made by someone that doesn't understand music? If not could you explain why in simple terms?
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Seven.FFF »

autosiril by siril is another interesting midi to AY converter.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Wall_Axe »

marsdust sounds really good from the 6 second mark til the 15 second mark,
when that new tone comes in it ruins it


morningsun sounds alright but all the notes are the same type, i dont know the musical terminology,

each note lasts the same amount of time so that is boring
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

Ta for the feedback.
Wall_Axe wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 3:39 am marsdust sounds really good from the 6 second mark til the 15 second mark,
when that new tone comes in it ruins it
So I hit paydirt for 9 seconds? That's progress!

RE the other track - I think the note length is constant in AY Tracker, so I'm going to blame the tools on this one.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by Wall_Axe »

oh aye. I didn't like most AY tunes back in the day, the sound tones used didn't really sound good,
marsdust does have a good sound though.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by RMartins »

It was a bit painful to hear, but I endured the full length of both.

If you do not notice or distinguish the dissonant notes, you will have a problem composing any music.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

RMartins wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 7:17 pm It was a bit painful to hear, but I endured the full length of both.

If you do not notice or distinguish the dissonant notes, you will have a problem composing any music.
Now there's a glowing encomium! :lol:

I agree marsdust is wrong (though think it has sections of potential), but morningsun sounds perfectly fine to me, I actually like it!

I think this comes more easily to some than others, in this domain I'm definitely 'others'.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by utz »

Cheers R-Tape, considering they're first attempts, those tracks you posted aren't so bad!

The secret to getting better at music is practise, plain and simple. Of course talent helps, but it's non-essential. Knowing some basic music theory will make things easier, though it's not a strict requirement either. Some people also swear by harmony theory. Personally I think that while it might make you a better/more efficient musician, it takes the fun out of music making. And having seen several people burning out after going heavy on harmony theory hasn't help change that belief either...

Anyway, of course practising writing chiptune music is different from learning a "real" instrument. But it's practising nevertheless. Like others have said, tinkering around is always a good idea. Also, listen to other people's music and try to understand how it is made (Tim Follin would disagree on this one, but then again he's a genius :D)

Some chiptune specific advice. 1) Get away from that notion of "bass goes on ch1, melody on ch2, percussion on ch3". For chiptune, the proper way to go is "put stuff whereever there is space". For example, it is easy to squeeze the bass and kick drum on the same channel. 2) AY editors (and chiptune editors in general) don't simply do percussion*. It's up to you to figure out how to emulate percussive sounds given the AY's arsenal (Hint: A kick can be simulated by applying a fast downward pitch slide to a tone, and almost anything else can be simulated with the noise generator or a combination of noise and tone).

Btw, I can highly recommend this presentation by gasman: https://media.ccc.de/v/SHA2017-175-zero ... n_one_hour

* Beeper is exception to this rule. For technical reasons, beeper routines will often feature a dedicated drum channel.
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Re: Spectrum musicians - how do you do it?

Post by R-Tape »

Thanks Utz, great post.

I am currently learning to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Beepola, and feel like I'm at nursery school.
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