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Posted By

Verona
on 2020-01-24
01:06:17
 How did you make music in the old days for demos?

Hello!

When I got my Plusy at 1995, I've always been fascinated by demo music, but I know almost nothing about how such music was made at that time. I am expecting anything, memories, materials, everything.

Posted By

Luca
on 2020-01-24
02:06:33
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

You can read a short synopsis about that in my Lone News 20 article.

Posted By

Verona
on 2020-01-24
07:02:40
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

Thanks, Luca! It's very brief, but good for start.

Posted By

Ati
on 2020-01-25
06:48:59
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

Verona! We grab music from a c64 program, we put into our stuff with a converter, and goodnight. Anno we had just converted future composer, dmc on plus4, but that was "uncompatible" with pure ted music... maybe nobody used that. I was lucky guy, because i could take c64 musics from sld.

Posted By

George
on 2020-01-25
13:13:46
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

Very Interesting topic Verona! Really!
I am no musician, nor have i done any demos back then, but i went the last years the way of direct midi conversion for TED and lately SID. I literelly convert the tracks with notes to basic commands. For Sid i figured out a method how to extrat 3 midi tracks of the song with several tools and make playable sid files.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1hXRkzWMcUQ

Posted By

Verona
on 2020-01-26
06:07:17
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

George: I watch your video. It's good, but I thought of something else. such as Trap or Brainfade, with that vibrating voices, drums, etc. They must have used some kind of a composer. it would be so good to have a book or documentary about it. Not for learning, but to see how it went. As a kid, I used to listen to intros, just because of the music, and wondered if I could do some of that.

Posted By

Lavina
on 2020-01-26
06:08:37
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

I guess those are digi samples played along with the composed music (?).

Posted By

Luca
on 2020-01-26
12:41:38
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

Verona mh, I invite you to read *again* my mag's article, which now appears to be less "brief" than your question needs grin

Posted By

MMS
on 2020-01-26
14:54:05
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

Hi Verona,

Both mentioned games are an interesting mix happy

Brainfade:
-First music (with intro pic "cat") is a SID music with FRQ converter, like the ones made by Pigmy (Games Music)/MB (Game intros)
-Second music (with flying logos) seems to be written for TED with such an editor Luca described in Lone News 20
-Third (ingame) music sound like a SID music played with digi converter (like TLC's one)

Trap:
-Intro music is evidently a Pigmy of MB SID FRQ converter
-Ingame musics are SID with Digi converter, you can clearly hear the cutoff frequency coming from the sampling rate

Also there is the fantastic TEDZAKKER from Hermit you may have vibrato and other if you want to write your own music.

Luca's article is really good in Lone News, but it needs a programmer (as you).

Because I am not a programmer nor a musician, I prefer George's way:
The music has very special sound, and it is not "taken" from C64, so I can say you cannot meet the same song in any other Commodore release. (I suppose there are even more MIDIs around than SID)
SID and 3 channel is still a blocking point for native TED machines, but it could be emulated too. happy

Posted By

Verona
on 2020-01-29
03:53:55
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

I already used the TEDzakker in L.T.I.B.

That's a relatively new tool, I am interested in the past times.

Posted By

Csabo
on 2020-01-29
09:14:54
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

We have to look at each different "era" separately. So, very briefly:

- "Pre-scene" era: music in commercial games is written "by hand". There are no formalized music editors or players, each piece is a work of art unto itself (just like the games themselves!). Notable tunes: anything by David Whittaker (exemplary use of the TED's capabilities), Terra Nova (a masterpiece in both composition and TED usage - volume, noise, adding extra notes to make it sound like there's more than 2 channels), anything by Brigitte Gertz.

- "Old-school scene" era: the only person composing music is ern0 (one of the greats!), using the (lost) Vanguard player. It has a very distinct sound. Otherwise music in demos is dominated by Pigmy's conversions.

- "Scene" era: nearly everyone uses the ever-evolving freq converters. Often badly. Wit (one of the greats!) revolutionizes the scene with the wave-converters. Only 3 exceptions that I can think off the top of my head: TEK (using their own stuff), LOD (that's us, using Future Composer) and Steve (he did a couple of tunes, also FC).

- "Post scene" era: this is now. Dominated by LOD Player (that's just me), and the eventual arrival of TEDzakker and Knaecketraecker.

That about covers it in very large strokes. As you can see, there's not much, and the tools that were used are mostly lost.

Posted By

zbyti
on 2021-03-02
16:09:42
 Re: How did you make music in the old days for demos?

Big THX Luca for the Lone News 20! :]



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