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Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-08-11
12:57:14

Amiga Music Box 1

If you like Amiga tunes and Plus/4 demos, then you're in luck: today marks the release of Amiga Music Box 1. In contains two tunes, converted from Amiga by Spektro. I (Csabo) helped out a little by wrapping them up in a little music box. There's not much else to add, give it a listen and enjoy!

Posted By

gerliczer
on 2013-08-11
12:57:14

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Hi Spektro,

Just downloaded and listening to your release. I like it. Thank you for your effort. And of course thanks goes to Csabo, too.

Posted By

George
on 2013-08-11
14:16:23

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

As usual, great work!

Posted By

Chronos
on 2013-08-11
14:24:22

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Great stuff guys! Anyway if you need a logo for the next release drop me an msg!

Posted By

Spektro
on 2013-08-12
01:32:45

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Thanks guys. Csabo did excellent work building the music box. Thanks again Csabo! I wrote those two tunes around 1989 to test my music player. There is a lot of room for improvement on the tunes and the player.

@Chronos
Thanks for the offer. Before any new releases I'll have to write a new player routine, a modern one, and new music, of course

Posted By

YERZMYEY
on 2013-08-13
10:43:31

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Good one, dudez.

Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-08-13
10:49:13

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

No problem, and it was my pleasure.

I think a logo would have been too much: the tunes have a nice simplicity to them, so PETSCII art was a good fit. Pure TED goodness

Posted By

Luca
on 2013-08-13
15:27:20

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Sweetly presented, I've liked it quite much

Waiting for the second volume, and for more infos about how the tunes have been composed.

Posted By

Spektro
on 2013-08-14
02:01:25

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

The tunes were manually converted from Amiga modules. To do that I used my own music editor called J.C. MusicEditor: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oi_SCAtuNu9tkbKR5VqUktMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink

As you can see from the screenshot, it's very basic. There are no wavetables or any fancy features. The editor saves the music as a big data block, also containing unused track space and patterns. It wastes a lot of memory.

The player and the editor were a dead end (an experiment), but I thought I could release the 2 tunes.

Posted By

Luca
on 2013-08-14
04:02:33

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Although the limitations you cited,it looka absolutely lovable. You should really release it for the mass in some ways,'coz it would be the very first TED music editor of the modern era running on a 264 machine.
Not any Plus/4 user has crossassembling skills in order to manage the cross-composing of a TED tune. I've seen a fantastic preview of an editor which was able to port the TLC's editor as runnable on Plus/4 but the project stucked (and I hope the author will relive it

). Even if very simple, your editor would allow everyone to obtain a runnable and manageable tune straight from the Plus/4

Posted By

MMS
on 2013-08-14
10:09:48

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

and it is what YERZMYEY is looking for since 2011, and he could be a potential new source of similar nice tunes.

this was about TED...

btw if someone may reverse engineer the HEXAEDER intro that plays different wavetable samples and 8 channels paralelly... Only one step from there is the 4-channel (noisy) MOD playback, if someone able to mix the two and program it. Switching off the 50% of the screen could be enough to gain CPU power.

Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-08-14
13:19:59

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

The "8 channels" player is not really a player: the waveform, the frequency, basically everything is fixed. It's a one-off thing.

If you want MOD-like players, grab Nyancat, it has a player which mixes two channels in real time, with the screen open. (More channels can be easily added, though the sample rate will have to come down because of the extra processing needed.)

Otherwise on the topic of players: LOD Player V2 has been out since... forever. I wrote every one of my tunes with it. It's modern player with pretty much every feature you'd need to make tunes. I told about this to Yerzmyey as well when he emailed me, but he never responded. I guess people don't think of the source code + Plus4IDE as a music editor? But it is though, it's the same work flow (for me), and copy/pasting plus all the normal "editor" stuff is all there - which would be hard to reproduce in a tracker-style editor. So, in short, I'm a bit baffled why more people don't use it. If some could articulate what's wrong with my thinking, I'd apprecite it.

Posted By

Luca
on 2013-08-14
15:24:05

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Csabo and me discussed several times about the presumed (

) promptness of understanding and usage of his fantastic TEDsound generating source code.

Me and Degauss did try several times to approach it, eventually failing. This has happened because other source codes like TLCplay and the one that 4-Mat released with TED Storm were deeply documented, and their features are limited into precise perimeters. On the countrary, even though we tried and tried again, Csabo's code looks different from tune to tune, because he optimizes the compiled .prg cuttin'out what the tune doesn't need. I watch the code asking to myself: omg and what's the slice he doesn't use now, what do I miss? The only words about what that code can do, and in which way, are there as comment lines.
Where are the parameters for a glide? Where can I tag and edit an arpeggio? 4-Mat's code set the average volume between what you've selected for the channels, and how Csabo's manage it?

On the other hand, Csabo was bewildered about our difficulties: the code is there, no probs at all, he has properly thought. Overall result: both sides get stuck in their positions :/ It's a pity, as I've written years before, the potential of Csabo's source code is quite big, but we simply were not able to embrace the parameters that drive it

The author uses it 1x, 2x, 1.5x, with digis, with elephants dwarfs and dancers; and we dunno how it works

For who didn't know, I've handled this argument in the last issue of my ancient magazine Lone News 20, with several examples included.

Because my post is 95% fun and 5% real stuff, I laughed during the entire typing of this text. But now let's take advantage of this thread in order to unjam our respective locks once forever

Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-08-14
16:16:33

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Ah, that cleared everything up perfectly!

Posted By

YERZMYEY
on 2013-08-15
18:27:32

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

MMS:

and it is what YERZMYEY is looking for since 2011, and he could be a potential new source of similar nice tunes

--------------------------
I don't deny, looks like the first step to stuff I look for, indeed.
But since 2009, to say at least.

Spektro, actually if You would be willing to release the tracker, even if it doesn't have any ornaments nor drums (not yet anyway), it might be still possible to make songs in it, as it was possible to make songs in "The Music Box" on ZX Spectrum (similar idea - 2 channels, no volumes, square wave only, not ornaments).
As for the example, I could show You this one:
http://parishq.net/proposed//sound/mister_beep-music_from_the_box.mp3
(except the intro/outro FX that has been made in another ZX48 tool) but the music comes from "The Music Box" and as You can notice, somehow it is possible to make hmmm, pretty interesting song even without any fancy effects (there are some drums at the end but they're not immanent part of the actual song indeed).

So - I'd take a look into the tracker, if possible.

Csabo:

I told about this to Yerzmyey as well when he emailed me, but he never responded.

----------------------------
If so, then I'm sorry about it, as it would seem to be rude of me (which I don't like). Probably it was some mistake/oversight from my side

HOWEVER, as for the subject-matter itself - my point of view stands, I'm sorry.
No coding from me. No and never - sorry. I actually regret in fact but I don't code I don't use assemblers I use only utilities. I'm just a humble user and will be nothing more in future.

If I have to make music/graphic/txt/whatever, I must have editors for it. Utilities, if you will. Tools.
It will never change.

Still, I'm sorry if I didn't reply to any e'mails, it's inexcusable.

Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-08-15
18:41:11

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

You may or may not have replied, this was a while back. Doesn't matter actually, and definitely no hurt feelings or anything. The point was, the discussion ended there

Plus4IDE is a tool, it's is an editor. When you're editing music for my player, all you have to be looking at is your own music data, so there's no coding whatsoever. Does this really come down to me saying "it's here, it can be done" and you guys saying "I don't want to use that because it's not a tracker"? It's probably just a question what you're used to, and whether you're open to new things.

Posted By

Spektro
on 2013-08-16
11:17:47

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

@YERZMYEY
If you really really want the editor, I can send it to you but you've been warned

Before sending it, I need to write instructions since there is no documentation whatsoever.

The editor doesn't save an executable program. Is it okay? The saved music file contains the player, but not the initialization and interrupt routines. It had to be made that way because the editor needs special versions of those two routines.

Posted By

Luca
on 2013-08-16
14:05:54

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Spektro: I've seen your original files for the tunes, and they look quite linear and clean to be coupled with a player easy enough. Csabo did the usual very good work with his players. I strongly suggest to release a pretty nice public version of the editor

Csabo: you know I'm used enough in composing by Plus4IDE, but I repeately failed to understand how to take advantage of its potential. Nevertheless, I really wanna learn to use it, hence I'm gonna try it again applying a bit of trial and error approach

Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-08-16
15:36:51

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Another thought occurred to me, particularly about this comment: "No coding from me. No and never - sorry." So even if you had a tracker, what would you do with the end product? The tracker will either save an executable, or just the music player + data (like Spektro's), but those are no good by themselves without further coding. So... yeah, that's weird.

Posted By

Luca
on 2013-08-16
16:55:03

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

Oh well... Hafta add'n'say that the composer is the composer, the coder will code and use that tune

Posted By

Csabo
on 2013-08-16
20:55:43

Re: Amiga Music Box 1

I can't get over this stuff: "I must have editors for it. Utilities, if you will. Tools." - and then me pointing out that Plus4IDE is indeed a tool. For what it's worth, I did a writeup of it here: http://plus4world.powweb.com/features/Using_LOD_Player_V2. Why, I don't know. I doubt it will be much use.

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