shmups.system11.org

Well I downloaded a patches folder from a game I know has a good variety of sounds (Sonic) and hey, it's not too bad already plenty of good sounds there. I guess I can slowly build my sound bank as I go

btw, what's the command for a note cut? In the manual I found the one for a delayed note cut (ECxx), but I haven't found how to abruptly end one

Also : is there a limit of patches you can use per song on the real hardware (seems unlimited in Deflemask, but I want to make sure I can play my song on a real Genny)? Wether it's memory tied or just a set max number of banks available? Not that I need a million, but I'm wondering if I'm tied to 6 fm instruments per song on real hardware since there are 6 fm channels

Nice to hear you're making progress on your FM adventure!

Note cuts/note off can be inserted with the TAB key when you're in Edit mode. It should be displayed as "OFF" in the chosen cell.

There's no hard instrument/patch limit that I'm aware of, but even so instrument data is quite tiny IIRC. I've made tracks with upwards of 20-25 instruments with no issues, and I'm sure there are .dmfs out there that get even crazier.

The main thing that determines file size is the size of the track. Specifically for hardware, samples will jack up the ROM file size something fierce, and you may see some unusually large sizes if you do any really intricate work with commands. Vibrato commands in particular are known to add a lot of weight.

The song is up :
Warriors! March forward!

Obviously the sounds aren't even close to being well polished. I'm light years behind you guys in that department. But I like to think that the composition and arrangements are at least decent. Pretty happy with it, considering I've first opened Deflemask 2 days ago, and had never messed with FM synth programming.

I have a ton to learn still, especially regarding finding sounds and taking the time to shape them. But this will be done over time. (I'm quite impatient so this song HAD to be finished today wanted to be able to switch my focus and energy on another song. Plus, I can always remix it later)
Next step is to download patches of games that have some really cool sounds that I can use, especially stuff with nice low end and stuff that sounds mettallic without sounding tiny. And stuff that sounds like both. hehe (gotta rip those sweet TechnoSoft sounds)

I have never tweaked sounds before, always just picked an instrument and played and that's it. So this craft of shaping sounds, and making sure they play well with one another, is completely new to me. It's a whole other new game. But with practice I will get better, no doubt.

EDIT : had to modify the bass sounds and the chords' synth sound. so I delete the track from soundcloud and reuploaded a new one. Ok I'm done now I have modified the url in the link above

I dig the hybrid of driving bass and pensive tones - it already sounds very Magician Lord (st4 to be precise).

Thanks! That's a good observation.
Yeah always liked that combo myself! As soon as I wrote the basic melody in demo form, I knew I wanted those chords over the first riff, and with an airy sound. And use that kinda sound on some of the leads too. A pensive tone as you say, that's a good way to describe it. That combo just sounds sooooo classic fantasy to me, had to use it!

At first I went with a deep and soft bass sound, but then I tought about maybe using the good ole' Lemmy style trebly, crass and cut-you-like-a-razor-blade bass sound that's so popular and so awesome in Genny games, and thankfully it meshed quite alright with the rest. Or at least I think.

Finished another FM tune today.
Cool investigation

Tune for a detective game obv, was thinking point and click style. A cyberpunk setting would fit nicely too.
I made a point of keeping the loop short and simple : this is a piece that would play during dialogues, in which you're given valuable intel and stuff. So the music needs to be simple and unassuming, yet hit the right mood.

This is quite a sassy beat, so turn on the loop function and shake your butt But not too much! I say : shake it like a bowl of soup!

bit of jungle music for a change
human bong
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... human-bong

https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... re-killeur
more amen darkside jungled

More Drone Ambient for an album I got asked to make for a label. Minimal, lush pads are the highlight of this one. https://soundcloud.com/james-shain-2/ja ... le/s-9mp02

Just a quick question, do newer versions of Reason play nice with AMD cpus?

I only have an old copy of Reason 4 and it didn't like my new build, refusing to start. I found a patch that works but it wanted to run everytime windows booted and not knowing exactly what it did, I was not comfortable with it.

no experience with reason but last time i spoke to my mate about beats said he's been having loads of trouble running it nowadays.
few more darkside/jungle ravey things
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... -buy-a-day
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... gunge-star
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... ue-twooper

It does sound pretty fitting for a point&click game! Not only for dialogues as you explained, but also for room examinations I think. It also has a bit of a noir flair IMO, but that impression may be due to the song's cover image.

I like the vibe this one gives off!
Drum&bass is a genre I discovered with Karous' soundtrack, so I always tend to compare tracks with heavy drum&bass sounds to that OST, but this one has enough other elements to make it stand out and do its own thing.

---

I tried my hand a bit on FL Studio and LMMS but am not satisfied with the few sounds I created, and in order to improve I have a few questions about synthesizers and the composition methodology.

-Is a synthesizer effective in terms of productivity? Does it make it easier and faster to create and experiment than simply using computer software with nothing else than a mouse and a keyboard? I am not well-versed in how synths even work to be honest, can they be plugged to a computer and interact with the aformentioned music software?

-In what order should you create the elements of the track? (the beat, the melody, and probably others as well)

-What techniques do you recommend to come up with a melody or a beat? Record yourself humming stuff ? Write down the notes on a sheet? Try random stuff until it sounds good?

Thanks in advance!

yeah that one is influenced more by the early jungle dark rave songs.. stuff like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aitLnwWOtBg i actually pitched down part of the turrican soundtrack and chopped it up in about 4 places for the main dark sound

i do like synths and have a few but i'm to lazy to plug em in atm .i don't use midi and would just sample them anyway they are really good for certain sounds (pads etc and all the sounds are gonna fit rhythmically with the tune) i use samples most the time and you have to chop/stretch/slow/speed up/add effects to make stuff fit the tempo of your tunes. if your sampling stuff with drums/percussion behind it it can make it even trickier.

personally i always start programming with a drum loop.i get that in time with the tempo then i make copies of various kicks,hats,snares,rolls etc and program them around the loop to add variation every bar or couple of bars.

then i find a loop or trigger a weird bass heavy sample with echo (preferably with spacy noises surrounding it to use as a anchor) and try get as many variations out of the loop/piece of music i sampled or chop various samples around the bass. i have a template that contains around 70 spacey noises /bass sounds and ambienty samples that i find slot into compositions easily that i constantly add to as i find more and this speeds up my workflow greatly. the template is also setup for a basic compression sound so the drums and bass in the music sound loud and like the old hip hop and jungle i like pretty much from the beginning. i then just add eq or reverbs to the sample to brighten or dull sounds as i see fit.. so yeah just pretty much throw samples at drum loops till i'm done. hip hop beats take me roughly 15 mins-2hrs to finish whereas a jungle tune can take me 2-3 hrs to 2 days or even a week if i take a rest to think about composition a bit more.

Thanks! You know that's a good, point, I haven't thought about ir but it would indeed fit the room investigation sequences as well, like you said. Oh and the Noir feel, yes it's helped by the picture but those mysterious sounding cool-jazz chords(minor sixth) that resonate for long are what do the trick I think. The note interval between them helps too (one semitone apart from one another) to create tension. Those two element together gelled really well, I was super happy about finding that (I had the sound well figured out in my head but finding the actual chord was a pain, haha. especially since I don't have a musical keyboard and had to program a chord and listen to it, rinse repeat, rinse repeat)

charlie chong : Thanks for the detailed explanation!
I only used the sounds available in the software's modules and didn't sample anything. I may have to rely on that a lot more then.

FinalBaton : I might have to remember those tricks you came up with, they do sound useful! (even though I don't really get the technical terms... )
Aside from that, I was wondering : in what ways the musical keyboard would have accelerated your workflow when you had trouble with finding the right chord?

Oh it's just that pressing notes on a real musical keyboard is instantaneous. You can test chords right away and test a lot of them quickly. In a tracker you have to input them and play them back, which still doesn't take a ton of your time (30 seconds), but at the end of the day it still is longer than trying a chord on a real keyboard (1 second). This extra time adds up, considering we do that operation many many many times in a session. But it's still not too bad, working without a musical keyboard does the job too just a bit more time consuming, is all

In deflemask you can play notes with keypresses on your pc's keyboard(notes saved as shortcuts) but it's no more than 2 at a time and there's some delay, so it's not really viable solution. I'd rather click on the on-screen piano roll (only 1 note at a time with this method, obviously)

Understood!
I can see how it can be kinda frustrating at the end of the day when you realize you could have made much more progress with a keyboard.
I looked around a bit and it seems both FL Studio and LMMS allow you to use your computer keyboard to hit the notes on the piano roll, so at least there's that! Dunno if there's delay and how viable/usable this feature is, though.

yep the delay is a pain in the bum with trackers(i use modplug tracker in conjunction with sound forge).. i only try and play the notes in live if i can't get the feel right by eye alone so i know roughly where to place a note. i mainly do that for my basslines tho.

don't worry too much about terminology unless you are musically trained. i just think of chords and musical progressions in terms of numbers or shapes (i get synthestasia pretty badly) and it Doesn't hinder me too badly

A couple more jungle songs
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... a-nautilus
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... very-tieme

Damn you've really been cranking them out lately. It's good shit too.
It's not my style but I can tell that it's good : the moods are all cool, it sounds full (always some stuff happening without feeling too busy) and is always moving, and it always flow well

Yeah it's definitely not needed to know your chords and scales etc. I just wrote it like that in case he was familiar with the stuff (and because I was curious to know what that chord was. It's a chord where the higher note is 8 seni-tones(8 piano notes) removed from the lower note). I actually had to look it up Been writing music for 20 years now and I don't even know the basic chords on a guitar, I know none of that stuff.

Oh and here's a fun FM track I just made :

Fearless adventurer Soundcloud | Youtube

I had to scrap a couple tunes that I spent a couple hours on each , before moving to this one, so by that point I had NO patience for making this one a long tune was getting pretty frustrated, and needed to get something out NOW. lol. Having said that I really, really like what's in there, I think it packs a punch. I didn't expect that but the last riff loops back super well into the first, kinda propels it and make it sound more \m/etal. which is why I was okay with ending the loop there. Obviously the aim here is Falcom rawk(but also Warsong), and tryna write a super emo and epic warrior hymn

Very happy with how it turned out!


(do you guys think I should put many loops in the soundcloud uploads, just like I do in the Youtube uploads? (currently put 2/3 loops per track on YT and only 1 in SC tracks). I kinda like the Soundcloud uploads to be a single loop, makes for extended listening without fade outs every 2 minutes. And also space is limited on SC, so that helps. (I want to ultimately have all my stuff available on SC without ever running out of space). It also helps give SC and YT distinct, different roles in hosting my vgm library. BUT : SC doesn't loop perfectly smooth, there's a little delay between end and beggining with loop option enabled. So that aspect is not optimal) EDIT : just re-uploaded last track with 3 loops. felt like it was crucial to hear this one looping perfectly smooth

thanks final baton 92-96 style jungle music and hip hop is pretty untrendy and retro now but i try to keep it as tasteful as possible while making sure the programming changes all the way through.. checked your newest chiptune and it sounded pretty authentic .reminds me of playing megadrive in my bedroom in 92 anyway
in discussion with a label that does physical releases about the jungle stuff which is not bad considering i only been back on it a week
my hip hop stuff sprawled out of control and i can't keep track of what i did over the past 6 months cos i did too many beats to even remember what they sound like now.

heres some new jungles i did the last couple of days

https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... ncha-munny
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... n/92-rinse
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... k-her-eyez
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... pice-mikey

Thanks! Yep that's 100% my goal : making mega drive music that sounds like it was in a game from back when a game you could have been playing as a kid. I'm really going for era accurate. Happy to see I'm reaching that goal!

most people go the route of making modern sounding stuff with that soundchip and pushing it's limits, and that's awesome, but that's definitely not what I wanna do (besides, I'm not good enough in the 'sound shaping' aspect and arrangement aspect yet to even attempt this anyway . I wish I was though, I envy those people. man, writing electronic music is harder than I thought. it's really it's own skill. been writing rock and metal on live instruments all my life, and since I started writing electronic music 2 weeks ago, I realize that. I still got a way to go)

yeah regarding your stuff : often it's just something subtle changed in the programming. but there's always a little something, which is the best way you can go about it I think, since making big changes often would make it sound like amess. Instead making smaaaaall changes often keeps it always interesting without being jarring. And it shows that you know this

Very good original Genny/MD composition by our own EmperorIng (he says it's an older one but I missed it the first time around)
Lancelot (Sega Genesis/YM2612 Original)

Another little composition I made for the YM2612
JRPG happy town Soundcloud | Youtube

a bit of a ravey 4/4/ breakbeat feel to a few of these that i done this week
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... sooperstar
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... nz-sisters
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... /dope-feen
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... noa-spliff
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... tcha-dance
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... en/bonkerz
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... /still-luv
https://soundcloud.com/don-pachi-aka-bl ... n/vaj-sand

Dawww, it's so cute and comfy!

FYI, this one's link seems broken.
Damn, you weren't lying about the pace at which you can produce those tunes. That's quite a lot!

Thanks!

This was very enjoyable. I am glad I took the time to listen to your other tracks (been busy ), as they earned you a new follower.

One thing I would note on this and other tracks is that you might want to learn and experiment with panning instruments (in other words setting instruments on one speaker or another, left or right). I find when you start putting background instruments on either side, while leaving the middle for bass and the lead instrument (and mix it up with the drums), it can really flesh out the sound of your track and make your music pop. Of course, I didn't know any of this when -I- first started out! Just giving helpful advice!

re: Lancelot
It's 'older' in that I made it years ago, but I never posted it anywhere. I felt I needed something to remind my followers I existed, so I took it out of the bin!

===

I finally got off my butt and put together my shootemup soundtrack I wrote back in 2012/2013 for a game that never got finished:


^top-tier visual design, I know

Bandcamp: Project XVG Original Soundtrack

Sound sampler playlist
XVG Album Demo

I don't know how to control all the knobs with bandcamp, so I don't know if you only can listen to 4 or so tracks in toto, or each one individually, before you need to pay. There is a good number of tracks (8 + the sampler) on the soundcloud playlist, so listen to that as a good preview. Sorry for being greedy and demanding $5.00!

This was a good project, and essentially my first paid soundtrack gig. I am bummed that the guy became sick and never finished the project (though I've reached out to him about 2 years ago and he was doing better and had moved on). It has a lot of that exuberance that comes from trying to balance cramming in all your favorite references/styles and keeping some type of coherent vision together!

Yeah, I can see how some stereo effects can make a song "breathe" more, and give it more excitment! I will try to keep that in mind in the future. I'm too impatient now, haven't taken the time to tinker with panning in my songs yet. But it's true that it gives a something extra to the songs. I really need to make an extra effort to program those in

Thanks for the tip (including suggestion for which type of instruments to pan or not)! and thanks a ton for the support it's hugely appreciated. Glad you liked these songs

A new YM2612, with more metal and hard/prog rock influences. I'm exceedingly pleased with how this one turned out:
Rise of the Thrash Lord

About as inspired as I've been for at least a month - I gotta get myself back into the habit of regular audio work. I've been too stressed out over IRL crap.

I uploaded another track from my old TFM Maker days (just the YM2612 - no fancy PSG!)

Weirdo Ruins
It pains me to think that this track is 7+ years old.

@FinalBaton:

It can be intimidating to figure out features - especially in tracker programs in which they are not as intuitive as a knob to fiddle for X effect and so on. I was making sega genesis songs for a year or more before I started to dip my toes into adding effects, but the more you learn the more you can really open up your music. Start small - fiddling with vibrato (in a tracker program, 4xx - with each 'x' determining the strength/speed of the a particular direction... think like the whammy on a guitar). Vibrato only works as long as the effect is active, for example:

C# - - 459
--- - - 400
--- - - 400
--- - - 400
--- - - 400
--- - - 400
--- - - 400
--- - - 400

In this case the 459 effect is carried over to all the other 400s for eight frames/ticks/beats - however you wanna call it. If you change the numbers, or stop having the 400s in the effects fields, then it reverts to its default tone. Panning is different in that you only need to set the effect for the "side" (left - center- right) once, and it will play on that side for as long as you don't change it (which you can for various reasons).