I was going to say "How come none of these tracks have sampled speech?" but then I realized "Na Jozefa" does. :)
@kgmcneil: Ever since I saw and heard the sample tracker demo years it could use the beeper as easily as the AY chip. I'm surprised you didn't know this. :-D
Digitised speech and graphics on the Speccy has always fascinated me. It's a shame it wasn't used more.
..."I'm surprised you didn't know this"...(zxbruno)
...I came pretty late to the ZX music scene... I grew up with a 128+2, so never owned a 48k... So I never grew up understanding the fascination or with an appreciation for the beeper... I have minimal musical ability myself and only really developed an interest when the Emulator scene took off...
I blame Ahim/CPU for my interest now... When I first heard their .PT3 piece called "Matrix" (created 2004?...maybe?) I thought, "What the F*?k is THAT?!?!?! - that does NOT sound like a spectrum AT ALL?!?!?"... Ever since then, Iv been drawn to Spectrum music that pushes the boundaries or ZX pieces that do not sound like traditional pieces... Iv been gradually building a collection on my hard drive under the title, "UnSpeccy" which defines the criteria for pieces dumped there, ie: Any piece of ZX music that does not sound like a Spectrum piece?!?!?!?... Since then, I discovered Fatal Snipe and the whole Russian scene of programmers and demo makers...
Concerning demos - I never knew a demo scene even existed during my Spectrum days... And I sure as hell knew nothing about the whole Russian and East European scene out there at the time... There is LOADS of musical talent out there... Ill probably get burnt for saying this (and yes, I am originally from the UK), but the musical world doesn't stop with Tim Follin (impressive though he was)... I like the old stuff for nostalgic reasons, but the material produced after the 1990s in the demo scene is much much more sophisticated in my (biased) opinion (Flame war approaching!!!)... I believe that is probably a result of the internet and the sharing and distribution of music software tools that weren't around or weren't easily accessible prior to then...
Anyway, Iv waffled enough...
Im a late comer, who loved his Spectrum but never produced anything with it until late in life (unless you count a few BASIC programmed games and graphics work done with UDG's), hence my lack of understanding even well established tools like Sample Tracker!!!! ;)
I blame Ahim/CPU for my interest now... When I first heard their .PT3 piece called "Matrix" (created 2004?...maybe?) I thought, "What the F*?k is THAT?!?!?! - that does NOT sound like a spectrum AT ALL?!?!?"... Ever since then, Iv been drawn to Spectrum music that pushes the boundaries or ZX pieces that do not sound like traditional pieces... Iv been gradually building a collection on my hard drive under the title, "UnSpeccy" which defines the criteria for pieces dumped there, ie: Any piece of ZX music that does not sound like a Spectrum piece?!?!?!?...
Really? That's interesting. I'd be grateful for an URL to it. I'm also kinda interested in pushing the "doorbell" to sound better (usually without any CPU's activity, like here http://yerzmyey.republika.pl/Yerzmyey-Yuki.mp3 ), so I would be happy to hear the mentioned "Matrix" song too.
I state AY is much more interesting chip that appears in classic or modern software. Sadly, people usually use the most common and basic features.
Hmm, this might be because of construction of ZX Spectrum music-editors.
@yerzmyey: The first time I heard your music I said "How is this even possible?"
Well, it seems like those more complex synthetic instruments are in a way... hidden in those trackers, heh. I dunno.
Actually more and more often I start to think about making some YouTube video with examples: how to make some good AY synthesis despite having crappy editors.
Tuning is the biggest problem indeed but it's really possible to make correctly, if guy has an ear or two. ;)
I must also say this is an older copy of my folder (with less pieces), as Im typing this from work and don't have access to the folder from here (this copy happens to be on a thumbdrive I coincidentlally happen to have on me right now)...
Anyhow, its a nice little collection, and demonstrates well my point about contemporary sounding pieces moving away from traditional ZX musical scores...
Id love to know what other people enjoy listening too?... :)
Thank you. I'll check this one out. I don't listen to anything in particular all the time and it's been a while so... I don't remember the track titles. I like several tunes I found on YT and I also used to have a folder with untitled tracks I liked a lot (not just digital/sample music). Some music from Velesoft's site, some of Yerzmyey's tunes, some ot Gasman's, some of AY riders, etc. The name "Dancing d*ick" also comes to mind as a favorite, but it's not something done with samples.
I remember Gasman's AY tune which used normal AY music and digitised voice at the same time. :)
What I would like to hear is less Amiga-sounding samples. It woulk make me so happy to see something like Daft Punk's Disc Wars (Tron Legacy - track 17) on the Speccy. That would be the day.
I must also say this is an older copy of my folder (with less pieces), as Im typing this from work and don't have access to the folder from here (this copy happens to be on a thumbdrive I coincidentlally happen to have on me right now)...
Anyhow, its a nice little collection, and demonstrates well my point about contemporary sounding pieces moving away from traditional ZX musical scores...
Id love to know what other people enjoy listening too?... :)
Fantastic stuff! Thanks!
Listening to the entire collection using ay_emul...
For Sample Tracker output, every compiled song can be adjusted to proper output by POKE 65006,n where n is one of following:
0 - AY
1 - beep
2 - D/A 4bit
3 - D/A 8bit
Of course, when you make a song using 8bit samples, that one cannot be played on AY and BEEP. So, you can POKE all Mister BEEP's sample songs to use AY and hear them in original 4bit quality as they were written in (Sample Tracker don't use 1bit samples). I am currently writing an article about this, just have to hack a bit his latest demo as the songs were somehow altered to disable this option. :)
Thanks for the link there... There was some pieces Id not heard before...
As for that tip about Sample Tracker, I didn't realize it was as simple as all that to change output... One poke?!?!?!... Now Im really surprised it wasn't used more!... It could have really simplified 48k-128k conversions for music...
Now all we need is a simple .XM to Sample Tracker note conversion tool and we'd be sorted (tools already exist for converting the WAV's to instruments)...
Comments
@kgmcneil: Ever since I saw and heard the sample tracker demo years it could use the beeper as easily as the AY chip. I'm surprised you didn't know this. :-D
Digitised speech and graphics on the Speccy has always fascinated me. It's a shame it wasn't used more.
...I came pretty late to the ZX music scene... I grew up with a 128+2, so never owned a 48k... So I never grew up understanding the fascination or with an appreciation for the beeper... I have minimal musical ability myself and only really developed an interest when the Emulator scene took off...
I blame Ahim/CPU for my interest now... When I first heard their .PT3 piece called "Matrix" (created 2004?...maybe?) I thought, "What the F*?k is THAT?!?!?! - that does NOT sound like a spectrum AT ALL?!?!?"... Ever since then, Iv been drawn to Spectrum music that pushes the boundaries or ZX pieces that do not sound like traditional pieces... Iv been gradually building a collection on my hard drive under the title, "UnSpeccy" which defines the criteria for pieces dumped there, ie: Any piece of ZX music that does not sound like a Spectrum piece?!?!?!?... Since then, I discovered Fatal Snipe and the whole Russian scene of programmers and demo makers...
Concerning demos - I never knew a demo scene even existed during my Spectrum days... And I sure as hell knew nothing about the whole Russian and East European scene out there at the time... There is LOADS of musical talent out there... Ill probably get burnt for saying this (and yes, I am originally from the UK), but the musical world doesn't stop with Tim Follin (impressive though he was)... I like the old stuff for nostalgic reasons, but the material produced after the 1990s in the demo scene is much much more sophisticated in my (biased) opinion (Flame war approaching!!!)... I believe that is probably a result of the internet and the sharing and distribution of music software tools that weren't around or weren't easily accessible prior to then...
Anyway, Iv waffled enough...
Im a late comer, who loved his Spectrum but never produced anything with it until late in life (unless you count a few BASIC programmed games and graphics work done with UDG's), hence my lack of understanding even well established tools like Sample Tracker!!!!
;)
Really? That's interesting. I'd be grateful for an URL to it. I'm also kinda interested in pushing the "doorbell" to sound better (usually without any CPU's activity, like here http://yerzmyey.republika.pl/Yerzmyey-Yuki.mp3 ), so I would be happy to hear the mentioned "Matrix" song too.
I state AY is much more interesting chip that appears in classic or modern software. Sadly, people usually use the most common and basic features.
Hmm, this might be because of construction of ZX Spectrum music-editors.
Thanks,
Y
@yerzmyey: The first time I heard your music I said "How is this even possible?"
Well, it seems like those more complex synthetic instruments are in a way... hidden in those trackers, heh. I dunno.
Actually more and more often I start to think about making some YouTube video with examples: how to make some good AY synthesis despite having crappy editors.
Tuning is the biggest problem indeed but it's really possible to make correctly, if guy has an ear or two. ;)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33485444/UnSpeccy.zip
First off, I have to say, the UnSpeccy folder on my harddrive is really only a reflection of my personal tastes... Most of the pieces in there are from other sources that can also easily be found on the web (eg: http://bulba.untergrund.net/Tr_Songs.7z, and pieces from Ahim: http://zxtunes.com/author.php?id=243&order=last_update&ln=eng, FatalSnipe: http://zxtunes.com/author.php?id=195 , CPU: http://demozoo.org/groups/8899/ , etc,etc..)
I must also say this is an older copy of my folder (with less pieces), as Im typing this from work and don't have access to the folder from here (this copy happens to be on a thumbdrive I coincidentlally happen to have on me right now)...
Anyhow, its a nice little collection, and demonstrates well my point about contemporary sounding pieces moving away from traditional ZX musical scores...
Id love to know what other people enjoy listening too?...
:)
I remember Gasman's AY tune which used normal AY music and digitised voice at the same time. :)
What I would like to hear is less Amiga-sounding samples. It woulk make me so happy to see something like Daft Punk's Disc Wars (Tron Legacy - track 17) on the Speccy. That would be the day.
Fantastic stuff! Thanks!
Listening to the entire collection using ay_emul...
0 - AY
1 - beep
2 - D/A 4bit
3 - D/A 8bit
Of course, when you make a song using 8bit samples, that one cannot be played on AY and BEEP. So, you can POKE all Mister BEEP's sample songs to use AY and hear them in original 4bit quality as they were written in (Sample Tracker don't use 1bit samples). I am currently writing an article about this, just have to hack a bit his latest demo as the songs were somehow altered to disable this option. :)
As for that tip about Sample Tracker, I didn't realize it was as simple as all that to change output... One poke?!?!?!... Now Im really surprised it wasn't used more!... It could have really simplified 48k-128k conversions for music...
Now all we need is a simple .XM to Sample Tracker note conversion tool and we'd be sorted (tools already exist for converting the WAV's to instruments)...
;)