128k Music Tracker
Can someone point me in the right direction with this please. I need a straight forward idiots guide for creating music on the 128. I was looking for trackers which I can see exist for the Russian clones but I can't seem to get any to work unfortunately. By guide I mean what emulator and software should I be using. Thanks for any help.
Post edited by Nonsense in BASIC on
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Remember that in order to actually include the song data in your projects you need to compile them beforehand. You must use this program - Gasman also explains how to.
If I recall, there exists a version of SQ-Tracker for Spectrum128 and tape (supposedly has better abilities than 48K programs).
Surely the best utility is Russian ProTracker 3.x (it's for 128K) however it is designed to work with diskdrive (betadisk).
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0021756
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0021757
I don't know if there is any tape-version of ProTracker.
It WORKS on 128K, like 99% (100%?) of 48K soft does. But it's designed for 48K machines hence it's very limited.
The guy explicitly asked for a tracker targeted to 128K Spectrums. Such trackers are far more advanced.
Nonsense in BASIC:
I might have something for You - seems like the SQ-Tracker recognizes a model that it was loaded into, so just use this tracker ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/utils/SQ-TrackerV1.03.tap.zip on Spectrum 128K and it will install some better version, it seems.
Besides, that SQ Tracker looks interesting, but instructions are in Czech only - do you know if there are some English instructions (even a quick guide, not necessarily a full translation) available for it?
http://alonecoder.nedopc.com/zx/PT372.rar
http://alonecoder.nedopc.com/zx/PT372SRC.rar
But nobody uses it now. They use Vortex Tracker for Windows instead.
Sound Tracker was written in Poland, where many people had 48k speccy / TC2048 + AY 3-8910. First polish demos also uses only 48k+AY. Many games works with 48k+AY also, and don't need additional 128k's features
Almost complete list of 48+AY games on the Yerz's site http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/48K_AY_games.html
And not only those first demos actually (and not only Polish ones).
Here is a list of some better 48K demos made for people who own Spectrums 48K and bought AY interfaces (nowadays mostly from Lotharek and Zaxon) -
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/ay48k_demos.html (with dates/years in descriptions).
Similar situation was in some other countries (Melodik interface - the same, with a different name).
Some older (but nowadays classic) demos for 48K, if You have the AY-interface.
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/classic_demos.html
Anyway, here is some more informations + photos:
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/aymusic.html
Actually I should add some infos about TK models (did they have AY on-board, in 48K models? Or any external interfaces were popular there?).
Alessandro, a funny thing is, that I have never made any AY music on ZX Spectrum 128K, for 23 years. :) 100% of my AY music has been made on 48K machines.
(Except those digital ones of course. But it's another story).
Best regards,
Y
I connected it to Spectrum 48K and everything works OK.
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/SAA-Interface_Spectrum48Plus.JPG
http://zxspectrum48.i-demo.pl/SAA-Interface_Spectrum48Plus_.JPG
Here are ZX TAPs from Velesoft, with many songs converted from SAM Coupe, working at this very moment on my Spectrum 48K Plus:
http://velesoft.speccy.cz/samcoupe/saa1099/zx-saa-sound.zip
http://velesoft.speccy.cz/samcoupe/saa1099/zx-saa-sound2.zip
http://velesoft.speccy.cz/samcoupe/saa1099/zx-saa-sound3.zip
http://velesoft.speccy.cz/samcoupe/saa1099/zx-saa-sound4.zip
I like and use Beepola as well but nothing seems to exist thats as user friendly for the 128. Oh well, at least I know. Thanks again.
You can always start a tune in Beepola, save it, and drag the saved bbsong onto bb2vt2.exe. This will make a Vortex Tracker 2 text file to load in Vortex Tracker 2. It might help getting started with Vortex Tracker 2.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9498358/bb2vt2_rc.zip
My ZX Art Music Page
Carlos Michelis Theme
The source code for Vortex Tracker II is on Sergey Bulba's website though. From messing around with VTII myself in the past, I think all the hard work is done -- it actually has the majority of the functionality that anyone would need, and it's all solid enough. It just maybe needs a bit of sprucing up on the user-interface, which probably wouldn't be very difficult at all.
Could be a nice little project for someone, that (not me though! :p).
now that's very useful indeed... thanks Frank :smile:
I know what you mean, I never owned a 128 either and at the moment I'm enjoying trying to squeeze out as much as I can from the beeper. The Savage engine is my favourite at the moment but I do have a soft spot for the old Music Box.
However I do like having more than 3 channels to play with - I couldn't really get on with Vortex Tracker's interface as it's a bit Windows 95, but Frank's converter will help.
I suppose I could have a fiddle with the source code, but that's not my area of expertise, I'd rather be making music!
Could you share with us some MP3 recording or TAP/SNA/Z80 files?
If spossible of course.
http://mister_beep.republika.pl/
I'm currently working on a few projects simultaneously - converting existing 48k music for well-known games to 2 or 3 channels. I don't have a lot of time to do this and I'm a bit of a perfectionist, but I'll post something up when I'm 100% happy with it :smile:
See this thread for ref http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43316&highlight=sound+tracker
From that link Gasman pointed me to an interesting informative thread and since then the JSWed editor now allows you to import sound tracker files but the problem i am having is with file size.Even though all i have made is a simple heart beat sound (be-bumf!) using just a pattern length of 14 (E-1,C-1 Space,Space,Space repeated 3 times) the resulting sound file is around 3Kb and is too large so i am not sure if i have to use the Sound Tracker compiler on the file first.It is all part of the learning process i guess lol.