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FamiTracker
Hello there everyone. I am pretty new to making music in general though not to music entirely, I use to play an instrument, but I never really was able to compose stuff at all and since my University doesn't let any non-music majors take any courses past super basic music theory, I've found myself having to learn to how to do this on my own. So yeah, I want to get better so please, if there is anything that one could think of to make this better I'd like to know. Thanks in advance.
Might wanna use some effects instead of making a bunch of instruments for the duty cycle, though.
And how did you know already about self delay? Looking at our modules? If so, you're a pretty good learner.
One thing, though.
[url=http://www.mediafire.com/?o4bzqxja11c9n75]Use some dpcm.
EDIT: but only if it fits... umm... noise drums are okay to... if that's what you want...
EDIT AGAIN: Forgot, duty cycle and volume don't work on tri. For volume you need to manipulate the dpcm channel. Note this will affect your noise channel too.
Alright, I fixed it up I guess. Got rid of the Duty cycle instruments used the effects instead. Is there a reason for this outside of organizational stuff? I'm just curious.
And by self delay do you mean the one channel echo? I was just looking at the wiki and saw it there. It explained it pretty well so I went and used it because I wanted to see what the melody sounded like with the echo and I liked the sound and kept it in.
I used some DPCM drums, I dunno if I like it better or not, but I added a hihat since I had the room for it. It sounds pretty cool.
EDIT. Oh yeah I remembered from the last time that I messed around with Famitrack about the volume stuff for the tri, but do you use the Zxx effect on the dpcm side? because I guess I don't know how it works but it didn't really change anything. Can't find an example of it anywhere either.
Sounds pretty good. For the Zxx effect, you use it on the DPCM channel. See the example I've attached. You can only use Z00-Z7F.
The only problems with this are that it also affects the volume of the noise channel, and that it creates a popping noise, which may or may not be desirable.
I really like this.
Keep in mind though that V01 is equivalent to V03 and sounds exactly the same (one is 25% and the other is 75% duty, which means that the length of the pulse wave is still the same for both)
[quote=desov2]Alright, I fixed it up I guess. Got rid of the Duty cycle instruments used the effects instead. Is there a reason for this outside of organizational stuff? I'm just curious.[/quote]
Well, it reduces instrument amount, which affects file size and leaves you with room for more instruments, as I remembered there being an instrument limit.
Okay that was a lot more subtle than I thought, but yeah that clears stuff up. Thanks.
And yeah, I did kind of just discover duty cycles. I have a hard time writing melodies and the different cycles helped it break the repetitiveness of I did come up with.
EDIT:
[quote=kinkinkijkin]
Well, it reduces instrument amount, which affects file size and leaves you with room for more instruments, as I remembered there being an instrument limit.[/quote]
[url=http://www.mediafire.com/?o4bzqxja11c9n75]Use some dpcm.
[/quote]
Actually, k^4, I think your use of DPCM is your major downfall :\
I think it's really important to nail down the classic 2A03 style before integrating DPCM.
Also, to OP, not bad. Not bad at all.
[quote=zephemeros]I really like this.
Keep in mind though that V01 is equivalent to V03 and sounds exactly the same (one is 25% and the other is 75% duty, which means that the length of the pulse wave is still the same for both)[/quote]
Actually, there is a slight difference with the V03. It feels a tiny bit like Z00 on DPCM; there's a slight "pop" that comes with the note. I think it's much more noticeable in the lower notes.
[quote=Xyz_39808]Actually, there is a slight difference with the V03. It feels a tiny bit like Z00 on DPCM; there's a slight "pop" that comes with the note. I think it's much more noticeable in the lower notes. [/quote]
Isn't it inverted? if so, wouldn't it agree better if used as an echo?
[quote=retrotails][quote=Xyz_39808]Actually, there is a slight difference with the V03. It feels a tiny bit like Z00 on DPCM; there's a slight "pop" that comes with the note. I think it's much more noticeable in the lower notes. [/quote]
Isn't it inverted? if so, wouldn't it agree better if used as an echo?[/quote]
Not really, seeing as it's inverted it almost cancels out the other wave...
It's not better as an echo, the phase will soon move to a more or less random position, making it irrelevant whether it was V03 or V01.
Xyz is kind of correct in that switching to V03 creates a small pop. Since you're going from a waveform that's up a little and mostly down, to a waveform that's mostly up and a little bit down, the DC bias (average signal level) shifts before it gets filtered off, so there's a tiny little jump there. But this only happens right when you switch.
If you stay on V03 for any length of time, the DC bias gets filtered away, and phase becomes unpredictable (i.e. indistinguishable from the non-inverted version).
Also, various NSF players implement the exact phase of V03 differently, so even if you -did- do something that depends on it being in a specific phase, it'd get messed up on some players. (This actually varies quite a bit between players.)
The instrument limit is 64 (00 - 3F). I find them pretty handy, myself.
Beyond the software, I like the little tune you've got going there, but as it stands it's essentially the same thing against different rhythms. Not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want to expand on it, try writing different melodies over your chord progression, or different chords under your current melody. That often leads me to more ideas.
Square V03 isn't a truly inverted Square V01, it's more like it's inverted and phase shifted.
[quote=Star Trek: The Next Generation]ENSIGN RO: "So we're cloaked?"
CMDR LAFORGE: "Not cloaked, [i]phased[/i]."[/quote]
Here's a [url=http://dougzwick.com/vxxplanation.png]handy little graphic I whipped up in Paint.NET. #1 is the Square V01 waveform (or close enough for this explanation); #2 is the same waveform inverted, while #3 is the Square V03 waveform.
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Some players will phase it differently (e.g. like #3 in your picture; conceptually a 75% duty cycle wave). FamiTracker also starts the phase a little before the signal goes high, rather than on it (which also isn't done by some players). Some reference: [url=http://www.slack.net/~ant/nes-emu/apu_ref.txt]http://www.slack.net/~ant/nes-emu/apu_ref.txt
As I said, though, it gets effectively randomized pretty quickly in most cases, so this is hair splitting stuff.
Anyhow, desov2, on the piece at hand, I'd say frames 00-03 are kind of "flat" sounding, not much going on, which would be okay if it was just 00-01 or 02-03 but because you have both it feels like the flat feel of the intro goes on too long before it picks up at 04.
Every two frames you vary the texture, but the variations aren't that big. Maybe try to make the loud ones "louder" (06-07 could use some more sustained crash-cymbal in the noise channel rather than more hi-hats, maybe arpeggiate in octaves, etc.), maybe pick one duty cycle for a voice in each variation, rather than using them all each time.
