I assume to post a loop to this thread, I reply in here. This doesn't count as bumping an old thread, does it?
It's a bit boring, I'm afraid. But feedback is always encouraged.
This thread is just used for posting short loops, doodles and WIPs and getting feedback on those things (sometimes). This thread will probably be relevant until it has reached an arbitrary number of pages (like 100, which was the ending point for the previous loops and doodles thread). So do not be afraid of people trying to burn you alive for bumping this thread (it is even stickied, so bumping cannot even occur). But do not go and bump very old threads, people here get really mad over that, unless you have something that is very relevant to the original post of course but that only applies to a certain extent. Generally you should not bump old threads though.
I am not sure if anyone has actually properly welcomed you to the site, so..... Welcome to this little community of talented musicians (with the exception of me) and enthusiasts. My name is Curious and I will be your waiter for the evening. You should expect a whole lot of nonsense and huge posts from me that go on and on about things that can be said with just a single sentence.... wait....
I will put aside my annoyance with music written in C-Major (It is just too freaking common for my taste. What about all the other scales? Why don't they get as much love!?!? Do I even exist, or am I just some dream of a very weird person?!!??!! I need scissors!! 61!!!) and try to give proper feedback and some of my opinions on the piece you attached.
To have the Tringle Kick hit a little harder do not use the "pitch"-thing and instead use an arpeggio that is "Fixed" (see the attached file). Also Vxx commands do not affect the Triangle channel as far as I know.
You did not cancel the 4xy (vibrato) when the song loops so it is still being used until it gets canceled in frame 08, I am pretty sure this was unintentional. Just add 400 next to A00 in the 1st frame.
I personally like the Rxy and Qxy commands instead of the 3xx because I think they are more intuitive, so I changed the 308 to R34. (You can read about all of the effects on the wiki).
Quick note, you do not have to loop the current Duty to have it still be the one that is played. You have it switch from 0 to 1 and then loop the 1 which is unnessecery since an instrument in Famitracker will always play through all the Duties and keep the last Duty until another note has been triggered. Same goes for Volume and some other things. Also any Vxx commands outside of the instrument window will not affect the Duty in any way if the instrument in question has any Duty changes otherwise it will be affected.
I have attached a modified version of your original tune where I have changed a few things I mentioned above.
Other than that, I kinda like this litte piece, it is a fun thing. It is a little simple and the volume on the echo is a little bit on the louder side in the beggining (but not by much).
Hopefully this was of some help to you. I am sure that someone with more experience than me could have given more precise and useful advice but whatever. It is a catchy little tune, and it is a whole lot better than what I could have done when I started out.
To improve your tracking abilites you can cover songs from NES games to learn the original composers little tricks, you can also look at the .ftm files that get posted on here and various other places and analyze what they do. You can make originals as well, where your goal is to always try to improve and get better. These are just some suggestions, there are a huge amount of ways to improve and it is mostly a personal preference on what works the best for you.
I am glad to see new people around here and I wish you good luck with your future tracking!
Holy smokes, that post got a whole lot larger than I thought it would. I probably should just rename myself to "MegaPoster".
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I have always been a curiously curious person.
(Sort of frequent mega poster here, beware!)
"Simple is always better. For something to sound simple, there has usually been a whole development cycle behind it." - David Wise
I really do appreciate the look through, and the edit you've done. You were right about the triangle percussion. Im honestly more accustomed to the old magical 8bit plugin for fl, and to make a decent kick there it's a very fast negative sweep. I didn't think to just manually punch in a big dive in the arp envelope.
The repeated v01 effect commands are more of a result of copypaste than me being paranoid about it switching to the default v00. And for the looped vibrato, that was an oversight as well.
I suppose the echo WAS a bit too loud.
Thanks a bunch for checking it out and throwing me a bit of criticism~
oh, and as for c major. That's just what rolled out, i didn't determine a key to work in at first. A bit intimidated by the interface, so i went with something simple.
Also, why DPCM samples made from imported *wav are so quiet? Is there a way to make a quality DPCM sample?
High frequencies are always quieter in DPCM because of the way DPCM compression works. Since you're already using the highest quality possible, there isn't a way to improve it. A lot of samples in DPCM tend to sound muffled for the same reason.
Here is something I cooked up in a few hours when I was bored.
What do you think of it? I personally think it is on its way towards being decent but it is not quite there, yet.
Oh, does anyone have some good advice to give about writing fast shmup-y stuff? I would love to be able to write a soundtrack to a shmup game, which I may or may not make in the future. All of my tracks seem to tend towards being very slow, as you can see in the middle of this one. Help?
And finally, can anyone suggest any fun scales to write music in? I would love to try to make something that is not in a major or minor scale but I do not have a clue on which one of all the crazy scales out there I should try. (I will just write them into my own silly program for musical scales I made).
Hurray for not posting a massive block of text! But I probably asked for too much though....
_______________________
I have always been a curiously curious person.
(Sort of frequent mega poster here, beware!)
"Simple is always better. For something to sound simple, there has usually been a whole development cycle behind it." - David Wise
And finally, can anyone suggest any fun scales to write music in? I would love to try to make something that is not in a major or minor scale but I do not have a clue on which one of all the crazy scales out there I should try. (I will just write them into my own silly program for musical scales I made).
The B major scale. F#, C#, G#, D# and A#. Gb maj is also a fun one: B, E, A, D, G and C, all flat.
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Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio...