Since you're talking to someone who's an electronics technician by trade, you had me confused with amplitude (since amplitude in electronics affects voltage &, therefore, volume of an audio wave. Frequency, on the other hand, affects the width of the wave &, therefore, the note).
But I understand you now; you want me to decrease the speed of the vibration as well as lessen the gab between the initial & final notes of the vibration.
Regardless, my previous statement stands; it's too low of a value to go down to for every single one of my tracks as I'm not trying to make it sound otherwise ultra-modern (like rushjet1's cover). I'm maintaining my current settings only for those songs that I feel should keep them. For other songs, I'll see how I can make a compromise between your suggestions & my ear.
Mind you, this will take a while. Don't expect it to be done any time soon (especially considering that the track's still not complete, either).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
In any case, I'm seeing what I can do. I know for a fact that your suggestions will help (even if I have to compromise with it. That said, it's music; it's an art form that has no form, so either way, everyone's right about something).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Yeah, that update was full of improvements!
Good job.
Here's a list of things that could be improved further.
Drums too repetitive on track 16
I'm not a fan of the drum sample you're using.
The chords on track 14 need something to spice them up, like volume modulation or vibrato.
The start of tracks 9 and 10 hurt the ears. Too loud. Track 10 gets better after a few seconds.
Yeah; I see what you mean with tracks 9 & 10. Because all the square channels are set at the same octave & volume settings, the volume of each channel becomes multiplied. But before I update the file again, what sort of drum beat or sample would you suggest for track 16 (because I also think the drums are a bit bland, noting that I only have 2 samples in this project)?
In the meanwhile, I'll do a complete overhaul of track 13. I'm still undecided about track 14, though, but I'll see how I can tweak it.
Thanks again, tadpole.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
here's a few ideas I had for track 16. I changed up the drums and bass, added vibrato and decay on the chords, added detuning and single channel echo on your arps, and lowered the volumes. It was hard to hear the drums and bass because the volumes were so loud on your other instruments.
Also, I think you will have a much easier time editing if you use multiple patterns instead of one long pattern.
I'll actually see what I can do here. But forgive me if I increase the volume of the other channels to something that can be heard alongside the drums (my inspiration for track 16 was actually the boss combat theme from Demon Sword, modified to something else).
Mind you, this could actually be a great theme for track 13 (with modification, naturally).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
As much as I want to change track 16's percussion, I couldn't really find a compromise between being faithful to my original soundtrack, or making the drum beat sound like tadpole's idea (I felt that his was a bit too modern for the scenario, but mine is a bit too poorly planned out).
But I finally changed track 13. It's a completely different song than what I originally had (& much, MUCH better, in my opinion). It's probably the only song that I have made exactly as I wanted. :P
Check it out in the first post of this thread.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Some criticisms:
1) The overall volume is too high. Also there is no volume change between closely packed notes, e.g. track #14. I can see that this soundtrack might become something like Gimmick! for the 50% chords, but volume control has ruined everything.
2) You only use duty setting 12.5% and 50% for 2A03 channels. You only use duty setting 0 and 7 for VRC6 channels. Things seem to get too repetitive after listening the whole soundtrack because there are not many timbres.
3) No effects other than Bxx, Fxx, 4xy and Zxx. At least make some Axys.
4) Spaces between notes are either too long (one row) or too short (no space). Change the volume envelope to [0 15].
5) Duty setting 50% hates chorusing a lot. For example:
Left two: 2A03 Right two: VRC6
C-3 00 F V02 C-4 00 F V02 C-2 00 F V07 C-5 00 F V07
Experiment it yourself by muting some channels.
6) Instrument 02 is too long for most of the time you are using it.
Hmm... For point 1, I personally don't find anything wrong as my goal was to make track 14 sound as it does in terms of volume. However, I admit that it's very repetitive. I've never played Gimmick! to hear its style of music (or to want to make music for a side-scroller instead of an RPG-styled adventure) anyways, plus I don't see how setting my squares to a volume of 8 ruined the entire song. Track 14 in particular is another song in my list that needs improvement.
I totally agree with point 2 & point 3, but using the volume column is almost the same thing as using Axy for fades. My chief problem is that I'm trying to make a more conservative song that could be used for a medieval horror theme; my instruments & my very novice use of effects don't really reflect this.
For point 4, I see this as a sort of back-track from point 1; I'm only using a max of 15 for volume envelops in my main channels. My accompanying channels are set to a lower volume so as to try & not overpower the main. Yet, the overall volume of the entire song is high.
Point 5 is concerning tracks 9 & 10, I'm assuming. Indeed they're harsh because of this chorus; can you suggest a way to modify it to be less harsh? As for my 2nd instrument, it's rarely used (it's only used for 2 songs). And when it is, it's used for harsh percussions on purpose (though not in the correct manner that I wish). :P
So my newest areas of improvement are in the instruments, use of effects, volumes & tracks 9, 10 & 14 (in spite of my trying to maintain some form of conservatism & avoid turning my song into ultra-modern works like tadpole & Rushjet1's covers). But thanks for the honest input. I'll see what else I can do.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Alright; this is my very last edition of the soundtrack.
I'm truly at a loss when it comes to trying to fix/change two songs in this track (the Settler Stronghold & Minor Boss themes). Other than that, I can finally say it's 100% complete.
Check out the attachments; any criticism is welcome. And I've decided to release both this soundtrack & my previous soundtrack under the MIT license, in case anyone wants to use (at least a small part of) it for any games they may want to create (including proprietary games).
If anyone wants to add or change anything, it's MITed; do whatever you want! Just give me a little credit for inspiring a major-league cover (got that, Rushjet1?).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Track 1: The intro hasn't fixed the '50% chorus' problem, and the loop sounds like it is going to break my speakers. I don't know why, probably because of volume control, the music there is a bit harsh and most likely it is because of the 50% duty again. I switched to 25% and this issue was way softened.
Track 2: So this is one of the few songs using DPCM and noise at the same time. The noise fades out too late. Wait a second, fade out? Yes, you used the instrument called 'fade' to do the noise. This is not good. Use instrument 06.
Also, I hate the tempo. Change the tempo to 150 first. Repeat this 16 times and put it into either empty channel: (the Fxx nightmare is coming!)
F07
---
---
F08
Track 3: VRC6 square channel 2 row 2E is supposed to be a G-1 rather than a G-2, right? That channel doesn't mix well with the triangle channel, so a suggestion is to change the V01 into V03 (sorry if you are still intended to make it sound like a bagpipe which I haven't figured out how to do) and than put a P81 at the start of the triangle channel.
Once again, I don't like the tempo. As this song's number of rows is a multiple of 12, I would do something new here. Change the tempo to 150 and then repeat this 16 times. Put it on the noise channel or the DPCM channel. (More nightmares.)
F08
---
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F09
F08
F09
F08
F09
F08
F09
F08
F09
Track 4: Sawtooth clashes VRC6 SQ2 and 2A03 SQ2 later joins the party. You really need to put P7F and P81 at the same time. Both VRC6 square channels are missing V0x as well - they even sound worse when not in solo.
Luckily you have got a simple tempo here, so just change the tempo to 150 and the speed to 13. (the nightmare is just not over yet...)
Track 5: Atonality on row 18 and 38 because of a D# and an E playing together. If this is not intended to be, fix it. Other than that, this track is too short to have something else to fix...
Track 6: Many patterns are the same, yet you used the 'change all'. It does not matter that much, but most composers won't like it.
Track 7: 'Change all' again? I understand that there might be slight changes for 2A03 SQ1, but there is no need to do this with the triangle, noise and DPCM channel!
Even worse is that 900 divided by 125 is 7.2 which means this is not a good tempo. Set the tempo to 150 and the speed to 8. IMO here a slower pace would fit the title 'Cave' a bit more.
Track 8: You added a lot of unnecessary spaces between rows, so the tempo here doesn't matter. This is actually one of the better songs here.
Track 9: Repeat this:
F07
---
---
F08
Nonetheless, the attempt at doing something 7/4 is quite good here. But once again, you used the 'change all'. Still one of my favourites.
Track 10: I finally found the problem. It is the triangle channel. Put something like ZFF at the beginning of the DPCM channel - trust me, it is better than nothing.
Also, using too many channels to chorus a line of notes is a really bad idea (at least in 8-bit tracking).
That's all for today. I know that track 11 will be quite a pain, so I need some rest here. This reply is lengthy enough anyway.
And I thought that would be my last edit. Back to the drawing board again. :P
And once again, thanks for the input.
1. I changed square channel 2 of both 2A03 & VRC6 chips. I hope it's better (it's either 25% or 75% duty, now). Using the ZFF idea for track 10 also helped with this track. I hope it's much better.
2. The reason I'm using the fade instrument is so that I could have an echo effect at every crash (to make it sound harsh). Sadly, for the conservative (& very repetitive) tone of the original song & transcribed this from, staggering the tempo along with using instrument 6 wouldn't really conserve the tune & would make the noise channel sound like a limping horse trying to run (in my opinion). So I'm leaving this one alone.
3. Thanks for catching that mistake; another look revealed several more that had to be corrected. I tried the speed adjustments & didn't notice any significant changes in tempo (other than a very rapid, unnoticeable change between 100 & 112 BPM). I also tried the using V03 & P81; again, I didn't notice much of a change with P81 in the triangle channel, but I liked V03 in square channel 2 of the VRC6 chip. so that was the only change I did.
4. Again, this can be blamed on the chorus problem & the fact that the volumes are building on top of each other (& I agree with. So I've changed the VRC6 accompaniment. I hope this is an improvement.
5. The atonality is intended, but I added an extra frame with something. I hope this can work.
6. By "change all," I guess you're talking about my unclean pattern usage. I guess you can see how my organization has evolved since I first started tracking in FamiTracker.
I'm not too worried about it (considering that this track was where I learned to be more organized). And my first original was much worse than that. :P
7. The same as 6, plus I personally don't think that a slower tempo would work (even Zelda 2 uses the same, fast-tempo song for caves as for other battle scenes outside of villages & palaces). I'm leaving this track alone.
8. This was a complete rewrite of the main theme to my first soundtrack; I'm glad you liked it! :D
9. this actually works quite well! Definitely changed the mood to a suitable amount.
10. This really did help (& much, MUCH more than I expected, even though lowering the volumes of all the chorus channels did some good). I decided to add this to all the songs that use this intro (tracks 10, 11 & 21).
I can't wait to hear more. I definitely know that my main problems in track 11 are the main theme in the 2A03 square channels (starting in frame 01, mainly due to the duty cycle & the vibrato) & the DPCM drum beat.
As for the other tracks, track 12-14, 16 7 18-21 (I feel) should remain the same (for the exception of track 20; I just added the ZFF trick to soften the triangle channel,) while I need a complete rewrite for tracks 15 & 17.
So once again, check out the attachments. Again, MIT license, etc.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
I decided to give up sending out tempo nightmares. Hopefully.
Track 7: If a faster thing works, change the tempo to 150 and the speed to 7. It makes the song speed up a bit, but more importantly there won't be any random rows with an extra frame.
Track 10: You forget to put a F0A at row 00. As the speed becomes 5 since row 40, another command is required to reset the speed.
Track 11: A lot of notes clashing together especially with heavy chorus in high octaves is bad. Unlike Track 10, which is exactly one octave lower than this one (Frame 00), this one utterly causes my ears go bleeding all the day.
Also, the tempo change in Frame 01 is a bit strange.
Track 12: Put P7Fs at the beginning of both square 2 channels to enhance the echoing effect.
Track 13: Like Track 1, this one's 2A03 channels have bad volume control.
Track 14: I have nothing to say.
Track 16: Frame 02 VRC6 square channels have that blamed 50% chorus, this time producing something similar to a 25% wave, except now it is way more harsh.
Track 18: The percussion... (along with track 16 as well) Even your track 17 has a better percussion track than this one.
Track 19: As a final boss battle theme, I think that the beginning of the song should not immediately proceed to the climax of the song. There is usually some kind of introduction, and this song is missing it.
Plus, IMO this one sounds like just another major boss battle theme...
Note: There is a minor boss theme, a major one and a final one. Still haven't you done a normal battle theme yet?
Track 20: 50% Chord issues. Also appears in track 1 started from frame 01. If there are more than one 50% square waves playing at high volume (15 or 14), the output is likely to become harsh especially if you are using the 2A03 channels.
Track 21: Blatant. Another track 10/11 is not good at all. Even the whole song has an overall theme of your soundtrack, please, at least change the notes a bit...
By the way, I don't feel like this is a final victory theme. Why not name it 'Ending Theme'? Ending is different from credits, so don't mind if you are to include that.
Track 22: This one is too similar to track 7. And I don't expect MOST of the end-game sections to have completely no percussion (that is, you sum up everything here: final boss defeated fanfare, ending theme(s), credits/staff roll).
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