music TIATracker: A new sound routine and sequencer application

[+JAC!]

Today I had a chat with a musician and he told me that TIATracker is great, but since there is no "export to .bin" he can't see how to use it. So here's a small archive with all required files, so you can create the .bin with a single click in Windows with MADS.

 

1) Extract the archive into a folder

2) Export the tune as via "File/Export complete player to MADS" as "Test" into this folder.
3) Run the test.bat to compile it into a .BIN file which can be executed directly in Stella.

TIA-Player.zip

[+Muddyfunster]

I tried this out today, it's really neat.

 

I would love it if one of the output options was something like a data statement that could be pulled into a bB music engine rather than just assembly. Something like VCF + D for each note.

 

Guess I can wish

[+mksmith]

Very impressive! So can this be implemented into batari Basic as is?

[+mksmith]

Well to my absolute shock and amazement I've managed to get this working with batari Basic!

 

Been fumbling around over the past few days trying various ways such as including the asm files directly, creating like a titlescreen kernel etc. Then remembering with Darrell Spice's sfx player you had to register some variables I played around and it started.

 

I'll post up the code in the batari Basic forum once I clean it up.

[+Muddyfunster]

Well to my absolute shock and amazement I've managed to get this working with batari Basic!

 

Been fumbling around over the past few days trying various ways such as including the asm files directly, creating like a titlescreen kernel etc. Then remembering with Darrell Spice's sfx player you had to register some variables I played around and it started.

 

I'll post up the code in the batari Basic forum once I clean it up.

 

Jesus Mary and Joseph!

 

I can't wait to see this!

[+mksmith]

@Muddyfunster

Just doing a quick tidy-up with example and instructions. Is actually a reasonably easy process as the module does most of the work but you need to add bB variables (once) to your game and remove the corresponding assembly variables from the track (each new track dump) manually.

Edited January 23, 2019 by mksmith

[+mksmith]

I've posted the module here in the batari Basic forum.

 

Thanks to Kylearan for a great program - hopefully a few more people can get cracking on some music for the VCS. I got no idea but hoping I can learn.

Edited January 23, 2019 by mksmith

[Kurt_Woloch]

Thank you for posting this tracker! I just tried it out making a small melody, and I can confirm that it runs flawlessly under Windows XP SP 3.

Crossfire theme.zip

[DerpDerp3001]

I wish there was a more advanced version meant for the Atari 7800 that has more instruments, has an arpeggio command, you can change the volume of the instruments, you can change the duty cycle in the instruments and in the tracker, and a dither command to tune instruments.

[lonestarr]

Hi, great tool indeed!

I've added undo-redo on my fork, if anyone is interested in testing a windows build please PM me.

(planning to add colors for patterns...)

 

 

[+MarcoJ]

Hi All,

 

It there a way in Tiatracker to create arpeggiated chord type patterns that run fast independently of the tempo? I'm thinking in particular of those chiptune riffs that ocean software used to use that simulate chords by arpeggiating the pants out of a single voice synth. I imagine setting TIA Tracker to the fastest tempo would probably work, but this would create large files due to the unnecessary note data. 

 

Cheers

Marco

[RushJet1]

Three ways:

 

1) make percussion that does it, and retrigger the percussion every x steps as necessary.  For example if your chords are 3 notes and your tempo is 5 frames per row, then you'd need a 15-length instrument of those three notes and you'd repeat them every 3 rows so they line up.  You have a limit of 15 percussion instruments so this is kind of limiting, chord-wise, especially if you have other percussive instruments.

 

2) you can do this with instruments if you set the sustain start to something like 1 and the release to 4.  It will play the "sustain" part in a loop until the note is no longer held.  This is very limiting as there are 7 instruments max.

 

3) just use patterns, but you can re-use old patterns over and over.  Patterns do not need to line up between channel 1 and channel 2, so you can have one channel be looping a shorter arpeggio pattern and be doing whatever on the other one.  I did this for the empty space in one of my .ttt files a while back- it basically plays a 4-note pattern, then plays the same empty 60 rows pattern multiple times to save space.  I might retool a program I wrote awhile ago to optimize .ttt files for repetition this way.  If I ever need to....

 

edit: I would not recommend 1 or 2 because each frequency jump is not the same between notes.  You basically have to make a new instrument or percussion for each individual chord as a result.  I'll attach an example of the 3rd method.

example.bin example.ttt

Edited March 11, 2021 by RushJet1

[+MarcoJ]

Thanks @RushJet1. Wow, the percussion one is a great idea. I sparingly use percussion anyway so that's now my arpeggio chord bank. Appreciate you posting the solution. 

[+JAC!]

SillyVenture 2020 Summer Edition has a VCS music compo: https://sillyventure.eu/en/compos

 

So in case you have an yet unrelease TIA Tracker tune, I can turn it into a binary with a small intro screen and submit it with/for you.

 

Just PM in case you have something to support the party!

[+JAC!]

The Atari SAP Music Archive (ASMA) now also supports TIATracker files

 

Let's give VCS musicians a platform - who needs Spotify anyway 🙂

Example: http://asma.atari.org/asmadb/asma.html?searchPhrase=glafouk

 

So if you have any .TTT file with proper song name, author and ideally some date information in the comment field, please send them via PM, so I can add them there.

 

We also plan to add replay there later. And I plan to add the date field to the TTT directly.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

On 3/7/2016 at 2:16 PM, Kylearan said:

• RAM: 9 bytes permanent, 2 bytes tmp, 2 bytes stack. This is fine for my current project, but I already have ideas how to reduce this at the expense of ROM

@Kylearan I am quite short on RAM with my latest project, so I wonder if you ever worked on reducing the RAM usage.