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In my previous blog post I opened up about the history of Radio F, the multimedia group I work with, regarding its early years as a comedy troupe and gradual evolution into a game publisher. I skipped over some of its history for the sake of brevity since it wasn't really applicable to the topic at hand but some recent developments have made them relevant again. From 1995-1999 Radio F existed as a comedy act, and from 2004 onward it became a publisher of games when "Software" was added to its name. Between those years, though? Radio F was actually a techno music group! The friend I started the group with in 1995 and I went our separate ways just before the turn of the millennium. My memory is bad but I think we had some argument over Pokemon of all things and we just stopped hanging out after that. In 2001 I started tinkering with music sequencing in my free time and this caught the attention of another friend of mine who was also interested in working on music. We didn't really take things seriously however by the end of the year we had a handful of tracks and no real way of sharing them in any meaningful way. We also didn't have a name for our project at the time. I suggested just reusing "Radio F" and my friend was fine with that. I collected seven of our better tracks and put them together into what would be our first album/EP, No More Lonely Nights. "No More Lonely Nights", 2001 Yeah... when it came time to design an album cover we settled on "Amy Rose upskirt" for some reason. In order to promote our music I registered a new account on GeoCities, which was still alive at the time, and designed a webpage for Radio F. I think Yahoo (owner of GeoCities) only provided something like 15 or 20 megabytes of storage space and given that the average size of an MP3 was around 3.5 MB for your average three minute song there was no feasible way for us to host the entire album on our website. Instead I took one of the better tracks from the project ("Thumper") and crushed its filesize down to somewhere around 2 MB. It sounded like garbage because of all the compression but it was the best we could do given the limitations. Visitors to the website could download the track for free and listen to it and if they liked it they could send us a mail order for five dollars plus shipping and we'd send them a physical CD in return. We actually sold a few CD's this way! Not many but enough for us to want to keep going with this project and maybe do a follow-up. 2002 would prove to be a very productive year for the group as we'd been inspired to work on music and thus had a second album ready to go after a few months of work. Titled Stuck on the Rollerslide (a reference to something that happened to me at a Discovery Zone when I was a kid) the second release was more of the same just better. We used the same sequencing software and method of recording as our first album. When it came time to release it we followed all the same steps as before; I added a page for it on the Radio F website and managed to find the space on the group's Yahoo account to fit another highly compressed "single" from the album to promote it. If you wanted one it was the same process as the first album, just send us a money order and we'd send you a CD. I want to say that we kept track of the names of who bought CD's from us and if you had purchased No More Lonely Nights then we'd charge you a dollar less for this album but I'm not 100% certain we did that. This was 20 years ago. Later that same year we'd release a third album, Eleven Dollars in Ones (an inside joke between my friend and I for how to give someone a cash gift and make it look like more money than it was). By the time I added the page for this album to the Radio F website we'd run out of storage space on our Yahoo account; the single from Stuck on the Rollerslide ate up the last little bit of space we had. I needed to find a way to include a sample track though! I'm surprised it took me as long as it did to think of this (two years and three albums) but the solution was as simple as registering a "radiof2" account on Yahoo and using it solely to host our MP3's. File size was still something to consider so again the track was compressed. The track we chose from this album, "FM", featured radio static in certain parts of the song and this did not compress nicely at all. It sounded horrible. Thankfully there were a small number of people who listened to our stuff who let us know that the song was perhaps a bad choice and because we now had a few more MB of upload space to work with we picked another track to offer online to sample the album with. It was now 2003 and my friend and I had one more album left in us. We weren't making bank selling CD's online because barely anyone knew about us. This was all just for fun and after a few years I think we were both kind of looking to do other things (for example I'd start working on Atari 2600 games the following year). Our fourth album, Reptilian Agenda, was in my opinion at least our best work. We couldn't pick one single track to upload online as a teaser so we actually uploaded three. By now we'd mostly figured out how to get the sound we wanted out of the programs we were using and it showed. Despite being our best release I don't recall selling very many copies of this CD. Each one sold less than the other which is weird to me because I feel the quality of the albums only ever increased. But I guess it was just a result of being so hard to find and how a lot of our "popularity" came from word of mouth on places like MSN Chat. After releasing Reptilian Agenda my buddy and I stopped working on music and focused on other things. "Monster Truck Rally" (single), 2003 So, that's twice now that Radio F has existed and twice now that the group has disbanded. I kept the name alive on my own through "Radio F Software" but it seemed our days of releasing comedy and music albums had finally eclipsed. In my previous blog post I mentioned the creation of the website "Radio F Software Headquarters" (RFSHQ) which acted as a hub to host all of the original comedy content I was writing and filming for the web. Despite being a multimedia-oriented website our previous album releases never saw the light of day there until close to the website's closure. In 2006 I thumbed through the four music albums that we'd made in the years prior and picked out ten tracks that I felt epitomized the group during its musical period. I wanted to feature a collection from all four albums however because I was going by song quality the majority of the tracks I chose wound up being from our third and fourth albums when we were putting out our best work. I named this collection F-Sides: The Best of Radio F and offered it as a premium download on the RFSHQ website. I believe the price was still just five dollars however instead of sending out physical CD's the advancement of technology now allowed us to accept payment online with PayPal and in exchange provide the buyer with a link to download the album digitally. F-Sides was available for purchase from its release in 2006 to the closure of RFSHQ in 2008. After going solo for nearly half a decade I had a growing interest in working on music again after being inspired by the rise of mash-ups and "YouTube Poop music videos" where creators would compose backing tracks and then pepper in "vocals" that had been sampled from viral videos and memes. In 2007 I tried my luck at this and created Radio F's first single in four years, "Hello My Future Dance Mix". This track sampled Michael "Mikey" Blount's infamous "hello my future girlfriend" audio recording that went viral in the late nineties. It was amusing but nowhere near as good as the mash-ups that were growing in popularity on the recently launched YouTube. I didn't get a lot of encouragement so I just kinda stopped working on new music, though the following year I made another remix mostly for the amusement of my younger brother and I. This track, "The Golden Fantasy Dragon", sampled TV salesman Tom O'Dell during a segment on the Cutlery Corner infomercial where he was hyping up a decorative knife of the same name. I didn't really have any intentions of releasing this song as a proper thing, I just uploaded it to YouTube where views wound up trickling in over the years. Like I said I kinda just lost interest in making music after the Mikey song flopped and the one about the dragon knife was just a one-off joke. That was until I stumbled upon the ongoing misadventures of Christian Weston "Chris-chan" Chandler. I'm not even going to try and catch you up to speed on this guy if you've never heard of him before, just understand that he used to be a bumbling idiot on the internet who overshared way too much about his personal life and situations. In one video that was released Chris attempts to demonstrate how he would perform oral sex on a hypothetical girlfriend. The original video is disgusting and I won't link it here but back in 2010 I was floored by it and felt compelled to sample Chris' vocals with raunchy porn music backing it. The result of this effort was the song "Tickle Yo Pussay". Given the active community surrounding Chris this song actually did gain some traction and garner several thousand streams but I never capitalized on it because the curse of Chris-chan is that once you involve yourself in his life yours gets ruined in return. I made a joke song and that was enough. Radio F, 2002 The Chris-chan single and its accompanying "B-side" marked the end of Radio F's output as a musical act. In the years that followed 2010 I graduated from university and went on with my life. Radio F's spoken word albums hadn't been in circulation for over a decade and the four music albums from 2001-2003 had long since been out of print and unavailable. F-Sides, the best of album, stopped being available for purchase when RFSHQ closed. The account associated with the mash-up singles I'd made eventually caught enough copyright strikes from YouTube to be terminated. Everything just sorta faded away. Only recently have I started caring about all this random stuff from way earlier in my life. I spoke about it a little bit in the previous blog post but there was an era of my life where I got led astray by some real bad actors and wound up getting hurt pretty badly. It's taken several years of therapy for me to work through all this and process it in a healthy way and only now am I really starting to feel "better" in a sense. I am now looking back at all the things I've accomplished and I find myself gravitating toward the more innocuous and wholesome things that dot my history. Radio F is something harmless and fun that I can be proud of and it's something I want to celebrate. I want to keep it alive in some way. At the beginning of this year I started re-compiling everything I could find from my Radio F days with the intent to put it back into circulation. I'm not yet sold on the idea of putting our entire back catalog out there again but F-Sides, the "best of" album, is a good starting point. As the name implies it contains our best work from our four musical releases. The mash-up singles I made from 2007-2010 were inklings of a fifth album, Conglomeraté, that was never completed. I compiled the highest quality recordings I could find of these tracks as well as their instrumentals and turned them into Conglomeraté: The Singles. Both of these releases are now available for streaming on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube Music. If you use Pandora then Radio F's music is something that can be suggested to you based upon the music profile you've curated. I dug through the archives of everything I had across all of my hard drive backups and found a few pictures of my friends and I that would suffice as makeshift photos of "the group" and added them to our music profiles. It was important to me to find photos of us that were era-appropriate to match the time period when our music and recordings were made. Radio F, 2010 So now we're at present day. Next year Radio F turns 30. Three decades have passed since the day one of my best friends and I had the bright idea to record our material to cassette tape and use that to distribute it among the people we knew. I am very grateful that after all this time I am still on good terms with everyone who's ever been a part of the group both from its eras as a comedy and musical act. We are currently in the planning stages for a reunion album to celebrate 30 years. I'm thinking about something akin to a 50/50 album of recorded comedy and new music. Perhaps I can make a mash-up of new music featuring samples taken from our old spoken word releases of the 90's. I'm honestly kind of shocked that the idea never came to me back when I was making mash-ups in the late 2010's. I also want to reach out to the people I've met over the years who are either musically or comedically inclined and invite them to participate on a track or two. I'm very fortunate that for the most part everyone still lives in same geographic area so a reunion to record new material and such won't be too hard to pull off so I want to do this now because there's no guarantee something like this will be possible for a 40th or 50th anniversary. In the meantime I invite you to listen to the selected works I've made available on all the major music streaming platforms. It's nothing incredible but it's special to me and maybe in some way the fun and innocence of the recordings will rub off on you.

2023 Krystone Online Music Compo for Atari 8-bit Computers POKEY C012294 We have 6 entries for you to judge today. All presented tracks are 4-channel mono and were recorded from a real Atari 65XE (PAL) along with the noise and harmonics. 🎶 Black Bouncy Blob 🎶 Fallen Hard 🎶 Nuclear Sign 🎶 Pokey Atmosphere 🎶 Tune 179 🎶 Unexpectedly Short To keep things simple: YouTube is where you listen to the tracks. And, here is where you vote. The video is 4K 50 FPS. If you can, en-joy on a large screen. The names of musicians will be revealed after the voting has completed. It is very likely that Atari Music Disc (.atr file) will be created with all the songs and made available for download with graphics and extras, so check back! Thank you and until next time. Feel free to share, comment, like, discuss, and most certainly vote for your favorite. Be fair, act fair. Feed YouTube algorithms if you care (I do). If you have any technical questions, you can ask here. Your engagement keeps this post alive and allows for a greater number of votes to be cast. The greater the number of votes, the fairer the results, thereby providing more gratification to the creators. The following prizes will be awarded to the musicians: 150 € and something tangible (to be mailed to and perhaps revealed by the winner), 100 €, and 50 €. However, it is important to know that, as far as I can tell, they didn't do this for monetary compensation. A big thank you to all participating musicians for giving this compo a chance. 🖤 Krystone December 2023 This thread is a continuation of:

I’ve been working on my own MusicXml parser (https://github.com/bkrug/envelope-demo#readme). As stated in the Readme the parser supports: Storing a separate stream of data for each tone generator Repeats and volta brackets compressing rests to save space storing notes as 7-bit values instead of 10-bit values An accompanying cartridge program plays the output, and also demonstrates adding envelopes to music auto-detection of a 60hz vs 50hz environment playing music at different tempos as specified in a song header I'm not the first person to create a MusicXml parser for TI-99 development, but I think existing parsers are geared towards sound lists. The reason I prefer to have a separate stream of data for each generator, is because that way I can support, for example, a half note played simultaneously with two consecutive quarter notes. My parser is shared as source code, because while another developer could use the compiled parser as is, it's also likely that one would want to add features I didn’t add. For example, the parser doesn't currently support dynamics. The existing repo has high test coverage, so you should be able to add functionality without breaking something you didn’t mean to. MusicEffects.rpk musiceffectsC.bin MusicXmlParser.exe

A couple of years back I attempted to make a 2600 version of Pac-Land. I've lost the original game files I was working on but I've found the music. From memory there's a couple of notes which are transposed an octave but it's pretty close to the original game. If anyone wants to take the project on then feel free to use the music. It's better then them being sat on my hard drive doing nothing. Pacland Music.bas Pacland Music.bas.bin

Hello there! Has passed a few months since my last CD releases, I've been working on many projects and now with the PRGE really close I decided to publish new soundtracks for the community. Probably you already know about my work, probably not, but now I have some exquisite news for you: A new game for the Intellivision will be revealed soon, and I got the permission of the publisher to release the soundtrack, you want to know before anyone what is the title of the game? Here's the place, order your CDs and get the info when you got your package. Albums and playlist are below: The Depth Of Nitemare Castle of Death Frankenstein Monster (with Pumpkin Master tracks as bonus!) (Unreleased game title, don't ask) *wink wink* Finally a little trivia about the music: Orders are open send your PMs. Price for the 4 albums is $60 USD (Includes free international shipping worldwide and PP fees. Add +$5 if you live in Europe) All the albums will be handmade on-demand (to lower production costs and keep the free shipping bonus/fees included), shippings will start the first week of September. Special thanks to Intellivision Revolution for the artwork of Castle Of Death, and all the Intellivision community for the support. You guys are breathtaking!

This is so cool, I thought it'd be neat to have a thread to post all the song demos from the Atari Video Music (Model C240), with YT and other videos starting right when the song starts for your enjoyment. Here are some. WARNING: These contain flashing lights which may affect some viewers! Atari Video Music Demo on Wikipedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Atari_Video_Music.webm Original Atari Video Music set to start at the countryish acoustic song: This has a little speech over it and isn't a full song: This was posted at least once before recently, but the YT of Rees' clone set to start at the song:

Hello to all , Impressed about nice production on Atari 2600 and 7800 range . My very first console , and keep it in heart . I have a request , my first playing game was Missile Command on 2600 , and I look for the original SFX , for make a portage to an another computer , for my pleasure and nostalgia. I am looking for the SFX in possible use format for me : .ASC ,.PT1, .PT2 , .PT3 (protracker range) , .STP, .SQT, .FTC , .PSM Only SFX for this game I found were only in MP3 .... thanks in advance for your returns and help !!! greetings

Here is another Intellivision track from the collaborative project with game and chip-tune musician @Nyuundere. Tracked for the Intellivision Music Tracker, using the six channels available on an Intellivision expanded with the ECS computer module. Presenting, Twisted Sister's 1986 rock anthem, "We're Not Gonna Take It," as played by an Intellivision! Enjoy! -dZ. We're Not Gonna Take It Released by Twisted Sister in 1986. Originally tracked for IntyBASIC in three channels by @Nyuundere. Re-tracked and remixed for IMT in six channels by @DZ-Jay.

As part of a collaborative project with game and chip-tune musician @Nyuundere, I've prepared a set of remixes of his Intellivision tracks for the Sea Venture game. @Nyuundere is releasing his recent videogame soundtracks as compilation CDs, and he graciously asked me to remix the Sea Venture tracks using the Intellivision Music Tracker. Starting from @Nyuundere's original tracks written in a notation for the IntyBASIC music player, I converted them to the IMT format and rearranged them in interesting way. The resulting tracks take advantage of the six channels available on an Intellivision expanded with the ECS computer module, and include all new instrument sounds and custom drums -- all beautifully played on two AY-3-8914. There are seven remixed tracks in total. The Intellivision has never sounded so good! I intend to prepare a music player ROM to share, but in the meantime, @Nyuundere has been gracious enough to upload a video showcasing one of the tracks -- indeed, my favourite one of the lot! Presenting, Tainted Love Mastermix, as played by an Intellivision! Enjoy! -dZ. Tainted Love Released by Soft Cell in 1981. Originally tracked for IntyBASIC in three channels by @Nyuundere Re-tracked and remixed for IMT in six channels by @DZ-Jay

[#050] ah yes my 50th blog. it only took me ten years to get here. most of ya'll can accomplish that in months, but i usually have nothing to say. today is no different. well, that's not entirely true. i hadn't studio-recorded anything since 2014 which was when my band of 25-years finally decide to wrap up for good. about thirteen months ago (february 2021) i dusted off my guitars and started recording a couple of cover songs along with a friend of mine who lives in Canada. we had a list of tunes we wanted to do and then weeded them down to a small handful. only three were ever started and only one was completed. we had used his ftp server thing to transfer files between us so that we both could record/send individual tracks to each other and load them up in a multitracking studio program called Reaper. the last time i fiddled around with the mixing/mastering was march 17th 2021. yesterday, exactly 365 days later out of pure coincidence, i opened the session in Reaper and changed the one thing that really bothered me with the volume levels of the vocals in a specific spot (the "oooh, oooh" was way too low and drowned out). anyway, D7 is the name of the song here. it's a cover, originally written & recorded by Greg Sage (The Wipers) and released on Is This Real? way back in the stone age of 1980. The song was made widely popular by Nirvana in the mid 1990s and is one of the most covered Wipers song for this reason. I've always wanted to do a studio version of this song. My buddy Mark did the drums, I filled in the rest. It mostly stays truer to the Nirvana version. In fact you can start playing both at the exact same time and they'd sync perfectly until the end because we used their recording as our metronome. We didn't take it too seriously. It was a project to shake the dust off, I have bigger things I want to do in the coming year or two. So here it is. D7 in FLAC format: D-7-2 22mix.flac

Obliterator - Amiga 4 Channel. My Version Of The Obliterator in game Theme on a Classic Amiga 500+

Hey, I'm making UI changes and improvements to TIATracker and thought I'd start it up under a new name. This takes the undo-redo fork that lonestarr had made last year and combines it with my fork I also made last year that improves playback accuracy. https://bitbucket.org/rushjet1/tiatracker/downloads/TIATrackerPlus1.0.zip https://bitbucket.org/rushjet1/tiatracker/ -adds undo/redo functionality -adds the ability to click and drag envelopes instead of clicking each one -improves engine playback accuracy (much closer to actually being 50/60 hz) I still have a lot of UI improvements I want to add. I've made a list and need to clean that up. Not sure how many I'll get done as I've never really done visual C++ stuff before in any real capacity.

I was playing Super Mario World on my SNES and in music effects or sequences, chords are missing a note or some notes just flat out don’t play. Could anyone explain what’s going on here?

This is my First Full Big Concert on Silly Venture 2021 Winter Edition. For those, who have not come to Gdańsk and for those whose would like to listen to it again. The premiere, full version should appear about 16:00 o'clock. Nice Watching! Greeings inside the movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68uJlm8iiaI

Using MIDI MUSIC SYSTEM software to build music compositions seems to fit my skill set. I'm not proficient at reading music but I can translate it. My latest arrangement was a Celtic folk song for flute and drums. Music was entered into MMS and a simple drum pattern was added. It sounded terrible. Turns out that a synthesized flute doesn't need to breath and sounds very mechanical without those breaks. Selected notes were shortened and rests were inserted to maintain timing and give the illusion that a breathing person was playing the flute. Sounded much better but it was tedious work. Then I started to think I might have saved a Voice file and used a program to make the changes. Then import the voice back into MMS. Then it dawned on me that I was going to have to figure out the file structure of a voice file and what the data means. At this time I want to share what I think I know about how to create a voice file to import into MMS. Then someday someone (or myself) might write a useful program to create those files. File header and data structure: First thing that was done was to take a look at what a voice data file contained. A few notes were entered in a voice and then the voice was saved. This short program was written to list the content to the screen. Simply change the filename to match the one you wish to view. Use the cntl-1 key to stop and start scrolling. 10 TRAP 100:COUNT=0 20 OPEN #1,4,0,"D:TEMP.V01" 30 GET #1,A:? A;" "; 33 GET #1,A:? A 37 FOR X=1 TO 3 40 GET #1,A 45 COUNT=COUNT+1 50 ? (A), 56 NEXT X 60 ? :GOTO 37 100 ? "COUNT=";:? COUNT This short voice file listing demonstrates the format of the voice file. You may want to build your own voice files and check the results. 24,0 250,0,0 10,48,0 85,48,0 75,48,0 87,48,0 250,0,0 165,48,0 245,51,255 COUNT= 24 It became apparent that the first two bytes will be the number of instructions in the file. LSB - MSB format. Then the instructions are listed. At the end of the a count of the instruction sets is displayed. This should match the 16 bit number at the beginning of the file. An instruction consists of three numbers. The first designates the specific instruction and the next 2 are for any required data. I am assuming that if the data byte is not required by the instruction then MMS does not clear them to zero. That's the only explanation I have for some of numbers I have seen. The first instruction will always be a measure marker(250). Every voice has a measure marker at the beginning. Check it out. Rests and Notes Rest Rn - 0,LSB,MSB n=0 - 65535 cycles In MMS the duration of the rest is its clock value. In MMS you would most likely assign a clock value as W,H,Q,E,S, T, or Z. Their clock values are listed on page 22 of the manual. The "." and " .. " are used to adjust the number of cycles required for the additional durations. There is also the option of setting the duration by entering the clock value as ^n. Keep in mind that meter will determine the clock value in a measure and to keep all the voices synced the total clock value must remain the same for all measures in a composition. (But you don't have to.) Note instructions are between 1 (C1) and 108(G9). If a tie is used bit 7 will be set making the value above 128. To calculate: MMS note number = (MIDI note number - 23) + (128 * IF tie) The duration is set by the next two numbers much the same as for rests. The Table The rest of the instructions are to manipulate the MMS music settings or MIDI instrument. For more information check the manual. If I missed any I'll add the information if I ever find a need to use them. If the Second or Third number's has not been determined then ND has been placed in the table. In fact, it may not have a purpose. Function MMS Input Byte 1 Byte 2 Byte 3 Rest Rn 0 LSB MSB Note (C1-G9)n MIDI# 24-127 MIDI#-23 (+128 if tie) LSB MSB Tempo Tn 240 35-290 ND Sound Sn 241 0-127 ND Program (CC) Pn,x 242 Controller number Setting 0-127 Repeat REPn 243 0 = forever 1-255 ND End Repeat ENDR 244 ND ND Jump to Voice JMPn 245 1-99 ND RETURN RTN 246 ND ND Change Channel Velocity /CHn VELn 247 247 Channel-1 0-127 255 0 Transpose UP TRUn 248 0-127 ND Transpose Down TRDn 248 Start +256 - n LSB * ND Transpose Zero TRZ 249 ND ND Measure Marker M 250 ND ND Tempo up TUn 251 0-127 ND Tempo down TDn 251 Start +256 -n LSB * ND Pitch Wheel High PWHn 253 ND ND Pitch Wheel Low PWLn 253 ND ND Pitch Wheel Zero PWZ 253 0 ND *= I Think ND = not determined Table edited 11/9/21 I hope this is a good start to understanding voice files. There are going to be some revisions to this table if I find a need to write a program that will import and export MIDI MUSIC SYSTEM Voice files. That may happen If I find that the M: device driver for the MIDIMax will work with Diamond GOS. I'll incorporate the changes when they are brought to my attention.

After having played DigiBeatz, while looking at Stella's current implementation of the Kid Vid Voice Module, I wondered if something similar could be done today again. But instead of targeting a cassette player, modern devices would be used. Having instant random access would allow the 2600 to play high quality music and/or sounds which are completely synced to the game play. Implementing this in Stella would be quite easy (similar to what MAME does with its SFX samples), one would only need the sound files. But for the real thing some hardware would have to be developed. There I am running out of knowledge, but I suppose this wouldn't be too complicated or expensive. Does that sound feasible and interesting for homebrewers? Maybe something like this already exists?

Hi, I'm trying to get hold of some ST software called Easel by Heavenly Music. It's an editor for Roland Sound Canvas SC modules. A review if the full version of the package is here: http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/heavenly-music-easel/7600 It was also available as Ease Junior desk accessory version: http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/easel-junior-sound-canvas-editor-accessory-for-atari-st/10799 Any pointers would be appreciated! Thank you

This sounds interesting, for what the games will be. https://www.atari.com/atari-announces-acclaimed-artist-and-composer-megan-mcduffee-will-score-an-upcoming-series-of-pc-and-console-games/ (The first in the series, for Centipede Recharged, now released.)

Hello everyone and nice to meet you! My name is grumpygamer and I am really grumpy! :D Nah, just kidding! I'm just a dad with an insane (and very expensive) passion for all things retro! Anyways I've come into possession of an Atari 520STfm to discover I can play midi on it! Now back when I was young I owned an Amiga (boooo! :P - really loved it!) and I used to make music on it with Soundtracker. So here I am wondering the following: Is there is a tracker on the ST that supports MIDI and at least 8 channels? Is my Atari good enough? If not which one would be the better one to use? I have it on my desk now and only have 1 FDD with Music maker, I tested it with Kontakt on my pc as a sampler and it works! Now I only need to find a tracker to work with for multi channel! Any help is much appreciated!

I though I'd post this in Classic Gaming General, but I guess it's not available anymore, so I'm just posting it here thinking this is where most people would be interested. I was looking through my record collection and noticed the inside sleeve for Pac Man Fever by Buckner & Garcia LP contains instructions on how to win the game:

So I recently bought Vectorblade and Protector/YASI from Packrat, and immediately having a Space Invaders itch, I popped in the latter and was immediately greeted for the first time with the awesome menu music that I assume a lot here are familiar with A little backstory about myself, I'm part of the Clone Hero community (if you're unaware, I assume you've heard of the game Guitar Hero; it's a free-to-play clone of those games) and basically, what I do is I take music that I think would be fun to play, and I make it playable on the game. Immediately, I was interested in doing what I could with the menu music from Protector/YASI. I messaged the guy behind Packrat about it asking if I was allowed to have a ROM file sent to me to try to rip the music, since I just bought the game. When he got back to me though, he said that he couldn't get a hold of the original creator and was therefore (understandably so) hesitant to share a ROM file without permission. Unfortunately, this was my only lead, as I do not have a Vectrex cart reader for my PC. I would like to clarify: I am NOT asking for a free ROM of this game (I, admittedly, don't even know if Homebrew ROMs follow the same rules as officially licensed ones. A ROM would fix my predicament, but I don't wanna accidentally break rules by asking for a ROM when I'm not supposed to or something. If anyone needed me to, I could provide proof that I own the game), I am only interested in getting my hands on an acceptable-quality audio file of the menu music. I was wondering if anyone else had ever ripped this audio, or if anyone has the ROM on their PC to be able to do so for me? (Or alternatively, I don't suppose anyone here knows how to get a hold of Alex Herbert?)

Several people have mentioned that RMT isn't the panacea anymore... so perhaps it is time to start discussing how to move beyond RMT. So I'm creating this thread because nobody else is willing to (Doesn't necessarily mean I want to get involved into any kind of coding!) One thing that is critical I think is to use Dmsc's LZSS player, as I mentioned many times, its main advantage is its speed no matter how complex the sound effects are. Its second advantage is that it already exists and doesn't require upgrading if new sound effects are implemented (because it just replays raw Pokey data). Possibilites from a tech POV: 1.Upgrade RMT ? It is a possibility, even though Raster's not with us anymore, some people seem have to have the source code. ( The source code for one the very first releases is actually available from Raster's homepage: http://raster.infos.cz/atari/rmt/rmt.htm : 2003/01: RMT 1.01 beta - rmt101b.zip (105 kb), rmt101b_src.zip (170 kb)) The PC tracker is written in C++ but the sound is actually played with the 6502 ASM player through emulation of the 6502 and Pokey which means implementing new effects require modifying the 6502 player which would bloat it/slow it down, not exactly ideal since it is also used on the A8. Since I have a compatible player (RMT2LZSS) written in C#, it could be possible to remove the 6502 emulation from RMT, replace it with the C# player and leave the Pokey emulation to be able to still play the tunes inside the tracker. The tunes could then be exported to LZSS for playback on the A8. It should then be possible to easily add new sound effects to the C# player. 2.Start from an existing tracker ? This means getting a functional UI but non working player. The player and all its effects would have to be adapted for Pokey. Is there a tracker for a different platform that has enough bits in common with Pokey? I like https://famistudio.org because its interface seems really user friendly and if you watch the demo video, it seems pretty easy to create tunes with it. 3.Start from scratch ? A mammoth task... A slightly different proposition would be to reset RMT by just starting from the C# player and rebuilding a new UI around it. And using Fox's ASAP, the Pokey emulator that's powering RMT. 4.Update RMT with patches ? That's a dead end since adding a feature means removing another one. What's needed is a tracker than handles all the patches at once (and more). To reiterate, this doesn't mean I want to get involved in the coding or implement every feature request that may pop up but at least let's get the ball rolling!

Hello everyone! There are quite a few musicians already making some great tunes on the Intellivision using IntyBASIC, but I want to invite them to give the Intellivision Music Tracker a chance. Not because it's better (IntyBASIC is great!) or easier (the tracker is a lot harder!), but because I think it offers some truly remarkable capabilities that allow for more expressive and nuanced compositions. To ease the transition from IntyBASIC Notation (IBN) to the tracker format (IMT), I've created a program that converts music data from one to the other, called IBN-to-IMT. The idea is that anybody can take an IntyBASIC song, convert it into the tracker format, and from there extend it and alter it with additional instruments, channels, patterns, effects, etc. I wanted to illustrate this process myself, so I asked @Nyuundere for a sample of one of his tunes. In the end I wanted to showcase his song transformed with all sorts of bells-and-whistles and give him and others an idea of what can be done. He graciously agreed, and I went to work. Having secured his permission, I will now share the results with everyone. The song chosen for this demonstration is Beat It by Michael Jackson, tracked originally by @Nyuundere for the IntyBASIC Music Player, transformed and remixed for the Intellivision Music Tracker by yours truly, @DZ-Jay. Original IBN: First, here's the original song, as tracked by @Nyuundere. I took the liberty of annotating it by hand, just to provide context on how each part relates to their corresponding sections in the transformed file. beatit-ibn.mp3 beatit-ibn.bas Transformed IMT: Second, here's the converted song, as processed by IBN-to-IMT. I also annotated the file by hand, so that anybody could follow the provenance of each pattern to the original IBN source. Notice that the instruments are merely approximations (although rather close) and that there is no percussion. IBN-to-IMT does not translate the percussion sounds from IntyBASIC, so it is left to the user to add drum and percussion sounds in the final IMT version. That said, the drums capabilities of the Intellivision Music Tracker are much more sophisticated and one of its key differentiators, so this is something you would probably do in any case. beatit-imt.mp3 beatit-imt.asm IMT Remix: Third, with the converted song on hand, I proceeded to create a cool remix by extending the song, changing the instrument sounds, and adding a proper drums track. I based the structure of the song and the drum sounds on the original Beat It track from Michael Jackson's album Thriller. I tried to reproduce the original drums track, complete with handclap accents, and used a "buzzy" bass sound to take the place of the guitar. As with the others, the source includes annotations relating each channel and section to their original counterparts. beatit-remix.mp3 beatit-remix.asm beatit-remix.rom I took the liberty of extending the remix to use the full six channels available with the ECS -- but even when played without the expansion module, it still retains the same feel; only that the extra drum accents and instrument overlay effects are missing. beatit-remix-3ch.mp3 Beat It - Remix.mp4 Information on the Intellivision Music Tracker and the IBN-to-IMT conversion tool can be found in their respective discussion threads: Intellivision Music Tracker IBN-to-IMT: Converting IntyBASIC songs to tracker format Thanks again to @Nyuundere for going through the trouble of tracking the song originally for IntyBASIC, and for begin so gracious in sharing it with me. -dZ.

Introducing IBN-to-IMT: A program to convert music data from IntyBASIC Notation (IBN) to Intellivision Music Tracker format (IMT). Description: The program will translate a music module composed in IntyBASIC Notation (IBN), into the data format used by the Intellivision Music Tracker (IMT). The result is an assembly source file with the original song represented in the target format. The output file includes instrument definitions that attempt to reproduce the IntyBASIC sounds. By default, IBN-to-IMT will produce output to support 6 channels, following the default configuration of the Intellivision Music Tracker. It will also try to determine automatically the most optimal length of patterns to use, removing duplicate patterns across all channels. The default behaviour can be altered with command line options. How It Works: The crucial problem that IBN-to-IMT attempts to address is how to identify patterns, and how to determine an optimal pattern length in which to split the song data. The solution it employs is actually to apply brute-force. First, the program scans the original BASIC source file and identifies all the labels and music player commands, extracting a stream of note events (the song stream) and splitting them into channels. Any music subroutines encountered via the command "MUSIC GOSUB" are unrolled and included inline as part of the song stream. Throughout this entire pre-processing step, the volume and active instrument of each channel in the original source is tracked. Then, operating on each extracted channel in turn, the program splits the song stream repeatedly into patterns of various row lengths. At each split, it attempts to deduplicate re-occurring patterns across all channels, and computes an estimate of the size of the data needed to reproduce it. When all lengths are tested, the program compares the relative sizes of the data for each iteration, and chooses the smallest one. This is assumed to be the optimal length with a balance between rows and data size. The selected pattern split is then rendered in the Intellivision Music Tracker (IMT) format by emitting the sequence of reused patterns, the channel patterns, and their individual note event sub-patterns. Any patterns corresponding to a labeled section in the original, will include a comment with its corresponding label for reference. Caveats: You must ensure that the source file contains only song statements in valid IntyBASIC Notation (IBN). Variable song speed is not supported by the Intellivision Music Tracker. Therefore, the "MUSIC SPEED" command simply sets the speed for the entire song. The program works best when the original song is naturally organized into repeating groups of notes or musical passages of the same length. Because the implementation of the Intellivision Music Tracker synthesizer is different from that of the IntyBASIC music player, the instrument sounds will only be approximations. The commands "MUSIC STOP" and "MUSIC REPEAT" are interpreted as the end of the song. Therefore, any following statements will be ignored unless referenced in some other way. You should take care to ensure that control-flow commands such as "MUSIC JUMP" and "MUSIC GOSUB" follow a coherent and logical flow. Chaotic jumping around in your song may not translate correctly. Be very careful when exiting a subroutine prematurely via a "MUSIC JUMP" command. This may result in unbalanced "GOSUB/RETURN" pairs. Because pattern extraction occurs independently of label positioning, there is a chance that labels wil not line up with the start of a pattern. Consequently, determining the backtracking from the target of a "MUSIC JUMP" command may fail. In such event, the program will default to an end-of-song marker. Known Issues & Limitations: Error checking is superficial at best. (What can I say, I'm an optimist. And lazy.) Drum arguments are read and extracted, but completely ignored during processing. The control-flow command "MUSIC JUMP" is treated in a special way: If it points forward into the song stream, it will skip all notes until that point If it points backwards to a previously encountered label, it will signal the end of the song and set the target as the repeat offset for backtracking at the end of the sequence. If a target pattern cannot be determined for some reason, it will default to the end-of-song marker. The performance command "MUSIC SPEED" will override the actual speed of the entire song, not just of the following sections. How To Use: For details on how to use IBN-to-IMT and for a comprehensive description of its features and available options, please see the User's Manual included with the program. Requirements: IBN-to-IMT is implemented as a Perl script. Therefore, you need an installation of the Perl programming language in your computer. On Mac, Unix, or Linux systems, Perl is usually included automatically in the standard operating system distribution. For Windows PCs, you may need to download one and install it. There are many distributions out there, most of them free for non-commercial use. One I've used in the past is ActivePerl from ActiveState. Acknowledgements: This program would not have any reason to exist if it were not for the fabulous work by Arnauld Chevallier (@Arnauld) and Oscar Toledo (@nanochess), respective authors of the original Intellivision Music Tracker and IntyBASIC. I would also like to thank @Nyuundere and @First Spear for suggesting the idea for this tool, and for providing sample files from their own personal repertoires on which to test. Most of my initial testing was done on a few sample IBN files I found in this forum, which happen to be published by @First Spear. Download: IBN-to-IMT is now included as part of the Intellivision Music Tracker distribution package. You are encouraged to get the latest version of the tracker from its dedicated thread. Nonetheless, below is the conversion program on its own, along with a copy of the user's manual. trk-utils.zip ibn2imt-manual.txt UPDATES: 2021-03-04: Updated attachments to latest version (from trk-distro-r4).

Hello, In my aim to make the Intellivision Music Tracker useful and increasing its appeal to IntyBASIC programmers, I want to make sure it at least offers at a minimum any critical features that the IntyBASIC music player has. One thing that was missing, and that some have already asked me about, is the ability to disable channels in the tracker so that you can use them for sound effects. Unfortunately, the Intellivision Music Tracker messes with all PSG channels during playback, even if it's just to re-assert silence. I added a simple enhancement that allows the programmer to configure the tracker at runtime to leave some PSG channels untouched. It works by organizing the channels into a prioritized list, and only using the number of channels requested, starting from the one with the highest priority. In order to emulate something like "PLAY SIMPLE" in IntyBASIC, I chose to assign the lowest priority to the third channel of each PSG. The priority list then looks like this: A (Main PSG) - Highest priority B (Main PSG) D (ECS PSG) E (ECS PSG) F (ECS PSG) C (Main PSG) - Lowest priority +-----------+-----------+ | MAIN PSG | ECS PSG | +---+---+---+---+---+---+ | A | B | C | D | E | F | +---+---+---+---+---+---+ | 1 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 5 | +---+---+---+---+---+---+ So, for example, if you are only using the main PSG without the ECS, and you request 2 active channels, the tracker will use "A" and "B" and leave "C" untouched. Likewise, if you plan to take advantage of the ECS extra PSG to play additional music channels, you can request 5 active channels and the tracker will use "A", "B", and the three ECS channels, and still leave "C" untouched. That allows you to predictably reserve "C" for sound effects, and still take advantage of the extra sound channels of the ECS for the tracker, just like when using "PLAY SIMPLE" in IntyBASIC. However, in contrast to "PLAY SIMPLE," you are not constrained to just reserving one or two channels; you can configure the tracker to use anywhere from 1 to 5 channels, disabling the rest and reserving them for external use. All you need to do is use the macro "SET_ACTIVE_CHANNELS(n)" where "n" is the number of channels to use. The default is 6, letting the tracker use them all. ' Enable 5 channels for tracker use. ' This reserves channel "C" for other things. SET_ACTIVE_CHANNELS(5) ' The song will start playing immediately. CALL TRKLOADSONG(VARPTR MYSONG(0)) (Obviously the feature is available using the native Assembly Language interface of the Intellivision Music Tracker as well.) The full set of channel priority configurations are as follows: +------------------------+-----------+-----------+ | | MAIN PSG | ECS PSG | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | SET_ACTIVE_CHANNELS(n) | A | B | C | D | E | F | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | 1 | X | - | - | - | - | - | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | 2 | X | X | - | - | - | - | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | 3 | X | X | - | X | - | - | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | 4 | X | X | - | X | X | - | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | 5 | X | X | - | X | X | X | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | 6 | X | X | X | X | X | X | +------------------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+ LEGEND: [ - ] => Inactive [ X ] => Active One important thing to note is that, because channels "A" and "D" are the only ones in which the tracker supports drums, we may want to keep those at a higher priority, or else you lose the ability to use drums when using less than the full set of channels. What do you guys think? I know it is a useful feature to be able to reserve some channels for non-tracker use, but is this a good interface? Would it be helpful, or is it too confusing? Is the priority order too wonky? Any feedback will be welcomed! -dZ.