WIP bB tool: Atari Sound Forger

[kisrael]

https://alienbill.com/2600/atari-sound-forger/

 

I might be reinventing the wheel here, but I was craving a tool to make it easier to experiment with Atari sounds in a real time way, so I made one, and am about halfway to my ambition.

 

There have been various tool to find good frequencies (including on real hardware) but I hadn't seen much encouraging real time play, treating the computer keyboard like a musical instrument. And some of the powerful off-atari tools are pretty hard for a duffer musician to understand. 

 

there are mappings sets (that you can configure and store locally) that let you map any computer key to any Voice/Frequency combination, and optionally display those mappings on a piano keyboard.

 

 

I think it's fun and maybe a little useful as it is, but I'd like to be able to record tracks in real time - not sure if a browser based tool will be quite precise enough, but worth a shot. And the take the recordings and generate code, starting with batari BASIC. 

 

For now the plan is for a simple "voice is on, voice is off" approach. It might be interesting to try some sounds that have ADSR type properties, or blend voices. 
 

I'm aiming for simple (and fun to bang around on) but powerful.

[+TwentySixHundred]

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Looks good mate, might help a cobber like myself out with making music ?

Edited June 15, 2020 by TwentySixHundred

[kisrael]

5 hours ago, TwentySixHundred said:

Looks good mate, might help a cobber like myself out with making music ?

That's my hope! If you have a little musical intuition you can find something that sounds pretty pleasant, just by banging around.

(sometimes I get distracted with the  programming by daydreaming with little microtunes  )
Keeping my fingers crossed that the timing will be accurate/consistent enough in the browser for recording to really shine, making it a cheap-n-cheerful 2-track tracker. If that happens, the barrier to entry for decent riffs in bB games will be shoved down a good measure.

[+TwentySixHundred]

Yeah i used to play guitar many moons ago. That's all good however with the music generator tool in Visual bB i found it extremely hard to make anything decent. As a result i never used to worry about music and just stuck with simple sfx

Edited June 16, 2020 by TwentySixHundred

[kisrael]

I guess I shouldn't cross post to both regular programming and batari, so I direct your attention to 

It can now record loops and put them in a batari Basic program for you! 

[+Random Terrain]

I like how you can drag and drop rectangles that symbolize the notes/length of notes using FL Studio:

 

youtu.be/9YcWrsB-_ng?t=246

 

Can something similar to that be made online for creating batari Basic music?

 

[kisrael]

Sigh, maybe.  (sorry, always tough to hear "do more!" before any evaluation of what's been done already  )

 

Definitely a change of UI to have enough space to do it. 

I'm kind of torn if I should make things so all you can do in the browser is what the Atari/batari Code can do, like lock it down, or if that would stop people from having fun with sound even when they're not worried about putting it on hardware

[+TwentySixHundred]

[kisrael]

Ha - which reminds me of some of why I'm doing this:

[kisrael]

But if anyone here has the "right" to ask for a bit more it's RT - not only for the work on the command guide but I'm using the clips he made.

[+Random Terrain]

2 hours ago, kisrael said:

Sigh, maybe.  (sorry, always tough to hear "do more!" before any evaluation of what's been done already  )

 

Definitely a change of UI to have enough space to do it. 

I'm kind of torn if I should make things so all you can do in the browser is what the Atari/batari Code can do, like lock it down, or if that would stop people from having fun with sound even when they're not worried about putting it on hardware

 

2 hours ago, kisrael said:

But if anyone here has the "right" to ask for a bit more it's RT - not only for the work on the command guide but I'm using the clips he made.

 

Yep, I'm not trying to poop on your online tool. I just remembered that years ago somebody said that the VbB Music and Sound Editor was OK, but they'd rather have something similar to Mario Paint Composer. FL Studio is similar to that, but you can resize the rectangles to change the duration of each note, so it seems to be better than Mario Paint Composer to me.

 

The tool you have right now is good for people who know what notes they want to play in real time, but I bang on the keyboard (right click on the keys) to find the note I need, then adjust the amount of time it plays and volume used by messing with the data. For example, I made this for Brian O a few days ago using the VbB Music and Sound Editor:

 

bandstand_boogie_2020y_06m_18d_1033t.bin

 

As I told Brian O, I'm not completely happy with the duration of all the notes and the spaces between them, but at least the data is there to adjust. Since I'm using data for both channels, there is a lot of "0,0,0" space holder data for many notes, so there is space to add other notes playing at the same time or tiny sound effects. Here's an example of the data for one note:

 

   4,12,21
   0,0,0
   1
   8,12,21
   0,0,0
   5
   2,12,21
   0,0,0
   8

 

Banging on the keyboard (right clicking on the keys) to find the notes was semi-hard to do, but adjusting all of the data by hand was probably the hardest part. If we had an FL Studio type of editor for making batari Basic sound effects and music, it would nearly eliminate the need to spend a bunch of hours messing with the data. Seeing the data as rectangles that you can create, resize, and move around (drag and drop) would make the whole process faster and more fun.

[kisrael]

yeah you're probably right.

 

There 's a secret problem w/ the page as it is now, which is how the bB-encoder deals with multiple notes at once - right now, the answer is Badly

So I have some revamping I'd have to do for that, as well as seeing if I can get some kind of drag and drop for the notes.

 

I alway thought rhythm was by far and away the toughest part of producing electronic music (with getting the pitches right second). So for the former I rely on people who have minor piano keyboard skills/rhythm, and for the latter the piano keyboard overlays. 

 

In theory it would be easier to make a Mario Paint style program as a standalone thing? Or maybe... eh, I dunno. Maybe a 2.0 of it all, if I get enough indiation people are getting value from what's there already. 

[+Random Terrain]

Speaking of rectangles:

 

youtu.be/JTnGI6Knw5Q?t=9

 

[kisrael]

9 hours ago, Random Terrain said:

Speaking of rectangles:

 

youtu.be/JTnGI6Knw5Q?t=9

 

Very Amazing!

I think I've seen that or something like that live. 

 

And I am actually building what you suggested  Trying to get a figure out how to link and what to display of everything (piano keyboard, computer keyboard, notes along side piano roll) is tough

[kisrael]

but my new project (atari-riff-machine) will have a feature I never got to in atari-sound-forger -- notes with ADSR envelopes, so you can have that nice plunk sound.