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2009-08-02 12:20

Adam

Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 323

SID music software recommendations?

Hi SID freax...

I am wondering what the general opinion is with what
the most popular or most recommended piece of software
is to use to write music for the SID in 2009?

>> Adam/Usagi <<

... 24 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2009-08-04 14:09

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086

Airdance III

last part's music uses 1-2 lines of rastertime iirc.

2009-08-04 14:34

booker

Registered: Jul 2003
Posts: 334

Quote: From the coders point of view, I would also like to know which tracker/player will use the most less rastertime? I only know of JCH NP19 (?). surely it depends on what sid-tricks are used, but beside of the JCH editor, where you can choose the player by yourself, i dont know how other trackers handle this (is there an option to switch off certain code-routines to minimize the player or at least the resulting used rastertime?

(If this has been asked /answered before just redirect me to the according thread please.

HardTrack composer uses very low rastertime (check later Shogoon tunes) but unfortunatelly, as for the tracker, you don't get convenient presentation of your patterns and forget about any follow-play either.

2009-08-04 22:04

Linus

Registered: Jun 2004
Posts: 639

Jeff: Well, well ... sure, the wavetable size is somewhat small for serious multispeed biz, right. My point is tho ... I don't get why people still think of goat as a very limited editor/player. Some very essential features (for me anyway) like switching filtertype/cutoff/resonance on any frame I want are missing in a lot of other players.

I guess Jammer, Randall, Conrad and others have proven that it is in fact a very powerful toy that doesn't have to hide behind SDI and JCH.

Just for the record: I never tried coding my own player and still know *exactly* what I am doing :)

2009-08-05 00:00

NecroPolo

Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231

Quote: Groepaz: I am curious, what are the limits of GT? Still haven't found them ;)

I could not make it bleed.

...yet... ;)

So... What do you REALLY need to compose music?

A recognisable stlye that sets you apart from all the others. That's all.

2009-08-05 00:16

Soren

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 547

Linus: We didn't need fancy stuff like changing filtertypes during a sound back when most of use only used the old chips.
I guess we didn't need that for drums. So some older tools don't have this, ofcourse. :-)
And well, we didn't even need smart editors that didn't fit into the memory of a real c64. To begin with a MC-monitor was enough for me for coding players and doing some sort of "music" :-)
I know times have changed, which is good ofcourse. Still I am pretty happy about the features and way of doing things that I have in my latest players, atleast. Ofcourse I do spend more rastertime on my overall players. But I do customized stuff music from time to time, to please the coders a bit. :-) Once again, not saying that GT is a bad player+editor. You and others have proved that for sure. I will however continue using my own tools, as those work like _I_ want them to work. :-)

2009-08-05 08:37

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

Quote: I could not make it bleed.

...yet... ;)

So... What do you REALLY need to compose music?

A recognisable stlye that sets you apart from all the others. That's all.

Well, style evolves.
I had a very recognizable style in the first 2 years, when i knew nothing about anything, when i got the 4th voice on Amiga, my style changed from first tune i made on Amiga.
400 tunes later and 20 years, i have all styles and none. So i take all my tunes, and try to sort them into similar sounding groups (my CD release schedule).

For me, any tune i make, is a snapshot of the time its made in. Each tune, when listened, takes me back to the moment i made it, and all feels perfect, its nice to have ability to look back into past with total recall.

When i dream about the future, my tunes get too complicated and mixed up in style, when i live in the moment of creation, they become coherent and give meaning.

I certainly wouldnt want to release 30 blues CDs - i would get bored after #3..

Evolution is endless, learn to focus on the now, and you have a way to define who and what you are, and where.

2009-08-05 09:00

NecroPolo

Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231

@Jan: Your way to go. It is rather about a philosophy of creation than skills. True, if you have the attitude, you can direct that evolution anywhere.

Most of the time I prefer creating some recognisable, style-independent stuff (that means some limitations but still allows much freedom) and stick to that (+ refine) than venturing through exact styles. In my experience, it works better on the long run. But that's my way to go. Everyone has a different road.

Some talk the talk, others walk the walk. For me, your tunes are the proof of that you know what you're speaking about.

/// ...just don't tell that blues-stuff to BB King or Angus Young ;) ///

2009-08-05 10:53

Tim
Account closed

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 467

Big change for me quite recently was sharing more of my own work, whilst still in creation, with other sidders.. I would really suggest either that, or take the feedback from peers on CSDB as positive criticism.. its priceless!

Ive started sharing some stuff from my work directory a few weeks now, plenty of mixed feedback.. some hard and motivational but overall a lot to think about.. some things you change, some you dont.. but made me realise that in the last 2-3 months Ive probably learned more by listening to others then 19 years of trying to self-teach myself.

For me composing on sid used to be months of frustration poured into a tune (yes, I know you can not hear the hours put into the few things I did release, but trust me I spent months on each tune I put out). In the last 2-3 months its changed 100% to actually really enjoying composing a sid during a few weeks and fiddling around in tweaking here and there. So, one sid finished for a release soon and two in the pipeline :) A quick, but very big thank you to Intensity, Jan -Rambones- Harries, Xiny and Zerozillion for changing my mindset :)

2009-08-05 11:00

NecroPolo

Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231

This thread ran a bit off-topic - but this way the most important thing is dicsussed considering composing. Great ideas in there.

2011-02-12 01:32

Hermit

Registered: May 2008
Posts: 208

It's 2011 now, and I might be out of picture in some ways, but I'd like to show my list about the trackers I tried 1-2 years ago...correct me if I know/remember some details wrong, or if they changed meanwhile.

1. GT by Cadaver - I didn't learn it for a long time, wasn't really interested by the DOS-like lookout. But once I had the time and energy to learn it, and since then I use only this tracker. It has many good extra features, the only one I don't like in newer versions is the speedtable thing and the emulated sound. I'm afraid hardrestart can't be switched off in instrument parameters, and only one Hardrestart-ADSR value can be used which is given in config file. Instrument saving/loading is possible.

2. XSID by Jeff - It is very featureful, good playing and pattern handling technique. 4x rasterspeed without tempochange, nice PW and Cutoff value displayers for easier visually aided sound-tweaking. Good keyboard layout, detuning and tablespeed adjustable, different HR-ADSR values. I don't like the command-table approach very much, it is needed because there's only one channel for instruments and patternFX. Good patternFX set BTW. I experienced a positioning bug when I switched between the orderlist view and JCH-like pattern-view.

3. SDI by GT and GrG - this editor (despite the lookout which I don't like much) is very full featured, has many tweak possibilities on sound (e.g. detuning). On the other hand, it requires someone to go deep inside it. For me it was a bit complicated for first time, especially how patterns were handled. 32 instruments plus 32 arpeggios are more than enough. Intuitive file handler with sorting function is good. As I've heard the workfile is not exported directly to playable tune, but a sourcefile which must be translated afterwards. I didn't like this, but it may have been changed since.

4. JCH's editor - seems to be a very sophisticated tool, many sound tweaking possibilities, but we have to know every numbers in the tables what they refer to. I don't think the keyboard layout is well defined (e.g. F6 is delete?!). It has very well invented pattern-display, follow-play function and poliphonic keyboard-jam function.
Drax uses this with Laxity's new player, and he gets out excellent tunes from this editor.

5. Sid Factory by Laxity - very similar compared to JCH's but with other player routine by Laxity. I remember keyboard layout was more standard, and sound quality was good.

6.DMC4 and 5 by Brian/Graffity - These editors are always standard in demotune composing, duration can be set in patterns as far as I remember. In DMC4 and DMC7 I didn't like that tested sound sounded differently in the played tune. (Necropolo said similar about GMC). DMC5 is a very different looking and much more advanced tool, and quite nice sounds could be tweaked out from it. There was a good possibility for filtersweep on patterns/tracks. It has stereo-SID version.
No pattern play (DMC7 had afaik), but it can be tweaked with aid of putting patterns into subtunes first. Thanks to Da Blondie for the tip. Player features sexy hardrestart using $09 waveform. In DMC5 instruments can be saved/loaded.
There's an editor called SYNC which is very identical to DMC5 for first sight...

7.Hardtrack Composer by Longhair - An older tracker with very good sound quality due to sexy hard restart where first frame is heard for very short time (e.g. Shogoon and Longhair tunes). However there's no tone is heard on keypress, so you need to have absolute pitch or just playing again-and-again all tune, because no pattern-play. Nice fast and easy navigation in patterns/orderlist/tables btw.

8.Ninjatracker by Cadaver - This seems to me a very well invented tracker. It has a lot of features similar to Goat Tracker, however player uses even less rastertime and memory. Some restrictions are given of course, like multispeed and channel mute/solo keycuts.
(I remember Cadaver's Sadotracker too, was interesting)

Odintracker and Cybertracker (Fasttracker like concepts) were two tools which looked good, but I didn't like them at the end, they didn't seem to be fast to work with, but maybe I was too lazy to learn them enough.
Soundmonitor is a very old but very well constructed tool which was used by Jeroen Tel and Rambones for compositions afaik.

Wait a moment, I'll share a table which I did when investigated for my favourite tracker among the most preferable ones...anyway, don't take it seriously, it's just a subjective way of decision, not everything is 100% sure to be real now from all point of views.

('ins.sav' refers to Instrument Saving/Loading option.)
('loaderc.' refers to Loader Compatibility mode - not using fastloader.)

Hermit Software Hungary

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