| |
MC
Account closed
Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 71 |
music-assembler
Any of you ever used it?
I am partly responsible for its existence.
Together with OPM who lived next door from me at the time (we lost contact) we decided after ripping lots of game tunes by Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway that we could do better technically.
We created a player routine which could play good sounding music based on tracks, sequences and presets (like hubbard's routine) minimizing RAM usage but without having big peaks in rasterline usage. The trick was working around the waiting stuff that had to be done with the SID or otherwise it wouldn't trigger. We accomplished this by having the player think ahead and make decisions for the next time the interrupt would be triggered. This routine would later become the music-assembler player code. The rest is history.
The two of us created the player routine, OPM was responsible for the track editor and I did the sequence and preset editors. We contacted Markt+Technik who also published some magazines in Germany and we had a publishing deal. They sold quite a large number of copies to my surprise at the time. I think I was about 17 years old or something back then.
I've read there were later 'updated' versions of our 1.0 release by Triad. Can anyone tell me what they changed/improved? I haven't seen a C64 in decades.
Cheers,
Marco Swagerman a.k.a. MC/DusaT
|
|
| |
SIDWAVE
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238 |
hey MC,
im one of your biggest fans.
when we started hvsc, some of the first priroty was to rip all your tunes, because i love them :D
no, at the time when masm came, i had already gone to amiga, so i never learned it.
in 1995 when i returned to c64, i got jch's tracker, because its more user friendly than masm, i chose to learn that.
now i use SDI by geir+grg, and imo its the best native c64 tracker around.
in hvsc, if you go to musicians/ouwehand_reyn, or musicians/Waz they use masm and got some good stuff out of it.
just so you know, about that your very first tunes, or in fact most your tune sin hvsc, are ripped by me. i was filled with joy to find the very first music coded in some very minimal player, that i guess you have written.. (with crappy sounds hehe)
:D
dear marco, if you want to compose sid again, check the tutorial videos i have put on youtube for SDI, then you can easy start to push the juice out of this fantastic tracker!
http://www.youtube.com/diabelez
my old handle is rambones/TST (The Supply Team)
(the group with the worlds largest sideborder scroller in 1987 and 1988)
if you want to talk to oscar again, i have his mail.
i mailed some with him now and then, about info, because you were nowhere to find! :D
|
| |
Angel of Death
Registered: Apr 2008
Posts: 215 |
*dropping down on my knees in total admiration*
"This is the rock-monitor three!"
Jan Harries is right. As far as I know all of Reyn Ouwehand's stuff is made in MA. (Except for LN III which at least uses the core of the playing routine)
There is a tune in the HVSC by me made in MA.
It was, at the time as promoted by you, the most economic and user-friendly music-maker around. And if you ask me it still is! It may lack some very advanced sound-creating functions (fast modulation, hard-restart etc.) but very easy to get into.
If goattracker wouldn't have come along I'd still be using it.
And I think that if you would type "music assembler" in the search box any other version of it should come up.
(being a dutch production I am sure anything dealing with will be on this site) |
| |
Zyron
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 2381 |
I believe the Voice Tracker editor, which I made alot of music in, was using the Music Assembler player. |
| |
Stainless Steel
Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 966 |
Marco Swagerman woah! I still frequently listen to "Still rolling" "rollerboard" and "ode to rob".
Great work dude and musicassembler rocked hard. And rockmonitor of course too :D
BTW, a count of all SIDID's matching music assembler comes up with a number around 5181 hits. Might be more i'm not sure if my hvsc version is the most recent.
Unfortunately SIDID doesnt seem to be able to tell Rockmonitor and Soundmonitor apart.
And yes, i have made some tunes in Music Assembler aswell but eventually switched to SDI years later. Still MA was a great editor for its time.
In my book one of the persons who really shined with it most was Reyn Ouwehand. Also Image did some really nice tunes with it aswell.
|
| |
MC
Account closed
Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 71 |
I've heard of this "hard reset" but am not acquainted with it. What exactly does it do? |
| |
Angel of Death
Registered: Apr 2008
Posts: 215 |
I'm no expert on this. But it has to do with the ADSR generator in the SID chip. As I understood it isn't very good, causing waveforms not to start exactly at volume zero and ruining your attack. It was fixed in the later version 8580 (making it sound tighter and more controlled) but some amazing techno-boffins found a way how to tickle some registers and causing the ADSR generator to reset and restart completely. (hence the name hard-restart)
The resulting difference is truly amazing. And the only down-side seems to be an increase in processor time.
But anyone who actually knows what he is talking about is free to correct me. :) |
| |
Frantic
Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 1661 |
as far as I know, the ADSR bug is equally present on the 8580. |
| |
iAN CooG
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3235 |
Stainless: grab latest sidid.cfg
http://csdb.dk/release/download.php?id=118271
and use parameter -m to get different sub-versions of players for example in /MC dir you'll get
Last_V8.sid Music_Assembler
(Voice_Tracker_4)
Lets_get_ill.sid SoundMonitor
(DUSAT/RockMon4)
Rockmonitor_5_Intromusic.sid Dutch-USA_Team/MC
Vainqueur.sid SoundMonitor
(JamMaster)
We_Have_It.sid SoundMonitor
(MusicMaster_1)
and so on.
|
| |
Marauder/GSS
Account closed
Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 224 |
ah the dutch usa-team in the house, kewl...and the good old music-assembler... (:
really liked that great editor/player and still have a (unreleased) jingle-maker somewhere on my old disks, which I did for Chris Ammermüller/Beatmachine in 1989/90...
Groetjes! |
| |
SIDWAVE
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238 |
MC: hard restart fixed the ADSR bug in the SID.
a triangle f.ex /\, it should start on value 0, but it dont, it just continues. so you reset the oscillator by setting waveform 9 or 0 or someothers, and then wait a few cycles, then set the waveform to be used. The /\ will then for sure start at 0 every time.
it makes drums hard and snappy, not sloppy and failing as in f.ex a lot of ben daglish tunes, or the basses of david whittaker. |
... 43 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....
|
| Previous - 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 - Next |
