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Forums > C64 Composing > music-assembler
2010-09-11 15:20
MC
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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
 
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2010-09-15 02:19
SIDWAVE
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Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238
MC: Didnt you see my pm ?

the 1.2 version by Triad, has the improvements described in the little scroll inside the main editor screen, and you should ofcourse notice them when using it.. ?

Here's the 1.4 version
Music-Assembler V1.4
2010-09-15 05:51
MC
Account closed

Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 71
Yes I read the PM and no the scroll in 1.2 didn' tell me enough. There's hardly anything in there. Disk actions window semi improved, rastertime display 'fixed' (it wasn't broken in the first place), time played display added and they changed the three track bars in the bottom into a 'graphic analyzer' type of thing in which you can't see which track is doing what so that it is just a nice looking graphic but not really useful.

In effect according to their scrolltext Triad made no useful changes at all and their subsequent releases appear to be bugfixes of their own code in their previous release.

This is why I ask if anything was changed at all in masm's functionality. As it appears this is not the case I can stick to 1.0 and safely discard the Triad releases, unless ofcourse there is some point to them I am missing?

Cheers, Marco
2010-09-15 14:41
SIDWAVE
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Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238
no, the functionality isnt changed.
its a pure "we upgraded this" (with useless gfx effect) release :D
2010-09-26 15:51
MC
Account closed

Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 71
I uploaded a manual for music assembler I'm working on at http://tanx0r.org/mc/masm_manual_0_01b.pdf (my own domain and webspace).

Any questions about the inner workings of MASM can be directed at me as I spent the last three days disecting and resourcing the player routine and writing the manual. My brain is up to par again concerning the old editor and player.

Cheers, Marco
2010-09-26 16:27
Stainless Steel

Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 966
I'd also love to hear some rockmonitor history.
2010-09-26 17:20
MC
Account closed

Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 71
Heheh and to think I always hated 'digis'. True story! It made me dislike the Amiga and its shite audio capabilities and even now I still hate samplers.

When I load up rockmon 5 nowadays I don't have a clue how it even works! :) I guess the base we used for it (soundmonitor) has never really been my cup of tea...

Rockmonitor was mostly OPM's project, I don't really have any recollection of how we did things. Just that the first versions were really bad compared to version 5, which utilized NMI interrupts to play samples through the volume register at $D418.
2010-09-26 23:52
SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238
Rockmonitor:

9000 lowbyte
9100 hibyte
9200 patterns (01 00 00 02.....) (drums)

9fxx (address can be found in digiplayer at 9e00), here are the lo/hibytes of sample start/end, and there is a table of sample speed. (see in player for this)

anyhow, that is RM3 and 4, i think RM5 is a bit different.

you have to enter the values in 9000/9100/9200+ OUTSIDE the current tune. so if it goes from step 1 to 5, you have to enter the drums in 6-ff - now thats pretty lame, because you cant make the drums while the music is playing :(

you edit the drum stuff in right side, where its all filled with bf00.

anyhow, RM3 and 4 both have instructions when you start them up.


hehe
2010-09-27 07:30
Stainless Steel

Registered: Mar 2003
Posts: 966
I meant history, not instructions :-D
2011-10-05 22:08
SURFiNG
Account closed

Registered: Sep 2011
Posts: 3
sorry to bring this up, but im looking after the manual and the link to MC's site seems broken.. Any Luck?
-----

Resolved: Found in cache of google documents! great!
2012-03-11 23:22
MC
Account closed

Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 71
Soz I canceled my webspace. Will upload again.
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