impulse tracker intro code
category: code [glöplog]
So ask your coder to support generated samples and/or sample compression support...
well maybe I don't want to do that.
I can imagine, coders are difficult to talk to -- and they might bite!
coders are evil
and sarcastic
and naked.
wait, .. what?
Maybe I shouldn't have told you the truth :(
But seriously, ADPCM encoding is easy to add and the decoder has a very small memory footprint.
I think KB even posted code a while back.
ah, no... he just said:
here
Quote:
oh, Did I mention that you can get an IMA ADPCM like decoder down to 120 bytes and into a software mixer's inner loop without problems? ;)
here
And to complete the rant, here's a nice PDF describing a simple (and popular) form of ADPCM.
I'd recommend looking at various kinds of dct-based compressors for 64k's, i used 2 simplistic variants with variable size blocks and tweakable quantization and was usually getting 10-20x compression of samples without any specific tuning or musician cooperation (quality and compression totally depended on tune and it's samples).
The first release with such a compressor was u-turn (i think that only the original dos versions was packed with this, didn't have any will to port the compressor to win32 and it's a big reason why the port is bigger) and i don't remember much specifics about that system (it was very hacky).
Also i voidspace and while it did muck up the samples a bit loonie kinda "liked" the effect of the compressor in some ways for this particular tune. If i don't remember incorrectly the 110k XM tune was compressed to something like 12k with quantization + exepacker then adding the unpacker and minifmod gave me a total of something like 20k for the music.
Now, i was blatantly raping whatever the musicians had done. Given more time i think making a tool with selectable compression (ratio/quantization optins/nocomp,etc) on a per-sample basis done by the musician itself would've given awesome results.
Personally i thought that this approach was nicer than the softsynth approach since it gave pretty much freedom to the musican and took the pressure off me to meddle with softsynths (something i'm not really good at).
Today softsynths is the norm and there's plenty of good synths. But for 64k's i kinda miss the playfulness in music that was more pronounced by the tracker musicians, maybe intro makers should allow musicians more space for samples,etc (compressed) and use softsynths for the kinds of sounds and effects where it makes more sense.
The first release with such a compressor was u-turn (i think that only the original dos versions was packed with this, didn't have any will to port the compressor to win32 and it's a big reason why the port is bigger) and i don't remember much specifics about that system (it was very hacky).
Also i voidspace and while it did muck up the samples a bit loonie kinda "liked" the effect of the compressor in some ways for this particular tune. If i don't remember incorrectly the 110k XM tune was compressed to something like 12k with quantization + exepacker then adding the unpacker and minifmod gave me a total of something like 20k for the music.
Now, i was blatantly raping whatever the musicians had done. Given more time i think making a tool with selectable compression (ratio/quantization optins/nocomp,etc) on a per-sample basis done by the musician itself would've given awesome results.
Personally i thought that this approach was nicer than the softsynth approach since it gave pretty much freedom to the musican and took the pressure off me to meddle with softsynths (something i'm not really good at).
Today softsynths is the norm and there's plenty of good synths. But for 64k's i kinda miss the playfulness in music that was more pronounced by the tracker musicians, maybe intro makers should allow musicians more space for samples,etc (compressed) and use softsynths for the kinds of sounds and effects where it makes more sense.
Agreed, subband coders offer better compression ratios, but are more complex to implement, and you have to know what you're doing.
agree with whizzter.
actually there are pretty many who still uses Impulse Tracker or even trackers (for .xm), and make pretty awesome tunes for 64k's or less. thats why i was starting this thread. I usually get ideas after listening to some modules from some one hour compos that are still held on irc, and then i thought wow, this would be an awesome track for an intro. the code is still missing though :D
actually there are pretty many who still uses Impulse Tracker or even trackers (for .xm), and make pretty awesome tunes for 64k's or less. thats why i was starting this thread. I usually get ideas after listening to some modules from some one hour compos that are still held on irc, and then i thought wow, this would be an awesome track for an intro. the code is still missing though :D
and i forgot to say, that these are samples that are course is very tiny in size, but they still manage to pull off some idm'ish tunes for example. kida like those tunes from whizzter's intros in the past or loonie'ish..
A synth doesn't dictate the tune; most synths are used in MIDI sequencers, not trackers. I think the difference in style comes from that.
Good look getting your IT player code. Perhaps you can borrow it from Schism.
I have no idea what the license is, if there is one, or if it is any good.
Good look getting your IT player code. Perhaps you can borrow it from Schism.
I have no idea what the license is, if there is one, or if it is any good.
Quote:
most synths are used in MIDI sequencers, not trackers
are you aware that most big synths are available as VST these days and that there are many trackers which support VST plugins?
I'd say a great amount of intro tunes are done in trackers using the usual softsynths.
Regarding SchismTracker, it's released under the GPL and it's based on libmodplug, so it's not really suitable for tiny intros.
trc: dat joch hierboven is net zo'n kleefrol, je rolt hem één keer op en hij vangt maandenlang je vliegen af :p
Kleeftrol, kleefdrol ... het lijkt allemaal op elkaar.
Most "playfulness" came from tracker effects like vibrato, retriggers and such... effects that are not usable within most softsynths. Of course, a _good_ synth patches maker could actually do whatever _he wants_ but Immagonnalooptheusualrantonnowadaysoriginalityagainsttheboomfactor
:-) oh yes, I've seen softsynths that do not implement pitchbending (such a shame)
other than that: I'm glad that with todays tools musicians do not have to type endless "CC" sequences.
however I agree: track=voice trackers back then were the best way to allow artists to max out yesterday's HW.
since mid-nineties PCs allowed for a huge number of voices, the IT design was the way to go, IMHO.
I am a bit surprised that there was no official play-routine (missed that PC era, had an Amiga back then..)
also, greetings from a born-in-the-70ies old-fart (wrong thread, I guess)
other than that: I'm glad that with todays tools musicians do not have to type endless "CC" sequences.
however I agree: track=voice trackers back then were the best way to allow artists to max out yesterday's HW.
since mid-nineties PCs allowed for a huge number of voices, the IT design was the way to go, IMHO.
I am a bit surprised that there was no official play-routine (missed that PC era, had an Amiga back then..)
also, greetings from a born-in-the-70ies old-fart (wrong thread, I guess)
...but seriously, we're naked.
I'm telling them, you guys are fucking NAKED.
knl: by playfulness i'm thinking of trying out different genres or just using samples for silly stuff.
I remember loonie doing some awesome interpretations of russian and american folk music in gus-compatible (1meg) XM tunes, i don't even know where to start to have had good enough synths to emulate all kinds of analogue instruments needed for those. But i do remember test-compressing the tunes with my compressor and getting them into maybe 100k without sounding crap. Now that was just me trying to mutilate the tune as far as possible without hearing any crap, i'm pretty sure we could've gotten something good sounding and intro-sized if we would've sat down together and worked on the thing.
As for silly samples and stuff good examples would be Netty, Runko and "deeper meaning of a tunnel" by tpolm are good examples of using stuff in the music that might be hard to synthesise. The most recent example of such stuff in a tune would prolly be dead ringer but apart from that i can't remember many 64k tunes for having something fun in them apart from the usual kind of stuff.
I remember loonie doing some awesome interpretations of russian and american folk music in gus-compatible (1meg) XM tunes, i don't even know where to start to have had good enough synths to emulate all kinds of analogue instruments needed for those. But i do remember test-compressing the tunes with my compressor and getting them into maybe 100k without sounding crap. Now that was just me trying to mutilate the tune as far as possible without hearing any crap, i'm pretty sure we could've gotten something good sounding and intro-sized if we would've sat down together and worked on the thing.
As for silly samples and stuff good examples would be Netty, Runko and "deeper meaning of a tunnel" by tpolm are good examples of using stuff in the music that might be hard to synthesise. The most recent example of such stuff in a tune would prolly be dead ringer but apart from that i can't remember many 64k tunes for having something fun in them apart from the usual kind of stuff.