for some reason, i really like the melody on this.

were you talking about the de-centering? how do you do that on purpose, anyway? i'd like to play around with that and see if i could get some good clipping effects.

well really, its the arrangement, the ending statrs in the middle since the rest is just the first half arranged backwards :D (i know a little hard to explain but take a look at it from a waveform view in something like audacity to see what i mean)

and as far as "de-centering" do you mean like applying a DC offset? or putting a signal out of phase? or are you simply referring to panning the signal left or right?
.

the pop you hear at the beginning and end is actually a DC offset that happens due to the particular way i built Goomba, another limitation imposed is how high a frequency it can playback, i didnt cap it though cause i think it could be used creatively the way it breaks up at higher frequencys.

other then that this came completely off the top of my head and i composed it in less then 10 minutes while instant messaging wiht my g/f :D

but i liked the way it turned out too.

some of the coolest stuff i do comes when im absent-minded, cause i don't concentrate too much on details and i can just get down and be creative.

im most creative between 12:00 AM to 3:00 AM because im half asleep.
O_o

but thanks

ok i see now. i was looking at it zoomed in too far to notice that.

yeah, my audio vocab is a little lacking. there's a constant DC offset that's going up and down every few measures. i definitely dont get that when i use it.

i almost always run things at the highest and lowest frequencies, but i forgot to do that with yours. i'll try that out.

:D

when i made this i was still building goomba in synthedit
(i hadn't turned it into a vst yet)
so it may be that something in the vst software you use thats removing it,
that is a good thing though :)

lemme give you a quick idea of how it works and why it cuts off at higer frequencys (like 3 1/2 octaves above middle C)

basically each voice is a "voltage level sequencer" that is clocked at audio frequency rates (the pitch of the note)

adjusting the sliders adjusts the dc voltage of each point in the sequence between +5 and -5 volts
(think of these terms in the context of a giant modular synth system)

the gain knob is attached to a vca stage directly after the "sequencer" part then its off to the envelopes.

and the tone knob is simply a lp filter that has been tuned so that it just takes the edge off when you enforce it,

the reason each voice cant be polyphonic is that im using it in a way it wasn't meant to be used to achieve a desired effect but thats also the reason it don't like high notes.

see though, i wrapped up all that complicated mumbo-jumbo into a tiny NES controller sized morsel that can make simple 8-bit waveforms.

i was going to make smaller knobs and re-arrange the sliders so they were a bit more defined but i got a little lazy in the GUI department

but if you make something with it be sure to let me hear it :D

nice, i like hearing about how people make stuff

lol man, that one pitch right before it refuses to play sounds EVIL

love it

i just used that on some silly hip-hop beat, and i've got it in the chorus of something else. i'll give you a heads-up when i submit.

OK

the beat is up now

i used it to for the bassline too

Great job, very authentic-sounding! This earns a fav.

its authentic enough to have a true synthesized monophonic oscilattor for each voice,

i made the synth thats playing this in Synthedit, :P

Too bad i lost the project files in a recent hard disk crash. ;_;

Thanks though :)

meeps, sry you lost your HDD. :( I use FamiTracker for my NES tracks. I hope to have a listenable album finished sometime this year.

I have played around with several trackers, but the whole way they use hex to code all the effects, and the vertical scrolling throws me off.

i know how to count in hex, so thats not the problem,
its just, i like to see a piano scroll, and be able to point-and-click to create notes,

so while i can appreciate the interface a tracker, ( be it madtracker, adlib tracker, famitracker, or what have you) im much more comfortable working with a piano roll and being able to copy and paste patterns, transpose things by moving a slider, and such. i use a somewhat dated, but still useful "Jazz++"
that was started as payware by some programmer back in 1994, he eventually gave up and made it freeware, and abandon the project, a couple years ago the source code was made available, and ever since then a small group of linux nerds have supposedly been working on it, and recoding the whole thing.

meanwhile, as it is, its about as pretty as any Windows 95 program was.
dialog boxes may have an X in the top corner, but only close when you press close.

that said, as messy as the interface is, i've sequenced just about all my sequences using the old freeware version. my release is dated "March 15 2000" if thats any indicator of how old it is xD

its like cakewalk used to be, minus the music notation interface,
im not sure if they've gone anywhere with the open source version, but my money is still on the freeware version from the past. its mostly glitch free.
and most importantly of all, IT JUST WORKS! :D (my favorite kind of software)

woo that's great that you chose today of all days to reply. I was actually surfing around for some free MIDI software to try out. :3 :3 :3 The only sad thing is that it does not seem that I can control more than one MIDI device with this software. I'm gonna try using it anyways.. thanks so much!

on windows 98 i used it in conjunction with Hubi's loopback device
which would let you internally route the midi to whatever program you wanted, (synthedit, fruityloops, anything really)

on windows xp i think theres a program called "LoopBe1" that does pretty much the same thing


basically, these two programs tell windows you have 1 to 4 hardware midi inputs and outputs, they show up in Sound/Multimedia devices as actual hardware, but in reality they're just a specially written driver that fools windows.

so after installing them, you'd go to "Midi devices" in Jazz++ and you'd select say "LB1" if you had installed the Hubi program, then midi would be sent to that through software.

you could open a program like "Fruityloops" or "synthedit" and in the config you would point "Midi input" to "LB1" and whatever played on Jazz++ into LB1 would be sent to fruityloops, Synthedit, Vsthost, or anything really that let you assign its input to a midi port.

it was a really dirty trick, but it works damn near flawlessly, if you can figure out how to install them.

you can still of course route your midi to an internal synth, or a real hardware output port, but your "virtual" ports will loopback internally

-unrelated-
I also use a peice of software called "Magicdisk" to mount up to 4 virtual DVD-ROM drives, they show up as 4 extra drives in my computer, and all i have to do is rightclick a tray icon, and select "Mount iso" and find the.iso file
i do this to save my hardware CD-RW drive from overuse.

Best of all, all these programs are freeware! :D

if you have an external midi keyboard, and would like to use it to record right to midi, WHILE playing whatever virtual synth, or VST, or soundfont player or whatever, heres a setup i'd use in that situation:

M-Audio Oxygen 49 (or whatever your keyboard is)>midi input on your computer

use Jazz++ or what ever sequencer you like, and select "Oxygen 49" as the input device, and "LB1,2,3 or 4" as the output.

make sure "Software Midi thru" is set to ON

then, whatever program your synth or sample, or vst or soundfont plays from, tell it to listen for midi on LB1,2,3 or,4 (whatever the sequencer was pointed to)

if your planning on playing things in real time using a real keyboard (vs sequencing)
if the synth is a VST, try and find a host that supports ASIO drivers (if your soundcard supports them) (if you cant find one, give Asio4all a shot it may work)

this setup, will allow you to record midi data to Jazz++ simultaneously while playing it back on anything you like, (with next to zero lag if you find ASIO drivers)

this worked for me using Windows 98 SE, a version of Jazz++ from like 1998, and Synthedit, and an AW840 cobra soundcard... not exactly top of the line, but it worked. (i had a 1.3Ghz Dell Dimension under it all)

under windows XP, i dont think the Hubi's loopback driver works, so you may have to use something like LoopBe1 instead, but otherwise i see it working the same way.

it sounds like a lot of work, but i had it running the first day i found all the necessary software.

that said, just about all these programs can be used in other ways:
Jazz++ can be used straight out of the box.
and one of the loopback programs could reroute say... the music from an old game like Age of Empires, or DOOM to a program that plays midi back with soundfonts.
(really good if your soundcard is horrible at playing midi)

call me stuck in the 90's, but thats how i make tunes, xD

i havn't made something decent in a while, because i've been stuck with a stone-age computer for the past few months. all it has is a pentium II, but at least it was free :P