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Author Topic: amiga demoscene music ..? how is it done?  (Read 2070 times)

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Re: amiga demoscene music ..? how is it done?
« on: July 09, 2008, 05:25:07 PM »
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SamOS39 wrote:
I really love listening to the music from amiga demoscen its awsome!
I make alot of my own electronica but usually using external midi samplers etc but i want you make stuff using my amiga alone!

I really like music from demos like TBL demos and i especially love the music from ocean machine!

but what trackers can do this kind of music? the channel mixing sounds so clean and clear!?

Ive been playing with octamed soundstudio for a little while now and i found that the channel mixing is extremely unstable and when you put it on 64 channel mode on high quality mode my  A1200 just freezes up solid and makes loads of noise!

but i am using a stock A1200 with just 8mb fast ram ..:roll:

How does OSS channel mixing behave with an 060?


No, you're doing it wrong :-)

For Demo music never use more than 4 channels, the first trick is to learn how to get most of your rhythm section onto one channel! Short sharp carefully selected samples will help you here, then on another channel you would put your bass line and longer percussion samples. That's sort of the golen rule, but you do leak into the other channels if there is space. Well written bass and percussion lines will also allow you space for any fx. The remaining two channels are going to be your melodies and arpeggios (I tried to avoid using chords since the sustain would obviously block a whole channel). If you you use counterpoint rather than simple harmonies the whole thing can sound much more complex than it actually is.

Things to note; Always sample from high quality sources, and if possible "multisample" so that you are never playing the sample from it's sample rate (8Khz samples are common on the amiga, but I prefered to sample at 12Khz... you have to take this into account when tuning the sample in the tracker).
If you need a complex part that clearly requires more than four channels... then build your part and bounce it down into a single (or more often 2 or 4) bar "loop" and simply trigger it at the begining of a bar. This really became an option when we moved to 1Mb as standard on Amigas... before that, loops were out of the question. I think I always used 20Khz for all my loops (but I could be wrong, I'd have to check).
Finally play with putting things in strange places and with the Tracker command on the right of the note, if you get it to do something that you like... remember that and do it again if you want that sound :-)
OctaMED also had a weird little synth engine in it... with you could actually modify and do wierd stuff... I never found it that useful... and prefered to sample my real synths... but my friend managed to do the coolest "filter sweeps" using it (they weren't real filter sweeps as the engine has no filter... but they sounded good).

Finally, it really should play on a stock A500 (perhaps with 1Mb)... otherwise you've done something wrong. :-)

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Re: amiga demoscene music ..? how is it done?
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2008, 08:33:34 PM »
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SamOS39 wrote:
wow thanks! now i get it!
I never new it would be that simple  :lol: and at the same time im quite disappointed i thought the music and patterns i was hearing was being generated by the amiga in real time  :roll:
But dont get me wrong some of the demoscen musicians out there are {bleep}ing brilliant!  :-o

thanks for your advice!  :-)


Pleasure... Basically we sort of thought of the Tracker as a 4 Track tape recorder... but with very little tape.. and worked out how to maximise what we had... using techniques common to 4 Tracks :-)