I have downloaded th vortex tracker program in hopes to create music for MSX game developers. I have absolutely no experience with sort of thing, but like all the musical instruments and music related things I'm capable of doing now, I plan to just tinker and figure it out the hard way. This program however I havent been able to get a sound out of, so I'm unsure what I'm doing wrong. Anyone who uses this program and can give me some pointers on how to get started would be greatly appreciated.

Nic

Read Tracker manual.txt

Are you already familiar with the AY-3-8910 and its way of creating samples with tone (T), noise (N), envelopes (M), frequencies and volumes? If not, that would be a good start point.

Just play around with other pt3 music found around the internet. There are al lot if good ideas in them.
For example its a good idea to combine the bass line and percussion together in one sample. Eg:

clean bass sample
bass + snare sample
bass + bass drum sample
bass + hi hat sample
etc.

A lot of music uses this technique.
Good luck. The MSX scene really needs PGS composers.

Quote:

Good luck. The MSX scene really needs PGS composers.

Hell yeah!

nah, "composers" are enough, PSG isn't any harder than FM-PAC/MUSMOD/SCC really, perhaps better software would do us good. I've just taken a brief look at VT, but it looks quite a bit overcomplex, we ppl are used to the smooth workflow of -say- MB. VT looks quite like 'a program to stuff content into the PT3 format', and that might be a bit of the problem.. it's "just that".

Oh, no no no!

Since I've worked with VT, the mere idea that I'd have to make PSG music with an MB-like program absolutely appalls me.
I don't even wanna fantasize about doing that!

It'd be such a time-consuming, not-worth-the-effort setback to make things like e.g. smooth tone-noise-sample transitions on a 3 channel chip if you can't even put more than one command in a single step.

Give it some time and possibly you'll find that VT is actually a very flexible, user-friendly piece of work, and that -compared to VT-, MB is adequate and nice, but a rather 'unprofessional' tracker with lots of limitations.

VTII (which is based on Pro Tracker 3) is a result of long evolution of PSG trackers (as well as composers) for ZX Spectrum. From Sound Tracker (1992) to Pro Tracker 1.x, 2.x ( 1995) and Pro Tracker 3.x (1997), and with some ideas from other trackers. Currently PT3 and VTII are main trackers on ZX, where >15 different PSG trackers exists. It can look complex (if you never used ZX trackers before), but there is no other way to make music which uses PSG capabilities almost for 100%.

With "MB", I didn't mean "no high-end features", but more the non-hacky looks of it. Things can improve by using colors here and there, a less crammed GUI, a somewhat bigger fontsize perhaps, the instrument editor could look a bit more easy perhaps -without giving in features-, etc.

I liked VTII too. I made Blinky's music with it, and it was pretty easy. Of course I didnt use 1/10th of its resources... but still, I made something with it. It made me remember my ST3 days

I just hope someday we'll have something similar to make .mbm (FM) tracker similar to this.... or a midi->mbm converter - or both

The only trouble with it that there's very little about it that relates to music at all (and I'm a musician, not a computer programmer!) I've loaded someone elses song and basically studied it to figure out whats going on - but when I recreate it for what I'm assuming is only a few measures, I don't hear anything. I need to load samples or something like that? I had hoped there would be a piano roll somewhere in the thing and I could just click away hahaha what a fool I am. But I won't give up! I will score a game someday!

@Gnos: Yes you need at least samples. You can save them from the sample songs and load them into your own music. But then it might still sound different because of the possible noise settings and 'ornaments'.

Gnosis, making music for simple PSG's is always very close to programming. In tracker-type editors you write some sort of program, which controls sound chip. So, it would be better, if you compose your music (in any comfortable way) before you write down (i.e. program) this composition in tracker.

Tho, tracking very much equals traditional writing on paper, it just looks different.

Yes, Im getting it slowly but surely. I'm taking it on as I took on the guitar. Just memorize what "position" or in this case, line of programming, equals what particular note. I'll get it eventually, though I can assure you I'll be back later with more specific questions.

Nic