A new soundchip?

A little note on option 3: we shouldn't go for a new chip just because you can't seem to get any Micro Cabin quality results from Moonblaster, just to name something. We obviously need different software for that, not a new chip. And you can replace 'tracker' with anything else which is relevant of course, but I had a character limit of 50 on this poll option.. ^^

That means that one vote for Yez Pleaze is you Meits

I once discussed the option to make an interface for the MOS chip with vortexion. Would be nice though. But I'm sure a lot of people disagree. BTW: what is a new soundchip? Old but never used? Or new as in new? X-Fi?

a cheap midi interface could help for developping music , it is not a new sound card but still a piece of hardware.
tracker could be running on PC's ...

midi could be cool yeah. or just a tracker that's more up to date, and doesn't dedicate all psg channels for drums

If there's one difference between the C64 scene and the MSX scene then it's that all the C64 noses are pointing into the same direction, whereas ours are pointing into every direction possible.

Just 'port' SID to MSX and after that EVERY MSX´er 1-2-2+-R nose is pointing at same direction:

at SID-MSX add-on!! Either they hate or love it, but every nose is surely pointing to brand new lovely SID-MSX anyway!!!

What's so great / special about the C64 sound?

I actually played a lot of games on that... thing, I admit. But I never liked the sound in particular.
The sample Hz seemed to be better allright (compare Activision's "Ghostbusters" ), but that doesn't make the sound IMHO.

oh msx fm, that preset plastic crap sound

Who would mind destroy a few C64's to make a cool new soundcard for MSX ?

I was thinking that maybe some freak wants to construct sid -CLONE- from scratch.

I don´t like the idea of hardsid, or anything else, which needs destroying of old machine.

Well it´s surely a matter of taste, but I love the sound of SID. Have always loved and will love eternally. Just hear "Pitfall II" on Commodore 64 on example.... and many more...

Well, having a more 'serious' music editor matters a LOT.

Huey: as unnatural as it may sound, your practical replayer issues (cpu load, mem size) are exactly what shouldn't be the primary goal for a new tracker. For one thing: it's not the coder of a tracker (or any other music tool) who should decide how heavy your format should or should not be, it's the composer and the coder of a game/demo who should decide. The best tracker/tool is one which allows everything there possibly is. You want 9 instrument-changes, volume-changes and frequency-changes on one line? You shall have it. Whether your replayer can cope with it is verse 2, and whether your product is a cpu-friendly musicdisk or a heavy game/demo is another verse. It could be that this means that the format is quite complex and mem-heavy. Again this is or should be the choice of the ones who're going to use the music in a production. A coder could tell a musician: "max 20 events per int" or "max 32 'cpu-load' per int" when events differ in cpu-load. Whether that musician then applies all these 20 events on the first 5 channels, or spread across the whole line is up to the composer. It should at least technically be possible. If the format is like .mod, then you get columns for notes, instruments, volume and effects. That's like 4 or 5 events per step, whereas Moonblaster/wave/fm (and other trackers as well) have only 1 event per step. So, Moonblaster may be more efficient, but 1) it offers far and far less flexibility, and 2) all events are put on 1 channel, whereas .mod style columns are separated from eachother. It could very well be that individual columns are easier to RLE because of the uninterrupted repetition of events.

MJTT uses exactly this mod format btw, although we convert our whole channels to an event-stream, kinda like MIDI.

But.. let's await NoWind in 2009.. I somewhat had the idea of making a tracker on PC which controls the MSX via NoWind. The only thing I need to do is upload events to the MSX, where it'll be put in memory, and a replayer on MSX will playback what's in mem (upon sending start/stop events). The advantage of having an editor on PC is the much larger resolution and the greater ease to make an interface. In my case the advantage would be that this interface would be made by a composer, rather than a coder )

But you don't always need compromises. For instance for an intro demo with little animation, a title screen, etc. can soup up much of the cpu in the replayer. In fact, all of MJTT didn't need the cpu time for anything else either (otherwise we'd have been screwed ). Probably only tightly timed high performance action games need to be really conservative.

Do you like SID or do you like the music that SID happens to produce?

If the latter (and I'm sure many people agree) that's currently a challenge for musicians using the PSG, regardless of whether we port SID to MSX. Take themes such as Masters of the Universe or Skate Air. I think these are quite good examples for musicians who want to create SID-like music for MSX.

Dunno, there are a few things to keep in mind tho. When I look at the -what I think- most successful MSX trackers:
- FST family
- ProTracker
- Moonblaster classic

• Then what these have in common are that all channels of a pattern are on a single screen. MOD-style formats usually need scrolling, as MBFM and MBWave do. Perhaps it was a choice back then to try to have everything on a single screen. This would exclude extra channels unless people would choose to have hidden channels one could toggle.
• Memory was an issue. More songdata = more memory.
• All these programs are fairly old by now, mid-90's at most. That's like 15 years ago, surely the programmers back then may not always have been as superskilled as they possibly are today.
• Tracker-programmers from this era were typically game/democoders, and creating an interface for a creative tool, thinking about functionality and workflow is clearly something differently.
• Tracker-programmers from this era may have been influenced by the composers of their group, which may be good or bad. Fact is that us MSX'ians have basically started with structural composing since FST, and only for a few years when the last-ever trackers emerged. Not everyone had an alternative system (like an Amiga) standing next to the MSX, so any knowledge about -for instance- mod-style composing was probably non-existent.
• And yes, the scene was about demos and games, so there was probably a situation where music had to be as cheap as possible.

Cool. Do you happen to still have some code hanging around? Especially as Basic is as far as my knowledge goes

Oh yeah, and you can use the SOUND command to include noise.

And it may be my complete noobness, but when trying to make music in Basic I get the effect that the three channels go out of sync. As in: various tones of certain length do not add up to the exact same duration as I would expect mathematically. That alone takes away all joy in trying to create tunes. No, I do not need another soundchip or tracker, I need a Basic PLAY statement that works!

I never even learned to read those musical symbols
But what I meant was that I expect one channel only using x8 notes will stay in sync perfectly with another channel using only x2 and x4 notes (but apparently with 2 or 4 times as many tones). Unfortunately the two channels will drift away and start mismatching. That surely shouldn't happen?

Nah, if the problem would be the BASIC slowness, then there would be a lag between new parts to ensue playing, and not between channels within the same part.

I've seen and heard (Japanese) perfectly flowing MML songs using all 9 FM-Pac + 3 PSG channels, using strings and not DATA lines.

I think the problem here simply is:
Discrepancy in tempo between channels.
Make sure all channels have the same tempo, else you'll indeed get some avantgarde stuff!

You know how to set tempo, right?

BTW when you add a point "." after a tone/rest, you'll get the 1,5 rate, don't forget.

Lastly, wolf_ is right, better use a tracker!
Unless you really want to do it in MML, hey, it's your party!

Ever considered using Musica, then?

So the discrepancy gets bigger and bigger?

Then it's a tempo problem, 100%.

If the music (program) seems to "wait" before continuing, well in that case one of the strings is simply too long.

[EDIT]

If the problem persists you could send the file to me and I'll look at it.

[EDIT 2]

One more thing: be absolutely sure that you have performed the correct way of stating tone length value.