Author Topic: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)  (Read 2323 times)

elmer

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #30 on: February 11, 2017, 09:11:12 AM »
But if you don't mind, I have a few suggestions for your future covers:
...

Thanks for the ProTips ... they're fascinating to read.  :D

I can see you using all of those things that you're talking about in your own tracks ... but OMG, I just don't don't know how you music-loving folks know how to break things down like that.  :shock:

My brain just doesn't work that way!  :oops:


One thing that I've really noticed in your tracks, is that there's always something going on. They sound very "full" for only 6 channels. That's a absolutely marvelous use of the PSG resources.

What I *think* that I'm missing hearing in Fragmare's Simon Belmont track is a "base/pad" (not a "bass").

Just something that's going on underneath the lead and mid instruments that the rest of the track can be laid on top of.

I listened to the SNES original of the track, and I'm not sure if it really had much of a "base" itself, so I can see why Fragmare didn't want to just go and add one ... but the lack of it is missed on the PCE (to my ears).

While the SNES lead/mids seem fairly sparse by themselves, it's the deep reverb/delay effect that provides that extra bit of background sound to keep the ears happy.

In that case, a extra pad layer would have just muddied-up the track.

Overuse of reverb was pretty much a hallmark for SNES tunes, IIRC.  :wink:


Quote
... to rip the instruments you want click the DMP button, then select DEV_HuC6230 (I know it's HuC6280, but it's just numbered wrong in the software)

The PCE sound chip circuitry that's been broken out of the HuC6280, and put into its own chip for use in the PC-FX is called the HuC6230. That's probably why they're using that codename.

That's part of the point for writing Huzak.

The PC-FX uses the exact same sound-chip, and we don't have a driver to use there (yet).

Actually ... Arkhan has said a few times that prototypes/develops his games in HuC, and then converts the HuC into assembly-language for speed.

Since the PC-FX has the same VDP, and the same sound-chip as the PCE, I'm curious if it would make a good prototyping platform for PCE/SuperGrafx games.  :-k

Michirin9801

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #31 on: February 11, 2017, 12:22:14 PM »
I can see you using all of those things that you're talking about in your own tracks ... but OMG, I just don't don't know how you music-loving folks know how to break things down like that.  :shock:

My brain just doesn't work that way!  :oops:
The same way I don't know how you programming folks wrap your heads around all of that code, to me it's all Greek >w>

But then again, that's why teamwork exists right? The people who are good with art and music will go and do the art and music, meanwhile the people who are good with coding will do their thing and make everything work like it should, and after a whole lot of work, voila! A game is made! (Or something like that)

Quote
... to rip the instruments you want click the DMP button, then select DEV_HuC6230 (I know it's HuC6280, but it's just numbered wrong in the software)

The PCE sound chip circuitry that's been broken out of the HuC6280, and put into its own chip for use in the PC-FX is called the HuC6230. That's probably why they're using that codename.
I didn't know that... Well, I can say I've learned something today ^^

fragmare

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #32 on: February 11, 2017, 02:24:08 PM »
You're welcome to download the DMF and try fiddling with it, but I'm about burned out on this track, at this point.

But if you don't mind, I have a few suggestions for your future covers...


Thanks for all the tips/advice!  :)  What's that about the Note OFF command boosting stuff?   This is the first track where I used a lot of Note OFF commands because I figured it was more "proper form" than using the note cut or simply controlling the volume manually (which is how i was doing it before).  So you're saying i should go back to my previous method?  I didn't notice any kind of next-note boost, but I did notice a lot of the HuC6280 popping between notes/waveforms using Note OFF.  I tried to manually envelope some of the OFFs with volume commands to cover up the popping, but I'm not sure it really had much of an effect.  :/

That doubling up the waveforms looks interesting, I'll definitely have to experiment with that!

As for the DMF file being wasteful and unoptimized... yea, i'm guilty lol.  It's not meant for any kind of game or demo, it's just meant to get all the notes and timings matching 100% 1:1 to the original.  Even the 5 channel/LQ-sample versions of the tunes I make are not really optimized in any way.  They're just meant to show how it would sound if they *were* game-optimized.  You'll even notice I never even bothered to deflate some of the effects columns on channels that don't even use them.  I guess my point is, I have zero interest in *actual* optimization of a tune unless I have something, in specific, I'm optimizing it for (like a game project).

As for the same note playing across multiple channels, I know I could consolidate them and bump the volume up a little and it would sound identical... but there's sort of a reason I'm trying so hard to stick closely to the source material.  You see, the reason I'm doing all this isn't SOLELY for making stuff that's pleasant to listen to, though I'm happy you folks think it is.  I'm also striving for ALL of my DMF files to serve as sort of 1:1 HuC6280 note/timing tablature for some of the all time classic video game tunes.  Or at least as close as i can get with the 6 channel versions.  That way, if other chiptuners would like to rearrange the track in Deflemask, they basically have a 1:1 tablature of the source material to work from, right there in front of them.  That's why, when you gave me the timemark of the note error, I was so quick to fix that.  And, also, some of it is to simply satisfy my own curiosity as to what this music would sound like on the PCE if composed the exact same way.  Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment and just like to impose an extra, artificial layer of restrictions upon myself lol  :P

Like I said, I'm not a chiptuner or a musician.  Never will be.  I'm just some guy who's a perfectionist and has sufficient patience to transcribe these tunes to the HuC6280 like a devout monk.  I almost feel as if it isn't my place, or within my skillset at this point, to start taking any "artistic liberties" with this stuff.  Not yet anyway.

I am, however, a decent pixel artist, and will draw you a mean 9-bit color sprite or background tile.  ;)

« Last Edit: February 11, 2017, 04:47:24 PM by fragmare »

Michirin9801

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #33 on: February 11, 2017, 03:39:07 PM »
Thanks for all the tips/advice!  :)  What's that about the Note OFF command boosting stuff?   This is the first track where I used a lot of Note OFF commands because I figured it was more "proper form" than using the note cut or simply controlling the volume manually (which is how i was doing it before).  So you're saying i should go back to my previous method?  I didn't notice any kind of next-note boost, but I did notice a lot of the HuC6280 popping between notes/waveforms using Note OFF.  I tried to manually envelope some of the OFFs with volume commands to cover up the popping, but I'm not sure it really had much of an effect.  :/
I think you're thinking of a different boost than I am... Here's the thing, the bigger the difference in volume between the end of the last note and the beginning of the next one, the more noticeable the next note is going to be, so when you cut out the bass right before the next note you're getting the most difference in volume it can possibly have, in other words, the bass is going to sound stronger and more noticeable than it would if you didn't cut it out before playing the next note, that said though, it's not gonna magically make it sound like an FM bass or anything...
What you're doing right now with the OFF commands is pretty much that, but the Note Cut effect is pretty much the exact same thing as an OFF command, except you can control in which tick of the row you put it on the effect will actually trigger, so you can cut out the bass the very tick before the next note instead of 2 or 3 ticks before it, so yeah, the Note Cut effect is a better way of doing the same thing...

As for the DMF file being wasteful and unoptimized... yea, i'm guilty lol.  It's not meant for any kind of game or demo, it's just meant to get all the notes and timings matching 100% 1:1 to the original.  Even the 5 channel/LQ-sample versions of the tunes I make are not really optimized in any way.  They're just meant to show how it would sound if they *were* game-optimized.  You'll even notice I never even bothered to deflate some of the effects columns on channels that don't even use them.  I guess my point is, I have zero interest in *actual* optimization of a tune unless I have something, in specific, I'm optimizing it for (like a game project).
As for the same note playing across multiple channels, I know I could consolidate them and bump the volume up a little and it would sound identical... but there's sort of a reason I'm trying so hard to stick closely to the source material.  You see, the reason I'm doing all this isn't SOLELY for making stuff that's pleasant to listen to, though I'm happy you folks think it is.  I'm also striving for ALL of my DMF files to serve as sort of 1:1 HuC6280 note/timing tablature for some of the all time classic video game tunes.  Or at least as close as i can get with the 6 channel versions.  That way, if other chiptuners would like to rearrange the track in Deflemask, they basically have a 1:1 tablature of the source material to work from, right there in front of them.  That's why, when you gave me the timemark of the note error, I was so quick to fix that.  And, also, some of it is to simply satisfy my own curiosity as to what this music would sound like on the PCE if composed the exact same way.  Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment and just like to impose an extra, artificial layer of restrictions upon myself lol  :P
Yeah I can see where you're coming from, but I still think taking a few liberties here and there and optimising the song would go a long way, not only to make the music sound better, but also to free up a channel or two so that you could squeeze in more details and ♥~sweet sweet reverb~♥ (sorry, it's the SNES fangirl in me talking)

That doubling up the waveforms looks interesting, I'll definitely have to experiment with that!
It's a pretty useful trick to coming up with new instruments!

Like I said, I'm not a chiptuner or a musician.  Never will be.  I'm just some guy who's a perfectionist and has sufficient patience to transcribe these tunes to the HuC6280 like a devout monk.  I almost don't feel as if it isn't my place, or within my skillset at this point, to start taking any "artistic liberties" with this stuff.  Not yet anyway.

I am, however, a decent pixel artist, and will draw you a mean 9-bit color sprite or background tile.  ;)
You know, you're in a very similar position right now that I was 2 years ago, I used to be strictly a 2D artist and spriter, I've been drawing for over 10 years now (100% self-taught) so I do think I have enough experience to call myself a 'decent' artist, however I was in need of a musician to make music for my game project really bad, I asked around everywhere I knew at the time, with no good results, so I had to force myself to get into music even though I knew jacks*** about it, and for a few months I've used a rubbish DAW called Musagi with a Mega Drive VST, and I could make some bleh music with it, but then I started using Deflemask, and it was so much better, I could make music in it a whole lot faster, and with much better results, and not only that, I could also use a soundchip that I desired a whole lot more, which was the PC engine's HuC6280! (Unfortunately my game's still using Mega Drive music, which isn't nearly as much fun to make, and it's too late to change it now for several reasons)
But still, with only 2 years of experience I was able to become pretty okay at covering other people's music (But I'm still terrible at coming up with original stuff)
The point is that making music (with Deflemask at least) isn't just a lot of fun, but it's also a really good learning experience!
« Last Edit: February 11, 2017, 03:46:16 PM by Michirin9801 »

fragmare

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #34 on: February 11, 2017, 07:10:13 PM »
Glad you guys like it a bit better now.  Original post now updated with DMF and HES file.  DMF should now be "Huzak friendly".... Elmer.  :)


Thanks!  :D

Here you go ...

http://www.dropbox.com/s/y4fap3jhhdgqr43/Huzak3rdWIP3rdTry-SimonBelmontTheme.pce?dl=0

Please let me know what you think.


I had to remove a couple of stray effects that you'd left in there ...

Converting channel 1 matrix row 23 pattern 23.
Unknown deflemask effect code $21xx, aborting!
Failed to convert DMF pattern data, aborting!


But congratulations, you're the new winner at nearly 9900 bytes of data in the one track!!! :clap:

I suspect that's from putting all of those Volume Slides in as manual entries.

It's created a lot of extra Patterns in there.

Unfortunately, the overflow from one bank into the next showed up a bug in PCEAS's bank-overflow logic, so that's something else to find and fix.  ](*,)

I'll look more into space-optimization again when the whole thing works properly.

P.S. I absolutely love those drums!  :dance:



Yea, man, the PCE file you sent me sounds identical, as far as i can tell.  That DMF is in NO way optimized, at ALL... so I could probably trim that 9k file size down a bit.

Also, I've just tested the new pre-release of Deflemask and they FIXED the Note > Sample bug on the PCE!  GAME CHANGER!  :D

Honestly, though, I'm so satisfied with the PSG drums i made for this track, I might just leave it alone.  :)

And i'm sad to say i don't think i'm going to be able to do the next cover i originally wanted to do.  :/  Apparently, a lot of times on the YMZ280B arcade chip, the composers just compressed streamed everything through one channel, like an MP3... so I have no way of isolating samples or instruments.  and MIDIs for this particular game are non-existent.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2017, 07:47:31 PM by fragmare »

fragmare

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #35 on: February 12, 2017, 06:01:08 PM »
Okay, so I couldn't resist.  Here is the version with sampled drums.  To be honest, it doesn't really sound a WHOLE lot different than the PSG drums version...

I only used three samples.  The kick, snare and hihat.  I left the toms PSG, otherwise I'd have to add 3 or 4 new samples just for one small part of the song... and that's just silly.


DMF File Download (SNES Drum Samples)

HES File Download (SNES Drum Samples)

BTW, can anyone tell me why the HES with samples is smaller than the HES without samples?!  O_o
« Last Edit: February 12, 2017, 06:31:18 PM by fragmare »

esteban

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #36 on: February 13, 2017, 02:50:35 AM »
Okay, so I couldn't resist.  Here is the version with sampled drums.  To be honest, it doesn't really sound a WHOLE lot different than the PSG drums version...

I only used three samples.  The kick, snare and hihat.  I left the toms PSG, otherwise I'd have to add 3 or 4 new samples just for one small part of the song... and that's just silly.




I like this and the PSG drums. I will have to listen a few more times to see if I have a preference.

BUT MOAR CASTLEVANIA.
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Michirin9801

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #37 on: February 13, 2017, 04:32:24 AM »
The samples are a little more pleasing to my ears, but yeah, not that big of a difference from the PSG
BTW, can anyone tell me why the HES with samples is smaller than the HES without samples?!  O_o
Because Deflemask's .hes export sucks >w>

esteban

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #38 on: February 13, 2017, 11:02:28 AM »
UPDATE: After a day of listening to these two tracks... I HAVE NO PREFERENCE.

But, PSG wins, by default.

I will admit that I love the original SNES/SFC version in all its glory, though. But that goes without saying.
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Digi.k

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #39 on: February 13, 2017, 11:46:52 AM »
UPDATE: After a day of listening to these two tracks... I HAVE NO PREFERENCE.

But, PSG wins, by default.

I will admit that I love the original SNES/SFC version in all its glory, though. But that goes without saying.

I feel the samples makes it sound a little more authentic to the original.  Great work Fragmare may you keep enjoying what you do!
« Last Edit: February 13, 2017, 11:48:42 AM by Digi.k »

fragmare

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #40 on: March 27, 2017, 06:03:54 PM »
Decided to totally redo this track as well.  Should sound quite a bit better now.  All percussion is now PSG, no samples.  The PSG kickbass has some really nice WOMP WOMP now.


https://soundcloud.com/user-716572978/super-castlevania-iv-theme-of-simon-belmont-turbografx-16pc-engine-cover
« Last Edit: March 27, 2017, 06:14:34 PM by fragmare »

esteban

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #41 on: March 27, 2017, 07:08:16 PM »
Decided to totally redo this track as well.  Should sound quite a bit better now.  All percussion is now PSG, no samples.  The PSG kickbass has some really nice WOMP WOMP now.



https://soundcloud.com/user-716572978/super-castlevania-iv-theme-of-simon-belmont-turbografx-16pc-engine-cover


I approve.

So clean.

Not dirty.

:)
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roflmao

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #42 on: March 29, 2017, 10:07:20 AM »
Sounds great!

Michirin9801

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #43 on: March 29, 2017, 06:34:17 PM »
Decided to totally redo this track as well.  Should sound quite a bit better now.  All percussion is now PSG, no samples.  The PSG kickbass has some really nice WOMP WOMP now.



https://soundcloud.com/user-716572978/super-castlevania-iv-theme-of-simon-belmont-turbografx-16pc-engine-cover

Oh yeah! Now THAT's more like it ;3
The waveforms you've used are much better! Now I have nothing to complain about, great job ^^
Good job on the PSG drums too!

fragmare

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Re: Simon Belmont OBEYS! (Super Castlevania IV Chiptune Cover)
« Reply #44 on: March 29, 2017, 11:59:08 PM »
Decided to totally redo this track as well.  Should sound quite a bit better now.  All percussion is now PSG, no samples.  The PSG kickbass has some really nice WOMP WOMP now.



https://soundcloud.com/user-716572978/super-castlevania-iv-theme-of-simon-belmont-turbografx-16pc-engine-cover


I approve.

So clean.

Not dirty.

:)


Sounds great!


Decided to totally redo this track as well.  Should sound quite a bit better now.  All percussion is now PSG, no samples.  The PSG kickbass has some really nice WOMP WOMP now.



https://soundcloud.com/user-716572978/super-castlevania-iv-theme-of-simon-belmont-turbografx-16pc-engine-cover

Oh yeah! Now THAT's more like it ;3
The waveforms you've used are much better! Now I have nothing to complain about, great job ^^
Good job on the PSG drums too!


Thanks, I'm glad you all like this one better.  I did a LOT of work on the waveforms, volume enveloping and the PSG percussion.  I could have thrown some samples in there, and they probably would have sounded good too, but I wanted to challenge myself and try to perfect the PSG percussion a bit.  At least to a point where I felt like samples were pointless to add.