So I had enough response for that last compo that I'm going to try doing this semi-regularly. With a proper website!
(Storlek: I'm just assuming it's OK to use /sc/ for discussion for this? Not like there's a lot of that going on. But I can move it if you want.)
Next round is scheduled to start by tomorrow at 8PM EST but I think I'm going to put the pack up earlier, maybe even very late tonight.
Things I'm particularly interested in opinions on:
Testing the anonymous posting... Where the heck does it come up with these names????
Will I continue to anonymously be Zackery Calhoun until I post from a different IP address???
I'm about to send in my votes. Really fun compo you guys! Looking forward to seeing the comments (not just on mine, but on all of them)
Hey guys,
Here is what I was planning to enter with. Was in bed all day yesterday.
It is still not to my liking on some points, but it is pretty much finished as of today. http://tct1501.net/m/hc06.4.mp3
I think I would have been disqualified anyway, because I converted gong into GONG!1! by distorting the shit out of the soundwave.
>>5567 I actually prefer comments to be anonymous. If someone has something (constructively) negative to say about a track, and wants to comment anonymously, I want them to be able to say it without worrying that their identity will be revealed. But this doesn't work if everyone else leaves non-anonymous comments.
If you have something specific you want to comment on, you can always make non-anonymous comments instead/in addition to, on this board.
As for self-comments... sure? People have left "comments" about their own tracks in the past but they've been fairly silly. But if you have something to say about your own track, then sure. I think those are safe to identify.
>>5572 Sounds great, too bad you couldn't make it. I've already got most of the votes in, in fact...
I doubt I would disqualify you for distorting one sample. Actually I'm a bit disappointed at the general lack of sample editing that people have done, I guess people are being either indifferent, or conservative to avoid a DQ? Remember: "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission."
>>5572 Hahaha, you even used ominous.wav! No one else did :P
One-pattern looper from one of my earlier attempts. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 style. I love it but I don't know what to do with it besides let it loop allllll day long.
>Actually I'm a bit disappointed at the general lack of sample editing that people have done, I guess people are being either indifferent, or conservative to avoid a DQ
I thought your selection of samples was very good, my compliments. Maybe this selection was enough for people, that they felt no need to edit. Not necessarily a case of conservatism or indifference, I think.
>"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission."
Oh man, that sounds so wrong! Pic related. ;)
Hey guys, look what I made: http://www.wildbunny.co.uk/blog/2012/05/15/composing-in-game-music/
I name dropped Schism and this forum! :)
Awesome! :D
though the screencap there says Schism Tracker and it's totally Scream Tracker. (though it'd be fun to have a switch to make the interface more ST3-ish, it would probably be a nightmare to code from the way it's built now)
>Dissecting Wild Bunnies (not as gross as it sounds)
I lol'd.
Nice article!
Thanks guys. Yeah, the screen cap is supposed to say Scream Tracker :)
So hay. I'm poking about at all the things that I can actually run on this newfangled computer of mine, and one of 'em is Renoise because it's capable of playing... well, anything at all.
IIRC there's a remapped keyboard layout somewhere for it, and also some GUI-changing plugin or something to make it look more like IT. Maybe we could magic a page about how to massage other trackers into the IT style onto the wiki or something?
Given everything else that Renoise has, I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know of any IT-style specific resources myself. I'd be interested in hearing if you find anything though; trying to use Renoise feels something like typing with Dvorak to me.
I recall protman and distance talking on the IRC channel ages ago about beating Renoise until it worked sensibly. Google brought me to a thread on the official forums, but I have the dumb and don't quite know what I was reading when I skimmed through it. A step-by-step "put this file here, click on this menu and then check this box" guide would be great.
I tried that script that would alter the interface, but for me it didnt work at all. The keyboard layout is remappable easily by doing it yourself. A lot of work though. So if that keymap can be found...
As for the wiki, an index page would be nice to begin with, before adding magic pages, but I barely have a clue what is going on.
I'm still waiting for someone to make a true IT keymap for OpenMPT - I think none of the current keymaps use 100% IT keyboard shortcuts. If you make one, send it to me and I'll be happy to include it in the next release.
>>5539
Since I have an actual Winders box now and not Wine which only half works, I might try doing that.
I would be surprised if OpenMPT was capable of doing everything properly though. ;)
How is MIDI used in Schism (on Linux)?. I have no to little knowledge about MIDI, but I cannot enable the active midi port in Shift-F1. The other two ports I can enable and set them to to input/output/duplex.
So, what I do?
Connecting my hardware midi to "midi through port0" is what I had to do. Then running Schism was fine.
With aconnect -i and -o you can list input and output.
with aconnect [sender port] [receiver port] you can create links between these ports, so this way you can hookup other programs as well. But apparently Schism doesnt have to be linked particularly. Well, I think :)
btw: Why is pressing two notes simultaneously not being registered in the pattern editor? With keyjazzing on the normal keyboard you have to hold shift... This should also be not necessary, I'd think, but if you press a chord, only one note is written. Wouldnt it be nice if it were to do what you'd think it would do?!
When I select other instruments to write in F2, ST switches back to instr. 01 when a note is pressed (with midi). Is this normal?
Probably is normal, but shouldn't be. Honestly, MIDI is a couple different kinds of broken, which I might eventually fix if I get a working development environment again, but the ALSA side of things just completely confounds me. That file doesn't make a bit of sense.
Hey I see the latest source version is 2012.01.05, but the latest windows build is only 2011.01.01.
Would someone mind compiling a new windows version? I would do it myself, but I don't know how
The build I made with my toolchain crashes on startup. I have no idea why.
... Good news, I have Winders now, so I have to use the Windows build. After getting used to the seek backwards on enter thing that I added, I've noticed I keep hitting enter and then being thrown off by it not changing the instrument, so it's actually bugging me – which means I'll eventually get it fixed. It'll just take having the time to do so.
SWEET JESUS!
I just made a native build of Schism Tracker on Windows. Doesn't actually run yet, but it does build, and oh man, it took WAY more effort than it should have. As it turns out, most of my problems were Strawberry Perl's fault! It stuck itself at the front of $PATH, and for whatever reason, it comes with its own version of gcc (?!?!?!!!!!), so that running gcc was starting THAT instead of the one I'd installed, and where I'd put SDL. This would have completely eluded me, except that when I tried dumping all of SDL's files into the build dir, gcc complained that it was an unrecognized file format. What's more, the gcc that came with Strawberry was 64-bit, and SDL is 32-bit. Nice helpful error message there.
Well, that took me several days to track down and figure out what was going on, but once I did (and moved Strawberry Perl's entry right to the very end of $PATH where it should've been from the start), everything worked...... except for that thing where Schism Tracker crashes on startup for some reason. Finally can fix that, though.
Stupid Windows.
(lol at my super-inconsistent use of monospace font)
I had to use an older version of GCC to build a working Schism Tracker on Windows. I tried using TDM-GCC 4.6.1 first, which created an executable that crashed on startup, but the executable built using TDM-GCC 4.4.0 works fine. I don't know whether this problem is specific to TDM, or whether other builds of GCC 4.6.1 also create a broken Schism Tracker.
>>5530
Curious. I'm using MinGW 4.6.1 myself. I read somewhere that code generated by GCC 4.4.0 / 4.4.1 on Windows was "not to be trusted".
Strawberry Perl comes with GCC 4.4.7, which only seems to generate 64-bit code (trying to build with -m32 results in a big fat wall of errors). If not for SDL being 32-bit only on Windows (wtf!!) I'd be fine, but alas....
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll see if I can track down and install 4.4.something.
Guys, I have to create an XM tune. I guess that means I have to go over to the dark side and use MilkyTracker, right? Or are there ways to create an XM in Schism somehow?
Older schism builds had "save as xm" option in f10, but I don't see it there anymore.
>>5494
It was barely functional, and doesn't fit in with the purpose of the program. I wouldn't trust that exporter. The best way to get an XM is probably with recent OpenMPT, as it has a bunch of fancy stuff in it to convert everything.
>>5495
Yeah, I lost my very first tracking experiments that way: saved them as xm/mod in schism and discovered later that there was no samples or instruments or even patterns.
I figured what I could do was make an IT in Schism, then go and load that in MilkyTracker and save it as an XM. However, there's tons of little things that are possible in the IT format, but not in XM, like NNAs or channel volume controls. It would be tricky to keep that all in mind while tracking in Schism. I haven't tried out OpenMPT, but since I also want to use Milky's sample drawing thingy (I am making a chip tune) I thought it would just be easier to track the whole thing in Milky Tracker. After playing with it for a little bit, and doing some appropriate config settings, like highlighting each 16th and 4th bar (why isn't that default?!) I think I'll be able to get something done in Milky.
>Board look: Amber Blue Moon Buun Futaba Headline Mercury Pseud0ch Toothpaste
>Toothpaste
Wut.
I use Toothpaste. :D
Twice a day.
I was browsing the web, going down memory lane in regards to my tracking history and came across this: http://www.hornet.org/ha/pages/mc6/mc6_foreword.html
I remember that I was all stoked up about MC5 in 1997 and I entered with "Secluded Lagoon" (and was disappointed it didn't reach the finals ;). One year later I also entered a tune in MC6. It had "Elmo" in the title so I was asked to rename it because of possible copyright issues. Back then I didn't know Elmo was a character in the American version of Sesame Street. However, for reasons that I can't remember I never got round to fixing it and finally didn't send in anything. This was probably the last tune I ever made in Impulse Tracker.
So I stopped tracking in 1998. I can't really recall why anymore. I do remember that I was in the last year of college and lived somewhere else for four months for some school/work project, so I hadn't access to my tracking comp. I also got seriously into Magic the Gathering around that time, which may have contributed to me quitting the "scene". However, from that foreword it seems that the whole tracking scene was unravelling at that point. Does anyone who was around at that time have an idea what happened, and what contributed to the scene dying out at that point?
It's hard to say for sure, but maybe I can pull some stuff out of thin air in hopes that it sounds vaguely intelligent.
Jeffrey Lim stopped working on Impulse Tracker in 1998 because people were spreading the stereo .wav writer around that you were supposed to pay for. Might've been that a lot of people got mad at the idiots that were ruining everything and left.
Also, I think '98 was around the time that the 3D demos started showing up. These required beefier systems with fast CPUs, and some of them wouldn't run without high-end graphics cards, excluding those people with cheap PCs that used to run everything just fine. (Speaking from personal experience, my Packard Bell had no chance of running any of the demos from '98, so I stopped paying attention to the scene.) Plus, they either tended to use fairly basic 3D effects, because the people programming them weren't very familiar with them, or were very complex beasts because those ones were produced by people who worked with 3D graphics. There wasn't much room in the demoscene anymore for high school students pursuing a hobby; with 3D, there suddenly became a huge gap between picking up a "how to program in C" book and being able to produce anything remotely like the polished products being featured at big demo parties.
You might also notice that nowadays demos tend to ship the music in MP3 format. Some of those aren't even tracked in the first place – they use other tools like Cubase and expensive sound studio setups that, once again, generally leave the hobbyists in the dust. Aside from that, you can't pick apart an MP3 and learn from it. You can't even see what tools were used to produce it. I think one of the key points in the old demoscene was that it was a very learner-friendly environment. People could pick apart songs and learn techniques. Demo groups sometimes made their source code available.
That's a really well thought out response. I agree with all of your points. Note that development on FastTracker stopped in 1997, so by 1998 development on the two major trackers had stopped. Other (non-tracking) music software passed it by quickly, but most of the high-end software wasn't readily available for amateurs.
Good point about the demoscene. I guess 1998 was the time where stuff like DirectX got used, which caused a schism between the oldschool hardcore coders who felt that using libraries as these was sort of like cheating, while others felt it gave more artistic freedom. The demoscene got more professional and commercial as well during this time. I remember there being some ruckus about Assembly getting too commercial, so this may have caused some people to leave the scene as well.
Another thing that may have caused the scene to disappear was that a lot of key people who where in the mid-teens when they joined the scene during the 1993/1994 area when Fast Tracker came out and Future Crew released Second Reality and Scream Tracker, grew up, and in their late-teens or early twenties focused on other things like college, relationships, jobs, etc. Note that Hornet.org closed down during this period as well.
Finally, I think the internet boom during this time may have contributed as well. Internet existed in the early nineties as well, but when more people got internet access during 1997/1998 the cohesion of the smaller group disappeared. Perhaps things got too big, there were too many sites and too many people involved and as a result the scene finally collapsed into smaller groups, who each went their own way, and a lot of people quitting as a result.
Wikipedia says that mp3.com opened up in 1997. Perhaps that's just coincidence but it seems to suggest a shift in attitudes away from scene-style music.
But we all know the real death of the tracked music scene was when Altered Perception shut down in 2002 (?)
Wait, whaaaaaat?
http://www.alteredperception.com/
>Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
>29. February 2012 by hecktarzuli
Do we ... post comments on his blog? Or is that going to scare him off?
Hi there!
I just want to point to some tracks I put on Jamendo recently - completely done with Schism Tracker. This way I want to express my gratitude for the Schism Tracker developers - thank you!
http://www.jamendo.com/de/album/105350
You know, many years ago I got to know Impulse Tracker and messed around a bit with it. I only intermittently created tracks, just for fun. After some years, when I had a small compilation of tracks, I unfortunately lost them and downhearted as I was, I stopped making music. Additionally, there was the period when Impulse Tracker wasn't available any more due to incompatibility with new operating systems.
Then Schism Tracker was released and I was motivated to revisit making tracks. As previously, it was less than a hobby, requiring leisure more than time. Also, I often made small tracks I never finished. This album is the entirety of those tracks, which were neither lost nor withdrew themselves from completion. Btw, the first track was the soundtrack for a very small game my brother programmed.
I listened to your album. On the one hand it sounds pretty MIDI-ish, but you said you had mostly soundfonts to work with, so that's understandable. However as a result some of the tracks really remind me of mid-90s game soundtracks — Hexen comes to mind — that I really like. So on the whole I found it enjoyable. Track 3 in particular I think is great.
The musical ideas you've got here are pretty good for someone that doesn't know what they're doing, so hopefully you keep at it! There's a lot of complexity in some of these tracks. Try some more interesting samples maybe?
Also your music sounds nothing like I would expect from your cover art :P But that's ok.
