oh boy i was completely unaware of this fine specimen of italo disco. btw in Poland we have a whole "disco polo" genre that is a direct descendant of italo disco with a sprinkle of Polish folk (like Festspielhausmusik).
Nowadays i sometimes listen to my tunes and they are more or less out of tune of course, sometimes it makes me feel stupid, how could I publish those. And mistakes are very straightforward - when I had discovered* the PSM-synth sound I simply added 1 to the frequency of second channel, instead I should have corrected values according to this. Maybe because of ugly speakers I had I could not hear this, or maybe my pitch - hearing improved with age.
* Well, I remember I have used it for a first time, not hearing it anywhere, discovered it by experimenting with sound found in "Oxygene" by Kemal Ezcan - which is used in public released Battle Ships tune for the first time AFAIR. It is still out (down) of tune in FiveToFive music, but there it gives more "darkness".
Interesting part of the both tunes above is that the original is always using "overlaid" sounds. Due to POKEY's typical channel handling, the resulting sounds work well.
This one is a little harder, as it plays "6 channels", caused by the recorded samples of the original mod. So to play the tune, the drums have to play a melodic part , and the polycounters need to resample a multi sample instrument.
Nice idea. Technically I appreciate it. And even most of the song sounds good. But again your typical problem with song appear. I see what is the problem and it come back again and again in your songs. It is wrong key note here and there. In this song this problem is repeated in parts started about 1:43, 2:29, 3:38, and somewhere else.
To be honest, I feel bad that you don't hear that in your songs, because technically you do cool things, but so what while most of the songs are not listenable, and only sometimes a song is cool among many others.
I would compare you to a very talented carpenter who can work wonders with wood. This carpenter decides to build musical instruments, and since he can carve anything out of wood, the instruments look great afterwards. But there's one little problem: this carpenter unfortunately can't hear sounds, so his instruments play randomly.
Ofcourse they don't sound as it should. Since POKEY music is been developed, it always struggled by the available software. Do you recognize the melodic voice and that the portamento and vibrato is correct? It's only possible in dxRMT, because it allows to do that.
The problem with dxRMT is the editing of instruments, as it is a early beta. Particular for the polycounter sounds, some kind of "instrument cluster" is needed. As the polycounter sounds were very low in the pitch resolution, they weren't really useful for melodic parts. But the interaction inside the polycounter handling the resulting sounds get usable for music.
Note: dxRMT is the 1ST Tracker that allows real chip/tracker commands using POKEY.... Or in short: 1979 Atari release 2022 1st real music making beta software available for POKEY ... just 43 Years passed by... ;)
I understand it everything what you wrote. But... I don't care, because that all are just tools, methods, technical ideas. Overall the most important is final effect as music. For example I play the guitar. I can use a million guitar effects, I can build modern and impressive sound, but if I play wrong notes, or dissonances, then my music will be piece of shit. That's how I see it. I think it is good work on technical aspects which you do, but it has sense if finally it will provide to do a good music.
What I am doing is to show people the good and the bad about POKEY, to get the best music out of this chip. But particular the polish scene never took care about it.
Just one question : Do you know better tunes than those 2 above ? I'm pretty sure, you always will point to tunes that weren't possible on a stock machine.
To have everything optimized for POKEY, you just can't do some 50Hz programming and FX.
One example: In dxRMT , the vibrato and portamento FX weren't fixed to the 50Hz intervals. Well, actually they were updated 50 times a second. But the FX were related to ms precision. Doing intervals that fit to 50Hz programming.
There is nothing comparable. Just because people didn't care about it , before.
Yes, I know better tunes. Old and excellent. For example: Draconus: every songs, Jet Set Willy, International Karate, and a lot of other songs which are made by people who understood what is most important in the music. Polish scene? No problem, for example: Lasermania, Vicky, Spy Master, Masterhead, and again a lot of other.
Note that I gave you a few examples of Polish and not Polish music, and each one of that example songs are using completely different technics of sound creating. So a new advanced technics should show better music or at least quality equivalent to old songs from 80s and 90s. New possibilites are worth nothing if the music is not worth to listen it.
If I came up with a new technique, I would primarily show the end result of what it can be used for. Showing a new technique that creates a new sound, but full of dissonances, is like showing a beautiful car that can't turn or drive.
Draconus. 3 Channels , and a real melodic flow. Jet set Willy similar, but flat.
Most of your tunes by polish guys suffer by the false notation range, and the musical part is rather limited.
Spy Master is a good exception. But it suffers by the straight 50Hz programming.
"If I came up with a new technique, I would primarily show the end result of what it can be used for. Showing a new technique that creates a new sound, but full of dissonances, is like showing a beautiful car that can't turn or drive."
The point is that EVERYTIME when a tune works well, someone blames the musical tast is not fitted. Also: The new car needs the tools to be created. The problem is that I had to start all the development, because people didn't do the obvious. The development of POKEY music broke somehow in the early 1980s . Today , we have a lot tunes (not just done by me) , that would be revolutionary back then. You don't see it (hear it ;) ), because you did see the slow progress and added slight changes to your knowledgebase.
Draconus. 3 Channels , and a real melodic flow. Jet set Willy similar, but flat.
Most of your tunes by polish guys suffer by the false notation range, and the musical part is rather limited.
Spy Master is a good exception. But it suffers by the straight 50Hz programming.
"If I came up with a new technique, I would primarily show the end result of what it can be used for. Showing a new technique that creates a new sound, but full of dissonances, is like showing a beautiful car that can't turn or drive."
The point is that EVERYTIME when a tune works well, someone blames the musical taste is not fitted. Also: The new car needs the tools to be created. The problem is that I had to start all the development, because people didn't do the obvious. The development of POKEY music broke somehow in the early 1980s . Today , we have a lot tunes (not just done by me) , that would be revolutionary back then. You don't see it (hear it ;) ), because you did see the slow progress and added slight changes to your knowledgebase.
Here is some Update on the tune. This time played inside dxRMT.
Have a look/listen particular from 01:44 on. dxRMT has the needed features to replay music, as the relevant commands can run in realtime, not bound to a short envelope loop. So the tune can run at any speed. Also, the 50Hz timing is no problem, as the time compensation solves it.
In short: You only can do things, if the tool offers the possibilities.
Not sure if it's possible to get the mood of the Amiga Original.
dxRMT helps a lot with musical features, but there were still restrictions. Particular when it comes to "resembling" multi channel samples. At this state it sounds very "technical" but nice in most places ;) Not to forget: It's real POKEY sound ... no faking with double pokey or digitizing.
Seems 64kHz is strongly recommended for flexible music creation. As advanced dxRMT is, there were several things missing. The polycounter sounds can be less noisy, but there is some tool needed to build a row of clean notes . At the end it might sound like some filtered bass sound. And there were several "automated value changes missing. It's still not possible to just set a wave form to a dedicated filter/pwm instrument. If that was built in, some endless playing tune with endless variations in sound could be possible.
In the 15kHz thread I mentioned about "real notation" and to solve things by "puzzling" with Pokey's features. Sadly the software is buggy and still will be as it is discontinued.
