Creating chiptune style samples in protracker

[demether]

Hi,

Back in the past (15years ago I guess) I was making music with octamed sound studio with "realistic" samples of real instruments.

But listening for Protracker (especially) modules on youtube, I recently wanted to make my own "chiptune" music, wich is, for me "music with vintage synth -and/or c64- style sound, with instruments I create from nothing".

So I installed Protracker 2 and 3 (since on youtube, these cool chiptune musics were played on them), tried to find some tips on internet (like creating .iff files with a text editor) and then....FAILED. I never obtained anything more than short and ugly distorded blipblip sounds.

I don't know what to think. Is Protracker the soft I need ? do they make their instruments in another software I don't know ?


I would really appreciate some help.


THank you for your help !

[s2325]

You need to loop "blip" sound with 2 vertical lines by clicking on sample graph. Or maybe there was even simple "loop" button.

[Apollo]

IMHO, besides the composition the typical "chipsound" comes from the short looped waveforms (which always reminds me on way wavetable synthesizers work) and the extensive use of the Arpeggio command (command "0")

from: http://openmpt.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/v...ffect+Commands

Cmd 0. Arpeggio [Range:$0-$F/$0-$F]
-----------------------------------
Usage: $0 + 1st halfnote add
+ 2nd halfnote add
Arpeggio is used to simulate chords. This is done by rapidly changing the pitch between 3(or 2) different notes. It sounds very noisy and grainy on most samples, but ok on monotone ones.
Example:
C-300047 C-major chord:
(C+E+G or C+4+7 halfnotes)
C-300037 C-minor chord:
(C+D#+G or C+3+7 halfnotes)

[Amiga1992]

You can get a shit ton of one cycle waveforms here:
http://www.adventurekid.se/akrt/wave...kid-waveforms/

No need to reinvent the wheel!
If you scroll down you can find the Protracker (and Musicline!) format archive (done by our friend ADRdesign).

Believe me, I doubt you will ever need another chip sample again

[demether]

Thanks, this is really helpfull, help, theory, and links ! Thanks !

I don't know if I will obtain anything good, but I'll try. If not, I'll use pregenerated waveforms, but I wanted to challenge myself (and for now, I failed) to create something from zero.

[Amiga1992]

PRotracker isn't the best to create waveforms. The way I did it was as described: load something in then cut a little loop. But the results are mixed. I usually loaded any garbage and see what I could come up with. It's not like Fasttracker where you can draw a waveform.

You could also use the AM/FM generators of Startrekker or Octamed.

There are many tools on Aminet to create your own chip samples, if I am not wrong.

[demether]

Thank you

SInce on youtube almost every amiga chiptune mod was played with protracker, I thought it was the tool used to create it !

[Amiga1992]

Yeah, to create the tracks, but not the samples.
I'm not sure how they were generated.

[daxb]

If you want to make your own chip sampels there are some tools out: FMsynth, SynthGUI2 (Blueberry/Loonies), Spectrum and Niva (model/up rough), ... and a lot more sample creator.

As Akira wrote. Sometimes it is enough to just take any sample where you get a waveform from using Protracker its sample editor. Use the loop button if you like.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by daxb

As Akira wrote. Sometimes it is enough to just take any sample

Or anything! I used to load binaries from games as raw data.
Some times the data contained sound samples, but some times I could make chip sounding noises from the data noise

[Frog]

Now, there's also some user friendly editor such as AHX to create chiptune
I'm quite sure that there's some article on amiga diskmag about how to create chiptune on protracker but i can't find a full index of all amiga diskmag's article

I also found this : http://zenpho.co.uk/PhillPhelps-ChiptuneSynth.pdf

[daxb]

Jup, any data could be source. For noise samples I often used text files. You als can find interesting samples/noise in RAM. In the past I did it with ActionReplay (e.g. mod.Chipnonchip). Ok, it is really freaky.

[demether]

I tried with text files, with no success for now. I even tried to find the software you were speaking about, except AHX I didn't find any.

I will reinstall octamed SS v1, it was my tracker when I was young. Maybe I should focus on this instead of trying to reinvent the wheel

[Photon]

You can draw waveforms in Audiomaster 2 with the mouse. You might get a better result from just loading a synth or percussion instrument you like from the ST-xx disks on aminet.net, and just snip out a waveform near the beginning of the sample. For anything but a bass you're looking at 16 to 32 bytes length.

Once you have a waveform (looking vaguely like a wavy 'S' lying down, ie. starting with 0, crossing the mid-line 0 once or more, then ending with 0) you can make a square wave by pressing Boost lots of times. From the square wave you can make a perfect triangle or sawtooth wave with the volume fade buttons.

You can't generate a sine wave (organ sound) this way though, you could find some sine generator on aminet or draw one, or snip one from an organ sound.

But most seem happy with short percussion samples and sawtooth waves so Sawooth is good for bass, try it with a very short Echo for a "poor man's detune".

[demether]

Thank you for these specific tips. They will be very usefull. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they apply to AudioMaster 2, not Octamed SS, Protracker 2.x or 3.x ?

All this technic seems very interesting. I made a lot of soundtracker music when I was a teenager (octamed and then Octamed Sound Studio), but I also tried to obtain the perfect oposite : some realistic instruments (drums, guitar, piano, voices, etc...). I even bought a Aura Sampler at this period (and trashed it, if I remember correctly. CUriously, I still have the original manual.

Now I'd like to go to chiptune, the "roots" way, not using a modern software (I'm a Renoise owner), synths or ready made instruments. But it's very, very hard. I guess people saying that learning when you're a grown man is harder than learning being a child are perfectly right !

[Photon]

Audiomaster 2 is where you can draw waveforms with the mouse, that's all. And also edit samples. But you can do all this in pretty much any tracker. It's just a way to snip out the samples you want.

[Amiga1992]

You will need to use other software or sampling sources or whatever if you wanna do it right, there's no all-in-one solution I'm afraid..
Also afraid to break it up to you but a lot of your favorite chiptune composers of back then probably used "ready made instruments", as in, gotten samples from other modules, other sources etc. There's -nothing- wrong with that (name your sources though).

But if you are comfortable with OctaMED, use that. If you just want to make the music for the sake of it, it's fine (and you can create those FM samples within it)

[h0ffman]

do what everyone else does, load up a mod and save the samples.

[saimon69]

I stumbled on some of the early chiptunes in mod file around 1989, and what i did learn was, exactly, thet you have to take an existing sample and crop it to the size of few bytes to have a kinda pure waveform; using that and applying all kind of effects then you can have your own instruments.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by h0ffman

do what everyone else does, load up a mod and save the samples.

Maybe not everyone does that since you're the first of seven to suggest it!

(Well, the threading is about creating them so that might have thrown the stats. :P)

Also, you're into it so you don't see the problems of finding the sounds. This is an extremely stupid search that can give at least a few author names. But there are 10000 more chiptunes, and he can't listen to all of them to hear what he wants.

If you want to make short sounds, well, there's not many different ways to make different 32-byte samples, they'll all sound like beeps. And a snare is a snare if you're not picky. But for a 20k module there's some roome for creativity and what you spend those 20K on, so I say just load up some ST-xx samples in Protracker and cut them up and loop them and listen