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| OmegaDog 1454th Post
 
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|  "Re(1):CHIPTUNE / LOW TECH extravaganza" , posted Wed 2 Mar 13:27
I've actually been interested in finding out stuff like this for a long time -- like, say, when a more recent game music piece is interpreted in the style of an older sound chip -- and I've even had interest in tracking pieces in that way (and vice versa, interpreting older pieces with newer instruments, but that's for another time). It's only recently, though that I've come across folks that have actually done it -- and I fell in love with a lot of what was out there. If done right, chiptunes can be awesome stuff.
Here's one guy that I came across randomly that's done a lot of that kind of stuff. He has a lot of stuff from Konami -- most notably, from the Castlevania series (Dracula's Curse, Rondo of Blood, CV Chronicles). [On that page, search for 悪魔城 in the title.] Some of the interpretations are better than others -- but it's still worth a listen. Done in the sound styles of NES (regular and maybe even + VRC6) and MSX. [H-LOAD_BGM seems to also use a higher quality digital channel, though -- something like Harmony of Dissonance for the GBA.]
And then there's VORC -- news for Video Game Music or Chiptunes. You can find a lot of links to other people's stuff there.
But yeah -- with having found out the chiptune community -- and just having a general interest in MODs and tracker-type songs for a long time now -- I've finally pushed myself to start up tracking. [I'm using MadTracker, at the recommendation of a few Insert Credit folks.] I'm not that far yet (sample searches can be tough, and I might just succumb to buying a CD full of samples) -- but yeah, hopefully I'll be able to do stuff like this sometime too.
[The challenge, though, is restricting yourself to the number of sound channels to which the original composers were limited -- and using those limited channels effectively. Another challenge is just recreating the effects old composers were able to do with simple sine waves, square waves, etc. I aspire to be able to do stuff like what Tim Follin did with Solstice and Silver Surfer for the NES.]
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| OmegaDog 1456th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(3):CHIPTUNE / LOW TECH extravaganza" , posted Wed 2 Mar 14:35:
quote:
It was said that the music for Metroid was written in ASM at the express desire of the composer, even when much higher level tools existed. I'm not sure if we can or should attempt to aspire to such insane genius.
In ASSEMBLY?! No way... was he really willing to do that to himself?
[EDIT: Good god... according to the Wikipedia article on him, he was willing to do that to himself. I guess, though, when you've had experience writing sound effects in binary, you're able to weather the task of writing music in ASM. Still, though... all this, even when sound tools were available. Damn.]
But -- what I mean are things like pitch slides and fluctuations, effective use of volume control and/or multiple channels for an echo or hall-type of effect -- stuff like that. [The multiple-channels deal would be pretty hard, given the limited number of channels to work with -- unless you had a chip that gave you extra channels like the VRC6.]
[EDIT++: ... and another style I'd like to try -- the sound styles from such Capcom games as Bionic Commando and Strider, whether interpreting new game music in that style, or interpreting the music from those games with more-natural instruments. Stuff like Area 5 in Bionic Commando -- I could imagine the music there with a kind of 70's/80's anime motif. Maybe it's just because the color scheme in that stage also matches that kind of theme.]
"IT'S PAYBACK TIME..." "LOCKED AND LOADED!" | CCT: NEXT STAGE IS 20
[this message was edited by OmegaDog on Wed 2 Mar 14:51] |
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