Glenn:
There are countless examples of tunes in the 2600 catalog that were
valiant attempts to do workable music, Don't Stop Believin' on Journey
Escape, Smurf's song, etc... and all of them feature at least one sour
note. I just don't know how you get away with it.
The two songs you mentioned are ports of other songs which are much harder
to do than writing original music for the 2600. For my original songs, I
select sets of notes that are all pretty close to being in-tune and limit
myself to composing with those notes. But when porting songs I avoid
playing out of tune notes by switching distortions and/or octaves to get
the closest pitch possible. I think most of the old skool drivers just
used one distortion, where my driver allows you to change the distortion on
each note. Probably my most ambitious port so far is the music from the
C64 version of Thrust, and you can hear how I'm switching distortions
pretty often on the melodies.
http://www.qotile.net/temp/thrust_main.mp3
Jeremy:
Now that you mention it.. =]
Yes, I'm a musician and 2600 music is something I'd love to get my
hands dirty with. Coming from a background of MOD trackers, dealing
directly with source (if that's still what's required, or is there a
tool to write songs with your engine?) should be something I can
hopefully adapt to =]
Great!! I write all my music directly in the source. The music is made up
of sets of 1 bar patterns that are arranged by fours into 1 measure
patterns. Then those patterns are arranged into a sequence. I'll clean up
my music guide and put together a new music development kit tonight. I
have a music development kit for my old driver, but it's a bit outdated.
BTW: One more short new song with a cool sliding bass:
http://www.qotile.net/temp/pota_title.mp3
-Paul
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