Re: [stella] Good old Tune2600

Subject: Re: [stella] Good old Tune2600
From: "B. Watson" <atari@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 17:51:38 -0400
> gave an "Illegal Note" error....is there something where "b" isn't
> treated the same way as in German notation as it is in American?

In Germany, a B is written as H, and a Bb (B flat) is written as B...
which is why J. S. Bach was able to use his last name as a sequence of
notes in some symphony or other (B A C H = B-flat, A, C, B to you and me).

> So is that thing just knowing what the well-tempered frequencies
> "should be", and finding the set of closest matches for the 2600
> frequencies for the notes desired?

As I understand it (and this is from reading the list, and from what I
know of music theory), the trick is to pick a set of frequencies that
sound good together, even if they're not absolutely at concert pitch.
This would have something to do with the key your song is in (a slightly
flat E in the key of C sounds OK, but the same pitch sounds awful in
the key of A), and something to do with the relative pitches of the
notes (e.g. C, E, and G are a major triad. If you're using them a lot,
it'd be better to have all 3 of them be slightly sharp than have one be
sharp and the other two flat, even if the average distance from concert
pitch is closer that way).

I have no idea how much of this Thomas's tool takes into account...

> You know thinking about these little command line apps vs. my habit of
> making webtools...webtools add to the convenience but they're harder
> to preserve if something hanppens to the main site. I've been pretty
> dedicated (for over 10 years now!) to the maintenence of my site, but
> unless someone backs up my code once I'm gone, it might follow fairly
> shortly ...

Best of both worlds: write command line apps, then write web app wrappers
for them (they read an HTML form and run the command line app for you).

Believe it or not, some of us (myself included) find web tools highly
inconvenient compared to a well-designed command line tool, especially
for small stuff that runs non-interactively. How in the heck do you
use a web-tool in a Makefile or batch script, as part of your game's
build process?

> Oh well.  Let me know what you all think about reviving and improving
> the Tune2600 idea...

I just now went and looked at the original mail about it... somehow it
slipped right past me the first time around. I think it's a great idea.

Thomas, any chance of us seeing the source?

--
B.
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