what's your top 10 Atari ST chiptunes ?

[MiggyMog]

Mr. Alderton, your tunes Rock!

[groovykid]

wow , COUNT ZERO is here !

that's a great honor for me to speak to a living legend like you. All Your hooked melodies of the Decade demos are still haunting my memories 15 years later and I know i'm not alone. I hope your boss is one of us ^^

when i think Atari ST , i'm stuck with the Decade demo , all your tracks and also cuddly & mindbomb. (when i think amiga , it's more about games)

As for my remixes , they are just rearrangement for the moment with different instruments but as soon as i got some time and a new pc , i'm planning to work on them the best i can. So they don't deserve a review by now even if i put a link of 2 of them still wip on the digital departement board.

I'd love to hear more of your present work.

Best regards

[alexh]

I have to say that No.1 for me has to be :

Mad Max - Ooh Crikey What a Scorcher - There are no sheep in Outer Mongolia!

Lov it!

[scavenger]

Hi Guys,

I just came accross this site today. Great to see the scene is still alive, although I haven't been involved in it myself for quite a while now.
The whole atari period was one of my favourite times of my late teens and the guys from Synergy were a great bunch.

I still keep in touch with Bat or Batkuip as he's called these days, he lives in Australia now.
Rapido still lives in Holland and works on databases for banks, I think.
Zanac is a freelance webdesigners these days I believe, haven't spoken to him for ages.
Stash is working on Spellborn, a big mmorg coming out later this year.

I myself worked in the UK for a while, at the Bitmap Brothers (not as exciting as it sounds, as I joined them after their 16-bit haydays), and another Uk developer. Moved back to Holland and joined Guerrilla, now owned by Sony, on various projects before Killzone got signed.
Finished Killzone and that infamous Killzone PS3 trailer, and went freelance.
Just finished Killzone Liberation for the PSP and have been living in the UK for the past 2 years again with my girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife Sam:)

Anyway, great too hear you guys are still enjoying the Atari so much to this day!

Cheers,

Joris / Scavenger

[unseenmenace]

OMG

Another legend graces us with his presence

Sounds like you've had an interesting time

[scavenger]

Hey Menace!

Well, it hasn't been boring, that's for sure

I just downloaded a load of my old tunes....LOL!!!

There was stuff there I could barely even remember writing; things were so much easier back then. Just 3 channels (and a noise generator); these days it's all big synth and sample rigs, mixing, mastering, blabla...

Anyway, I'm not complaining. Just fond memories of the Atari where one could churn out a tune in 15 minutes, and the music was all about the melody.

I'd be interested to know what the other chip composers (like mad max and count zero) are up to...

Cheers,

Joris

[Stefan jL]

I'd be interested to know what the other chip composers (like mad max and count zero) are up to...

Well, Mad Max is still doing YM composing, check out latest Ym-Rockerz demo
http://www.creamhq.de/ymrockerz/downloads.php

[lotek_style]

SCAVYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!



Happy to see you here on the board If you are in the
netherlands next year then please come to outline

http://outline.scene.nl/

Please check also the previous links for YM ROCKERZ and FADING TWILIGHT

[MiggyMog]

Another chipper whos tunes rocked!

I think Leif Ruler is the only YM with DIGI swearing as well as drums ?

( Although it is missing on playback in WinJam, oh %@~# off!)

[unseenmenace]

I'd be interested to know what the other chip composers (like mad max and count zero) are up to...

Of course TAO (of ACF/Cream) is still active in the chip scene as well and Count Zero posted here a while back and is currently working in films I believe.

[scavenger]

hehe, I can barely remember writing leif rular.
I remember when synergy just started I was desperate to write chipmusic, but there were no tools, and I wasn't a programmer, though I knew what I wanted.

Then Trisound came around, and I used that for a while. I had an experimental phase where I wrote all these simple tunes with digidrums, just seeing what I could do with it, and creating my own digidrums.
I found that with some sampling of my hardware synths and careful eq'ing I could get some nice (for that time anyway:P) 4-bit samples.
That was the time leif rular was made. All those tunes from that time are pretty basic.

But I reached the limit of trisound pretty quick. It also had a bug in the frequency table. and I hated the fact that I couldn't do proper noise drums, as you couldn't change the noise settings every vbl.
So chipmon 1 was born, which was basically a replay routine based on trisound with some added features that BAT wrote.
We used that for a while, until again, it became apparent that every new feature was a drag to implement. BAT did a rewrite at some point of the soundroutine to make it quicker; at some point the replay routine was almost completely changed while still using the trisound ui..but we'd reached a limit.

Then I decided we should just write our own editor and soundroutine (which became chipmon2).
So I designed a new soundroutine, which BAT coded from the ground up.
When i designed it I mean I basically wrote down 'this is what it needs to be able to do every vbl'....Bat did the coding along with Rapido who gave his input.
Rapido figured out the tmfx stuff together with BAT, although I do believe it was inspired by that ziggy hidden demoscreen.
Rapido figured out a really quick way of doing it and calculating it in realtime; the bat optimised it by putting the frequency calcs into a table.

I'd been experimenting with various basic programs to be able to write my ow editor..and I decided on STOS (big mistake).
Stos was great for putting together a UI, because of the sprite controls and easy gfx routines. But it was extremely shoddy coding wise.
Since Stos wasn't quick enough, BAT ended up writing me loads of replacement routines for quick 2 plane block routines and a text routine.
I was interested in writing the best tracker GUI for chipstuff out there and it took me over a year!
I also hadn't noticed that it would stall occasionally on an internal garbage collect..on my 4 meg ste that never happened, but on a 1mb machine it happened every few minutes!:)
I used chipmon2 on the synergy megademo and crapman...and by that time the atari era was already fading into twilight...
The idea was to release chipmon 2 after the demo, and I do have a working version somewhere on my old hd (no idea where that is though).
However, synergy kind of disbanded not long after; everybody got jobs or started studying and/or moved away.

I might be tempted to turn out another chip tune some day..just for the cluck of it !

Cheerio,

joris

[Marcer]

Hey Scavenger!

Thanks for the Historical Information!

I would be very intressted in Chipmon 2! since im a tracker Collector.
and another chip tune from you would be very outstanding!

Greetings,

Marcer

[ASYLvM]

First Count Zero, now Scavenger - two of my fave composers on ST both in the same topic


Scavenger, if your thinking of knocking up a tune or two it would be interesting to see (or hear!) what you could do with the latest in chip tracking software: MaxYMiser.

Would also be cool to hear any unreleased tracks you may have hanging around


ASY

/|\

[scavenger]

Hey Asylvm,

Thanks:)

I think *if* I would knock up a tune, it would have to be in chipmon2:)
There's not a lot of time these days and I certainly wouldn't want to have to learn a new tracker again. Next to that, Chipmon pretty much does all the stuff I would need it to do anyway.
Next to that, the blood, sweat and tears that went into that program mean I couldn't forgive myself composing in anything else!!!!

Last but not least, a big part of my chipcomposing is down to use of block functions. If you look at my old better known chiptunes (having a period in 3d space is a good one for that), or mute a channel or two, you'll notice that every channel is pretty much full most of the time.
I used to copy channels to other ones, offsetting them and lowering their volume, to get a fuller sound. If there was already data on there, I used to underlay the tracks..stuff like that.
Great trick for rhythmic delays and such!

As to unreleased tracks; I have absolutlely no idea what is on my old megafile that is up in storage. Last time I looked at it was like 6 years ago! From what I've seen, I reckon most of my stuff is out there.
I was surprised to see even my old Trisound concoctions (basically just tests) are out there as well
I've moved around a lot recently (last year to scotland, recently to the south coast of england) and so my atari stuff is still in boxes!
That atari has sure seen a lot of mileage!:)
It's gone from the hague (NL, 5 locations) to Eindhoven (NL) to London (4 different locations there) back to Amsterdam (NL, 2 locations) to Scotland (Glasgow) to the UK (Shoreham)! And that over a period of 10 years!

Btw, does anybody remember what kind of HD is in the megafile? Is it just an IDE drive? what is the easiest way to get stuff from the atari on to a PC?
Also, are any of the emulators good enough to run a tracker in? I'd much prefer to work on a PC then to have to work on the old ST..it's getting on a bit:)

Joe

[Marcer]

Hey Scavy.

There is Emu called Steem.
which works quite okay!

I *shame* use it for my chippin. But I also use Winjam to double check the sounds I create, so they dont sound way to wrong. since the emu doesnt emulate the YM chip 100%.

while the Winjam 2 player seems to be pretty close to the YM emulation!
But as all ppl refer to me.. use the original platform for the 100% correct hearing.

// Marcer

[Nyh]

Btw, does anybody remember what kind of HD is in the megafile? Is it just an IDE drive? what is the easiest way to get stuff from the atari on to a PC?

Most of them have an MFM drive. No IDE. I used a TT with network card running Linux to copy all my harddisks to a PC. The TT can read the Megafiles directly. I don't know whether Wout Klaren's TT is still in working order. If it is I might ask him to put the contents of you harddisk on a CD for you, if you are interested.

Also, are any of the emulators good enough to run a tracker in? I'd much prefer to work on a PC then to have to work on the old ST..it's getting on a bit:)

IMHO no. Especially SID sound is still much better on an original ST.

Hans Wessels

[MiggyMog]

I'm almost inspired to try and write a new ym tune if I can work out how to use a new version of a certain program which was sent to me yesterday...

Scavvy I wish I'd known you were in Glasgow I could have had an interesting chat about making YM tunes on ST's over a pint or two, lol.

I had the Bubble Bobble tune as my phone ringtone until the other day when I changed it to one of TAO's 6 voice ones I think I had a turrican song before that....

( A 19 year old girl gave me a row when my phone rang in work as it can produce 'well better tunes...', LOL!)

[Frazer]

Tons and tons of great ol' tunes out there, hard to pick favourites and make a list out of them. One of the more underrated musicians in my opinion is Dave Whittaker. Not that his soundroutines were too great, but I always kinda enjoyed his melodies in games like Xenon and Quadralien.

[unseenmenace]

Tons and tons of great ol' tunes out there, hard to pick favourites and make a list out of them. One of the more underrated musicians in my opinion is Dave Whittaker. Not that his soundroutines were too great, but I always kinda enjoyed his melodies in games like Xenon and Quadralien.

Yeah I really like Speedball, Custodian and Star Ray among others

[Frazer]

Yeah I really like Speedball, Custodian and Star Ray among others

I always liked his spookier tunes, like the ones in Weird dreams, Zombi and things like that...

[Mug UK]

Frazer/Syndicate? If so, welcome to the forum - if not, welcome aboard anyways

[Frazer]

Frazer/Syndicate? If so, welcome to the forum - if not, welcome aboard anyways

Yup, that's me! And thank you very much! Glad to be here and see what the scene is doing these days

[MiggyMog]

David Whitaker's music must have been some of the earliest I heard coming from the YM-2149/ AY-3-8910 which was more than a Jingle, that was before I even had an ST on the Toshiba hx-10 MSX , I particularly liked the music from the games,Feud & Lazy Jones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_Jones & BMX simulator which had identical music to the ST version.

When I seen Lazy Jones it made me want to program computer games, I started doing some screens for an ST conversion of it which was to be done in STOS, LOL! never did make a proper start to it though 'cos Im a Lazy @$£$

Find amiga version of the 16 bit tunes & a mugshot at:- http://www.exotica.org.uk/tunes/unexoti ... taker.html
[we already know where to get the ST versions ]

I would say that he done some great qurtet tunes & of course the tremendous Xenon 2 sountrack on the ST, although it would be great if someone hacked it to play the intro music ingame on the STE!

[matt]

Old thread resurrection!

My favourites:
Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters (Matt Furniss)
Deflektor (Ben Daglish)
LED Storm (Tim & Mike Follin)
lots of Mad Max tunes

[StickHead]

Gosh, where did you dig this thread up from, it smells rather fusty.

My favourite tunes are Tim Follin's work on Ghouls 'n' Ghosts. Atmospheric, perfectly fitting for the game, and expertly crafted from a musical viewpoint.