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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:02 am

Maddi writing at Vintage is the New Old pulled together a fascinating post that revolves around sampling keyboards and using the audio with tracking program Soundtracker Pro 2.

After playing Turrican 3 on her C64, she became determined to write her own MOD of the music on her A1200, which she explains:
The .MOD and .SID formats are completely different in how they work, as are the SID and Paula Chips. I do believe Paula also has some Wavetable Synthesis and FM Synthesis capabilities. Which is why I sometimes felt that Amiga and Commodore 64 music sometimes reminds me of one another. However as far as I know there is no chance of conversion from one format to the other. So the only option is to recreate a MOD by ear.
She explains a bit of her process, then at the end of her article she drops in a very interesting video of the entire process. Cool stuff!

After watching Shot97 create his own custom tunes and album, in conjunction with Maddi's alternative approach, the fact is that the Amiga was and is a very cool tool for creating awesome music - even today.

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Fri Jun 30, 2017 9:15 am

It was a good video that I watched earlier today, and I was saving the article for later. I didn't even realize you could hook up a keyboard to those tracker programs... Still mostly gibberish looking to me. When she said the numbers are in hexadecimal I suddenly started to understand it a lot more... It's just that one little piece of information that NOBODY else cares to share that can suddenly make something a lot more accessible. I don't really understand the benefit of using a tracker program when you have a keyboard hooked up though. It seems like those programs are best used for those that want to make music but have no real input method. Was fascinating seeing the video though... I also had no idea Turrican 3 was even released for the C64... That's actually my favorite of the series on the Amiga, I never really liked the other 2, and I had the first one back in the day.





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