So none of this really has anything to do with me, just throwing out some ideas for the OP.

sleepytimejesse wrote:

You can make famitracker sound very human, you just have to become really acquainted with the humanizing commands like Gxx and Sxx to escape the grid. Which comes back to the note-by-note composition, not the fluid improv you want though. At least not in fami.

You could probably use a keyboard and FamiTracker's MIDI in function to record improvy stuff, and then go back and use the G and S commands to undo the auto-quantize it'll put in

True. But I feel by the time you record a good take and then go back to re-/un-quantize things you don't really save any time. This is just me though, everyone works differently.

You can make famitracker sound very human, you just have to become really acquainted with the humanizing commands like Gxx and Sxx to escape the grid. Which comes back to the note-by-note composition, not the fluid improv you want though. At least not in fami.

You could probably use a keyboard and FamiTracker's MIDI in function to record improvy stuff, and then go back and use the G and S commands to undo the auto-quantize it'll put in

Carbonthief wrote:

Lines per beat

edit: As in, right now you can only make notes as small as quarter notes in Famitracker.  You can make shorter notes with pattern commands or volume envelopes, but this wouldn't allow you to make a rapid succession of notes.  You could try to do something with the arpeggiator in the instrument editor but this gives you poor control obviously and you'd need to make a new instrument for every few notes and it would be really hard to get it to sound the way you want.

As opposed to say, OpenMPT where you can just set LPB to 16 and now you can make 16th notes at any BPM you choose.

I don't think there's such a concept as "lines per beat" in Famitracker (I'm not sure if it's presented that way, though). It's all "ticks per line" If you want higher resolution, decrease the amount of ticks per step. Those steps that are quarter notes in your head could as well be 8ths 16ths, 32nds or even triplets. You can increase the speed so far as to have one tick per step. You can change the amount of ticks per step dynamically, so you can compose in a more comfortable way normally, and double or quadruple the speed when you get to more timing critical parts.

So ticks are frames right? We are just counting frames between steps?

Edit: ahh nm I didn't read your earlier post about ticks.

lft had some interesting stuff about the timing of frame players vs bpm in his seminar video.  (about 16 minutes in)

You can convert between the two (usually speed 6 in a frame player is equal to 96 clock in midi) , but a frame-based player is only going to have the resolution of the amount of frames between beats.  (so speed 6 gives you 6 quantized steps within each beat on which to play a note)  A lot of trackers have delay commands to allow you to play on a particular frame within a beat.  (EDx in Protracker, for example)

Thank you this is very educational. I was wondering about the difference.

VGM file normat support sample-accurate data logging for sound chips (which includes the NES) - I am assuming .NSF is the same though I don't know the format at all.

I think the NSF format is more like the SID format in that it contains the code/music data of the player, and that it's up to players to emulate much of the hardware stack, although unlike SID, timing is defined in the header in terms of millionths of a second between calls, whereas in SID you'd either use a hardware timer period value or let it call on 50/60 Hz intervals (or leave it all up to the emulated player software).

You can convert between the two (usually speed 6 in a frame player is equal to 96 clock in midi) , but a frame-based player is only going to have the resolution of the amount of frames between beats.  (so speed 6 gives you 6 quantized steps within each beat on which to play a note)  A lot of trackers have delay commands to allow you to play on a particular frame within a beat.  (EDx in Protracker, for example)

Lines per beat

edit: As in, right now you can only make notes as small as quarter notes in Famitracker.  You can make shorter notes with pattern commands or volume envelopes, but this wouldn't allow you to make a rapid succession of notes.  You could try to do something with the arpeggiator in the instrument editor but this gives you poor control obviously and you'd need to make a new instrument for every few notes and it would be really hard to get it to sound the way you want.

As opposed to say, OpenMPT where you can just set LPB to 16 and now you can make 16th notes at any BPM you choose.

I don't think there's such a concept as "lines per beat" in Famitracker (I'm not sure if it's presented that way, though). It's all "ticks per line" If you want higher resolution, decrease the amount of ticks per step. Those steps that are quarter notes in your head could as well be 8ths 16ths, 32nds or even triplets. You can increase the speed so far as to have one tick per step. You can change the amount of ticks per step dynamically, so you can compose in a more comfortable way normally, and double or quadruple the speed when you get to more timing critical parts.

edit: As in, right now you can only make notes as small as quarter notes in Famitracker.  You can make shorter notes with pattern commands or volume envelopes, but this wouldn't allow you to make a rapid succession of notes.  You could try to do something with the arpeggiator in the instrument editor but this gives you poor control obviously and you'd need to make a new instrument for every few notes and it would be really hard to get it to sound the way you want.

As opposed to say, OpenMPT where you can just set LPB to 16 and now you can make 16th notes at any BPM you choose.

So theoretically, there could one day be a LPB added to Famitracker then?  Like when I make stuff in Renoise I use 16 LPB, and it seems Famitracker is permanently stuck on 4 which feels a little limiting to me sometimes.