same old shit, different place eh akira?

Try eternity.xm out of my archive.  It has the double instrument fine tune, the one in there called 'Blank Page' does the X command trick.

4mat, I couldn't really get that SID sound out of the saw-tooth waveform trick. All I really got was what seemed like just a 2 note chord .

Care to link to a good example?

Wow, 4mat, That is extremely helpful! Will definitely mess around with that.

Harhar akira, I was trying to keep the title short. I guess I could have used "chiptune artist" instead. >.>

You are a chiptuner? I have a Subaru Impreza that needs chip tuning, send me a mail.

o_O

Re: gear... you don't need it to get started.  Once you've found the sound you're after, then hardware really comes in handy, especially if we're talking handhelds, which are convenient to compose on vs. a notebook.  If you plan on performing, hardware will practically be a necessity.  There's no need to go gear crazy, but let's face it, acquisition is pretty fun if you can afford it.  My advice is to expand slowly, use what you buy, and maybe sell what you thought you'd use but don't.

In Milkytracker if you've got a square wave you can make the other Gameboy/NES waves from it.  Say it's 64 bytes long, make the loop 32 bytes big within it (moving the start and end points in so there's an equal amount of wave above and below the middle point),  now drop the instrument by an octave to get the pitch back where it was if you want.  (keep the rest of the sample, don't minimise yet)

To get the other tone timbres just move the the start loop point back so you have unequal amounts of wave above & below the middle line.  That's the principals of pulsewidth modulation and how the Gameboy/NES timbres are generated.  (it's been a few years since I wrote Gameboy games but I think they were 12.5%, 25%, 50%, 75% "duty" for the waveforms)  The Gameboy's third channel uses the same method, you can have your own (32-byte?) waveforms on it.

For "SID" (c64/Amiga) emulation:

Generate a saw-tooth wave, duplicate it to another instrument and reverse the new sample.  Now change the finetune of the second insturment to +8 or above.  Play the same pitched note on two channels and you'll get some automatic pulsewidth modulation.   For more on that you might want to read this tutorial.

I'm saying you SHOULD use them. Personally I think it's cool to use all platforms of hardware and software to make music on.

This is what I was wondering. I guess I want to make chipmusic using wavform manipulation and not just samples. I could just do that in FLStudio easy...

Gonna look up some tuts for it soon. Thanks for this, it really helps!

My number 1 suggestion to you is to learn how to make your own waveforms. It's really handy, especially with drums.

Milkytracker has a waveform generator. Set the sample size to like 64 (that's the size I usually stick with.) then right click, go to Generators (I think?) and you can select Saw, Sine, Square, and Noise. For square is only gives you a 50% wave. If you want something else just make it less of a square and more of a rectangle.

Also, you don't need cool samples, you just gotta know how to make the simple ones sound cool. i.e. combining waveforms and junk.

Just mess around with things. Oh, and MilkyTracker and Famitracker are COMPLETELY different. Famitracker is for making NES music. Just sayin.

To answer your question. You seem to have everything you need, except perhaps the cart for the GB.

You mention a laptop and the lack of MIDI.  If you want to sync up you will need a MIDI interface and a LSDJMC^2 or Arduinoboy.  These also work without MIDI for synching two GBs together.   But if you're not planning on syncing to the laptop/sequencer or other outboard or another GB, then this is an unnecessary step.

Hope that helps, have fun

p.s. some people are a bit precious when it comes to chip music, gear etc.  My advice : Just ignore, get help where you can and get on with it

Speaking of which, back in the studio this weekend  - w00t!

Yes, you're right.  A lot of tracked music now uses a ton of channels and effects that weren't originally possible (or were they? but most music didn't use it that I've heard from the mid/early 90s).  Also people have a predefined assumption in their own head when they hear "chipmusic" and an explanation of it.  Someone from Europe might think of Amiga / C64 / SMS stuff, someone from the US will probably think NES or Atari if they're old enough and those from Japan will probably think Famicom.  It's pretty region-specific from what I've seen, and now that the "scene" is opening up to other areas than just Europe, ideas start to clash, etc.

wait, what do i know? i just write music and bury my head in the sand the rest of the time

best of luck in your endeavors.

@ dexter

Haha, thanks, but I doubt it.

@z-z-z-butt

Well, I could've just used modplug then. That's what I used to use before. My problem has always been trying to come up with cool samples. Does anyone have a link to a waveform generator? I remember seeing one ages ago that let you mix various frequencies of different wave forms, but I have had no luck searching for it. Any hints for samples?

Also I've picked up piggytracker for windows. Pretty sweet program. And my computer makes LSDJ sound like crap. >.<

@nickmaynard

Yeah, I've never done midi stuff before, I'll probably pass on it. And some of the prices for GBs that have backlights and prosound mods are ridiculous! It's only like <$20 for parts to do it yourself...

Which is why you're at a site called chipmusic, I guess.