Carbonthief
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Ok I realize that question doesn't make any sense, so I'm going to try to explain what it is I'm trying to ask.  The only way I can think of is by just describing a scenario.

Ok so if your goal is to make authentic sounding NES music on a modern PC, you have Famitracker.  And Famitracker is great, I love it.

But lets say you were to use either authentic samples, or the Plogue Chipsounds plugin, in a DAW, and limit yourself to 2 pulse channels 1 triangle channel etc.

And then you like, record a improvised pulse solo.  That's something you can't really do in Famitracker.  I mean you could, but it would miss the subtle details, and the "imperfections," because you have a limit on how short a note can be.

So maybe my question is making sense now.  Now in one way this would be "authentic" just because you could theoretically play that solo on a real NES if you got the special midi device and cart for it.  But would you be able to save that data on a cart without data loss?  And if not, does Famitracker accurately emulate the limits you would have, or can you get more with MML?

boomlinde
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Sweden

I think the limits, when it comes to timing, depends on the play routine. Normally a player would run once each frame (60 times per second on NTSC). If you recorded freely with a DAW, you'd likely notice some artefacts if you were to quantize stuff to 60 Hz ticks.

While they usually are in practice, players aren't necessarily limited to 60 Hz, though. You could have several ticks per screen redraw to increase the resolution, (probably) use a timer interrupt to advance the ticks at an arbitrary rate or so. The only real limit is how much time is spent on each tick in the play routine, which in most cases should be less of a worry to you than MIDI jitter.

If you are tracking and want to make things sound more natural, have a look at the note delay/cut commands. Some trackers will even let you record MIDI freely and insert the delay commands for you as you play.

little-scale
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ad-hell-aide

It sounds like you are asking about time-based resolution for music data events.

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.

As a result, the timing resolution for music data is much higher than your perception of music events in terms of real time playback - and could thus capture any imperfections from things like solos and so on.

The limits that you describe are limits of the platforms that are used to write the music - not of the NES itself.

little-scale
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ad-hell-aide

Agreed RE MIDI timing being of a lower resolution AND also potentially prone to more issues than a playback routine.

Carbonthief
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Thanks for the responses, I think that fully answers my question.  I have several years of metal guitar behind me, and as old habits die hard, sometimes yearn to rip a solo when I'm tracking.

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.

little-scale
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ad-hell-aide

What is LPB?

Carbonthief
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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.

Last edited by Carbonthief (Mar 30, 2013 12:31 am)

boomlinde
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Sweden
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.

Last edited by boomlinde (Mar 30, 2013 11:22 am)

4mat
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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)

Last edited by 4mat (Mar 30, 2013 1:17 pm)

boomlinde
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Sweden
little-scale wrote:

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).

breakphase
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Earth
4mat wrote:

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.

breakphase
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Earth
boomlinde wrote:
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.

Last edited by breakphase (Mar 30, 2013 7:37 pm)

sleepytimejesse
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Youngstown, OH

I think the line "restriction" is for convenience. In my experience upping the tempo (effectively increasing this lines-per-beat idea) works fine. And I think the Gxx command proves that smaller increments of time are well within reach of the programming but since we are working with a tracker designed for note-by-note composition rather than live performance these strict-ish lines are imposed for easy organization of events across time.

sleepytimejesse
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Youngstown, OH

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.

Carbonthief
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This thread turned into a ton of awesome information and I just wanted to say thankyou.

Saskrotch
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Chicago IL
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