Norrin_Radd
Offline
Surrey, BC Canada

Episode 01 - Fundamentals of 8bit: https://youtu.be/EQn3sTnf32g
Episode 02 - Title Screen: https://youtu.be/hGizkHRY0js
Episode 03 - Intro Video: https://youtu.be/fw2KulEJmO0
Episode 04 - Stage 01 Forest: https://youtu.be/gAJWQJBnpGs
Episode 05 - Stage 02 City: https://youtu.be/C9RFIxutMWQ
Episode 06 - Stage 07 Factory: https://youtu.be/6yAkQsyZSAg
Episode 07 - Stage 08 Castle: https://youtu.be/sOw-UVZmmeU
Episode 08 - Final Boss: https://youtu.be/pRuFXiw-mgk

For those of you who don't know me, I am kind of an old timer in the NES music community. So old that I have been and still am using ModPlug to create my NES music, while trying to be as faithful as I can. Of course, using ModPlug presents a lot of problems in achieving anything resembling a familiar sound. I know FamiTracker is a far superior application for the creation of NES music, but just in case you were curious about what it looked like to be fiddling around with this stuff in the early 2000s, here's a breakdown of my methods with some goofy picture in picture live commentary going over my most recent tracks.

This may be entertaining even just to see how haggard my approach has been.

Sorry if this is a spammy thing to do, but hopefully this series is juuuuuust interesting enough to be worth a thread.

Last edited by Norrin_Radd (Jan 14, 2016 10:39 pm)

gotoandplay
Offline

Nice tutorial. There should be more of this kind of stuff out there. There's plenty that exist for famitracker but the more esoteric the tracker is, the less likely there is going to be video tutorials like this. Well done!

bitpusher2600
Offline

I just want to say hello, and that I'm enjoying your videos.

I've been wanting to tinker with some NES beats myself, but he'll I struggle doing anything really decent with Little Sound DJ, let alone something as big as a NES tracker. That said, I only knew of FamiTracker, never really heard of ModPlug. If I can ask, why (for you) is this preferable to FamiTracker? Just curious. The tunes you are making sound like proper NES to me.

Last edited by bitpusher2600 (Dec 21, 2015 5:59 pm)

Norrin_Radd
Offline
Surrey, BC Canada
gotoandplay wrote:

Nice tutorial. There should be more of this kind of stuff out there. There's plenty that exist for famitracker but the more esoteric the tracker is, the less likely there is going to be video tutorials like this. Well done!

This is relieving to hear! I was very curious how a ModPlug tutorial\walkthrough would be received in this day and age, now that FamiTracker effectively does everything an NES musician could ever want. Hopefully the spirit of the composition process is fairly universal, and yes, the specifics of ModPlug in particular are very close to being lost in time. Though, oddly enough, even as a heavy ModPlug user, my methods are bizarre, and probably not normal to begin with. I have basically been using the application in isolation for 14 years, trying to create one specific type of extremely niche music. That's weirder, the more that I think about it...

bitpusher2600 wrote:

I just want to say hello, and that I'm enjoying your videos.

I've been wanting to tinker with some NES beats myself, but he'll I struggle doing anything really decent with Little Sound DJ, let alone something as big as a NES tracker. That said, I only knew of FamiTracker, never really heard of ModPlug. If I can ask, why (for you) is this preferable to FamiTracker? Just curious. The tunes you are making sound like proper NES to me.

Great question! One that unfortunately has a long winded answer, I apologize. ModPlug is definitely not better for creating authentic NES music than FamiTracker, but it is more preferable for me mostly due to the fact that it is not built to be authentic. Since it does not adhere rigidly to the NES guidelines, it allows for a lot of bending the rules which make the composition process infinitely more smooth. Though rest assured, the more authentic you want to sound in ModPlug, the more time and effort on your part will have to be spent on achieving that sound. Samples that sound good are just one solution to the problem. There are many other pitfalls that present themselves when you are left without a compiler as a definitive guard rail. But, when you know what they are, you can begin to incorporate them and envision your ideas through them just as if you yourself are the compiler. This can also lead to having a somewhat peculiar sound, for better or worse.

I do find that using LSDJ or FamiTracker have their caveats. They are the most authentic sound, and allow all creative endeavors to remain compilable. For people that are interested in pushing the limits of the soundchips, these are the only true solution. But they often times do not allow you to bend the rules for the sake of speeding up the composition process. And it is the composition process that I like to push, if that makes sense (in other words, I mainly want to hear my ideas through this self imposed protocol). That's where I found I had a lot of trouble using FamiTracker rather than ModPlug. Dealing with pattern structure and memory and limited numbers of columns has often been a bottleneck for my own personal creative process. I think of it almost like encumbrance in a Bethesda game. I want to carry more carrots so that I can eventually do this really dumb thing I have in mind, let's say, but as a result I am often times having to dungeon crawl in my underwear just so I can carry all the carrots back to my house. While adhering to these limitations of the soundchip (or game engine in the case of a Bethesda game) are another aspect to the appeal of making chiptunes, it is not necessarily where my interest are. But I do also really like sounding as close to the original as possible, don't get me wrong.

The more you know about NES sound construction, the more you can manipulate ModPlug in to simulating a reasonable facsimile for the NES sound. This series of videos is kind of meant to illustrate how I went about doing that. Only real h-core NES heads will be able to pick your sound out of a lineup and call it "fakebit". But, for me, even when they do this is a term of endearment for me because I know how much effort I put into creating what is at this stage, a fairly uncommon method for achieving a common sound.

What is art, even, anymore, eh?

2PLAYER
Offline
Rhode Island

Just checked out your first video and started your second one last night. I wanted to chime in and echo how enjoyable they are but from a different standpoint. I use a DAW with MIDI (midines/arduinoboy/etc) but I enjoyed learning about your creative process. It has been funny to see analogies to things I do during my writing process like copying patterns and ending up with bizarro hidden pseudo-songs in a file or keeping and relistening to older tracks.
However, the best part about your whole series IMO is when you pick out the subtle NES composition elements of old soundtracks. I spend a lot of time listening to and digesting old NES soundtracks for ideas and hearing someone provide a new angle on them has been intriguing. Keep up the great work.

Norrin_Radd
Offline
Surrey, BC Canada

Episode 04 is out, and goes over the first level song from Venture Kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAJWQJBnpGs

On this forum, in particular, I feel like I can dive in to a bit of a description about some of the topics covered in the video. I go over using the triangle channel as a kick drum technically, but also from a song writing perspective, and some reasons as to you would want to do that. I also go over tone portamento being used to simulate hammer on pull off sounds on a guitar. And finally I go over some concepts of gluing each pattern of your song together with the next. I believe these are all concepts that can benefit Modplug users and FamiTracker users alike. But also, song writers in general may enjoy the breakdowns.

Also, I am trying to promote this series in the most responsible and least annoying way, but I have no idea where it is appropriate, and wont come off as soliciting. If any of you have suggestions for similar communities, or websites I should investigate, please let me know.

2PLAYER wrote:

Just checked out your first video and started your second one last night. I wanted to chime in and echo how enjoyable they are but from a different standpoint. I use a DAW with MIDI (midines/arduinoboy/etc) but I enjoyed learning about your creative process. It has been funny to see analogies to things I do during my writing process like copying patterns and ending up with bizarro hidden pseudo-songs in a file or keeping and relistening to older tracks.
However, the best part about your whole series IMO is when you pick out the subtle NES composition elements of old soundtracks. I spend a lot of time listening to and digesting old NES soundtracks for ideas and hearing someone provide a new angle on them has been intriguing. Keep up the great work.

Thanks 2PLAYER! That is some fantastic feedback. I am really happy to hear that DAW users are able to enjoy aspects of this series, or at the very least, relate to the creative process. that is almost my main goal for this series is to just translate what I am doing to others, rather than actually make a tutorial on chiptunes. And it also puts a smile on my face knowing that others just keep sliding the bizarro alternate sections to the back of their tracks, haha smile

Norrin_Radd
Offline
Surrey, BC Canada

Bump, just to share that episode 05 and 06 are out. Video 05 in particular goes over 8bit song structure in great length, and how to keep your listener from getting bored or lost. Or at least my interpretation of how to do that, that is. Video 06 goes in to some detail about how to come up with a motif for your style of level. Is it a fire level, an ice level, a city level, or in this case, a Factory level.

Be sure to check out the annotations, since there are tons of links to stuff I talk about.

Also, the reason this series of videos started was to hype up the release of the Venture Kid soundtrack, which is apparently in 3 days...? WHAAAA?! I might have one more video up before then, but thanks for checking out this stuff all the same everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM6R7unOABU

Last edited by Norrin_Radd (Jan 12, 2016 12:32 am)

Nullatrum
Offline
CA

Definitely watching this. Great work

Parsenyo
Offline
Norrin_Radd wrote:
gotoandplay wrote:

Nice tutorial. There should be more of this kind of stuff out there. There's plenty that exist for famitracker but the more esoteric the tracker is, the less likely there is going to be video tutorials like this. Well done!

This is relieving to hear! I was very curious how a ModPlug tutorial\walkthrough would be received in this day and age, now that FamiTracker effectively does everything an NES musician could ever want. Hopefully the spirit of the composition process is fairly universal, and yes, the specifics of ModPlug in particular are very close to being lost in time. Though, oddly enough, even as a heavy ModPlug user, my methods are bizarre, and probably not normal to begin with. I have basically been using the application in isolation for 14 years, trying to create one specific type of extremely niche music. That's weirder, the more that I think about it...

bitpusher2600 wrote:

I just want to say hello, and that I'm enjoying your videos.

I've been wanting to tinker with some NES beats myself, but he'll I struggle doing anything really decent with Little Sound DJ, let alone something as big as a NES tracker. That said, I only knew of FamiTracker, never really heard of ModPlug. If I can ask, why (for you) is this preferable to FamiTracker? Just curious. The tunes you are making sound like proper NES to me.

Great question! One that unfortunately has a long winded answer, I apologize. ModPlug is definitely not better for creating authentic NES music than FamiTracker, but it is more preferable for me mostly due to the fact that it is not built to be authentic. Since it does not adhere rigidly to the NES guidelines, it allows for a lot of bending the rules which make the composition process infinitely more smooth. Though rest assured, the more authentic you want to sound in ModPlug, the more time and effort on your part will have to be spent on achieving that sound. Samples that sound good are just one solution to the problem. There are many other pitfalls that present themselves when you are left without a compiler as a definitive guard rail. But, when you know what they are, you can begin to incorporate them and envision your ideas through them just as if you yourself are the compiler. This can also lead to having a somewhat peculiar sound, for better or worse.

I do find that using LSDJ or FamiTracker have their caveats. They are the most authentic sound, and allow all creative endeavors to remain compilable. For people that are interested in pushing the limits of the soundchips, these are the only true solution. But they often times do not allow you to bend the rules for the sake of speeding up the composition process. And it is the composition process that I like to push, if that makes sense (in other words, I mainly want to hear my ideas through this self imposed protocol). That's where I found I had a lot of trouble using FamiTracker rather than ModPlug. Dealing with pattern structure and memory and limited numbers of columns has often been a bottleneck for my own personal creative process. I think of it almost like encumbrance in a Bethesda game. I want to carry more carrots so that I can eventually do this really dumb thing I have in mind, let's say, but as a result I am often times having to dungeon crawl in my sexy underwear just so I can carry all the carrots back to my house. While adhering to these limitations of the soundchip (or game engine in the case of a Bethesda game) are another aspect to the appeal of making chiptunes, it is not necessarily where my interest are. But I do also really like sounding as close to the original as possible, don't get me wrong.

The more you know about NES sound construction, the more you can manipulate ModPlug in to simulating a reasonable facsimile for the NES sound. This series of videos is kind of meant to illustrate how I went about doing that. Only real h-core NES heads will be able to pick your sound out of a lineup and call it "fakebit". But, for me, even when they do this is a term of endearment for me because I know how much effort I put into creating what is at this stage, a fairly uncommon method for achieving a common sound.

What is art, even, anymore, eh?

Nice,to explain.