llVeXXll
Offline

Hi again, sorry if making a new post for this is annoying sad I have spent days trying to find the answer to these questions with no luck. Please know, yes I have read the manual, twice.

1) Duty cycle, waveforms, timers:
I see nowhere to change the duty cycle/ pulse width modulation in MaXYmiser, and, nowhere to specify common waveforms, sawtooth, triangle, sine... I am assuming I have to do this manually with the "timer" sequence? I have been playing with the timer in the sequence editor all afternoon and I just can't work out what's going on! I've worked out that using one value for the upper half the entire sequence and another value for the lower half makes what sounds like a perfect square wave. That's about it. In fact, I am really confused about the timer sequence as a whole, which I'm guessing is more to do with my fundamental lack of knowledge about music synthesis. Like why does timer have to be there with SID, I don't even really understand what SID means. It was the c64 that had SID right? I don't understand what we are doing by choosing 01 05, are they 2 waveforms or something? What effect would a timer sequence have on an instrument with 01 00 in the mix sequence? What even is buzzer and syncbuzzer? I'm failing with the terminology. Sorry for being dumb sad

2) BPM:
So I noticed that changing the speed doesn't allow for precise control over the BPM so I increased the ticks in the box below to get 130 BPM. Something about this feels wrong, did I do it wrong? Am I right in thinking that playing with these settings will change the "groove"? (like LSDJ)

3) Making percussion and fixed frequency:
I have made basic bass and snare drum by ripping off the values in some other song I could open but I'm not sure I understand what's going on well enough to customize them. The mix sequence seems to have both square and noise? 01 00, then 10 00 and even 11 00 at the end. This makes me think the drum sound is made partially of a square wave like how you can make a kick drum in the pulse channel on LSDJ? I thought changing the note would let me see this but I think it's meant to be fixed, so I looked at the fixed frequency sequence and understand that these values are frequencies but how? Why does 0E EE = note C1?

4) Hop and kill?
How can I "hop" to the next pattern to make a waltz? And I see these rectangles that look like they mean "play nothing" how do I insert those?

Thankyouuuuu so much smile

Last edited by llVeXXll (Jun 11, 2016 7:33 pm)

gwEm
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London

1) there isn't duty cycle as such on the YM chip. you modulate a squarewave from software with the YM squarewave to get PWM like effects, but they aren't so controllable. If you want to do a pulse waveform this is possible, but fixed duty cycles are really best for that, you can program a sweep for it, but its alot of work and doesn't sound great. I think I answered your other questions here on facebook(?)

the YM has an envelope generator which is not that useful as it has only basic waves based on triangle and sawtooth waves. but you can play them at audio frequencies and get the waves in addition to the normal squarewave. they make a buzzing sound, so we call them buzzer. with sync buzzer you are retriggering the waves, in a similar way to the sync function on some analogue synths. if you play around with it you can get some filterish sounds.

2) yeah, you specify the number of ticks per 1/16 not step. and then the length of the tick (replay rate from 50-200Hz). but adjusting them both you can get the tempo you want.

3) Yes, the square channel works well with kickdrums. And you can mix some noise in too if you like. Thats the way to do it, unless you want to use samples for the drum sounds. The fixed frequency table in the online help is calculated from YM datasheet. If you are really interested in how the values are calculated I am happy to go into it, but you may just like to accept them wink

4) there is a pattern break effect, check the online help for that