Authentic, Faithful Music Compositions for Old Gaming Hardware

[Anonymous No.2448294]

I've noticed that when people compose "chiptune" works, they are often not based upon a certain chip's capabilities, but are just mapped to a MIDI soundfont or something like that.

I feel its significantly more impressive to pull it off on the original hardware, and that it is the restrictions of the hardware which brings out creative simplifications and abstractions of complex sounds.

Which artists do you feel bring out the hardware to its maximum potential, and what is there platform of choice?

Also, which trackers do you believe are the most versatile and capable in their reproduction of the original hardware?

I wanted to highlight HertzDevil and his MEGA ZUN series, which is an earnest attempt to reproduce Touhou tracks primarily on NES hardware, but also the Game Boy and the C64. Its currently on 74 songs, and despite relying a tad too much on arpeggios, it really shines for its dedication to authenticity, with the composer developing his own fork of FamiTracker to employ every trick in the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuXDHUYQXRc&list=PLA873DCDCC153AEE8&index=1

[Anonymous No.2450652]

>find something touted as an "NES remix"
>expanded audio, bonus points for VRC6
>arpeggios up the ass
>generally doesn't sound like what NES games actually sounded like
>mfw

Thing is, even basic 2A03 compositions with Famitracker sounds heads and shoulders above what most NES games even sounded like. You have people like that HertzDevil making Touhou wannabe music, when most NES games sounded like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_X3vVgleZ0

NES games only had 32 kB at BEST for music data, but the average FT composition takes up the entirety of an average NES game. Thus, I can't count them as "accurate" use of the hardware, not to mention these songs needing way too much system RAM to be used for a game.

[Anonymous No.2450693]

>>2450652
Silver surfer and solstice?

[Anonymous No.2450964]

>>2450652
this is the reason most "Sega Genesis remixes" frustrate the hell out of me and I never leave comments on anything in fear of being labeled a troll or a some kind of purist. it always often doesn't cover the fantastic range of the YM2612, there's like no PSG anywhere it's all just Sonic 3 and Knuckles Chaotix drums

[Anonymous No.2451040]

>>2450693
when I first heard the silver surfer music, I assumed it was a modern remix of old NES music

follin is so based

[Anonymous No.2451130]

>>2450652
sunsoft.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzsFS4Plmw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bNCGR1D9WE
Rob Hubbard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8TmIxHSBcU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt-X6-Kxm0Q

Arpeggios up the wazoo tends to be annoying, but it was more prevalent on C64 than on the NES, I guess many of these remixers comes from the C64 world.

[Anonymous No.2451157]

>>2450652
>generally doesn't sound like what NES games actually sounded like
Says a person who thinks that most NES games used one sound channel.

[Anonymous No.2451217]

Konami vrc6 www.soundcloud.com/vespeon

[Anonymous No.2451218]

Http://www.vespeon.com
Http://www.soundcloud.com/vespeon

[Anonymous No.2451698]

I haven't tried out the newest chip-tracker DefleMask, but it purports to emulate Genesis, PCE, NES, and some other stuff. I don't think it's free, but rather a "pay what you want" type of deal. It doesn't compress its samples the way I've normally heard Genesis/MD music, so you have some really strong-sounding drums in these mixes, but they might not be 100% accurate? I dunno.

For the longest time the best Genesis tracker was (and still is?) VGMM (sometimes VGM MM) - a freeware tracker program that emulates YM2612 6 channels (1 for DCM) and 4 PSG channels (3 square, one white noise).

Here's an example of VGMM, by me(!):
https://soundcloud.com/ec2151/the-return-of-arthur
https://soundcloud.com/ec2151/club-deville

Two examples of DefleMask:
https://soundcloud.com/5alazar/tale-of-firebrand
https://soundcloud.com/5alazar/shapeshifting-ninja-cat

[Totse Redux !!5+TqycLHDPW No.2451736]

I'd like to see someone write an actual rom and write it to a cart that is just a bad ass use of the NES's sound chip.

[Anonymous No.2451794]

Is there a program that you can write tunes with the original hardware in mind? Any old system. I hate those "8-bit" songs that are obviously re worked, and not how it sounded on nintendo.

[Anonymous No.2452068]

>>2451794

Easiest for NES is Famitracker, which strictly adheres to hardware limitations and lets you output actual NSF files.

Actually I recently arranged the entire Gradius III soundtrack with it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCMHkhTyHyw

[Anonymous No.2452119]

>>2450652
What are you even talking about? This is in-game NES music from the NES era:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF32DRg9opA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZiCNTT2CcQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fVz_aTbyWY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o65s78WI3oI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAN3Z8raOvQ

[Anonymous No.2452148]

>>2451130
How is the bass in the second clip done? It sounds amazing.

[Anonymous No.2452170]

>>2452148
Sunsoft was one of the rare (the only?) to use the NES PCM channel for bass, instead of the usual triangle.
https://youtu.be/la3coK5pq5w?t=1m40s

more sunsoft :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCImC5Cizis

[Anonymous No.2452180]

>>2452119
to be fair, Capcom NES tracks shine by their compositions, but they don't really push the limits of the hardware. In fact many if not all Capcom musics never use the sample channel.

[Anonymous No.2452182]

>>2452148
Using the NES's DPCM sampling channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEgoYUzwabI

[Anonymous No.2452198]

>>2452182
That was very informative, thank you

[Anonymous No.2452387]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vvVjyaz-4M
Does Norrin Radd count? I think it's pretty cool.

[Anonymous No.2452670]

>>2450693
Those games only had a few songs in them, possibly due to how complex the songs were.

>>2451130
Sunsoft games in particular had to compromise game length due to how much data their music chewed up. Skate or Die 2, and Immortal, are actually quite impressive given the length of the game, musical complexity, music variety, and musical tricks used. Then again, it's Rob Hubbard, that guy was a genius.

>>2452119
Capcom games were probably the closest you could come to those Famitracker compositions, but still, those songs are all very basic. A few notes with a vibrato here and there, with rudimentary noise and bass. Nothing special, at least nothing compared to the "average" FT composition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gmVGsQbDl8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcoKY9G-4ss

Neither of these would actually be feasible for use in an NES game. Famitracker is a music tool first and foremost, NES development tool not even considered as it completely eskews the NES' memory limitations. The closest you'd get would be by writing the songs entirely in hexadecimal, then you have songs that sound like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjoCRPHA4Gc

tl;dr Famitracker compositions greatly exaggerate what the NES was really capable of.

[Anonymous No.2452717]

>>2450652
>Thing is, even basic 2A03 compositions with Famitracker sounds heads and shoulders above what most NES games even sounded like.
it helps that FT is a fuckton nicer than what developers had to work with back in the NES era, and many games didn't even have a skilled composer working

Sure, some FT songs wouldn't be feasible for use on cart (that being said, the FT engine is generally light enough to use in-game, and it is designed so you can cut un-needed features from it to save memory and CPU time), but you can do a damn lot more than sounding like Lode Runner in an actual game, and even other games from that early period didn't sound that simple.
also, many NES games use few channels for music so that they aren't interrupted during SFX playback (this also does save memory)
Once you get into 1989-era and up NES stuff, you quickly approach music that sounds like the average FT song. Heavy DPCM usage, complex melodies, the works. A combination of larger ROM size and greater knowledge of the machine.

it's not like a SuperNSF generated track (which plays four freely-pitched sample channels and NES audio at once -- works all on real HW, but completely and utterly unfeasible for use in a game, I don't even think you have time to show moving graphics on screen, also they're huge)

arpeggios are a bit of a C64 and tracker tradition that will pretty much be in almost any tracked chipmusic (and simply wasn't used in NES music of the era because Japanese composers didn't really know of the technique at the time more than anything else -- it was very much rooted in European computer music, of which the tracker scene originally hails from) and let you do complex chord sounds with very little note data/memory usage, and that's just always going to be there

vrc6 overuse needs to stop though (but it is very, very comfortable to work with, too comfortable)

[Anonymous No.2453091]

>>2452717
>(and simply wasn't used in NES music of the era
It was, it was just more reasonably used.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-RjkK6QQ4Y