VIC-TRACKER COMPO 2005 official thread!

tlr · Post by **tlr** » Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:15 pm

I hereby announce the VIC-TRACKER COMPO 2005!

VIC-TRACKER COMPO 2005 is a friendly competition to squeeze out some interresting music and
sounds from one of the most restrictive sound hardware produced.

SOUND HARDWARE
The Vic-20 has 3 channels of square wave, one channel of noise, and a 4-bit global volume.
The frequency is determined by a 7-bit value for each of the 4 channels.
The three square wave channels have different frequency ranges. they are one octave apart.

RULES
- Entries must be composed in VIC-TRACKER.
- A real vic-20 is preferred, but using an emulator is encouraged if you don't have a vic-20.
- The Competition starts Saturday October the 22nd, 2005.
- Entries must be submitted before Thursday December the 1st, 2005.
- Visit the VIC-TRACKER COMPO 2005 page for complete rules.

Feel free to post questions in this thread, or mail to victracker [at] kahlin [dot] net.

tlr · Post by **tlr** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:20 pm

The first entry has already arrived!

Sjamembi 8 by Anders Carlsson.

Head to the compo 2005 page to hear it!

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Thu Oct 27, 2005 5:24 pm

*cough*

Daniel, do you (or someone else on this forum) have any relation to Emmaus Björkå, an independent charity foundation which donates money to freedom fighting organisations around the world?

This charity foundation currently has a VIC-20 for sale:
http://www.tradera.com/auction/AMIGA___ ... d_19932168

The seller added the following note (translated into English):

Emmaus, Malmö wrote:I was just told by my premier source when it comes to Commodore and/or music related stuff, that there is a music program for VIC-20 called VIC-TRACKER (link), and you can compose real machine music (link). Listen and then tell me it is not cooler than Antarktis. As by a coincidence, you need a 16K memory expansion to run it, which you can find here (link to other ongoing auction).

Leif's disk utility cartridge is a fund raiser in research about AIDS, and Daniel's music program is mentioned together with charity foundations. It seems the VIC-20 community these days is doing good!

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 3:41 am

Before I enter this contest you need to add these things to your program:

* Instread of just typing numbers into the tracks, you should be able to use the vic keyboard as a piano keyboard. Just like SoundTracker, NoiceTracker, ProTracker, StarTrekker, DigiBooster, Octamed, FastTracker etc works.

* While you insert the tones with this piano keyboard, you should also hear the tones.

* In the tracks, things like C-2, D-2 and G#1 should be seen...

As it is now, it's just totally unusable for me... (If I not have missed something here...)

/Anders

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:03 am

I belive both Daniel and me (as a user) are aware of that, but it is a matter of how to fit it on screen. PAL users may be able to view a screen that is expanded to 26 columns, but not sure about NTSC. There are some alternatives (custom font, mix of upper and lower case, inverse characters etc). Perhaps there could be an option to display only four of the five channels (incl. volume/tempo channel) at once?

I also found the numerical system a bit odd, but after a while, it came somewhat natural: C1 = 10, A1 = 19, C2 = 20, C3 = 30 etc. On the other hand, I compose the music elsewhere (OctaMED) and just sequence from a printout, which may be a bit simpler.

aneurysm · Post by **aneurysm** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:10 am

I completely agreed with Boray until I started to use it. And I wouldn't have if it wasn't for this compo. But now I've got a few bars of music written and it all kind of makes sense. I still have hopes of making my own tracker someday and this one has given me some stuff to think about like note duration.
Just think of traditional trackers as BASIC and this thing as ASM.

tlr · Post by **tlr** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:12 am

carlsson wrote:Daniel, do you (or someone else on this forum) have any relation to Emmaus Björkå, an independent charity foundation which donates money to freedom fighting organisations around the world?

This charity foundation currently has a VIC-20 for sale:
http://www.tradera.com/auction/AMIGA___ ... d_19932168

The seller added the following note (translated into English):
Emmaus, Malmö wrote:I was just told by my premier source when it comes to Commodore and/or music related stuff, that there is a music program for VIC-20 called VIC-TRACKER (link), and you can compose real machine music (link). Listen and then tell me it is not cooler than Antarktis. As by a coincidence, you need a 16K memory expansion to run it, which you can find here (link to other ongoing auction).

No releation though, but the announcement has been spread on several fora and mailing lists, so alot of people have probably heard of it.

tlr · Post by **tlr** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:20 am

Boray wrote:Before I enter this contest you need to add these things to your program:

* Instread of just typing numbers into the tracks, you should be able to use the vic keyboard as a piano keyboard. Just like SoundTracker, NoiceTracker, ProTracker, StarTrekker, DigiBooster, Octamed, FastTracker etc works.

* While you insert the tones with this piano keyboard, you should also hear the tones.

* In the tracks, things like C-2, D-2 and G#1 should be seen...

As it is now, it's just totally unusable for me... (If I not have missed something here...)

I don't think it is completely unusable...

Seriously though, Like carlsson says, I choose to implement the notes as hex values for reasons of screen space.
These things are listed in the TODO list, but I will not have time to implement it before the competition deadline.

The logic of the hex notes is that the first digit is the octave, and the second digit is which note within that octave.
This is the same system as in GB Composer and the Skyline Technics editor, and a couple of others.

There's some discussion about additional features in this thread.

I should mention a couple of limitations and recommendations for the current version:

- The maximum pattern length is 32 steps. (1F)

- The maximum number of different patterns is 128 (00-7F).

- Carlsson recommends using a lower volume than F to reduce distorsion (if desired). 8 is probably good.

- Using arpeggio mode 0 in the noise channel does not work predictably.

- Introducing an arpeggio during a tie may not work as expected.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:23 am

This is what I found out about arpeggios:

The default type of arpeggio is type 0 (traditional stepwise, for chords etc). It seems to always work, no matter if it is a tie note or not. Also independent on whether the arpeggio begins on the first line or on a subsequent step.

The other major type of arpeggio is 1 (frequency, for glide/vibrato etc). It only takes effect if it is put on the same line as the note itself. If it is introduced in a later step, it will be considered as a type 0 arpeggio, no matter what you specified in the arpeggio editor!

When it comes to tie notes, they seem to inherit the arpeggio type (currently 0 or 1) from the previous note rather than obeying what the arpeggio definition says. The rest of the arpeggio data is correct though. If the previous note didn't have any arpeggio or played a type 0 arpeggio, the tie note will also always be considered to have a type 0 arpeggio. On the other hand, if the previous note successfully played a type 1 arpeggio, the tie note can start its type 1 arpeggio whenever you want...

Furthermore, if you have a note with a type 1 arpeggio directly followed (no silence) by a tied note with a type 0 arpeggio, the outcome on the tie note is a straight note. Not sure why.

As long as all the offsets in the type 1 arpeggio are positive, you may not notice these bugs, but if you use negative values (40-7F), you will definitely hear that something is odd. Notice that you can turn the arpeggio on and off on subsequent lines, for further experimenting.

There is also a bug with tie notes on portamento (effects 1X, 2X, 5X, 6X). I don't know exactly how to diagnose it, but there seems to be a miscalculation in the note table when a portamento is followed by a tie note. If you need this combo, you can manually adjust the tie note to a different value than you expect, but it will sound correct (in this version of VIC-TRACKER).

I may have found one or two more issues, of which some I told Daniel and some I found a work-around for and forgot to mention. The arpeggios above should give him some nice headache to start with.

tlr · Post by **tlr** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 12:16 pm

carlsson wrote:This is what I found out about arpeggios:

The default type of arpeggio is type 0 (traditional stepwise, for chords etc). It seems to always work, no matter if it is a tie note or not. Also independent on whether the arpeggio begins on the first line or on a subsequent step.

The other major type of arpeggio is 1 (frequency, for glide/vibrato etc). It only takes effect if it is put on the same line as the note itself. If it is introduced in a later step, it will be considered as a type 0 arpeggio, no matter what you specified in the arpeggio editor!

When it comes to tie notes, they seem to inherit the arpeggio type (currently 0 or 1) from the previous note rather than obeying what the arpeggio definition says. The rest of the arpeggio data is correct though. If the previous note didn't have any arpeggio or played a type 0 arpeggio, the tie note will also always be considered to have a type 0 arpeggio. On the other hand, if the previous note successfully played a type 1 arpeggio, the tie note can start its type 1 arpeggio whenever you want...

Furthermore, if you have a note with a type 1 arpeggio directly followed (no silence) by a tied note with a type 0 arpeggio, the outcome on the tie note is a straight note. Not sure why.

As long as all the offsets in the type 1 arpeggio are positive, you may not notice these bugs, but if you use negative values (40-7F), you will definitely hear that something is odd. Notice that you can turn the arpeggio on and off on subsequent lines, for further experimenting.

Great bug description!

carlsson wrote:There is also a bug with tie notes on portamento (effects 1X, 2X, 5X, 6X). I don't know exactly how to diagnose it, but there seems to be a miscalculation in the note table when a portamento is followed by a tie note. If you need this combo, you can manually adjust the tie note to a different value than you expect, but it will sound correct (in this version of VIC-TRACKER).

This is intentional.
The point is that you should be able to do a legato run while simultaneously bending a note. Compare with guitar right-hand tap while simultaneously applying a bend.

The only way of resetting the bend value is currently by triggering a new note. It is in the TODO list to implement a player command to reset the bend-value manually.

You can simulate ties with bend-reset by setting the length of the sound to a value larger than the speed-value, and using regular notes instead of ties. If you want one of these sounds to be shorter you can always selectably use the cut command (Cx) or switch sounds on the fly.

carlsson wrote:I may have found one or two more issues, of which some I told Daniel and some I found a work-around for and forgot to mention. The arpeggios above should give him some nice headache to start with.

Yes, I'll have to think about those for a moment... Most of the problems should be possible to find useful workarounds for though.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 3:32 pm

I don't think the display of hex is the biggest problem. I could cope with that. The other two things I said are much more important to me...

I'm so sorry that my own vic tracker is no more... I formatted the disk containing the only copy by accident around 1991. (It had a ML player and a Basic editor... with the features I want

) I think I have one mp3 from it somewhere. Have I posted it here before?

/Anders

tlr · Post by **tlr** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 4:21 am

Boray wrote:I don't think the display of hex is the biggest problem. I could cope with that. The other two things I said are much more important to me...

You have the source...

Modifying the editor will not violate the rules in any way. It's just (currently) required that the player is the same.

Boray wrote:I'm so sorry that my own vic tracker is no more... I formatted the disk containing the only copy by accident around 1991. (It had a ML player and a Basic editor... with the features I want ) I think I have one mp3 from it somewhere. Have I posted it here before?

I don't remember having seen/heard it.

Anyway... this particular compo requires you to use vic-tracker, I'm looking forward to compos for other music programs though!

It'd be fun if you made an entry for the compo!

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:53 am

You wouldn't have to change the player to add those functions. You could just have an alternative edit mode. The sound while you insert the notes doesn't have to sound as they do in the player, just a short beep of the correct tone is enough. In my tracker, you heard a beep like that from all of the tracks that contained a tone when you inserted a tone on one track, so that you heard the "harmony" so to say... That would be nice to have in your tracker.

/Anders

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 11:01 am

Here is my tune (out of contest):
http://user.tninet.se/~zmj477m/VIC-20.mp3

...not very complex, but it's all I have left from my tracker because I had recorded this tune on tape...

/Anders

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 3:57 pm

Hm, a live play mode (as it is called in other trackers) may be a good feature. Currently, the best you can get is to set start and stop to the same block, mute the other channels and edit while playing the same block over and over.