Alive Dead Media 2020: Tracker and Chip Music

Home , Commodore 16, Demoscene, Fairchild Channel F, Gravis Ultrasound, Music Macro Language

1st day introduction, Markku Reunanen Pics gracefully provided by Wikimedia Commons Arrangements

See MyCourses for more details, but for now:

● Whoami, who’s here? ● Schedule of this week: history, MilkyTracker with Yzi, LSDJ with Miranda Kastemaa, holiday, ﬁnal concert ● 80% attendance, two tunes for the ﬁnal concert and a little jingle today ● Questions about the practicalities? History of Home Computer and Game Console Audio

● This is a vast subject: hundreds of different devices and chips starting from the late 1970s ● In the 1990s starts to become increasingly standardized (or boring, if you may :) so we’ll focus on earlier technology ● Not just hardware: how did you compose music with contemporary tools? ● Let’s hear a lot of examples – not using Zoom audio The Home Computer Boom

● At its peak in the 1980s, but started somewhat earlier with Apple II (1977), TRS-80 (1977) and Commodore PET (1977) ● Affordable microprocessors, such as Zilog Z80, MOS 6502 and the Motorola 6800 series ● In the 1980s the market grew rapidly with Commodore VIC-20 (1980) and C-64 (1982), Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1982), MSX compatibles (1983) … and many more! ● From enthusiast gadgets to game machines Enter the 16-bits

● Improving processors: Motorola 68000 series, Intel 8088/8086/80286 ● More colors, more speed, more memory, from tapes to ﬂoppies, mouse(!) ● Atari ST (1984), Commodore Amiga (1985), Apple Macintosh (1984) ● IBM PC and compatibles (1981) popular in the US, improving game capability Not Just Computers

● The same technology powered game consoles of the time ● Notable early ones: Fairchild Channel F (1976), Atari VCS aka. 2600 (1977), Mattel Intellivision (1979) ● “Video Game Crash” of 1983 ● In the 1980s Nintendo NES (1983), Sega Master System (1985) and Mega Drive (1988) ● Connection to synthesizers and popular music of the time Basic Waveforms Noise ● Random noise is also a common waveform on sound chips, it’s just not regular unlike the previous examples ● Useful for percussion instruments, such as snares and hi-hat, sound effects Beyond the Beeps

● By playing the waveform at different frequencies we get notes. The larger the amplitude, the louder the sound. ● Modifying the frequency and amplitude (i.e. volume) on the ﬂy gives character to the sound ● Turning a waveform simply on and off makes for mechanistic beeps, as real-world sounds aren’t like that ● So-called envelopes control how the volume behaves: fading in and out at different stages. ADSR is one of the simplest ones. Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release Experiment with Waves and ADSR

● https://www.keithmcmillen.com/blog/making-music-in-th e-browser-web-audio-midi-envelope-generator/ ● Let’s try in practice how different basic waveforms sound like and how applying ADSR changes them ● Might not work on Chrome, try Firefox or some other browser Real-World Sounds

Example of speech from the Aalto University Wiki Let There Be Sound!

● Sound was not a priority on the earliest computers – some didn’t even have any sound capabilities ● Not necessarily for games, but for warning beeps ● Game consoles, obviously, were a different ballgame ● Rate generators – one or multiple channels of square wave audio ● Usually just one feature of a clock chip ● A capacitor ﬁlters the sound and rounds it ● Often just 8 bits (256 different values) for the frequency The PC Speaker

● For long the standard PC sound device ● One-channel square wave audio from the clock chip, no volume control, just the frequency ● Quite different implementations across machines ● Tricks: arpeggio, vibrato, even digitized audio using Pulse-Code Modulation (computationally expensive) ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzfDOD4q0Kk ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izadA3nSPbk ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wivtSeGr_T8 At Times not Even That

● Sinclair ZX Spectrum – a popular British home computer (1982) ● Commonly used for games, but: no sound chip, not even a rate generator ● The processor can switch the output on or off: even continuous beeping is heavy. Small internal speaker. ● Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM), interleaving ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgUzteADsRI ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lacCH2h70w Programmable Sound Generators

● Separate sound chips with features like: multiple channels (3 typical), volume control, different waveforms, envelopes ● Still not possible to play digitized audio directly: processor-intensive ramping of volume up and down, amplitude modulation possible ● Used on most 8-bit home computers and game consoles ● Chip music usually refers to this era, either the real hardware or just the general style General Instrument AY-3-8910

● Or simply just “PSG” ● A typical representative of its kind: three square-wave channels, volume, noise and envelopes ● MSX Compatibles, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128k, Amstrad CPC, Intellivision, but also the 16-bit Atari ST ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TB3j8rlQrU ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohxzj7rBTDg MOS Sound Interface Device (SID)

● Used on the Commodore 64 ● Two models: 6581 and 8580 ● More capable than most PSGs: selectable waveforms, ADSR envelopes, variable pulse width, programmable analog ﬁlter and more ● Plenty of famous tunes and composers (see HVSC) ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhQIotlAxW8 ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6xhfDLaVtU ● Couldn’t get a SID composer to teach this week, sorry :) Meanwhile in Japan...

● Well, not just Japan, but rather typically so :) ● Frequency modulation (FM) based chips by Yamaha ● A selection of (sine-based) waveforms whose frequency is modulated by another oscillator ● Complex devices with effects and ADSR envelopes ● Many Japanese arcades, Sega Mega Drive, but also Adlib and SoundBlaster sound cards for the PC computers ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2aaSG3ICd0 Enter the Amiga

● Commodore’s 16-bit machine (1985), Amiga 500 (1987) very popular in Europe ● Extensive graphics and sound capabilities for the time ● Paula sound chip: no built-in waveforms, but 4 channels of 8-bit digital (PCM) audio with frequency and volume setting ● Stereo sound ● Real instruments from synthesizers, instruments and your favorite albums ● At times called wavetable synthesis Amiga (cont.)

● The tracker paradigm dominant on the Amiga, tightly reﬂects the hardware capabilities ● Used for professional music production too ● Digitized samples use much more memory than chip music, Amiga typically had one megabyte(!) ● Playing speech or other “real” sounds no more difﬁcult but a standard feature ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLMhBE99byM ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzx8imUo9kU And Then

● From 8 to 16-bit samples, CD quality ● Amiga-like wavetable cards enjoyed a momentary success in the mid-1990s: Gravis UltraSound (1992) and SoundBlaster AWE32 (1994) ● Quickly growing processing power made wavetable chips obsolete ● Now simple chips that can just play back digital samples ● Intel’s AC’97 standard (1997): surround sound and 48 kHz sampling rate Making Music

● What about tools? How did you compose music? ● Initially no particular tools, game music was commonly composed by programming in machine language in the mid-1980s ● https://www.1xn.org/text/C64/rob_hubbards_music.txt ● The musician was often an external person ● Some home computers let users do simple music using the built-in BASIC programming language (=main user interface of the machine) Back to 1983

● We’re sitting at the living room with our shiny new MSX computer and trying to make it play music ● WebMSX emulator: https://webmsx.org/ ● Create music using the play command ● Use an external text editor (not Word or Google Docs) to edit the command and then copy it with alt-b to the emulator – or just use the text box directly ● When done, copy paste it to the Drive Music Macro Language

● Basic syntax: play"notes","notes","notes" (you can have up to 3 channels playing) ● Quotation marks must be like this: " ● Notes: cdefgab, # can be used for sharp notes ● Specify the length with a number: c4, 1=full note, 2=half note and so on ● Much more here, if needed: https://www.msx.org/wiki/PLAY Concert

● Let’s listen to what the others have composed ● Copy paste from the Google Doc and try to ﬁgure out how they did it Emerging Tools

Soundmonitor (1986) by Chris Hülsbeck for the C-64 The Tracker Paradigm

● The roots of the tracker composing paradigm can be seen on Soundmonitor already ● Trackers evolved considerably on the Commodore Amiga and were the dominant way of making music, both in the hobbyist and professional circles ● Particularly characteristic software for the demoscene community ● Tomorrow you’ll get to try MilkyTracker yourself. ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKvreHmHKds Tracker Basics

The Ultimate Soundtracker (1987) by Karsten Obarski Another Tracker

FastTracker II (1994) by Triton for the PC Trackers Now and Then

● Trackers are still alive, in particular when composing for retro computers ● Cross-development: using a powerful modern computer for composing for an old one ● Not that typical in professional audio ● Renoise represents the current top of the line, a full commercial digital audio workstation: https://www.renoise.com/ That’s it!

This was pretty much it for the ﬁrst day. Any questions with regard to…

● History of home computers or game consoles? ● Sound chips? ● Trackers? ● Further readings or links? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEijimuzr8 – chiptune scandal(!)