Moonsound Music Editor and Replayer Using only Samples

Paragon (1140)

30-05-2020, 10:39

Hi guys !!

I had an idea.
Years ago when I was working on the Streetfighter port to MSX I was amazed by the fact that the Moonsound cartridge can play samples using it's own cpu. Meaning, you can play any kind of samples at a decent samplerate without slowing down the cpu of the MSX itself.

This got me thinking. Wouldn't it be great to create music for the Moonsound cartridge using this principle ?
So the music does nothing more than playing back samples.
The result would be a really fast replayer, since playing back the samples is handled by the Moonsound cpu.

Is this an idea worth working on, or does such a thing already exists ? (I know about Moonblaster wave, but this is superslow)

Another thing I am thinking of is having the tracker/music editor in windows, since this works better and faster.

I have always been a big fan of programs like Cubase and Logic.
And it would be great to compose in a similar matter for Moonsound for MSX.

Any thoughts ?

By syn

Prophet (2123)

30-05-2020, 11:01

moonblaster for moonsound and ms2 exist on the msx as editors,

and sootsound as a fasttracker replayer for msx.

By norakomi

Paragon (1140)

30-05-2020, 11:01

Yes, but I'm thinking about something fast.... moonblaster really slows down your game/project so much.
And making music in windows instead of a tracker in msx is 100x better...

By syn

Prophet (2123)

30-05-2020, 11:21

im pretty sure MS2 will have a lighting fast replayer

and sootsound is a replayer for xm files (fasttracker/milkytracker which are pc tracker), I think this is exactly what you are looking for?

By syn

Prophet (2123)

30-05-2020, 11:19

norakomi wrote:

And making music in windows instead of a tracker in msx is 100x better...

I dont agree with this at all Somehow i like working in trilotracker more than anything, even though its run in an emulator, and I'm a guy who have spend many euros on musical software/vsts/sample packs

By norakomi

Paragon (1140)

30-05-2020, 12:31

sootsound seems fine indeed, but it's too hard to obtain the converter program (XM-to-LTM module converter program).
And MS2 is in development since 2011.

So you actually prefer working on the msx in trilotracker.... Ok, I wonder how many people would be interested in making MSX music with pc software.

For me personally, I wanna be able to make music with my mouse, and with a big screen with a huge resolution.
On a 256x212 screen without mouse doesn't really do it for me.

By syn

Prophet (2123)

30-05-2020, 12:40

ah so you want a DAW-style pianoroll editor?
I like both tracker and pianoroll, and it kinda depends on my mood or purpose.. for msx chips like psg/opll/scc i think a tracker makes more sense, although i wanna make a msx tune in ableton live sometimes using vst equivalants of the msx chips

By Grauw

Ascended (10768)

30-05-2020, 12:51

What about using a combination of existing tools and some converter scripts? E.g. use Renoise or Reaper to compose the music, adhering to the restrictions of the OPL4. And then exporting to MIDI and hopefully some wave-set export format, which you convert with some scripts to a compact VGM-like file format suitable for play-back on MSX.

The advantage of this would be that you can reuse the existing DAWs and don’t have to create a full editor. Perhaps it can even be generic and work on any DAW. I made a thing a while back, but it’s not for OPL4 and also currently only for live playback, a converter still has to be made. But you can see MSX music editing is possible in various DAWs (in those videos, Renoise, Logic Pro and BeatStep Pro).

By norakomi

Paragon (1140)

30-05-2020, 13:36

Quote:

ah so you want a DAW-style pianoroll editor?

Yes exactly !

using existing tools and converter scripts seems like an idea, but how do i make such a script ?
The problem is I can't code c++, so unless I learn this, or someone joins me in this project, this will just be nothing more than a brainstorm session.

I mean I would love to make my own DAW for this, a very simple DAW. The DAW only needs to:
1) play sample
2) change volume
3) change panning
4) change pitch

And have multiple channels. That's all, nothing more needed imo.
The big question is:
What easy programming language should I learn to do this ?

Or I learn to write a script to convert like Grauw said, but I prefer to make my own simple little DAW.

Start small, and build it into something nice and big !!!

By Grauw

Ascended (10768)

30-05-2020, 14:42

norakomi wrote:

What easy programming language should I learn to do this ?

Hmm, C# perhaps? For creating a Windows GUI program probably the best option.

I myself program a lot in JavaScript. You can use it both in the browser and on the command line with node.js for tooling.

Python 3 is another popular programming language. Not too familiar with it myself, but there are GUI toolkits for it like TkInter, PyQt and wxPython.

Either way whatever effort you put into learning any of these languages will pay off later. All of these three are popular so there’s a lot of information, examples and tutorials online on how to use them.

By norakomi

Paragon (1140)

31-05-2020, 12:47

I've been experimenting in C++, checked several tutorials, and made some hello world-like programs.
I even got a .wav file playing. So I got a bit excited ^__^
But as I'm diving deeper into it, I'm realising it's gonna be absolutely impossible to make a DAW.
Even things as changing volume, panning and playing multiple sounds simultaneously are extremely complicated.
So I'm giving up on the coding aspect...
I'm going to look into Renoise or Reaper.
Maybe that's a better option for now.