Totally noob questions about sound/music

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 5:59 pm

Hi,

What are my options for creating sound effects and music for playback on the Genesis? I've seen many threads on the topic, and from what I can see there are many formats and modes to do them with, but I haven't been able to figure out how they all fit together. What can I check out to make everything more clear?

Thanks!
DJCC

Oerg866 · Post by **Oerg866** » Wed Apr 18, 2012 10:24 pm

www.segaretro.org/Echo

andlabs · Post by **andlabs** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 4:13 am

Barring that, you could figure out how to make a driver yourself, or take the cheapest route and use the TFM driver (is that still available?) for music and do the SFX all as PSG. The tools available to you depend on which path you take.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 5:11 am

TFM driver is still available, as well as PSG effects player/tools, and it rather easy to combine the driver with a Z80 driver that play samples (one or few channels).

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:35 pm

andlabs wrote:Barring that, you could figure out how to make a driver yourself, or take the cheapest route and use the TFM driver (is that still available?) for music and do the SFX all as PSG. The tools available to you depend on which path you take.

Considering that I don't know anything about the topic, I'd naturally prefer a ready-made solution, or close enough. I don't really know which paths are available, so I'm not sure which one to take.

I'm not much of a musician, but I can make some okay music. I'd probably go with a midi-style composition rather than, say, recording real instruments to .wav/.mp3 and converting that to something playable on Genesis.

Shiru wrote:TFM driver is still available, as well as PSG effects player/tools, and it rather easy to combine the driver with a Z80 driver that play samples (one or few channels).

Would you recommend TFM or VGM Music Maker? I just noticed on your site that TFM is obsoleted.

As I'm using Stef's SGDK, any hints as to how I could integrate TFM or VGMMM into my project?

Thanks!
DJCC

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:59 pm

Stef's SDK includes TFC player. Use VGM MM (FM channels only) or TFM MM to create music, export into TFD, use TFMCOM utility provided with TFM MM to get a TFC file, use the file with the player.

There is no full blown ready-mady solution for music and sound effects that would allow to use all the sound capabilites, because there is no real demand. Genesis development is barely existing these days, and those who doing something serious prefer to make their own private sound tools and code anyway.

Oerg866 · Post by **Oerg866** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:14 pm

Um. thanks for totally reading my post guys ! :

Echo is full featured and easy to use too. Why make things so complicated

?

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:40 pm

Oerg866 wrote:Um. thanks for totally reading my post guys ! :

Echo is full featured and easy to use too. Why make things so complicated ?

Totally sorry, Oerg

It does look interesting!

There's a problem with the github page, though.

http://www.github.net/sikthehedgehog/echo doesn't seem to load.

EDIT: But https://github.com/oerg866/Echo works.

I imagine there are instructions on how to integrate Echo in code? How about in something like an SGDK project?

andlabs · Post by **andlabs** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 3:44 pm

That should be http://echo.mdscene.net/, not whatever that URL is; I'll fix it on the page

slobu · Post by **slobu** » Tue Apr 24, 2012 10:34 pm

I'm currently trying Shiru's TFM Music Maker as it indirectly supports MIDI files. As in, use OpenMPT to convert MIDI to MOD and then use TFM Music Maker to convert MOD to TFD. Assigning instruments and timing issues still prevent me from being successful.

Oerg866 · Post by **Oerg866** » Tue Apr 24, 2012 11:58 pm

slobu wrote:I'm currently trying Shiru's TFM Music Maker as it indirectly supports MIDI files. As in, use OpenMPT to convert MIDI to MOD and then use TFM Music Maker to convert MOD to TFD. Assigning instruments and timing issues still prevent me from being successful.

I don't even know where to begin with that.... Talk about overcomplicatedness?

If you absolutely need to use MIDI files, use MID2XM from un4seen... And then convert them using my xm2esf tool and use echo (that gives you at least some effects)... (shameless plug)

There's simply no way you can achieve anything like you wish to do it, I'm sorry.

slobu · Post by **slobu** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:54 pm

Oerg866 wrote:
slobu wrote:I'm currently trying Shiru's TFM Music Maker as it indirectly supports MIDI files. As in, use OpenMPT to convert MIDI to MOD and then use TFM Music Maker to convert MOD to TFD. Assigning instruments and timing issues still prevent me from being successful.
I don't even know where to begin with that.... Talk about overcomplicatedness?

If you absolutely need to use MIDI files, use MID2XM from un4seen... And then convert them using my xm2esf tool and use echo (that gives you at least some effects)... (shameless plug)

There's simply no way you can achieve anything like you wish to do it, I'm sorry.

The MIDI format is used by a broader range of musical composition software. The typical MOD tracker interface gives me hives.

I'd love to use Echo but only Shiru's work has BasiEgaXorz examples. Even those examples may have to be modified to work on real hardware.

Could you whip up a quick example on how to call Echo from BEX? Also, thanks for the tip on MID2XM. I'll definitely check it out.

Oerg866 · Post by **Oerg866** » Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:48 pm

slobu wrote:
Oerg866 wrote:
slobu wrote:I'm currently trying Shiru's TFM Music Maker as it indirectly supports MIDI files. As in, use OpenMPT to convert MIDI to MOD and then use TFM Music Maker to convert MOD to TFD. Assigning instruments and timing issues still prevent me from being successful.
I don't even know where to begin with that.... Talk about overcomplicatedness?

If you absolutely need to use MIDI files, use MID2XM from un4seen... And then convert them using my xm2esf tool and use echo (that gives you at least some effects)... (shameless plug)

There's simply no way you can achieve anything like you wish to do it, I'm sorry.
The MIDI format is used by a broader range of musical composition software. The typical MOD tracker interface gives me hives.

I'd love to use Echo but only Shiru's work has BasiEgaXorz examples. Even those examples may have to be modified to work on real hardware.

Could you whip up a quick example on how to call Echo from BEX? Also, thanks for the tip on MID2XM. I'll definitely check it out.

I tried it once, but BasiEgaXorz has way too many bugs. Echo relies on a pointer list for samples and instruments, and beause of a bug, incbin'd files must be in BasiEgaXorz's program directory. So unless DevSter finally releases a new version with these bugs fixed, it works.

I got Echo to work without any issues before in BEX, aside that bug. It's terrible.

djcouchycouch · Post by **djcouchycouch** » Thu May 03, 2012 4:05 pm

Another totally noob sound question. Since the Genesis has two sound chips, can both be used simultaneously?

Stef · Post by **Stef** » Thu May 03, 2012 4:08 pm

If you are speaking about the YM2612 and PSG chip, of course they can be used simultaneously.