Hello everyone,
As some of you may know, I'm into 1-bit music. Well, long story short, our old 1-Bit/Beeper Music Forum recently went down, and we had to start over from scratch (http://randomflux.info/1bit). So in order to get things rolling again, we've thought up a little something...
Without further ado, I'd like to invite you all to participate in the 1-Bit Forum Music Competition 2015. There are several different music categories (including one where you can submit calculator music, of course), as well as a "code" category. So, hope to hear some classy AudaciTI/CalcMod/QuadPlayer tunes from you ;)
Please see all the details at http://randomflux.info/1bit/viewtopic.php?id=19
Cheers,
-utz
Ouch, sorry to hear about your forums. :( Didn't you have any backups or caches? Because sometimes we can retrieve data from Google/archive.org before it's too late.
Anyway I'll see if I can do something, although chances are slim that I do it since I only made 8 bits and 32 bit music before >.<
That sounds interesting, I might participate but don't expect anything good :P
Ooo I hope your forum gets back up and running, I might participate, but I am no musical genius. :P
Yeah, please do join even if you don't feel like the next Mozart ;) And if you absolutely don't feel like making music, you could also code a new multi-channel player for Z80/68k TI. Think I'll post a tutorial on 1-bit routine coding over at the 1bit forum soon.
@DJ Omnimaga: Unfortunately it was too late for retrieving the data. Which is really a pity cause we had tons of tutorials, code snippets, historical research etc. on there. Well, I haven't given up hope completely: there might still be a backup copy of the db floating around on some server that we can't access atm, so maybe one day we'll be able to retrieve that. Chances of that happening any time soon are low, unfortunately.
Question: what was the previous URL of your site? I checked archive.org and couldn't find anything relevant.
Quote from: utz on July 13, 2015, 04:22:42 PM
Yeah, please do join even if you don't feel like the next Mozart ;) And if you absolutely don't feel like making music, you could also code a new multi-channel player for Z80/68k TI. Think I'll post a tutorial on 1-bit routine coding over at the 1bit forum soon.
I'd like to enter, but I dont have the right components to get my 556 timers working ):
I consider using software on a 64 bit computer cheating.
Sadly im not really good at music making :/ though i have a question!
Since for example the io port on a 83/84+ series calculator have 2 rings, one for left and one for right, does that mean that if you use only one of the rings (or both but just outut the same audio) it technically is one bit? I mean you an only have the ring(s) on or off. But if you change the state on different speeds, you get different tone's, so you'd say its more than one bit. In other words does serial data count as one bit i guess?
I'm not very familliar to that kind of music related stuff :P
@DJ Omnimaga: The old url was http://1bit.i-demo.pl. Not much left over at archive.org, sadly.
@Strontium: Damn, some 55x timer music would be sweet. Regarding stuff made on PC, well, we do have a "fakebit" category where you can submit stuff made with VSTs etc. In fact one of our members just made an advanced VSTi (http://randomflux.info/1bit/viewtopic.php?id=11) which emulates different types of 1-bit synthesis.
@Cumred_Snektron: Yes, strictly speaking TI music using both rings/lines seperatly would be 2-bit ;) But we aren't that strict, so we count it as 2x 1-bit :P
Sorry for the bump, just wanted to let you know that I've posted a tutorial on how to write 1-bit music routines (http://randomflux.info/1bit/viewtopic.php?id=21) on the 1-bit forum. So far I've covered only the basics, will be extending the tutorial with some advanced tips and tricks later on. It's all a bit ZX Spectrum-centric at the moment, but I believe it can be easily adapted for writing TI calc sound routines as well.
Hmm maybe I'll try that out if I have nothing to do tomorrow! :)
Cool, I will probably be using Axe (Ti-84+)
Thanks foe the info utz. Too bad you had to change website URLs entirely. This happened to another calc site, called Revolution Software, a few years ago.
Quote from: alexgt on July 15, 2015, 12:51:00 PM
Cool, I will probably be using Axe (Ti-84+)
ohh, interesting. Do you have a 2.5mm to 3.5mm jack? i had trouble finding one, and the one i got didnt fit. After some sanding it did though
Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on July 24, 2015, 11:22:52 AM
Quote from: alexgt on July 15, 2015, 12:51:00 PM
Cool, I will probably be using Axe (Ti-84+)
ohh, interesting. Do you have a 2.5mm to 3.5mm jack? i had trouble finding one, and the one i got didnt fit. After some sanding it did though
I bought one and lost it but I can use the emu xD
Yeah the good old sanding trick... I still remember getting my first 2,5mm adapter - specially bought at the store for like waaay too much money and the damn thing just wouldn't fit even with the entire plastic base removed. Finally a friend of mine ground away some of the metal to make it fit :o Nowadays I have loads of them though. I pick up one pretty much every time I go to the flea market. Lots of Chinese el cheapo phones and mp3 players use them, so they're easy to find if you're willing to dig through some of those banana boxes with huge piles of messed up cables inside ;)
Re emulators, well 1-bit sound emulation is a bit tricky cause those routines usually run much faster than the average PC soundcard can handle, so you can get quantization errors and such. Just today I managed to totally throw off tilem2 with some fast-switching routine. Normally that one works fine for me though.
Also don't forget the calc freezes if you plug in a cable on the home screen <_<
What kind of cing use has that TI?
Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on July 25, 2015, 11:36:31 AM
Also don't forget the calc freezes if you plug in a cable on the home screen <_<
What kind of bleeping use has that TI?
No kidding! its crazy! I guess they thought that they wouldn't have anyone listing to music :P
Yeah it's quite ridiculous. Though in my experience it only happens when you plug in headphones. Plugging a normal line is usually fine. Also fun fact: the calc doesn't freeze completely, it actually just goes veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slow. I think what happens is that headphones feed back some voltage (because microphones and speakers are essentially the same thing) and the calc takes that as a trigger to start polling the link port repeatedly in expectation of incoming data. Now why you would want to poll the link port when not in link mode is a different question...
Btw just today one of the 1-bit forum members released an updated version of his 1-bit tracker that he officially abandoned years ago. It's actually my favourite music editor of all times, because of it's absolutely minimal, distraction-free interface. It's called 1tracker (http://shiru.untergrund.net/files/1tracker.zip), and it's a cross-dev PC tool, mainly targetting the ZX Spectrum home computer. It spits out some pretty interesting Z80 code, too ;) The download is for Windows, for *nix source is available here (http://shiru.untergrund.net/files/src/1tracker_src.zip) (though it almost certainly won't compile out-of-the-box).
Also the freezing only happens when not in busy mode. In ASM programs or during BASIC program execution it's usually fine. It's still annoying, though.
I'll check your 1tracker link soon :), does it let us listen to the files as we compose them?
You can't edit while playback is running in 1tracker, but you can play back stuff at the push of a button, and you'll hear instantly what you're doing when entering notes/fx commands. So it's pretty much "what you hear is what you get". ;)
Ah ok that's what I was wondering. I don't like it when I insert notes and it doesn't play any sound. It makes it very hard to edit anything, because I was used to Music 2000 for Playstation, which plays back notes when you insert them.
One week left till the deadline :o
Did you get any entry or participants yet?
Yeah, got a few entries, though not enough for the "alternative" category - so I do need more TI entries. Also, a few more entries for the "code" category would be nice. It's partly my fault, should've made an account at TI-Planet and announced it there, too.
So in any case, if anybody here would like to submit something, please do. And if you need some more time, let me know and we'll work something out.
My main issue is that at first glance I couldn't understand much what I needed to download in order to create 1 bit music, calculator or not. I wasn't sure if the things linked to earlier were music editing softwares or plugins, for example.
True that, I should have provided some better info on that. It's sometimes difficult to put yourself in another person's shoes if you're immersed in your own little nerd world ;) I did however assume that people around here would be more keen on using the stuff that's available for TI calcs. I mean there are quite a few different TI sound routines (http://randomflux.info/1bit/viewtopic.php?id=8) floating around, but nobody ever seems to do something with them.
I want to make an entry :), but just so I know for sure 1-Bit music is music that has one tone correct?!
No, you can have more than one tone. It's about making music on machines that don't have any sound hardware, like sound cards or sound chips.
TI calculators are a perfect example of a machine that will make 1-bit music if programmed to do so. No sound hardware, you can just switch on or off the link port. Still, you can have more than 1 tone, with clever software mixing.
You don't have to worry about that part though, just grab one of the utilities I linked to in my previous post. Or, if you want to try a really easy software, have a look at Beepola (http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/beepola/).
Yeah the issue in general with TI sound is that to make music, you often have to edit ASM data then compile it yourself, same for sound routines in some cases. THere are obviously trackers, though, which can be handy, but it depends if people are fine with using trackers. I'm gonna check out Beepola later :)
The deadline has been extended to September 13th.
@DJ Omnimaga: I believe one of the most comfortable ways of making TI music at the moment would be my rawp-ti (https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=634.0) routine - you can compose music in a standard PC tracker, and convert it to 82p/83p/8xp by running a simple script.
Ah ok. Can the script be used on Windows 7? Also does it have a GUI or does it have to be ran through command prompt?
Quote from: utz on August 27, 2015, 06:57:38 PM
No, you can have more than one tone. It's about making music on machines that don't have any sound hardware, like sound cards or sound chips.
TI calculators are a perfect example of a machine that will make 1-bit music if programmed to do so. No sound hardware, you can just switch on or off the link port. Still, you can have more than 1 tone, with clever software mixing.
You don't have to worry about that part though, just grab one of the utilities I linked to in my previous post. Or, if you want to try a really easy software, have a look at Beepola (http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/beepola/).
Ok, thanks for clearing it up :)
@DJ Omnimaga: I have no idea, to be honest. Provided Win7 still has a cmd.exe, it should work. No GUI, you need to run it through a command line as it takes an argument (-82/-83/-8x) in order to specify which model you want to build for. Also, you need to have Perl installed.
Btw here's me playing some live 1-bit music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ljnBXYOr-Y
Ah ok. As long as we dont have to type the entire music into z80 data by hand like with CalcMOD *.*
Also I'll check your vid soon. I can't promise a contest entry but I would like to give it a try (it will depend of next week work schedule)
Quote from: utz on September 02, 2015, 06:39:19 PM
@DJ Omnimaga: I have no idea, to be honest. Provided Win7 still has a cmd.exe, it should work. No GUI, you need to run it through a command line as it takes an argument (-82/-83/-8x) in order to specify which model you want to build for. Also, you need to have Perl installed.
Btw here's me playing some live 1-bit music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ljnBXYOr-Y
That's some hot dual calc action :P
Wow I just watched the video and I am amazed at how this sounds. I think it could be played at hard dance raves and stuff. Also I am unsure if I'll be able to enter by the deadline, but I'll see. I've been kinda tired lately.
Unfortunately I was unable to participate Utz. Sorry. The thing is that trackers and setting them up are simply not my cup of tea. The only interface I can rally stand to make music is Music 2000 for the Playstation 1. Plus lack of time and motivation was a problem lately. I still hope that you got enough entries, though.
Well, turnout was pretty low, unfortunately. So there won't be another 1-bit compo any time soon, I think.
The video is a bit misleading as the footage doesn't always match the music. The song you hear is actually played from a ZX Spectrum. I did use the calcs, though ;)
Sorry to hear. I guess it's inevitable with small communities, though, especially with a new URL. Plus among calc coders, it's mostly those who are into Z80 ASM and such low-level languages who are comfortable with trackers or command line interfaces. Others tend to prefer stuff like Reason, FL Studio, Music 2000 or even Mario Paint.
Also I see. I am curious about what the live music sounded like?