Let's remember how awesome the Amiga was at music

[Qube]

Found a couple of Amiga tunes on youtube which brought a few memories back. They are the original versions but had the audio tweaked to maximise awesomeness

Amazing that these tunes were done on a computer from 25+ years ago with only 4 audio channels ( I know Turrican II had a software based 7 voice system coded for it which makes it even more impressive )

Turrican II

Pinball Dreams

Another Turrican II tune which some may have not heard but should do

Superfrog

Special bonus - A really cool C64 Remix

There are many many more but do you have any personal faves that pop into your mind from time to time?

[MrmediamanX]

nice, a lot of composers learn't and knew how to push the audio chipset hard to it's max, which required doing tricks in of its self.

[BasicBoy]

I still listen to Jogeir Liljedahl's 4-channel Amiga mods! There was some degree of genius there, I reckon.

I think his later stuff (e.g. his two CDs) was mostly disappointing. I guess his heart just wasn't in it any more.

Some years back I made an attempt at covering one of his 4-channel tunes, "Variations" (but I never got past the partial work-in-progress):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUYfTqFe2P8

As far as I'm aware, no-one else has covered that tune, which is a pity! Perhaps someone here at SB could take up the challenge? 


BasicBoy.
--

[Rick Nasher]

Almost forgot how much I loved those Protracker sounds.

Even though I was more fond of OctaMed as had more features/tracks.
Whatever happened to MED SoundStudio anyway? Last thing I'd seen was a release for Windows(of course for $) and then never heard/seen it anymore..


Their site www.medsoundstudio.com appears dead.
Could only find the 2.1 demo<here>.

If they went bust I wouldn't be surprised: why-oh-why would anybody pay for something that can be surpassed by other commercial tools easily or simply use the other freeware tools to play?

[Pakz]

I stil listen a lot to old(and new) Amiga music.  ( https://www.youtube.com/user/cyberpingu1?pbjreload=10 )

I have Vividtracker on my ipad which is a noisetracker remake which I sometimes use to make mod files.  On android there is a milktytracker port I think but it is less user friendly I think.

Back then when I started making music with the Amiga I had trouble getting lots of good instruments. Nowadays every famous st-xx instrument disk can be found for free ( http://aminet.net/mods/inst ) I remember trying to rip every song I could with my cartridge.

Daxx is the best and most productive Amiga remixer on the planet. He somehow makes his remixes sound very good. In a interview he stated he only uses samples. He left Amigaremix.com a while ago and can now be found on youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVdDOrby3fy_6aOuv6urj5g )

Last night on Slay Radio (which play remixes) there was someone going on a drunken rant

[MrmediamanX]

though sort of unrelated I had programmed an audio demo using collision and timers in blitz3d.
good times.

demo and source code
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlJNCfpRzgA2gUOLc6qGEntEtf4R

[Rick Nasher]

@Pakz

Nowadays every famous st-xx instrument disk can be found for free ( http://aminet.net/mods/inst ) I remember trying to rip every song I could with my cartridge.

Didn't know about that. Thanks, might come in handy.


@MrmediamanX
Talk to the hand? Love that mechanical poly hand thing. Pretty cool.



We may have been eating too many member berries..   

[Qube]

I stil listen a lot to old(and new) Amiga music.  ( https://www.youtube.com/user/cyberpingu1?pbjreload=10 )

I have Vividtracker on my ipad which is a noisetracker remake which I sometimes use to make mod files.  On android there is a milktytracker port I think but it is less user friendly I think.

Cool collection of Amiga tunes, thanks. Not come across that one

I didn't know they did a tracker app on the iPad, lol. I think I'll grab that and shove it on me iPad Pro 12.9" as it'll look best on that one

though sort of unrelated I had programmed an audio demo using collision and timers in blitz3d.
good times.

demo and source code
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlJNCfpRzgA2gUOLc6qGEntEtf4R

Nicely done

Even though I was more fond of OctaMed as had more features/tracks.
Whatever happened to MED SoundStudio anyway? Last thing I'd seen was a release for Windows(of course for $) and then never heard/seen it anymore..

I loved OctoMED and moved over to that on the Amiga although I never used it in 8 channel mode much as the sound quality was just too much of a loss.

I bought the PC version years and years ago when I was on XP and used it to create a few tunes in midi with an SB AWE 32 ( a massive long ISA card with 8MB installed ).

MED died on the PC because it didn't offer anything new and was miles behind other music creation apps on PC. It was more of nostalgia that I bought and used it over it being the best.

Tracker wise these days I use ReNoise which I only use the tracker side with VST plugins. It can do way more than I use it for but my needs are old fashioned and simple

[Rick Nasher]

I wish there was something that could import original OctaMED songfiles and convert them to a more common format, for I did some interesting(well to me at least ) experiments, which I'd like to build upon for intro's and in-game music. Still a mystery to me why people don't release things as freeware when they go bust.



In the past when started out with the PC a friend 'gave' me a bunch of music sw on CD's, among which:
Proppellorheads Reason
FLStudio
Cakewalk

So I tried those and found Reason and FruityLoopsStudio were pretty cool.
Also onetime I when visiting someone  who had an iMac, I tried Garageband which appeared pretty intuitive to me and I think it's still a shame Windows doesn't come with something rudimentary like that, while does ship things like Paint, Notepad and such.
It's like audio doesn't exist in Windows. Even SoundRecorder, which could add echo's and save WAV's, was killed in favor of a stupid VoiceRecorder with no features at all.



Looks like that Renoise's interface is looking pretty tidy. Something to keep in mind when needed, so thanks for the tip. 

[Pakz]

The company behind Cakewalk went out of business a while ago. I had their sonar and music studio on steam together with a couple of instruments packs. I might get flstudio if I need another daw for the pc in the future. Not sure on other daws like ableton and cubasis. I do know pc software is expensive.

There is a port for fasttracker and protracker for pc. For mac and linux also iirc. https://16-bits.org/ft2.php

One of the first music tools on the ipad I got was caustic. They have a free full version for the pc. Caustic comes with a lot of build in instr7ments and synths. http://www.singlecellsoftware.com/caustic
Caustic also has a vocoder!

[Rick Nasher]

My old PC was lagging with Cakewalk + midi keyboard, so not very usable. Always heard Cubase was the better one, but never tried.

There is a port for fasttracker and protracker for pc. For mac and linux also iirc. https://16-bits.org/ft2.php

Knew about that site and in fact already downloaded that, not installed yet due to lack of space. Will install on another machine, but doubt it's gonna be able to import MED song format, unless saved in the compatible .MOD format.

Came across Caustic before, but didn't know about the vocoder. That's uber cool! 

[Holzchopf]

Apparently OpenMPT can load .MED - have you tried that?

[Krischan]

Hybris - my favourite Amiga Game Tune

Enigma Demo - best Demo Music

90s was the Techno Age

C64 Bonus: Did you know Ben Daglish died last year? Ben Daglish Remembered - Wastelands Loader:

More from the Fastloaders at c64audio.com:
https://c64audio.com/products/ninja-musicology-a-tribute-to-the-last-ninja-game-series
https://c64audio.com/products/rock-hubbard-by-fastloaders-digital-album
https://c64audio.com/products/progressive-64-by-fastloaders

[Rick Nasher]

@Krischan
Those guys rock! 

And that Spaceballs -State 0f The Art - demo is my all time Amiga favorite.
Was really something at the time.

[EDIT]
@Holzchopf
Thanks for the tip, that is actually an option for most files. A few(among the ones I really like  to get do not import. The original MED SoundStudio for Windows Demo also rejects, says those are songs+samples from an older version and need to be converted on the Amiga first.

So I guess I'll have to dig up my A1200 config(which has a SD-card drive in place of the original IDE HDD, way faster and higher capacity for next to nothing).
Will need to install OctaMED there and see how goes..

[Henri]

Amiga inspired musical creativity with powerfull sounds, and tools like protracker. I know that I had a lot of songs written, that are now long sense gone.

It's hard to raise any one sample from the vast ocean of music, as there were many (like the ones posted above).  As an example I choose this because it had stuck in my mind enough so that I learned to play it with a guitar..

As a comparison here is also the PC-version :-)

-Henri


Ps. My favorite demo was this..