I’m looking for more info on how the 90’s composers on the Snes /MD/Neogeo used to fake FX - (Though I think NeoGeo had it’s own fx?)
I remember a web page where someone who used to make Game music would double the lead melody and delay it’s channel or something so it would produce a fake echo effect.
Maybe I’m remembering this completely wrong Haha , or perhaps this memory was implanted !
I’m sure there are many other tricks like this but am having a hard time tracking more info down.
No you don’t remember it wrong - this is how an echo effect can be faked without a real echo dsp and a spare track or two. Or some space here and there in a track already used for another instrument.
And also - why not just study modules from that time to find out about the tricks? I also find people of that decade were sometimes very creative at abusing the formats and soundchips. I think this is also a main point of that special feel in “real” chiptunes imho - there might be 6 instruments packed in 3 tracks, and you still kind of feel the 3 track limitation while your first impression tells you: no, it must be more tracks…
I Don’t know anything about the console formats you named, but maybe you can find extractors and tools and are able to use emulators to kind of analyse and work stuff out yourself.
The dos tracker scene however had its tricks I know about. The delay tricks you named, by repeating melodies with a delay and lower volume plus panning offsets. And combining multiple echoes of this kind into channels, to save channels to use for other stuff, deciding manually which echoes should be dropped as they sounded not important enough - or just pasting stuff over each other, beginning with the weakest echo up to the strongest. Also tricks that had to do with layering a sound with a detuned instance, and then controlling it via portamento and sample offset - for chorus/flanger like fx. And panning the detuned/delayed versions differently for stereo width. The leet guys had sound hardware at hand and resampled or effected stuff for the more professional sounding modules everyone else was stealing sounds from afterwards. Or stuff like blending between differently effected sounds to fake modulations. Or having pure wet reverb versions of your samples to fake reverbs, and then imagine the mayhem possible with this by sequencing the reverb differently than the original track - compared with a traditional reverb module.
IDK probably the module formats and sound chips of those consoles had their own twists and limitations to break - no so sample friendly, but interesting synth chips that were open for abuse and tricks of manifold kinds.
Maybe you’ll find digging in old .mod .xm .it or the like files interesting if you’re up to looking for tricks, and it is a lower hanging fruit to research than the console music because you can work with modern trackers on your pc and without emulation.
A lot of tricks can for sure be transported to a modern context. The delay trick is a secret weapon for making delay effects impossible with a standard delay plugin, a tedious secret weapon though. As for the detuned copy trick, I think for example noisia said to have used kind of the equivalent with audio tracks for making their warped basses have a flanged sound, I guess because it was easier to control and nail down the exact modulation than with the usual flanger plugins.
Yes, I still track delays manually in this manner.
I prefer delays to be detuned+panned for an immense amount of additional space (and arguing that using detuned clones of an instrument is superior to any FFT/granular based detuning, except for the risk of having more obvious phasing/aliasing issues). I don’t know how many cents are ideal for this kind of detuning, by my go to setting for a lead voice is -8 cents for the ping and +8 cents for the pong, unsure of if there is an optimal setting in regards to phase. I’ve also seen settings like -10 for ping and +6 for pong. Detuning delays is a somewhat similar effect to using chorus, phaser or flanger on a delay. I think it’s generally better - hence the usage of tracked delays still being relevant.
I’d say 1-10 lines (given a normal amount of speed/tempo). 1 line would be more of a slapback delay and is more often used as a flanging kind of effect, I’d say. A typical example for lead delay would be ping: 4 / pong: 8 or ping: 6 / pong: 10.
I’d say 1-10 lines (given a normal amount of speed/tempo). 1 line would be more of a slapback delay and is more often used as a flanging kind of effect, I’d say. A typical example for lead delay would be ping: 4 / pong: 8 or ping: 6 / pong: 10.
Cool thanks man am I correct in thinking I need to duplicate the track to do this for each delay?
But if you are using a simple sample in Renoise, you can use a trick to include the detuned delay with your instrument if that suits you. Duplicate the sample inside the instrument, detune the duplicated sample and route it to a separate sample fx chain (inside the instrument) where you put a delay device (with source muted and in line sync mode). For the sake of simplicity, make that delay mono and add a gainer device for volume/panning.
Make it once more (if you want to), with a sample detuned in the other direction, to the opposite side of the stereo field and with a different line sync setting.
I’ve attached an example. I’ve added some vibsweep as well since I think it lends itself very well to delays
emmm…now, first, the delay amount is the amount you shift the copies in. So you delay in lines/ticks/whatever. Ofc if you are aiming for a certain delay time, you need to fire up a calculator and do some trivial math. You decide by what amount you want to delay, if you want to have a short panned slap echo, or a spacy wide l/r panned trance delay in sync with song speed, it is your deal. And different amounts of notes to spend. And yeah, you basically copy all stuff, for each echo of the delay one time, and remember to scale volume down for each repetition. As many mod formats had limited channels, it is an art to combine multiple echoes into one channel. And often manual work. For example if you have a loud melody, you have two echoes where it fits, and if the melody gets real busy sometimes only one. As soon as the melody makes a pause, you ofc have space for more notes on the echo channel, and can make a succession of more echoes of the last note, becoming weaker with each echo. These additional feedback simulation won’t be missing too hard when the melody is busy, because it is loudest part, and then it even works a tiny bit like sidechaining and ducking the delay to the main melody. Again - what I name the special chiptune feeling. Now imagine having two instruments playing in call and response manner, and having only a single channel left for making echoes of them.
Boy, I was so happy when I discovered that fast tracker 2 could paste selections to where the cursor is (offset), and leave old notes intact where there was no info to write. It still didn’t solve the lots of work of fixing the faked delay over pattern boundaries.
The amount of micro editing possible to the “delay copies” and how it changes the sound can be interesting. I remember having delay tracks of the wrong pattern copied to accompany a lead synth that was playing a different (variation) melody, and it sounded so fucking cool that I kept it as nice element and even drove it further manually, and just let it be psycho techno.
emmm…now, first, the delay amount is the amount you shift the copies in. So you delay in lines/ticks/whatever. Ofc if you are aiming for a certain delay time, you need to fire up a calculator and do some trivial math. You decide by what amount you want to delay, if you want to have a short panned slap echo, or a spacy wide l/r panned trance delay in sync with song speed, it is your deal. And different amounts of notes to spend. And yeah, you basically copy all stuff, for each echo of the delay one time, and remember to scale volume down for each repetition. As many mod formats had limited channels, it is an art to combine multiple echoes into one channel. And often manual work. For example if you have a loud melody, you have two echoes where it fits, and if the melody gets real busy sometimes only one. As soon as the melody makes a pause, you ofc have space for more notes on the echo channel, and can make a succession of more echoes of the last note, becoming weaker with each echo. These additional feedback simulation won’t be missing too hard when the melody is busy, because it is loudest part, and then it even works a tiny bit like sidechaining and ducking the delay to the main melody. Again - what I name the special chiptune feeling. Now imagine having two instruments playing in call and response manner, and having only a single channel left for making echoes of them.
Boy, I was so happy when I discovered that fast tracker 2 could paste selections to where the cursor is (offset), and leave old notes intact where there was no info to write. It still didn’t solve the lots of work of fixing the faked delay over pattern boundaries.
The amount of micro editing possible to the “delay copies” and how it changes the sound can be interesting. I remember having delay tracks of the wrong pattern copied to accompany a lead synth that was playing a different (variation) melody, and it sounded so fucking cool that I kept it as nice element and even drove it further manually, and just let it be psycho techno.
Great Stuff mate Loved your post and Joules
I come from the Cubase / Ableton world so i still think of delays in ms ! I never thought of using another channel and staying on the lines , so simple but precise ! I like it !
I guess phrases are ideal for this ‘old school’ tracker delay/modulated delay most of the time? You don’t have to keep copy and pasting stuff into the editor all the time.
My favorite 90’s tracker trick is to fake PWM with two saw wave samples.
Just make a single cycle saw tooth sample, copy it, and then reverse the copy. Play both at the same time, but detune the reversed sample by a few cents, and voila! No need for a big sample of a pulse width modulated synth patch.
Ah, yes! I used to fake echo/delay effect in my mods all the time when I finally discovered how you could do it.
----8< cut 8<—
C-5 – — ---
C-5 40 — ---
C-5 20 — ---
C-5 10 — ---
----8< cut 8<----
Or split it up in two tracks. One with the original “sound” and the other one for the echo/delay. The space between the delays depends on the LPB and BPM and how fast you want it to be.
But I guess the previous answers has beaten this topic to death already.
Another technique I used a lot is… I don’t know what it’s called… kind of delayed-echo-reverb-procedure (DERP for short… haha!)
—8< cut 8<—
C-5 –
D-5 –
C-5 30
E-5 –
D-5 30
F-5 –
E-5 30
G-5 –
F-5 30
… and so on…
—8< cut 8<—
The first note is reflected between the second and the third note with at a lower velocity than the original note. The second note is reflected between the third and fourth note. Rinse. Repeat.
You can also reflect the note right after it’s played for an even faster effect.
Best used with a short sample, obviously, and a rather high BPM. Remember that trackers back then usually only had 4 channels in total and no effects so a lot of stuff had to be done in the same track since the other tracks usually already played another sample.
