The basics of these sounds should be easily recreatable in Renoise, if you understand how the SID works and know its filterranges…
This is the actual instrument schematics of how the oscillators were routed:
You only need one oscillator/generator set.
The metallic sounds that you hear in the song are ring modulation tricks and voices were upwards chain-linking (these are these Sync/RM lines that you see connecting the sets) to other voices to produce that effect (if value 33 was a sine wave oscillator shape, then 32 was its ringmodulator)
Next to the ringmodulation, and filtereffects you also could design pulse width effects which gives each waveform its more narrow or wide shape.
Pulse width is not easy to emulate since the ringmod device does not have such an option (and it lacks a noise generator). But the pulse width and filter modulations are in generic that give these sid sounds their vivid personality.
Recreating multi-oscilator sequence variations is not easy either. (On the C64, a kick drum was usually combined out of a noise generator wave and a sine wave quickly in sequence)
You might want to try the Dream 64 pro plugin to get pretty similar sounds
i suggest that you take two or three trackers that are chip-based like GoatTracker, FamiTracker, DefleMask. they usually are programmed to emulate the original chip as good as possible. you could also use MilkyTracker which has an 8-bit wave generator and can be easily switched to no interpolation. write a few songs in them, learn their limitations and what tricks the artists use to make the songs sound good and then you can always write patterns, export them to WAV and use them in Renoise. some artists like to add reverb at this point or add proper drum samples.
i mean there’s no magic behind it, you just have to put in the effort and do some research. writing good songs on the other hand is a totally different topic.
Goattracker is pretty good. DefleMask has a very long way to go regarding being able to build good Sid instruments though, i would not recommend it at this stage (unless you want to play with the FM sound systems).
Siduzzit is difficult to learn, but i believe that it’s the most powerful tracker on C64, at least it was considered so by my C64 geek friends. I never got to learn it properly though and did most my stuff in JohnPlayer, which on the other hand is very simple, but also a bit buggy sounding (which i thought was a cool feature).
So grab VICE 64 or another emulator of choice and it’ll be almost as good as the real thing.
You could also build yourself one of the projects at Midibox.org.
Looks like the forums are down at the moment but I built myself a SammichSID after I was able to source the SID-chips.
About €300 in materials and then it’s the build time.
Wasn’t too long ago that I built it so I haven’t used it much.
The SammichSID comes with prefab boards, the whole component kit except the SID-chips.
The guides are pretty good so it’s more or less a straight forward process.
Have the whole HVSC library, so if anyone want to hear an example through the SammichSID from that library let me know.
There are also demo vidoes on youtube with the various midiboxsid-projects.
I have a broken C-128D (and a working one) and i have for a long time considered to use the chip to some synth project. I haven’t really done any digital electronics, so i’ll probably make a simple analog monosynth. I have an old pedal keyboard i salvaged from an old organ that would be perfect for it. How cool wouldn’t it be playing the electric guitar while also making awesome SID sounds with your feet.
i think all replies are somewhat helpful, but it’s surprising nobody mentioned the all-mighty arpeggio command (which i think you’re after in the 1st place)
start renoise
enter note triggering very SHORT sample (no matter what) with forward loop
→ if any doubt, create a new, self-drawn sample with a length of 128
apply effect 0Axy, whereas x and y represent the half-tone steps to arpeggiate between.
Yes, but it will be no more than just an idea. I personally (as a sid composer) considered the old arpeggio command the most poorest arpeggio feature that got implemented into trackers. Loads of music composing applications on the C64 have always been much richer in that concept.
And every other tracker developer simply kept forking this same limited idea into his own design, even when there no longer was a reason to be such limited. Finally we now have phrases in Renoise where you can have a very big influence on arpeggio design. Using the arpeggio for chord effects is just plain silly to refer to and always has been. No doubt the arpeggio command is still useful to create various nifty effects, but for creating arpeggio chords i would really advise to use the phrase editor instead.
you can’t agree on something which has never been stated by the person you refer to.
posting on the renoise forum, the OP probably wants to achieve the “oldskool sound” in renoise, rather than vortex.
you’re using the arpeggio command in this, just incase you didn’t notice.
@Vincent
to complement what i said above:
nothing of what you wrote is related to the topic or helpful for the OP with his request for achieving that “oldskool sound“ with renoise.
even when presuming that he is a registered user having access to the current beta, phrases are so totally different in their handling that you cant be serious about recommending them as a substitute for the arpeggio command, used in chiptune-esque music ever since the release of the first sample based soundtracker on the amiga decades ago.
here as an old 4ch .mod made on protracker, converted to xrns. http://www.keith303.i24.cc/temp/tro15.xrns
can you can get identically sounding results (track 03) with phrases in the same, simple manner or in any way at all?
i doubt it !
There is also always something special with having limitations, well, does the music really sound much better with all the features and fancy equipment?
All you really need is a C64…and some serious skills:
Okay, you got your point: I apologize about the phrases…
I have been messing with those but not that thoroughly.
I could however achieve something similar without requiring the arpeggio command though http://ge.tt/7ggNFsJ1/v/0
The phrase not being able to take over the epic arpeggiator pitch arpeggiation feature is a pity though. (its gonna take me quite some time before i have that specific part updated to work in Renoise 3.0)
But still regarding old-skool chiptune mods:They exactly prove why the arpeggio command in trackers suck:they have no speed versatility, you cannot extent to have arpeggios containing more than three notes. Besides the fact you could not apply filter effects and pulse width effects on the sound, but that is something i can’t blame the tracker developers for but Commodore to leave those features out of the Paula chip. (Yeah, the paula had simply a filter “on” and “off” mode but nothing else to control the variation of it.)
I tried and it sounds pretty much identical actually. All you really need is 6 3-note phrases (2 of them duplicates) at 12lpb in each of the two arpeggio instruments and in the pattern change the note of the odd values to the key where you mapped the corresponding phrase. It’s another way to work and it’s great, but i think it would be very sad if the arps disappeared from Renoise.
Thank you a lot everyone iy will dig this and and keith303 u got very nice skills there as soon as i got time i will try some of those nice tricks u got in that tune !
Yes, you can create the same effect with the Phrases, however in live situations, these kind of phrases don’t work out well once the note-off kicks in. (the phrase stops playing)
I suspect the desired behavior is that the phrase keeps playing while the sound is still playing (perhaps this could be finetuned).
The arp effect imho does not need to vanish. It is being used to create other kind of effects as well.
Smart you brought that up since a dsp ringmod is be able to do this (and i bet the renoise one is as well, but analog not so much). It will actually work as well controlled ‘tremolo’ at audio rate. I’ve used this for pwm sounds and if you only have a 4 or 5 note riff it isn’t much work.
If there is some self tracking (more or less approach as amp mod in particular scenario of pitch tracking with frequency offset but ringmod excludes the original signal which is a benefit for making pwm from it). At very high speed if it is tracking the pitch, you just have to move frequency off a bit and it will cut the square into smaller ‘pulses’, as if well timed tremolo chopping up square waves with another square wave. In renoise, someone just has to poke in all the values via an lfo which seems very boring. It wouldn’t be the same as simply copying Dblue pitch device stuff. But, it would be like copying that and adjust each note for correct frequency offset. If one did do that (119 or 127 times?), at that point you could adjust the lfo amount and offset. But the offset is too course for alot of free adjustment with such high speed modulations. You would still get alot of variations, though.
So, renosie may have such an ‘option’ but the effort is possibly so massive vs. benefit that, well, you’re still right.
