Space99 - Music and Sound Effect Forum

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 10:06 pm

Now splitting Space1999 to make it more readable. This section is devoted to sound for Space1999. If anyone has some good links to Space:1999 theme tune, episode tunes, sound effects, or even existing 8 bit music like SID, PT2 then please post here. Also if you have feelings what the music should sound like.
The initial intention is to reproduce Space:1999 theme tune in a chip tune on Sonix.

TheSpider · Post by **TheSpider** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:58 pm

Hiya Twi,
Have the themes on MP3....

http://thespider.ath.cx/sounds/1999Begin.mp3
1.16MB

http://thespider.ath.cx/sounds/1999End.mp3
700KB

http://thespider.ath.cx/sounds/1999-cult1.mp3
Full Version - Season 1 - 3.63MB

http://thespider.ath.cx/sounds/1999-cult2.mp3
Season 2 - 1.88MB

Have more, but 56 files / 135MB in total.
Most might be episode tunes & sound effects but been a while since I listened to them.

Just checked... I think most came from here:
http://www.space1999.net/moonbase99/media_centre.htm

JamesD · Post by **JamesD** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 6:52 am

There's also some Space 1999 midi files. I was going to convert the midi to sheet music with MidiNotate Musician, put it in a tracker and use the data.

I'm going to be spending a lot of time sitting in a hospital room and I'm going to take a 6502 book and notepad with me to write down some code if I get time but it will be a few days.
Now I really wish I had bought a laptop.

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 12:02 am

Chema, if you email me your address, i have a rather useful code card sheet that has all the 6502 mnemonics on one side and sound relationship tables on the other, i thought i lost one so made another, but then found the original.

Regards Midi files, i actually find it better converting music from the original. Converting from midi has a tendency to not sound so close to the original. Unfortunately the Oric doesn't have a midi player or converter and even if it did it would be a terribly inefficient way of storing the music.
So i'll do what i did for Ghouls and Ghosts on the C64 and Super marioland (Ambassadors of Funk), i'll listen to the cult one a few times, find the right key and lay down some notes in Sonix.

Chema, i think the best scheme for the sound will be the main title tune in 3 channels (and possibly SID), then sound effects on one channel and 2 channels for incidental music.
I can do all the music and Sound Effects in Sonix, but will need to write separate code to drive sfx outside the environment.
The Sonix tune will then be compiled (SMC) which should give is a better idea of size (i'd hope not more than 4K including driver).

Spidery, 1999-cult1.mp3 is the best imo, i would also hope to extend the guitar solo a bit

It also reminds me that if time permits, i'd like to do some sid sounds with this song. btw, SID sounds do not take up more memory but only in some more code and cpu usage is a little higher.
Unfortunately no version of Sonix supports SID sound, i have to manually add it afterwards, so we'll see.

Post by **Dbug** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 12:35 pm

Twilighte wrote:Unfortunately the Oric doesn't have a midi player or converter and even if it did it would be a terribly inefficient way of storing the music.

Already forgot about Fabrice's 'Karoke' program ?

Fabrice wrote:> P. S. may be it will be funny too if we have midi player for Oric that
> can play simple three track midis without correct soundings of
> instruments, all with one organ voice of oric sound chip like produced
> by MUSIC command?

Ok, I've spent a few hours on it and here it is...
A simple MIDI player that plays the music on Oric's internal PSG.
It's monotimbral only, and it can only play 3 notes simultaneously, so it's sole
interest is to be able to read single-instrument music compositions in standard
MIDI format...
However, it uses a Least Recently Used channel scheme so that some tunes that
need more than 3 voices are still hearable with it...

A distribution on a single 360KB disk, filled with near one hour of classics
music pieces is available on
http://oric.free.fr/DISKS/midipsg.zip

Best regards to all,

Fabrice

Was posted on comp.sys.oric in december 2004

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 8:39 pm

oh dear, i am so sorry Fabrice.
Forgot all about this thing. Very cool.
Whilst the memory usage is ok, i would like to somehow import the generated sounds into Sonix, since i can then jazz it up a bit and also use some other features of the AY.
So now would be the best time to find a good space1999 midi file

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 9:36 am

Twilighte wrote: So now would be the best time to find a good space1999 midi file

I have uploaded the only one I found that somehow resemble the original tune...

http://www.defence-force.org/ftp/forum/ ... 1_open.mid

I found it months ago, just before deciding that music was completely out of my possibilities

Twilighte, I will PM my email to you.

Regards

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 11:01 pm

ok, just a quick update, i tried using Sonix for this but it is a little inept for this sort of music. It is not the capabilities of the AY to cope with the music but the capablities of Sonix. I am currently designing a new sonix that will hopefully overcome these issues.
But don't get worried, if i take what i consider too long remind me and i'll return to Sonix. I had looked at Fabrices Midi player which is very cool but does only manage one midi instrument, which tends to make the player only useful for classical compositions.
If i ever use the midi player, i'd convert the music to Sonix and then add instruments and stuff.

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 11:39 pm

ok, another quick update, infact did rather well tonight...
A change of heart made me realise a converter is needed to translate thousands of songs from the Spectrum to the Oric.
I wrote an Encoder to convert just the Patterns and Song list to a tape file then wrote the player which autoruns on the oric.
Admittedly i don't yet capture effects or Envelope generator (Which is used alot in this music, but the result of just one evenings work has just paid off, both encoder and player worked first time!
I don't get that often enough

So anyway, want to hear the result?
You need to first load the generated music file...
http://www.defence-force.org/ftp/forum/ ... c/girl.tap
Then this file which is the autorunning player.
http://www.defence-force.org/ftp/forum/ ... sic/vp.tap
The original music is here...
http://www.defence-force.org/ftp/forum/ ... c/girl.pt2
And is played on the ZXSpectrum Sound Chip Emulator which can be found here...
http://bulba.at.kz/emulator_e.htm

The general idea is that i get a friend of mine who is a bit of a spectrum music nerd to compose us a Space1999 song(he is the best musician i know) then i use the converter to get it into oric format, i can then potentially add other special effects, etc.

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 3:11 am

update... I had asked a friend of mine to compose the Music but he has not yet replied to my mail (i must admit it has been a while since i last contacted him), so i went to #z80 and tracked down 'Fatal Snipes' email address. He is responsible for loads of excellent Spectrum tunes so should be able to do it instead.
On the coding side, i have coded the next stage of the player (ie. optimised patterns, Effects handling) but not tested yet.

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Thu Jan 04, 2007 12:19 am

It seems i have had little or no reply regards getting a friend to do the music, so have returned to writing a new editor again. In fact i spent most of christmas (including Christmas and boxing day) coding. It is about 60% complete and i estimate it should be ready by end of this month.

Here is a screenshot

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 7:12 pm

Twilighte wrote:It seems i have had little or no reply regards getting a friend to do the music, so have returned to writing a new editor again. In fact i spent most of christmas (including Christmas and boxing day) coding. It is about 60% complete and i estimate it should be ready by end of this month.

Here is a screenshot

This looks impressive, Twilighte... I can't wait to see... er.. hear your sounds

Twilighte · Post by **Twilighte** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 2:41 pm

I have now moved the Editor development to Audio Tools forum, i will only post Space99 music related stuff here now.

Chema · Post by **Chema** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:28 am

Ok, following your advice.... Here comes the list of sounds I think we will need.

-Door opening/closing (whistle).
-Object picking/dropping ("pic"-like sound).
-Stepping sound (two at different pitch, such as the two Oric's kbd clicks).
-New message through commlink.
-Beep for information messages in text area.
-Effects for infopost menu system (selection changes and CTRL)
-Effects for inventory item selection change. (can be the same as above?)
-Alarms for power low and life support low. (something continuous on the background or something to sound when the text messages appear?)
-Effect for dialogue with other characters. (Maybe not needed)
-Musics for sub-objective accomplished and new challenges (the first could be a variation of the opening part of the Space 1999 theme and the second the drums in the same tune).

What do you think? More ideas?

Post by **Dbug** » Tue Jan 23, 2007 4:21 pm

Chema wrote:-Stepping sound (two at different pitch, such as the two Oric's kbd clicks).

Actually I think that one single sound with a random slight alteration of the pitch would be better. Having two differents sounds would sound like the heroes have a peg leg, or two different shoes