I've noticed that many C64 games have a very distinct sound that I haven't heard on another console.
I cannot really describe it, but somehow, many melodies on the C64 sound metallic/futuristic/science fiction-like.
Does anybody how exactly this effect is called?
Also, is it possible to replicate it on the NES?
DRW wrote:
I cannot really describe it, but somehow, many melodies on the C64 sound metallic/futuristic/science fiction-like.
Cannot you be any less precise ?
I belive you might be refering to the constant changing duty cycle of square waves ? With the NES it cannot be replicated as only 3 different duty cycles, however some games for other consoles such as Chrono Trigger (SNES) and Golden Sun (GBA) have replicated exactly that effect in software for some of their music.
Examples :
Chrono Trigger Golden SunPS: This thread should probably be moved to the Music thread, even if it does not speak about NES music per se. I don't know really.
There are a number of things that kind of sound "C64" on the NES/famicom:
1. Constant arpeggios, especially with PAL 50Hz refresh rate.
2. Build snare drum sound out of alternating frames of square wave and noise. (i.e. a C64 channel can have tone or noise on a single channel, but not both at the same time; leads to very idiomatic kind of snare drum sound.)
3. VRC6 expansion can do an impression of C64 sliding duty cycle width. (Not quite as smooth.) It also has a saw wave.
Here's an example that I think does all of these at once:
Cybernoid cover by Necrophageon (Check out instruments 06/07 for the drums especially.)
"Arpeggios" in this sense are the warbly chords in
Pictionary,
Silver Surfer, and
Solstice for NES (which have
Follin in common) and most Codemasters games for NES.
I'm guessing it's duty sweeps. The
training/jogging cut scenes in Punch-Out!! for NES (which became the
"Nigga Stole My Bike" meme) have a very primitive version of duty sweeps, but the NES pulse waves can't do more than 3 different duty cycles. So C64-style NES tunes such as the
theme from Skate or Die 2 have to switch the duty cycle much faster.
[listens to fourth YouTube video, which is Double Dragon]Yup, it's duty sweeps. If the level end bell in
Number Munchers for Apple II has the same sort of "science fictiony" sound you're talking about, it's definitely duty sweeps.
I believe "that c64 sound" is just modulating the duty cycle every frame, and the VRC6 can approximate this.
The C64 can also do filter sweeps (and other fiilter effects), that double dragon is using them pretty prominently. There isn't really anything analogous to this in NES sound, though. At best maybe slowly adjusting the modulator strength on a VRC7 patch can to something a little bit similar, or maybe some clever DPCM sampels, but in general a PSG can't emulate a filter sweep.
As for the duty-sweeps, if you're not allowing Famicom expansion audio, I don't think the NES' 3 stages of duty even come close to sounding like it. I think the best you could do is maybe using 2 pulse waves playing the same thing but detuned. Smoothly varying the duty of a pulse shares a little bit of spectral similarity with two pulses at a slight detune. It's still obviously different than a smooth duty sweep, but I think it's a bit closer at least, though it unfortunately requires 2 channels.
Say what you want, but I prefer sound on the C64 over the NES. I just like how much more upbeat a lot of C64 music is.
I mean, dang:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93nIljXpqUYI'd also think it looked better if it weren't for the poor resolution in 16 color mode (which somehow seems more colorful than the entire NES color palette.)
I'd like to see this be done on the NES:
I always thought it always sounded too buzzy. It does work for some songs though, so that's not to say I hate it, the C64 has some excellent songs. I just prefer the NES and Game Boy's sound to it.
Sogona wrote:
I always thought it always sounded too buzzy.
I think the biggest problem with the SID is a lack of effective per-channel volume control. Basically everything has one loudness, which makes it difficult (but not impossible) to balance or do subtle orchestration. I suspect this lack of volume control is part of the reason why SID composers put so much expression into little notes and timbre effects (e.g. arpeggios and duty slides).
I guess that's the reason for a lot of Commodore 64 songs sounding more "excited" than NES songs.
rainwarrior wrote:
I think the biggest problem with the SID is a lack of effective per-channel volume control. Basically everything has one loudness, which makes it difficult (but not impossible) to balance or do subtle orchestration. I suspect this lack of volume control is part of the reason why SID composers put so much expression into little notes and timbre effects (e.g. arpeggios and duty slides).
That's not to say there is
no volume control. The S setting in the ADSR registers for each channel sets the sustained volume, as analogue synthesizers traditionally did.
If you have one channel with a S(ustain) of 15 and another channel at 8, they will NOT be the same loudness.
This sounds just like volume control per channel...
Espozo wrote:
This sounds just like volume control per channel...
But it's not exactly. I haven't used the SID myself, but my understanding is that it's ADSR envelopes only. You can set the sustain level, but attack and decay are times, not levels. It's the time it takes to attack to and decay from maximum level. I wonder what it sounds like if you set it to the minimum, I don't know if you can change the sustain to effectively make your own software controlled envelope, my guess is there would be lots of clicks, unless only re-triggering the ADSR on note changes. Would be interesting to know.
Yes, there is a sustain part of the envelope which you can use for a partial volume control. You can also use the filter to attenuate one or two of the channels (while also filtering), or you can use the triangle wave on a channel to make it quieter (since it's not as loud as the other waveforms).
I also tried a trick where you cancel the attack early, going straight into release, allowing notes to have an attack that doesn't go all the way up, but this was a little bit problematic on hardware tests (the envelope doesn't seem to like being updated while it's running, some writes don't appear to go through).
So, yes, there are ways to do some forms of volume control on the SID, but every one of them is flawed. Of all the chips I've written music for that actually had any volume control at all, the SID has the worst. Almost everything else has a very straightforward way to attenuate individual notes (e.g. NES, AY, Pokey, any YM FM chip, etc...)
rainwarrior wrote:
Almost everything else has a very straightforward way to attenuate individual notes (e.g. NES, AY, Pokey, any YM FM chip, etc...)
Straightforward, if you are a CPU.
You can see that the SID was designed to be easy for a musician to trigger and release notes as he/she played without worrying much about volume control per-note. No musician in their right mind would want to keep one hand on the volume control knob at all times while pressing keys on a keyboard, which is pretty much the AY/2A03/YM model.
ccovell wrote:
No musician in their right mind would want to keep one hand on the volume control knob at all times while pressing keys on a keyboard, which is pretty much the AY/2A03/YM model.
Clavichords and organs support
polyphonic aftertouch. Organs also tend to have an
expression pedal that changes the instrument's overall volume.
rainwarrior wrote:
Of all the chips I've written music for that actually had any volume control at all, the SID has the worst. Almost everything else has a very straightforward way to attenuate individual notes (e.g. NES, AY, Pokey, any YM FM chip, etc...)
What about the Game Boy? No volume changes without resetting phase.
Game Boy at least allows specifying the initial volume. Thus it has a phase reset at the start of each piecewise linear segment of an envelope but nowhere else. So you get A (click) D (click) S (click) R, and whatever's playing in noise can mask the clicks.
ccovell wrote:
No musician in their right mind would want to keep one hand on the volume control knob at all times while pressing keys on a keyboard, which is pretty much the AY/2A03/YM model.
No musician in their right mind would play so many instruments together at the same time either, they'd get other people to play the other instruments. (not to say this hasn't been tried, but you get the point) If you see different channels as different instruments rather than just a way to do polyphony (and since each channel has its own instrument, it's definitely not just for polyphony), the model is indeed straightforward.
ccovell wrote:
rainwarrior wrote:
Almost everything else has a very straightforward way to attenuate individual notes (e.g. NES, AY, Pokey, any YM FM chip, etc...)
Straightforward, if you are a CPU.
You can see that the SID was designed to be easy for a musician to trigger and release notes as he/she played without worrying much about volume control per-note. No musician in their right mind would want to keep one hand on the volume control knob at all times while pressing keys on a keyboard, which is pretty much the AY/2A03/YM model.
You've completely lost me here. O_o The SID is attached to a CPU, not a pair of human hands... what are you making this comparison for?
Even if we pursue this analogy to a keyboard, have you never heard of a piano? The volume is controlled by how fast you press the key. What about MIDI velocity control? Breath control? A volume pedal? There's like 100 other ways to control volume on a MIDI synthesizer.
Also it's actually really common to see a synthesizer keyboardist to play keys with their right hand while their left hand sits on the mod and volume wheels (
example). Pretty standard way to play when not in poly mode, really.
Dwedit wrote:
What about the Game Boy? No volume changes without resetting phase.
Actually, even though the Game Boy did not seem to be designed to do this, there is some kind of work-around that lets you set arbitrary volume at any time. I dunno if the technique was used in the commercial era, but it appears to be well understood now? (e.g.
Deflemask lets you use the "volume macro" idiom).
Even still, nothing on the Game Boy prevents the musician from having one note start at an initially different volume than another note playing. That's crucial to a subtle background part, or most halfway-decent noise drums.
While there is a trick that can clock the GB envelope counters, and thus set volume levels, it didn't work when I tested it on the GBA.
I ended up using a different way to work around the phase reset issue: Use GBA high-resolution timers, and synchronize them with the pulse channels to force the write to happen within a few cycles of when the wave would change, so the pops go away.
rainwarrior wrote:
Even if we pursue this analogy to a keyboard, have you never heard of a piano? The volume is controlled by how fast you press the key. What about MIDI velocity control? Breath control? A volume pedal? There's like 100 other ways to control volume on a MIDI synthesizer.
Also it's actually really common to see a synthesizer keyboardist to play keys with their right hand while their left hand sits on the mod and volume wheels (
example). Pretty standard way to play when not in poly mode, really.
My point was that many PSG chips (ones without a hardware volume sweep / fader) are like a piano whose note never fades away -- the "musician" / programmer / whatever has to take it upon himself to program in the fading of each note by twiddling the volume like a madman. Even "expressiveness" would have to be programmed in manually. At the very least, the SID takes that chore away from the non-technical person in that a natural-sounding note can be played with a single push-button coming out of the machine.
ccovell wrote:
My point was that many PSG chips (ones without a hardware volume sweep / fader) are like a piano whose note never fades away -- the "musician" / programmer / whatever has to take it upon himself to program in the fading of each note by twiddling the volume like a madman. Even "expressiveness" would have to be programmed in manually. At the very least, the SID takes that chore away from the non-technical person in that a natural-sounding note can be played with a single push-button coming out of the machine.
Okay, but you explicitly compared it to the AY, 2A03, and YM (which YM?) which
ALL have envelope generators. The SID has a
better envelope generator than AY and 2A03 for sure, but a worse envelope generator than
every YM FM chip.
So, all of these chips have a "fire and forget" way of playing notes, but I think it's kind of strange to think of this as an advantage, because almost nobody wanted to do that with these chips. SID music
typically is frantically writing registers every single frame (e.g. the omni-present arps). With all the work they're already doing, it would not have been any problem to update volume each frame, and it would have had a huge advantage in balancing sound. I think it's truly bizarre that the SID is so feature-packed but omits this one crucial control.
Of these, only MIDI-controlled FM typically operates with sparse register writes. MIDI is really the only place it's an advantage, since you have somewhat limited control bandwidth, but for something directly connected to the CPU like a SID it's a non-issue to update it every frame.
Even if the SID ADSR had a channel volume control, like YM FM always does, that would still be a huge advantage without having to update every frame. My point is that it has no good per-channel volume control. Whether or not you want to do volume macros is a completely different issue from whether or not you can control the overall volume of a note
at all.
Does YM refer to Yamaha's clone of the Texas Instruments 76489 or to the YM2149, Yamaha's clone of the General Instrument AY-3-8910?
I though "YM" was just used in the name of most of Yamaha's sound chips. The Yamaha "YM"2151 is used for FM in both the Irem M72 and M92. There's also the YM2612 used in the Genesis, and the YM2610 used in the Neo Geo. (How in the world do these chips get their names? The YM2151 is the worst out of all of them, (The M92 also uses another chip, the custom GA20, for PCM samples) but the YM2612 is worse than the YM2610 and it's numbered higher by 2, oddly enough.)
Espozo wrote:
I though "YM" was just used in the name of most of Yamaha's sound chips. The Yamaha "YM"2151 is used for FM in both the Irem M72 and M92. There's also the YM2612 used in the Genesis, and the YM2610 used in the Neo Geo. (How in the world do these chips get their names?
YM stands for Yamaha. The internal names (OPN, etc) make more sense and give clues as to which ones are register compatible.
Espozo wrote:
The YM2151 is the worst out of all of them, but the YM2612 is worse than the YM2610 and it's numbered higher by 2, oddly enough.)
This is based on hot air. The OPM (YM2151) is a fan favorite. Higher numbers don't always mean "better part". Otherwise, the 6502 would trounce the 486.
mikejmoffitt wrote:
Otherwise, the 6502 would trounce the 486.
Except the 486 is actually 80486.
mikejmoffitt wrote:
This is based on hot air
Well, that's just what I've heard. :/
tokumaru wrote:
Except the 486 is actually 80486.
I didn't really get that either... Anyway, I mean processors of the same family or series or whatever. It's not like the 80386 is better than the 80486.
Speaking of x86 processors and the YM2151, I really need to get back and try to work with the M92 at some point...
Music on the SID largely comes from European composers, meanwhile NES music largely comes from Japanese composers. Each region has their own stylistic influences, and just like it'll come through on the radio, it also comes through in video game soundtracks. If you're saying that SID music sounds more upbeat and energetic, that's probably what you're noticing.
I dunno what America was doing at this time... were we seriously more focused on IBM-compatible gaming? A.k.a., the platform with almost no musical capabilities?
Drag wrote:
If you're saying that SID music sounds more upbeat and energetic, that's probably what you're noticing.
I guess it's a bit ironic that I prefer Japanese video game artwork then.
A game with a soundtrack I do really like that is from a Japanese developer is Super C. I like a lot of things about that game (and run and guns in general).
This is latter, but just thinking, I love all the songs from the DKC games, even the ones that aren't that upbeat. I love the song "Misty Menace" from DKC, and it's probably the least upbeat song in the game.
I guess I just feel that something with as "noisy" sound hardware as the NES or the C64 should have more energetic music, because I think it's better suited for it. You certainly couldn't reasonably pull of something like "Misty Menace" on either machines.
Espozo wrote:
I guess I just feel that something with as "noisy" sound hardware as the NES or the C64 should have more energetic music, because I think it's better suited for it. You certainly couldn't reasonably pull of something like "Misty Menace" on either machines.
I think what Dave Wise composed on the GameBoy (DKC, etc) has reasonable renditions of the SNES tunes.
Drag wrote:
I dunno what America was doing at this time... were we seriously more focused on IBM-compatible gaming? A.k.a., the platform with almost no musical capabilities?
Yeah, beepers, buzzing calliope SID tunes, and cramming Sierra games onto 6 floppy disks :-/
I'm not a big fan of European chip music (too raspy, I think), I much prefer the Japanese style.
The l33t hax0rs on IBM PC were doing this with the PC speaker:
https://youtu.be/AiURTmwpX2U (Thanks Rainwarrior)
Obviously, Pinball Fantasies had it beat. (MOD player using the PC speaker!)
I've found an NES game that has this distinct C64 sound that I was describing:
I'm talking about the sound that you hear in the first seven seconds of "Lethal Weapon":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6OHxglS10Although, the rest of the soundtrack does
not sound very C64-like to me. (The map music reminds me of "The Smurfs".)
For those who can't hear YouTube, it's arpeggio + duty changes.
Espozo wrote:
Say what you want, but I prefer sound on the C64 over the NES. I just like how much more upbeat a lot of C64 music is.
I dislike the Euro sound of most C64 stuffs, but it's more than just that. SID sounds dirty/gritty. More than just noisy. A lot of tunes are too busy as well - they're trying to fit too much into a limited 3 channel setup (for whatever tricks they use). I'm guessing the busier style of most c64/euro style music helps hide the limitations as well. I also dislike strong use of arpeggios, which euro musicians seemed to be in love with. Mild and moderate use is fine, but euro musicians at the time take it to the extreme (too noisy).
NES doesn't have timbre changing effects like SID can do, but the sound is so much cleaner. I find it more appropriate for different styles of music too.
Edit: thefox's cover of Rude Boy on the NES is a good example of moderate use of arpeggios IMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD2TIzut4Ps . And his other cover as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rumD3-0j9n4
I agree with more or less all of that. I like some SID music that is less packed - the Thing on a Spring music works pretty well for what it is, and even though it's a bit muddy and crowded I like some of the way the Short Circuit theme sounds.
American developers weren't totally musically inactive. During the NES days I don't think a lot comes to mind, but as the Genesis really took off a lot of developers used GEMS, for better or worse, and did produce a lot more content. ToeJam and Earl and Sonic Spinball are examples of American developers doing a decent job with GEMS.
tomaitheous wrote:
I also dislike strong use of arpeggios, which euro musicians seemed to be in love with. Mild and moderate use is fine, but euro musicians at the time take it to the extreme (too noisy).
[...]
Edit: thefox's cover of Rude Boy on the NES is a good example of moderate use of arpeggios IMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD2TIzut4Ps . And his other cover as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rumD3-0j9n4I just want to say I fully 100% agree with you (despite I'm from Europe). Arpeggios are awesome when they are slow enough so you hear all notes and they simulate things like synth pads - and on only one channel simultaneously of couse. However when they are too busy and that the arpeggio is so fast you don't hear the note it's not nice to the ear - it's great for ingame sound effects but that's a completely different thing.
Here's a good example I found of music by a European composer being to busy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCR85qPmgTY...Okay, sorry...
mikejmoffitt wrote:
During the NES days I don't think a lot comes to mind, but as the Genesis really took off a lot of developers used GEMS, for better or worse, and did produce a lot more content.
GEMS is actually pretty good under the right hands (see Jelly Boy)... the problem is that what happened was giving a full blown VM to composers who didn't have more technical background than the average computer user (yes, GEMS is pretty much a bytecode interpreter running on the Z80, variables and all). Whoops.
Arps are fine when they don't sound like ringing phones... and not sounding like ringing phones is kind of a rarity lol.
Sik wrote:
GEMS is actually pretty good under the right hands (see Jelly Boy)...
I don't suppose you're talking about the GameFreak game of the same name. That might explain why it was given a different title outside Japan, to avoid confusion with the other Nintendo exclusive Jelly Boy game.
That said, even though the NES is quite a popular console, and today marks it's 30th birthday in the United States, I feel like it's sound is grossly underused. All too often am I disappointed to see "NES remixes" of certain songs done with audio expansion, ironic considering only a handful of Famicom games bothered to use it at all. I really like the NES' triangle wave.
OneCrudeDude wrote:
All too often am I disappointed to see "NES remixes" of certain songs done with audio expansion, ironic considering only a handful of Famicom games bothered to use it at all.
Would you be disappointed to hear
"Chill" from Dr. Mario on an NES and a Game Boy at the same time?
OneCrudeDude wrote:
I don't suppose you're talking about the GameFreak game of the same name. That might explain why it was given a different title outside Japan, to avoid confusion with the other Nintendo exclusive Jelly Boy game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F80kmUzwPIEIt didn't get released apparently but that didn't stop bootleggers from bundling the game with a clone >.>; (seriously, I got the cartridge with a model 2 clone when I was 7, cue my surprise when I find out that it was supposedly not released) Admittedly graphics and sound
are worse than the SNES version (certain screw up with the lightbulb effect aside) but the game physics are the exact opposite (alright on the Mega Drive, completely broken on the SNES to the point a bonus stage is unwinnable), not to mention that on the Mega Drive you press, huh, down to duck (on the SNES you press A - what?).
Still, that video should give you an idea of how it sounds (and what happens when you make it play too many sound effects at the same time =P)
I was making a joke about how there were two irrelevant games with the same name. Oddly, the European game came out much later than the Japanese game.
@Tepples: It's not a remix of a non-NES song, so it's fine. I like that harsh buzzing sound you used though, especially considering that I hate how developers always aimed to use that nasally buzzing sound. Very few games used triangle wave styled sounds, Pokemon RBY uses what sounds like a hybrid between the Triangle and Sawtooth. That's one of my favorite sound types, second of course to the triwave itself.
OneCrudeDude wrote:
I like that harsh buzzing sound you used though, especially considering that I hate how developers always aimed to use that nasally buzzing sound.
It's intended to squeeze two, three, or four notes out of the wavetable channel. I think I have a minor third (5f and 6f), major third (4f and 5f), perfect fourth (3f and 4f), and a power chord (2f, 3f, and 4f) in there. Some of the instrumentation choices are inspired by ports of
Dr. Mario to later console. (I own it for NES, Game Boy, Super NES, N64, GBA, and Wii.) Oh, and the NES side has a sample from the theme song to
3-2-1 Contact.
I've got another question about that C64-sounding apreggio effect: What exactly is it that makes this effect sound like on the C64?
What I mean is: When I listen to the first seven seconds of "Lethal Weapon", the title music of "Asterix" or two specific songs by Shiru, I immediately think of the C64:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrNQrPeJPuswww.youtube.com/watch?v=RjV7GzDtWyEhttps://shiru.untergrund.net/files/mus/ ... treets.nsfhttps://shiru.untergrund.net/files/mus/ ... e_rain.nsfWhile the sound of "The Immortal", "M.C. Kids" or "Skate or Die 2" doesn't sound particularly C64-like to me:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HWHneafZ8w&t=1m1swww.youtube.com/watch?v=4HWHneafZ8w&t=1m21swww.youtube.com/watch?v=4HWHneafZ8w&t=2m26sIs this just a subjective feeling or do the above sounds actually include something that the below ones don't?
It's definitely the pulse-width changes, the first ones you listed are changing the duty cycle, while the other ones aren't changing the waveform.
C64 has a much wider selection of pulse-widths, so it tends to get varied quite a bit in C64 music. Google search shows it has 12 bits to select the width (really?!), while the NES pulse has just 3 different widths.
Memblers wrote:
Google search shows it has 12 bits to select the width (really?!)...
Yeah, it's ridiculously fine-grained. It's funny, since the VRC6 does a pretty good job of aping it with just 3 bits.
Also the 2nd group of games is using the triangle voice as a lead/arp, DPCM hits, etc... quite un-C64-like.
Immortal and SOD2 were made by a Brit (Rob Hubbard) working in the U.S. (IIRC), so maybe that influenced his sound. Rob Hubbard's style was more 3-voice calliope and Blues-inspired anyway.
ccovell wrote:
3-voice calliope
I'm curious about this term. Are you referring to the kind of mechanical organ one might hear attached to a merry-go-round, or is "3-voice calliope" a musical genre of some sort?
No, it's not a genre, just my opinion of the style of "The Entertainer" in this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6jdMhDMxVM