Tech, I said I'd be entering if I had a chance, and maybe I will...
Although I have to admit this is quite a challenge... I've almost always relied on instruments (my only finished work depends heavily on instruments!).
Well, I wouldn't be offering prizes if it weren't much of a challenge. :P
But I'm sure you can do something. If I can do something basic with my test sample song, then you can most likely do something more elaborate. But no worries; I'm just doing this for the fun of it.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Ok, remove my current entry, I made another one that's better. It's 2 songs, and I could only do this properly because I recently had some cofee and am exiting my usual slightly depressed state.
NOTE: New does not mean it's the newer one. It's for around the end of the game when happy town is happy again.
moviemovies1, even though your 900 BPM song isn't anything like nicetas_c's, it's still a great piece of work. I would personally like to see better volume control in your piece, but it's still a worthy submission, in my opinion.
Archj, I'm impressed at the level of knowledge you have when it comes to creating a medieval air in your music. I wish I was able to do this for my Warlord's Realm soundtracks (even though I also needed some horror & somewhat militaristic elements in my songs).
It looks like we have 3 contestants now. at any time, if you feel a need to change the song, just post it up here.
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Tech, I changed my entry to happy town stuff. Please change what my entry is on the front post. I have a built in link veiwer on the bottom of my browser, you know.
Sorry about that; when I was checking the forum yesterday, I was redirected to moviemovies1's first post instead of your last one.
But dude; I had a listen to your song & I think it's a greater improvement over some of the other works. I'd call it a great song (even though I'm more of the type that likes long songs, a song's a song).
It's been changed (& so has moviemovies1's entry).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
Simplicity is, at times, the best way to go. One instrument to play a simple tune is something that was done in the early days of the NES.
Look at the music for Kaettekita Mario Bros.; all the songs are simple, but they're catchy & can be easily covered in FamiTracker with the use of one blank instrument & a bunch of effects.
So, why call your knowledge limited?
Also, All the tunes I'm seeing up here are great. Yet, they're all in MMC5 or pure 2A03.
Don't be afraid to use other expansion chips; the rules I've made for this contest also state that you can use expansion chips as long as you only have one blank instrument for both the expansion & the 2A03 chips. Go ahead & create VRC6 & FDS songs (just don't use VRC7 songs).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
The reason is because it takes away from the challenge. 7 extra sound channels with preset instruments isn't something that I'd consider a challenge.
The real point of this contest (besides having fun & winning something) is to experiment with making decent NES music without the use of any MML settings or presets from within any instrument (hence the reason behind banning VRC7 only allowing the use of one blank instrument per chip).
The challenge would be to use the tracker's effects column to do all the work, instead of relying on multiple instruments with different settings.
I'd also like to be able to listen to the 2A03 square channels as they were meant to be heard (since I use FamiTracker 0.3.0, if you open an 0.3.5+ project file that uses multiple 2A03 instruments with different settings, they don't retain the MML values you set. As a result, the 2A03 effects settings are check-marked with no MML, leading to the song plaing without volume, duty or arpeggio values. I'd only be able to listen to songs that use a blank instrument for everything).
That's the only significant downside to using FamiTracker 0.3.0 (besides not being able to listen to VRC7 or FDS projects; that's why I'd recommend exporting to NSF when submitting an FDS track on this contest).
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Technology: the one thing that's hated & cursed at by all engineers, technologists, scientists & technicians!
I just had a question since I've only entered a contest once before (and that was about 5 minutes ago).
Am I allowed to submit a cover of a song or does it have to be a custom song I wrote myself? I have a song I've been meaning to finish for a while and I realized I only used one instrument in it.
Here's the start of the song if you wanted to hear it: