Sample Pack Contest VI: ALBUM RELEASED

[Charybdizs]

I still wanna hear Pharmaceutical Derp!

But yeah, I'd say not to worry about copyrighted issues, it's not like we're making a profit off of them, and I don't think we ever will.

On a side note, when are you gonna start the next Monthly Midi Contest DHR? I was thinking it might be a good idea to start it before the first of the month, just so people have a little more time to work on their songs. Not that any of use really need a whole month and a half... But I do like to have a lot of time to procrastinate! XD

[KungFuFurby]

Let me admit that other then making just-for-fun music, I also have actual games to compose music for that are by other people... and some of them have been released. I did the music to my own Nine Pixel Game, handled the music to Scribble Star, and composed the music for Circyt. These are all Stencyl games if you're curious... and they have been released. ^_^

[Rocco]

I want KFF to talk about KFF more.

And regarding the MMC starting back up, I have been considering running one last "Contest de la Rocco," for old time's sake. If there's any interest in that, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to have simultaneous contests running. It would require some back end work before it would be ready to begin (and I would have to ask around for someone to donate some server space for a contest site), so how about we get a February MMC going, with the intention of hosting CdlR7 in March/April?

As for the legendary missing sample of SPC6, I present to you: "Pharmaceutical_DERP.wav"
(T-Pain autotuned a speech by Barack Obama, and this happened.)

[Charybdizs]

lol, nice sample there.

May I ask why it's "one last "Contest de la Rocco"?
I wasn't around during the last ones, so I don't know much about it though. I'm assuming life just got too busy?

[MaliceX]

Regarding the legality of samples, I am of the opinion that while the sample sources may be dubious, realistically it's unenforcable unless it were a clip of a high-profile, well-known song, or a direct sample from a hardware ROMpler which contain trademarks without permission AND is being sold. (the samples that is, not the music made with it.) The fact people are encouraged to sculpt different sounds out of its original context garners more benefit, and really people are going to care about suing your hiney if you're getting rich using names you don't own, clear clipping of a famous segment, or reselling raw samples you didn't make and making a large profit out of it. (hell, some royalty-free sample cd's are technically illega as it uses other royalty-free loops/samples stolen from a competitor and they're getting away with murder. Then you have to consider the amount of 808/909 sample libs out there, Roland doesn't care until you start using their name and/or are directly copying design imagery from their hardware pixel-by-pixel.)

In short, unless you're getting famous from blatant sampling without much effort, this kind of thing really is unenforcable and matters more by principle. I believe no one is innocent of this, and perhaps technically almost everyone on youtube is breaching copyright laws one way or another. (public broadcast, duplication clauses.) Really the only people that can sue your ass are the people that made the samples to begin with. Chances are, they won't give two shits or they'll never hear your stuff.

PS: holy feces kungfufurby, SPC's for SPC. Nice!

And another CDLR? Yes please!

PPS: Here's some shortcircuit presets and modified samples: http://djtbmx.stdrand.com/junkpile/spc6 ... resets.rar

Unsubmitted samples:
http://djtbmx.stdrand.com/junkpile/cellosidechain.wav (taken from a gated reverb test with XG)
http://djtbmx.stdrand.com/junkpile/progwanker.wav (me being a lead wanker with a Helix preset I made, based on k_hope_lead.wav)

[Rocco]

TUC: The last CdlR was #6, held in June of 2006. Since then, things have conspired to force me into a more "adult" lifestyle. That is to say, I have a lot less free-time than I used to. Wage slavery is an ugly, ugly thing. Before quit hosting them, they were an almost bi-yearly event, and tons of fun. I already contacted some people I would like to serve on the judging panel (yes, you heard that right), and am as we speak hammering out some of the specifics of the next contest. Be on the lookout for more info as it comes available.

MaliceX Haha! I love the pitch-corrected singing girl! But I can't hear any of the .scg files.

[Bregalad]

I actually wanted to make a psuedo-SNES game soundtrack for SPC 6, hence the reason for the shocking number of tracks. It's true, folks, I have become somewhat of a SNES composer... and one day, I'm actually wishing I could find someone making a SNES game. I'd be glad to compose the music. ^_^

OK this makes perfect sense to me now. Maybe you should have titled the songs so that we understood that. Well what is done is done.
I'm into NESdev currently and planned to move to SNES-dev one day... but it's been about 6 years since I wanted to release a NES game and I still have nothing to show off so it's not like this was easy.

I understand you used the IT->SPC converter, because it would probably have been to hard/limiting to write your own SPC replay engine (I actually wrote one, and lost the source ) but I'll write a better one someday.

I don't think your tunes are bad but most of them would benefit usage of better samples... for example my favourite is Way Out - No way - it would probably sound much better if the FM bass was replaced with some kind of piano, then it would do a very fine song. Well the high pitch usage of FM bass is interesting, yet it doesn't sound extremely good. Also this song would suit better a dark dungeon than a game over theme... I listened to all the songs while level grinding the last dungeon of Dragon Quest IX with my DS, so this might have influenced me a lot.
Tunes that went well along that dungeon probably got a few extra points from me This is one of them.

We actually did this for sample pack contests II and III. With II, all samples had to be mic-recorded by the submitte

So people who don't have any mic, like myself, can't enter the contest ?

[Blitz Lunar]

So people who don't have any mic, like myself, can't enter the contest ?

not exactly -- if you couldn't record samples, then you couldn't submit samples in those contests, but you would still be able to enter songs using the samples people submitted. if we were to do this again, i'd be in the same category since my mic is broken and useless (unless i dug around for things i recorded years ago.)

[MaliceX]

MaliceX Haha! I love the pitch-corrected singing girl! But I can't hear any of the .scg files.

.scg files need to be in the same directory as the SPC6 samples. If the samples do load, that may be an issue on your end.

[KungFuFurby]

I actually wanted to make a psuedo-SNES game soundtrack for SPC 6, hence the reason for the shocking number of tracks. It's true, folks, I have become somewhat of a SNES composer... and one day, I'm actually wishing I could find someone making a SNES game. I'd be glad to compose the music. ^_^

OK this makes perfect sense to me now. Maybe you should have titled the songs so that we understood that. Well what is done is done.
I'm into NESdev currently and planned to move to SNES-dev one day... but it's been about 6 years since I wanted to release a NES game and I still have nothing to show off so it's not like this was easy.

I understand you used the IT->SPC converter, because it would probably have been to hard/limiting to write your own SPC replay engine (I actually wrote one, and lost the source ) but I'll write a better one someday.

I don't think your tunes are bad but most of them would benefit usage of better samples... for example my favourite is Way Out - No way - it would probably sound much better if the FM bass was replaced with some kind of piano, then it would do a very fine song. Well the high pitch usage of FM bass is interesting, yet it doesn't sound extremely good. Also this song would suit better a dark dungeon than a game over theme... I listened to all the songs while level grinding the last dungeon of Dragon Quest IX with my DS, so this might have influenced me a lot.
Tunes that went well along that dungeon probably got a few extra points from me This is one of them.

I don't even program using SPC700 assembly... I'm actually not that advanced in programming. Also, I don't even have a debugger to start with on either the SNES or the SPC700... I'm good enough to invent music modifiers for SNES games, and believe it or not, I've got full music modifiers for games with bank modifiers, and some of these games remind me of cracking safes (not for real, just a figure of speech)... all I have to do to find the combinations is usually look for all other hits for when they call up to load a bank. One of the games I could be talking about is Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions. That has two bank IDs, and both must be used. Then in one bank combination, you have more than one sub-tune (I already had the sub-tune modifier from the beginning). You can find my codes on the SNESMusic.org forums.

Hey, that's OK. Even the real SNES musicians sometimes didn't do so good on their substitutions. In my case, I was just simply making with what I had. Plus, I couldn't get too long on my samples because I knew I had memory limitations... this is why I actually cut one of the samples (to the person that guessed anonymousS3.wav as that sample: you win!) and used a late segment of it. If you want, I can show you my source IT files of the SNES tunes. ^_^

Oh, and P.S: I entered late into SPC 5 without entering a single sample because of how late I was when I first saw it. ^_^

[Blitz Lunar]

just read through the comments (since i hadn't previously.)

Sadly, it feels a bit repetitive at parts and not so solid as a piece overall.
I sense a struggle when making this piece, however the mastering was done exceptionally well this time.

well spotted, interesting you picked up on that. i rushed all three of my songs in the last week and as such they are a bit more repetitive than i'd like. but yeah on the plus side i have improved my mixing - started learning to use a master track limiter since i had avoided such in the past. still not totally comfortable but i've learned to use them without the sound being horribly compromised.

My god this song sucks hard.

made me lol. it was supposed to be a follow-up to spaz discount from SPC III (which oldies will know and probably acknowledge was a far better song.) i ran out of time with this one... there was going to be some actual MUSIC but i just called it done when i had drum parts. but the percussion sequencing is good right?

I'm really not keen on that hard panning
The panning really helps keep it interesting in the beginning, as well as giving a call and response sort of effect.
Two beatbox samples, so you just HAD to get your way and do an IDM beatbox showdown

werd, that panning would have perhaps gone down well if i had gone with my original plan of calling the song "Dueling Beatbox". actually it may have fared better in the contest had i done that. silly me, always trying to find original names instead of using descriptive (and admittedly trite) ones.

anyway, it's not a very good song.

The high pitched deathbells are very nice, and certainly make up most of the 'watery' textures perceived.

that's high pitched windwaker actually it makes a very nice melodic tambourine sound. yeah, watery. you came to the same conclusion as me.

[Kris Troutman]

Another thought about the microphone problem; If people don't have one, just make a general rule where the sound must be created entirely by you.

Last time I checked, using an OSC or an FM (as well as many other things) results in the sound being completely generated by you, thus you own the rights to use it. Just encourage that something be done so that it's not just a straight wave and is somewhat a challenge to use. Like maybe put it through Atlantis or something and just go totally random.

Some programs even have a random sound generator, I know FL does (I forget the name of it), and you never know what you will get. Sometimes it's like a ringy strings sound, or sometimes it's some weird crystal-like bass. I really love that thing, and things like that would be really good to use if you don't have a microphone. Atlantis is also pretty good for making random sounds as well.

[Charybdizs]

Some programs even have a random sound generator, I know FL does (I forget the name of it), and you never know what you will get. Sometimes it's like a ringy strings sound, or sometimes it's some weird crystal-like bass. I really love that thing, and things like that would be really good to use if you don't have a microphone. Atlantis is also pretty good for making random sounds as well.

You can randomize pretty much every synthesizer on there, actually. It sounds like you're talking about Autogun though, am I right?

[Kris Troutman]

Yeah it was Autogun. It's all royalty free, and there's like over 4 billion sounds so far (I think it actually grows as people find and describe more of the sounds).
Atlantis also has a good amount of randomness in what sounds it can make, and you can get some pretty weird and cool sounds from it.

Yeah, you are right, almost all synths on FL can do random settings. I tend to go manual on things like the 3XOsc though. Either way, it's royalty free. Some of them you had to pay for in order to use (Sytrus), but the sounds are still generated by you, thus they are royalty free. If I'm wrong, then somebody please correct me.

[Charybdizs]

Yeah it was Autogun. It's all royalty free, and there's like over 4 billion sounds so far (I think it actually grows as people find and describe more of the sounds).

The descriptions are probably the best part.
"Sounds like a bear that is broken"
"Sounds pretty much like Canada hit with an axe"

Yeah, you are right, almost all synths on FL can do random settings. I tend to go manual on things like the 3XOsc though.

Haha I think 3xOsc is the only one I know how to efficiently use manual on. Not saying much, because it's got like, 10 buttons.