FamiTracker

Download an archive of my chiptunes here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... iptunes.7z

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Zelda's Lullaby (MMC5)

One of my earlier chiptune covers. Having been most inspired by Skyward Sword's version of this music, I decided to make a cover that was simple, graceful and effective. I tried multiple drafts using only 2A03, then accepted that the only way to give this song justice was to have at least four pulse channels with volume controls.

Please be kind. I was still learning the format. ^_^;

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20FTM.zip

(EDIT: Updated to reduce the echo problem.)

Another earlier chiptune cover of mine, made soon after my Zelda's Lullaby cover. Again, I wanted to make something simple, graceful and effective. However, I may have been naive to have 50% pulse with an echo of itself, considering that the two waveforms occasionally cancel each other out if they oppose each other at the same time.

Again, this is an older work when I was still learning the format, so please be kind. ^_^;

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20FTM.zip

(EDIT: Updated to reduce the echo problem.)

Again, another older chiptune cover of mine. I got steadily better with practice.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20NSF.zip

I'm sure making Game Boy-to-FamiTracker chiptune replicas is nothing new. This was my first attempt at it when I was still learning the format. I made two versions - a VRC6 version with sawtooth bass, and a 2A03 version with triangle bass.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20NSF.zip

With this cover I really started to become more confident in my FamiTracker skills.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20NSF.zip

This cover was my first in trying to design a piano-like pulse instrument using a halflife fade contour more like that of actual piano wires. When I made this, I calculated the contour manually using a calculator, but later on I programmed a redistributable browser tool to calculate these contours automatically: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... lator.html

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20NSF.zip

Another older chiptune cover of mine.

I made the VRC6 version first, and it's a fairly straightforward cover. But then I had some ideas, and decided to make a 2A03 version that tried to make the best of even fewer channels. To my surprise, I actually like the 2A03 version better. Since then, I've ended up using "0 0 12 12 0" and "0 0 7 7 12 12 7 7 0" arpeggio settings a lot for simulated overdriven guitars and power chords.

This was also one of the last chiptunes I made where I routinely balanced the instrument volumes as loud as as possible. Later, I realized that most actual in-game music on NES is actually half the loudness so that it doesn't drown out the sound effects. I was still learning all sorts of new things back then. :)

When I first made this chiptune, I mistakenly thought the first stage of Battlemaniacs was called Ragnarok Canyon, but that was actually the name of the first stage of NES Battletoads. I corrected the name to Khaos Mountains for the release on this forum.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20NSF.zip

Back when I made this cover, it was a huge milestone for me. I originally did not only to challenge myself, but to prove to my colleague Mjollnir that you could do house music in chiptune. You see, the original version of this song on GBA had this repeat progression of complex organ chords, and there was no realistic way I was going to fit all those chord notes into VRC6. And standard arpeggios sounded too ugly. So I transformed the chords into a harmonic rhythm. And, using a technique borrowed from David Wise, I provided a quieter echo, but instead of being only slightly delayed from the lead rhythm, I made the echo oppose the rhythm's position at any given point.

Did I succeed? You tell me. :)

This chiptune was also my first use of triangle wave for percussion, for both the bass drum and the wood block. It was also my first use of cycling through the VRC6 pulse pattern duty to create a "shifting" effect (for lack of a better term).

Also note that, like most house music, there is a lot of repetition but also a lot of variation to that repetition, and the song itself is a longer one. There are 104 frames, and it plays over three minutes before it loops. So if your NSF player is set to automatically fade out after just a minute or two, you may want to increase that limit.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... NSF%29.zip

When I first made this cover, I made the VRC6 version first, which was straightforward except for the piano chords. I didn't have enough room to dedicate three channels to the chord notes, so I designed several piano arpeggio instruments. Why didn't I just use standard FamiTracker arpeggios with the 0xx control? Because those are ugly! XD So I designed an arpeggio that is three times slower than the built-in arpeggio, but in the process had to make 13 separate piano instruments to accommodate all the possible chord combinations. Slow arpeggios really can be more attractive than fast arpeggios. :)

When I first released the VRC6 version, one of my friends complained that it was difficult to hear the bass (which I assigned to sawtooth), and it would be better if the bass sounds more like it does in other NES music (using the triangle wave). This posed a dilemma: Since I was already using the triangle wave for the bass drum, they couldn't both share the same channel. So I made a .wav recording of the bass drum instrument playing in isolation, then imported that as a DPCM sample. This way, I could have both triangle wave bass and triangle wave bass drum playing at the same time. This was also the first time I used the DPCM channel in a chiptune. Since I no longer needed the sawtooth channel at all, I released this revised version as MMC5. This is now the "main" version of my release of this cover, with the VRC6 version being obsolete.

Then, inspired by the fan games Rockman 7 FC and Rockman 8 FC that simplify music to 2A03-style chiptune, I decided to make a simplified 2A03 version, sacrificing a bit of detail for the desired sound. And fortunately, since the piano chords were already arpeggios, I didn't have to simplify those at all.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20NSF.zip

(EDIT: Updated to reduce the echo problem.)

With this cover, I once again used the DPCM channel for a triangle bass drum. But I also tried something new - I realized that the VRC6 sawtooth often works adequately as a backup voice of a different-sounding instrument, so I used it as one when the sawtooth wasn't carrying the lead melody. Similarly, when the sawtooth is carrying the melody, a pulse can adequately stand in as its echo. This may have also been my first chiptune where I made active use of all eight channels in VRC6 mode simultaneously.

Download: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/109 ... %20NSF.zip

(EDIT: Updated to reduce the echo problem.)