#deflemask tracker

[kielbasanova]

Lmao I fixed this one after I uploaded the soundcloud one. There's also a funky fun animation I made for it as well

Don't know why I forgot to post this here

[alphachromeyayo]

I've been messing around with this fun Mega Drive/FM tracker - it's cool! 😍

(and very different to how I normally make music)

Software is Deflemask if you're curious. S'fun!

[tytoalbias]

these are so awesome why doesnt more software do this

[azulcrescent]

I randomly found your YouTube channel and ended up on the playlists section, and noticed the music creation playlist and a couple videos on making chiptune

I'm curious, have you heard of a piece of software called Furnace? It's a tracker (the interface is like SunVox I'm pretty sure, I've never used SunVox) and it supports a ton of different sound chips, from the NES to the Atari 2600, and even a custom chip by the developer, called the Tildearrow Sound Unit

It usually can play back on original hardware too, at least I know it's been used for Mega Drive game soundtracks, I think its files are too big for 8-bit systems

You can also combine chips, so if you really wanted to add the Pong chip to the Game Boy you can now

I'm not sure how experienced you would be with the interface, so it might take a while to learn

If you've ever used a similar program called Deflemask, it should be simple, and you can move elements around to your liking, plus it's fully compatible with Deflemask, some demo songs were made in Deflemask

I couldn't insert a link, but if you search "Furnace Tracker" it should come up, and it's the first result on Github when searching Furnace

Thank you so much for the advice and the recommendation for Furnace! To be perfectly honestly I had close to no music background and couldn't make heads or tails out of music theory for the longest time. I've recently starting learning piano but I'm still very much firmly in the learning process so it'll take my a while to make use of these, but thank you! ^^

[eeriemagicians]

figuring out deflemask tracker is hard . . . ;;

[silveralicorn]

Original Song - Devils’ Drive (CD Version)

https://youtu.be/KjrWdC9pmLo

I remade a song I first did in DefleMask about a month ago. DefleMask is cool, but kinda flawed. I’d be more likely to keep using it if it would import/export midi. On the other hand I go way back with Modplug Tracker, OpenMPT is really comfortable to use :)

[green-lean-espeon]

I tried using Furnace and HORY SHET! THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN Deflemask!

Why have no one told me of this awesome ass tracker yet?!

Deflemask is a paid program and this bad boy IS FREE?!

Damn, boiii.

Also, have this (very shitty) test song I made using Furnace Tracker.

[echoesinthedeep]

Your music is amazing! What do you use to make it?

i use a lot of different programs for different things but im mostly a tracker user, i use the free version of deflemask and also furnace tracker. these are programs that make old video game style music for different systems' sound chips. they can seem tricky and intimidating to learn but there's video tutorials and stuff. i like them because they offer a bit more of a centralized look at your music than daws do sometimes, and i think not having to worry about all the instrumentation and stuff that goes into modern music as much is nice

i also sometimes use sunvox and renoise for less chiptune-y stuff, which are for more modern music styles

[scowsh]

Trackers are turning out to be my favourite way of composing… there’s just something about the workflow that fits my brain. My weapons of choice: Deflemask (mainly nes chip, occasionally genesis too), LSDJ & last few weeks the M8 tracker

[kielbasanova]

Since it's undertale and deltarune day and I haven't done anything schfancy, i will once again post this neat cover / animation i did that is potentially THE ONLY COVER OF THIS SONG THAT CAUGHT A COPYRIGHT CLAIM FOR LITERALLY NO REASON OTHER THAN BEING TOO ACCURATE?????????????????

All I ask is to share this around if you enjoy this. I'm still pretty salty that with all the time i put into this i got cockblocked by a faulty content id system

[clingojam]

Treetop - Super Mario Land 2 (SEGA Genesis / YM2612 Cover)

"Super Mario Land 2 is a pretty kickass game, especially for the Game Boy. From the fancy spritework to the catchy tunes, everything screams Mario; but with a delightfully wacky twist. Plus, this game introduced the best fictional character of all time: Wario."

this was made by me (!) using tildearrow's Furnace Tracker:

[delayrgc]

Learning DefleMask... 's legacy version

This ended up a bit longer than I hoped.

So far, I've made my music exclusively in MilkyTracker. Unlike programs like FL Studio, you don't have a fancy graphical overlay and not that many options. That's because trackers have been around for a very, very long time, and they weren't exactly made for mass consumption.

What you see is what you get.

You've got your instruments and samples (per instrument) at the top, then some fancy graphs, and the main feature takes up the majority of the screen: Your (up to) 32 channels, column by column. You're basically making music by filling in spreadsheets, called patterns, and arranging them. Their order is in the top left corner.

Things can get quite busy, so let me break things down a bit. This will be useful later.

While playing a track, the pattern is scanned row by row, top to bottom. To be brief, the white value is the new note (it continues the previous note if it's empty), blue is the instrument number, green represents the volume and the last three numbers are the effects column. What effect each code stands for is pretty much a standard at this point. Don't worry about the values themselves, I don't either. I just play around a bit and whatever sounds best is usually what I choose.

This is what I've used for three years now, and I still will. MilkyTracker allows you to play anything on any channel, so it's great for making music overall. But what if you want to emulate a particular sound, like the Sega Genesis or the Commodore 64's iconic SID chip?

This is where DefleMask comes in.

This tracker is designed to simulate particular soundchips from back in the day. You can create tracks for the GameBoy, NES, C64, and numerous Sega consoles. For testing I'm only using the free legacy version, and the number of emulated chips has grown slightly since then!

I'm especially interested in the aforementioned Genesis and Commodore. I love each console's chip for their own reasons. The SID was simply amazing for its time and the Genesis provided many memorable tunes (that's neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive!)

I cover stuff, so to explore this new environment a bit I decided to cover make a Genesis cover of the Hidden Theme from the C64 game "Dominator":

Matt Gray produced a lovely track here, the guy's a very talented SID composer.

I already covered the same game's Loader theme - this was the Commodore 64 after all, loading took a while - so I roughly know what I want things to sound like. Except this time I'm using DefleMask.

Where are things currently? I'm about 38 seconds into the track, and I've already noticed a few things that I really like about this program.

Overall, I think the way things work in DefleMask is... tidier? I don't have to specify the note volume once, and fades are controlled by the instrument's volume envelope (ADSR). This means far less stuff on the volume and effect columns. Speaking of which, I can have multiple effects per channel, which you can even see in this screenshot!

However, there are some challenges as well. It's not the tracker's fault that hardware worked that way, but the speed of the track is not as controllable. I can set the "length" of one row and I can change the clock speed. That's it.

How exactly the instruments are made goes beyond this post, I think. Maybe I'll add more later, the key phrase here is "FM synthesis".

So far, I think DefleMask is very comfortable to use. It took a few hours to adjust, but now I somewhat know what I'm doing!

Lastly, since I've already mentioned it, I might as well share what I've got so far. This everything I got "done" in one day, including learning how to use the tracker at all. It goes without saying, but this is heavily work-in-progress and things sound a bit unpredictable at times. Of course things will improve with practice.

[z80]

i made this c:

[musicvsartstuff]

🎹 So just been workin' on some FM music 😎 what vibe/feel do you get listening to this? I would love to hear your feedback! 💜

[kermakatti]

flawedmuses replied to your post “flawedmuses replied to your video: Here I go...”

thanks! you're gonna have to teach me how to make better music sometime too lol

I’m not a very good teacher myself but there’s a basic tutorial on their wiki and plenty of video tutorials available on YouTube if you need help on learning how to use the software

As for general songwriting tips... I guess just make more music. Trial and error plus experimentation got me where I am today. Remixing or rearranging existing music is also a good tool since it allows you to skip past the composing part and concentrate on how different instruments and effects and sounds work