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| Saga Musix presents: Beyond (5:34) |
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After 20 years of (Open)MPT, it's time to go beyond samples and VSTs and
finally use my outbound gear via MIDI for a release.
Yes, it is unlikely that any of you will be able to listen to this module
in its full glory, as it refers to no less than 7 MIDI synths controlled
via OpenMPT's MIDI Input / Output plugin. Some of them could probably be
replaced by their respective VSTi versions, but that is not possible for
all of them. Still, I hope that something can be learned from the module
even without having access to all those MIDI devices, and thus I release it
just like any other track I've so far with its original sources.
This track started its life when I was jamming on my Roland JP-8000 with
some supersaw pads I have created. The breakdown (pattern 0 / 1) is where
it all started.
I have toyed around with the idea of releasing a hardware-based track for
a while now, and soon it became clear that sampling the synths used in
this track would be to no avail - so I decided to go all-in and just use
them as-is, via MIDI.
Then OpenMPT's playback code started to struggle. At the time of writing,
all MIDI output is done in the audio thread, which upset my ASIO driver
quite a bit! I have some local modifications to make MIDI output
multi-threaded and thus make the track play properly on my hardware, and
hopefully these changes will find their way into OpenMPT 1.32.
But OpenMPT's MIDI code was no the only victim of this track.
I wanted to make the final recording of this track on my Marantz PMD671
PCM recorder. On the Saturday before Revision, I wanted to make one final
recording in addition to the one I already made on another recorder, just
to be sure. The PCM recorder wouldn't turn on any more. After a night of
sleep and disassembling the device, it became clear that a pin in the CF
card slot was bent and was shorted with its neighbouring pin. Carefully
prying the pins apart revived the device! \o/
With the recorder back to life, the next misery was about to happen.
Wanting to connect the PCM recorder to my sound card, I unplugged some
cables, resulting in a BSOD. Not the first time this happened, so I was
not alarmed. But after a reboot, the analog inputs were no longer routing
to the analog outputs (which was kind of crucial for the recording. . . ),
so I rebooted the PC another time. This made things even worse - now the
card was not recognized by the driver at all!
My trusty ESI Juli@, my first piece of (semi-)professional audio gear...
dead after 17 years?! Not the best day in my life.
However... I've always had a good relationship with ESI support and their
driver developer in particular, so I thought that it cannot hurt to send
one more mail to them, explaining the situation. After a few days, I got
a reply, suggesting that the EEPROM might have gotten erased. They sent
me their reprogramming tool for the EEPROM. I ran the tool, and lo and
behold: The card worked again! \o/
I cannot stress enough how helpful ESI have been time and time again with
their support for legacy devices. If you want audio or MIDI hardware that
will outlive your PC, go ESI.
As hinted at in the introduction, March 2024 marks my 20th anniversary of
using ModPlug Tracker (and later OpenMPT). Time sure flies! Back then, I
was looking for Scream Tracker 3 (as recommended in the manual of the BWSB
audio library), and I guess we can be lucky that the first Google result
that I clicked on was a download for MPT, not ST3...
-Saga Musix, 7th of April 2024
Testimonials from happy customers:
"Junge, was f.r ein Brett! :star_struck:"
-- dojoe
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Here are the hardware requirements, for the unlikely case that someone has
access to all the same synths and wants to play the track on real hardware:
- FX01: Roland JP-8000 (or JP-8080) with custom patch
- FX02: Roland JD-800 (or JD-990) with custom patch
- FX03: Yamaha TG77 (or SY77) with custom patch
- FX04: Yamaha X5DR (or X5D) with JayB's sound bank
- FX05: Roland XV-5080 (or XV-3080) with SRX-05: Supreme Dance,
or fall back to PR-D:069 Booster Bips if you do not have SRX-05
- FX06: Yamaha CS6R with PLG150-AN in PLG1 slot and JayB's sound bank
(any other host for the PLG150-AN board might work as well)
- FX07: Korg Triton (Rack or probably any other variant), no custom patches
(Bank Map setting needs to be set to KORG, not GM)
The custom patches are included alongside the MPTM file. I plan to improve
OpenMPT's MIDI plugin in the future so that these things can be included in
the module itself and automatically be sent when the track is opened.
When that happens, I will probably update this file to use this new
mechanism.
Any suggested alternative synths may or may not work.
I don't have them so I cannot verify that.
Configuration:
Set TG77 and CS6R to Voice mode, and the JD-800 to Single mode.
All other synths are switched to the correct mode (assuming SysEx is not
filtered, which is on by default on the X5DR - so to be sure, enable
Program mode manually on that synth).
The following volume settings refer to mixer amplifcation, followed by the
volume setting on the synth itself:
- TG77: +15dB, analog outs at 7/10
- CS6R: +0dB, analog outs at 100%
- X5DR: +0dB, analog outs at 100%
- XV-5080: +1.5dB, analog outs at 100%
- Triton: +4.5dB, analog outs at 100%
- JD-800: +9dB, analog outs at 100%
- JP-8000: +9dB, analog outs at 100%
(with DI box that reduces signal levels by about 3dB, so +6dB in total)
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Greets fly to everyone I met at Revision 2024, in particular:
abductee, AceMan, AdeptApril, aldroid, Alysius, Arrbyte, Bartman, Bombe,
Cosowi, cupe, Curt Cool, D.Fox, d0dge, Deyta, dIRTIE, Doc.K, docd, dojoe,
draugven, eladamri, Franky, Ghost, h0ffman, halcy, henne, inversephase,
justmona, juvi, Kabuto, KamikaTze, kb, KeyJ, Koltes, kudrix, Kuemmel, las,
Leia, lft, LJ, LMan, Losso, lug00ber, Luisa, Lycan, Lynn, madame, Medo,
metheara, MissCtrl, moovie, Mrs Beanbag, mrvux, muhmac, musk, navis,
nerdine, Netpoet, nightmare, novel, NR4, okkie, Oni, PoroCYon, PotcFdk,
ps, psykon, Punqtured, Puryx, RaccoonViolet, Raven, RbR, regines, rez,
Rhino, RoccoW, Romeo Knight, Rufusul, sannarchie, sensenstahl, slerpy,
SoDa7, Starchaser, Steffest, Sun, susencrusen, T$, tenfour, teo, TMA,
Triace, Unlock, v3nom, velo, vl4d, Vraiemoule, wayfinder, xtrium, xxx,
yugecin, Zavie, _Ook and everyone I forgot.
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This work is (c) 2024 by Saga Musix and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Track information:
- Compo Cut (included as a separate sequence) released at Revision 2024 in
the Streaming Music Compo, where it ranked 7th.
- Original Mix released on the 7th of April 2024
Please use OpenMPT 1.31+ to play this track.
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You can contact me via e-mail at info@sagamusix.de.
If you want to chat with me...
- Jabber: sagamusix@s3m.it
- Libera.Chat: #openmpt (Nick = Saga_Musix)
- EsperNet: #modarchive, #modplug, #mod_shrine, #modulez
(Nick = Saga_Musix or Saga)
- IRCNet: #deadline, #demozoo, #evoke, #revision, #nordlicht
(Nick = Saga_Musix)
Feel free to visit my websites as well:
- https://sagamusix.de/ - Here you can download all my music, free
samples and other stuff. (German and English)
- https://sagagames.de/ - Website featuring my (mostly German-only) free
games, applications and other stuff.
- https://openmpt.org/ - Home of Open ModPlug Tracker :)
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Sample credits:
The sources of many samples are not known.
- Kick2: From the Kick2 VSTi plugin
- kb6: From the kb6 drum samples collection.
- X5DR: From my Korg X5DR
- Zero-G: From the Zero-G Datafiles sample CDs
- JayB: From JayB's trance sample collection
- The Winstons: The good old Amen break!
- Bobby Bird / James Brown: The good old Yeah! Woo! break!
Take care!
