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Pico8 Music Synthesizer

johanpeitz.itch.io

21–30 of 55 posts

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#21

Thanks for the lovely comments! I'm the creator of picoSYNTH and it was a really fun project to work on. I don't have much experience in synths so it was a big learning project for me. If there are any questions around the program, just let me know!

Very nicely done! cool!

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#22
This is very cool!

I've been wanting to play around with synthetizers / trackers (?) for a bit. I played around with TIC-80 (another fantasy console like PICO-8) amazing track + SFX editor, but I'm very lost as to how to actually make... music, instead of noise.

Does anyone have any beginner resources on music theory, specifically oriented to working with synthetizers and trackers?

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#24
post #22

This is very cool! I've been wanting to play around with synthetizers / trackers (?) for a bit. I played around with TIC-80 (another fantasy console like PICO-8) amazing track + SFX editor, but I'm very lost as to how to actually make... music, instead of noise. Does anyone have any beginner resources on music theory, specifically oriented to working with synthetizers and trackers?

Better start with something like Ableton. Tons of tutorials on youtube and the interface makes it much more clear what is actually happening.

These trackers are built around the limitation of old computers, some people prefer working that way because that's how they started but I wouldn't bother with them as a beginner nowadays. Some DAWs like reason try to emulate a real studio with cables and all, simmilar to this pico-8 app, but again, if you never worked in a real studio why would you bother?

The only "real" classical music theory you need to know is Scales, the bigger chunk will be knowledge about digital audio production. Synthesizers, compressors, filters, ... that information is also plenty available on youtube.

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#25
post #22

This is very cool! I've been wanting to play around with synthetizers / trackers (?) for a bit. I played around with TIC-80 (another fantasy console like PICO-8) amazing track + SFX editor, but I'm very lost as to how to actually make... music, instead of noise. Does anyone have any beginner resources on music theory, specifically oriented to working with synthetizers and trackers?

You might be interested in the Dirtywave M8. If you don’t want to buy or wait for the actual hardware, you are able to install the software yourself and run it in headless mode.

https://dirtywave.com/

https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware

You might also look at Pure Data and Max.

https://puredata.info/

https://cycling74.com/products/max

In terms of actually making music, I think that probably just comes with both practice and experimentation.

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#26
post #22

This is very cool! I've been wanting to play around with synthetizers / trackers (?) for a bit. I played around with TIC-80 (another fantasy console like PICO-8) amazing track + SFX editor, but I'm very lost as to how to actually make... music, instead of noise. Does anyone have any beginner resources on music theory, specifically oriented to working with synthetizers and trackers?

I haven't worked on it in a while, but you might like textbeat (https://github.com/flipcoder/textbeat). It's a midi tracker and REPL that lets you type in music theory-like terminology and plays it. It's nowhere near a modern DAW but it's cool for tinkering and learning.

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#27
post #4

Johan Peitz is an amazing creator.

Yay yeah he is! I remember playing Icy Tower for hours! [1]. Love his game designs and aesthetics. If I get it right, I first came in contact with his work when I was learning allegro [2], but TBH I'm not sure now. I think he used to use allegro in some of his games! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icy_Tower 2: https://www.allegro.cc/

Aw thanks! Yes, allegro was my first foray in to making games in c. Used it extensively 98-02 iirc. :)

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better is that most of that should be the PICO8 virtual machine itself. A PICO8 cartridge is limited to 32kb.

I don't think it contains the VM at all, but contains a bunch of extra files including an image and a LICENSE file that aren't actually part of the binary.

It does.

Re: Pico8 Music Synthesizer

#29

Thanks for the lovely comments! I'm the creator of picoSYNTH and it was a really fun project to work on. I don't have much experience in synths so it was a big learning project for me. If there are any questions around the program, just let me know!

Really impressed! I'll recommend it at once to my musician friends.

Good idea to recommend PicoCAD at the same time, my first thought was, "he does it again!".

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