Music System Xcellent Part Kiwi tape 4 (MSX Soundtracker Music)

Finally, the final part of the 4 tapes of Soundtracker music.
Again it's mono and Soundtracker 2.0 (maybe it was 2.01, cause 2.0 had a serious bug, had to do with saving and loading 1.0 files, again maybe)

No more highlights of Kant A, just the worst: Cold Christmas (unknown, with good reason),
Miami Vice Theme (unknown, not energic enough), Mog Serenda Bonus (unknown, a drumbeat on a classical part makes it not better), Snout Demo Part 4 (happy, but I miss some Snout humor in it).

Link to Kant A:

The last 5 songs are from the Philips Music Creator demo songs, a program where you could choose an arrangement and play your own solo in it, change the instruments and tempo. Well, there is a lot more in it, but that was the only part I was using...

The worst of Kant B: J.M. Jarre Medley 1 + 2 (BCF, I think the limitations of FAC Soundtracker, no instruments change during the song, made the songs not as good as the arranger wanted to make), the last 3 songs from the Philips Music Creator demo songs (somehow the arrangements does not fit the song completly).

PS: If you follow the link to BCF DiscStation #4, you will see also the Amazing Heads demo
      (at 20:30). Don't miss it, it's hilarious !

PS2: Xmas songs and Soundtracker doesn't match very well.
       The songs on these tapes were the best I could find, and that was not very good.

Link to Kant B:

Music System Xcellent Part Kiwi tape 3 (MSX Soundtracker Music)

The complete title of the tape is: "Music System Xcellent Part Kwiki 3 in Full Dimensional  Mono".
Yeah, my friend at that time had a Commodore Amiga 500, which had 4 sampling channels and in stereo. So the titles of all 4 tapes were a little ironic (like the Super Fake Stereo).

This is the 1ste of the Soundtracker 2.0 tapes, now in plain mono.
You will hear only the Music Module.
It was easier for me to record (less changing the recording level of the left/right channel,
so the sound of these tapes 3 and 4 are better than 1 and 2.

The music cames from other sources, cause Moonsoft never released music for Soundtracker 2.0, they were far too busy with creating Moonblaster and composing songs
for it...

So most of the songs cames from the FAC (Federation Agains Commodore) of course and from the BCF (Best Crackers Federation), who released a couple of Diskstations, a sort of disc with a different demo's in a nice menu.

Highlights on Kant A: The Labyrint (FAC), Spybass (BCF) and James Bond Theme (BCF)
is a great starter, Planet Mars (FAC) strange sci-fi, the famous Impact style with Impact 137 (Impact) and Drente 1992 (unknown), funky MSX with Funky Items (FAC), great game-music cover of Metal gear in Action (FAC), classical with Piano Prelude (FAC) and cool down with Amazing Heads 3 (BCF) and Science Fiction Part 2 (FAC).

Kant A link

Songs on Kant B: Impact style in Impact 58 (Impact), the classical Tocca Et Fuga Remix,
the uptempo sci-fi Darkside & Monster (BCF), the early house of Ducky's Acid-House Theme, psg in Music Module style Psg-2 (Impact), happy sound of Mid-Summer 1991 (BCF), the softer side of MSX with Synth Power #9 (FAC) and Totally & Completly (I forgot).

Kant B link

I think there are some songs made by TwinSoft, but I'm not sure...

Music System Xcellent Part Kiwi tape 2 (MSX Soundtracker Music)

As I explained earlier, tape 1 and 2 were recorded in stereo. Well, actually 2 different soundchips were playing the same song at the same time !
Crazy way to get stereo music as you look back...

On tape 2 at Kant A, these are the songs I won't forget:
Arpegiator (FAC), Ni Hongo (A.J. Minnaard), Acid 2 (Amazing Bytewizards), Bases 1 (Station), Swing Beat (FAC), Vibraphone (unknown), Space Invaders (FAC).

The songs are split in 2 different genres, uptempo with Arpegiator, Bases 1, Acid 2,
and Swing Beat.
The softer side with Ni Hongo, Vibraphone ans Space Invaders.

I think the music of Station is very inderrated, it came all from the DECALOGUE demo.
The music was simple but all songs had the same style that I like.

And on Kant B: Impact 2 (Impact), Swift Bass (FAC), Decaloque 2 (Station), Acid (unknown), Dedicated to Mike (I forgot), Impact 60 (Impact), Basic (FAC), Chevy (Station).

All Impact songs I recorded on the tapes were good or very good, I bought all their musicdisks and demo's at the MSX fairs.

I am aware the soundquality is not optimal, I have tried to clean it up, but the results are not much better as the version you can hear
via mixcloud. An old tape is still an old tape with it's limitations...

Listen to Kant A:
Listen to Kant B:

Music System Xcellent Part Kiwi tape 1 (MSX Soundtracker Music)

I have enough explained so I will only share the links and some info about the songs.

The tape is a combination of Pet Shop Boys/Michael Jackson/Queen covers, Synthesizer Greatest covers, MSX Gamemusic covers and original work from members of FAC, Impact,
Moonsoft and the Amazing Bytewizards (the guys from MIDI-blaster and more).

My favorite songs on Kant A are: Bdd Theme 2 (Impact), I'm Angry (the Amazing Bytewizards), Acid 3 (idem), Jazzy Jam (FAC), Another One Bites The Dust (I forgot), I Want A Dog (Moonsoft) and Atomic Cinderella (I forgot too).
All these songs are up-tempo,  the slow songs are a little boring, I think.

I was most impressed by the funk of Jazzy Jam and Atomic Cinderilla and I still like the humor in I Want A Dog.
Another One Bites The Dust is not just a Queen cover but a cover in Impact  style,I like this version more tan if they had tried to follow the original song.

Here is the link to mixcloud
Kant B specials: Chase (unknown), Impact 2 (Impact), Bases 2 (Station), Electricity (Moonsoft), Tilburg Joepie (Moonsoft), The Show Must Go On (unknown too) and Rising of Red Moonsoft (Moonsoft).

The songs Chase, Bases 2 and Rising of Red Moonsoft
(of XAK II) show how MSX-Music and MSX-Audio are capable of making big bass sounds.
And every time I play Rising of Red Moonsoft at the highest volume, that kicking bassline, the pounding drums and a strange melody, it just a blast !


In Electricity you can hear 1 tone was hanging during the recording and I tried to do something about it, then I got bored and changed on the fly some channels.
MSX-Stereo at his best (or worst...)
Still love the humor in Tilburg Joepie and The Show Must Go On was for me just as haunted and sad as the original ballad, of Queen again.

Mixcloud link

I must say my taste changed in years, but not completly...

Introduction to Music System Xcellent Part Kiwi tapes (MSX Soundtracker Music)

Long time ago I uploaded the mp3-files of both sides of an old cassette tape to 4shared.
It was full of the best FM-Pac/MSX-music from Japanese MSX-games I could find (at least 3 Aleste games, Undeadline, and more).

Then I post a message at msx.org with the links and got comments about why not splitting the mp3-files into a bundle of songs.
Well, I thought it had no use, cause if they wanted the songs they better search on YouTube for the complete soundtrack of each game. And not all of the songs were great, that's why I made the collection in the first place....

So after that I don't wanna upload any of my other mp3-images of MSX related old cassette tapes, cause somebody may asked me to split it in songs again.
But lately I did it, but I uploaded not to 4shared but to mixcloud

It was a lot of work, cause there were 4 tapes with A and B side , so totally 8 big mp3 files to upload. And each must have their own picture, comments and tags.

In the end it was worth it, and so I could enjoy once again these old tapes via a browser
on the net.

As you will notice, the first 2 tapes (4 mp3 files) are in MSX-Stereo  (FM-Pac left channel, Music Module right channel - or viceversa -) and the last 2 tapes are in just mono (Music Module left and right channel).

Well, the MSX-Stereo tapes contains FAC Soundtracker 1.0 files, which could be played
in MSX-Stereo with a few pokes. Moonsoft created a nice program to make interactive music-discs for these files with on the fly changing of channels (FM-Pac or Music Module or both) and some different VU-meters.
They called it Moonsoft Awesome Compilation Disk Creator (or something like that,
I should have the disk somewhere ?)
Here is a screenshot of the Moonsoft Musicdisk Awesome 2, which looks like the creator.

The other 2 tapes contains FAC Soundtracker 2.0 files, which could not be played in MSX-Stereo anymore. This was really a mistake of the FAC I think, otherwise Moonblaster would not become so populair.

When I made the tapes I was just starting collecting Soundtracker 2.0 songs, so I had not enough to fill 2 tapes completly. I recorded some music-samples of MSX demo's and songs from Philips Music Creator instead.

I recorded these 4 tapes at the end of 1991 and beginning of 1992 on my father hifi-set.
It was a Schneider, but it took me a lot of time to find a picture on the net of this set.

That was not easy, cause the cassettedeck had no automatic recording level, so I had steer
volume levels of the left and right channel constantly during each song.
You can see that in the picture the 2 big buttons on the left side of the cassettedeck.

Finally I converted the tapes into mp3-files with my Philips hifiset and an old usb memorystick. The set can only record mp3 in 192 bps and can only use usb memorystick no bigger than 512 Mb, but this much easier to use than connect a cassettedeck to the line-in on your computer and trying to capture the sound with Audacity...

One last word:
The tapes were already at least 10 years old, when I converted to mp3, so something it sounds a little out of tune.

MSX Google: week 44, 2014

Hi,

I was Googling for an old PC game Powerslide, cause my son wanted to play it on his Windows 7 computer and the original CD-Rom (for Windows 98) failed to install the game.

Then I got a link to www.xtdos.com and found out I could play old MS-Dos games like Powerslide in my own browser, if I had Java plugin installed.

I noticed a lot of old favorite games were playable, but it got better and better.
On the right side of the pages there were links to SNES, NES, ATARI and MSX !!!

Yezz, I can play MSX games in my browser without installing an emulator
and searching/ downloading some MSX games !


Well, not on my old XP PC....

I installed the latest Java but that didn't help.
Then I tried on a old Vista laptop and...it worked...I played Aleste in my Firefox browser.
Waaaw, amazing !
A little bit slow at first, but after a while it ran on normal speed.

So if you have a newer computer than me, check the website www.jamsx.com.
Don't forget to update your...