Mixes of friends at mix.dj: featuring ...(a lot)

Mix.DJ is changed and is no longer the DJ network as earlier. Now everybody can mix online or upload mixes. It's a "people who wanna be DJs" network. So all my friends from mix.dj are moved to edeejay.com, and if you search hard for these DJs below, you know my musictaste.

DJ Villas
Miguel OM
DJ Ghost
DJ Bacon
Lasermoon
A Tus
Dr Sy
DJ Angelo
D.R. Beats
DJ N.J.
Duncan
Spared t
he DJ
DJ Dimsa

So mix.dj is dead, long live edeejay.com. Well, in reality I find the mixes at mix.dj more refreshing to listen to than listing to the countly deep house mixes of those prof DJs at edeejay.com.

Fan of Robert Palmer

Its strange.  I never guessed I would create a post about Robert Palmer,  cause I was never a big fan of his music.

I bought his Addictions 1 and 2, but that was it. No Greatest hits or best of. However when I found out "I Dream Of Wires" was a cover of Gary Numan song I knew I had to post about Robert Palmer.

He died in 2003 and had a lot of hits in the 70s / 80s and 90s.
To name a few Best of Both Worlds, Looking For Clues, Some Kinda People, Addicted to Love and much much more.

He wasnt a great singer, but sings how the song must sound like.

I was suprised when I listened to both Addictions how many songs I already knew and and how many of the other  songs
I could add to my fav songs ever.

Including the cover I Dream Of Wires.
Sorry Gary, Robert Palmer is a better singer than you. Robert made a more smoothened version so more people could enjoy it.

I tries very hard to find any Robert Palmer music, besides the live performances
( if the band is good, Robert Palmer is good, else not)  and a few videoclips of his greatest hits. So I tried my luck on Vimeo, even lesser than YT.

I am no very sorry I sold my 2 Addictions, I am planning to buy them somewhere again. Or even maybe a Best Of. After his career as popartist he switched over to a new one , with a big orchestra singjng jazzy things, yeah not my cup of tea. I will remember Robert Palmer for his great sing-along songs in different genres like pop, rock, reggae and was never afraid the be a bit experimental.

Here are some artists that really know how to play Robert Palmer songs:
Tina Turner 
The Heavytones
Los Cenzontles
Robert Palmer

No suprise, Robert Palmer is the best performer of his own songs.
And despite all the coverbands playing Addicted to Love, there are very few artists who done a Robert Palmer cover, which is (to my opinion) a real shame.

Last but least: Robert Palmer did cover some songs from The Beatles, even a very strange version of Drive my car as a duet with a Japanese girl.

My Music Memories : Are Friends Electric of Gary Numan

This music memory (1979 !!!) is very strange.
I had this song in mind for at least 2 times earlier and recently I was sure I had it

post already. 

It seems I had been thinking about posting it and forget all about it more than once. 

But now, here it is. First of all, it is "Tubeway Army" and not Gary Numan who released "Are Friends Electric?" I don't care. 

It is clear it was all Gary Numan the artist who composed, played and sang it. The song is very epic, you love or hate it with all your heart.

Gary is not the greatest singer of the world and the slow synthesizer loop with some out of tune notes is not suitable for everyone's taste. I love it because of to the rock setting he used to create such an edgy song. I listen to some other songs of Gary Numan who still makes new music. 

Well...he has his own style and most of the songs I heard so far, won't make me a big fan. Besides "Are Friends Electric", "Cars", "I Dream Of Wires", "I Am Dust"
I didn't find any goodies. 

Gary has not only his own music style but also his own lyrics subject, it's always about the battle between human and robotics. Anyway, this is what I found on the big YT, al different versions of great Gary Numan songs:

* Scott Gaffney - 2012 version Are Friends Electric?

* Timoty Eilers - Gary Numan cover I Dream Of Wires

* NIN & Gary Numan - Cars Live

* Citizen Clone - I Dream Of Wires  

* 8 Bit Universe - Cars 8 Bit Cover Tribute

* Synthsound1  - I Am Dust (Den'o Edit)

* Emhead - I Am Dust (No Good Mix)

* Jum Collins - A Tribute to I Dream of Wires

* Republica - Are Friends Electric? cover

Note: I always believed that "I Dream Of Wires" was composed by Robert Palmer, 

until now. I will explain more in another post about Robert Palmer himself.

PS: Gary Numan worked together with many artists and featured some mashups, some arent too bad....

My Music Memories: Thunderstruck of AC/DC

I was not sure if I wanted to blog about "Thunderstruck" song. It's just another rock-song with a famous guitar-riff. Also, it was a hit of AC/DC MK II with another vocalist (Brian Johnson) . If I hear him "singing" more than 1 song, his voice starts irritating me. I liked the original singer Bon Scott much more, but he passed away too early. I still plan to create a mix of all tracks of "Let There Be Rock" and "Powerage", the only CDs I ever bought of AC/DC. I once let create an automixer create such a mix.
It sounded so poor, I directly forgot where I stored it.

Lately I search for 8-bit versions of "Thunderstruck, most of them where only instrumental and after 2 minutes more or less boring. I dont want to include any of them hear.

Of course I search for other versions of "Thunderstruck" and found a video about Isle Man TT motor races with the original audio of AC/DC, with really good editing.
And there is more:

- 2 covers:
  country rock of Steve N Seagull
  (yes, those country boys knows how to rock)
  acoustic rock of Luca Stricagnoli
  (1 man 1 guitar band with some drumming too, amazing)
- 2 mashups:  ghostbusters of Wax audio
  (both songs and videos are blended perfectly together, wow)
  coldplay/2unlimted of  DJ from Mars 
  (more vocals from AC/DC instead of Coldplay would make it better, still very danceable)
- 2 remixes:
  peculiar of Mr. Peculiar
  (sort of psy-trance, if AC/DC would share the stage with any Trance DJ)
  crookers of Crookers

  (the most famous remix of "Thunderstruck", some parts good, some better skipped)

Of course the 2Cellos cover should be mentioned here, this video was made before they hired a drummer, still their performance is so powerfull, no drummer needed.

Note: There are a lot of AC/DC Tribute Bands calling themself "Thunderstruck".
I think it a waste of my time to hear and see who is the best AC/DC imitation.

Happy Halloween: Creepy music from the Virtual Audio Project

I always try to create an MSX part and a Music part (mostly from YouTube) for very special days. During the year is that Valentine's Day (no clue with to post), Halloween (you reading it right now), Xmas (of course) and New Year's Day ( best wishes blabla...)

I had not much inspiration about what to do with Halloween and Music, when I remember I had 2 audio-CDs full of scary music of the Virtual Audio Project. I was a huge fan of V.A.P. and collected more than 30 of them (still I'm missing 11 pieces). I will create another post about the Virtual Audio Project later on.

First I searched for the original audio-CDs, I had them stored in a special blue CD-map.
Then I searched for the right titles, it was "Adrenaline Issue 9" and "Nightmares Issue 26"
And I started thinking, will I create a short video of the best track of these CDs or not.

Then I found at allmusic.com a lot of Virtual Audio Project, especially both scary ones.
You could listen to them for maybe 30 seconds, but it's a start to hear what you like...
Then I started searching for big YT and somebody had there put his entire collection of V.A.P., not a big as mine own collection, still impressive.

I listened to both YT videos and the differences between "Adrenaline" and "Nightmares"
are in the length of the tracks, on "Nightmares" they are much longer, not creepier.
In the end, I was happy when I finished listening, every horror film doesn't have a scary music for more than 1 hour constantly.

My favorites are the first track of "Adrenaline" and the last track of "Nightmares".
Better listen for yourself.

And recently there has been a breakup in the team behind mix.dj, some started a completely new website with the old name mix.dj and others gave the old website a new look a new name: https://www.edeejay.com/

So if you want Halloween music in different music-styles better visit both and search for Halloween 2017, I'm sure it will be already Halloween 2018 before you have listened to them all.
And big YT has plenty Halloween music 2017 in store for you.

Happy Halloween: The First Jumpscare On MSX Ever (maybe)

Hi Everyone,

I'm very pleased to announce "The First Jumpscare On MSX Ever" (maybe).
It's hidden in a home-made game-demo I made, called "The Return of Mr. Hyde".

The game-demo is (I believe) actually the first hidden object game on MSX, like so many other PC-games on Facebook or CD-Roms.
It's a very short game, cause the jumpscare will interrupt your game. And as the text screen says, you can find no more than 4 objects.

Finally, I finished the game-demo and the jumpscare, I start working in October 2015 already.
Then I couldn't finish it in time for Halloween, so I created other posts about Halloween and forgot all about it, until recently.

I had no idea what to post for Halloween this year and wanted to start with the TnC's WORDSTORE+ MegaDemo. So I searched in my MSX .DSK collection and found a map called "MSX Halloween". There I found the forgotten stuff I made for the hidden object game-demo and the jumpscare.

Why I put a jumpscare in the game-demo? Well, it was hard to create a working game
and when I started in 2015, I soon came to the conclusion I better put a jumpscare in it.
That way I didn't have to finish the whole game. Yeah, I am a lazy MSX-Basic programmer.

Maybe if I get some good responses I will take a look if I can expand the game-demo to a complete game with more sceneries, more objects, ending/hi-score screen, more music etc.


Here are some random quotes I wrote down,
during the last testing sessions:




- The pictures are stolen from a HdO adventure, called "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde"
  It was a simple hidden objects game on CD-ROM for PC, I bought it for 2 Euro.

- When I saw "Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde" I wondered if I could re-make it on MSX-2.
  That how I got the idea of an MSX prequel "The Return of Mr. Hyde"

- The resolution of SCREEN 8 was not good enough to get good converted pictures of the "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" game to see all hidden objects.
  So I had to improvise and find other (bigger) objects to search for.



- I choose SCREEN 8, cause although SCREEN 7 pictures have a better resolution,
  they are also more kB than SCREEN 8 pictures. If I made the complete game with
  SCREEN 7 pictures, it still is a short game with not more than 9 sceneries.

- I wanted an original scary sample, so I search in my home-made samples and found
  one I used in a DUAL SONG for the MusixBox program (Philips Music Module).
  The voice you hear is not my own, it was a friend of mine long time ago,
  Robert van Leeuwen (I hope he won't notice it ever...)

- Cause I wanted also music in the game-demo and the scary sample,
  I choose the MoonBlaster program to create music and play the scare sample.

- The intro-/game-music you hear is made by myself, quick and dirty.
  It sounds a lot like my random PSG-sound generators, but with FM-voices.

- The game-demo should work on every MSX-2 with MSX-MUSIC + MSX-AUDIO.
  I have no idea if it works on an MSX-2+ without Philips Music Module or other different
  MSX hardware. Now I only test for MSX-1 and quit.

- The whole hidden objects game-demo differs from any PC-version, cause I choose
   in 2015 not to add fire-button detection, so you just have to move around to find
   the hidden objects.

- The "ugly" intro-screen was made with Philips VideoGraphics. I don't like it much,
   but I ran out of time and ideas to make an better conversion of a picture and better
   title design.

- If you want to beat my HI-SCORE, you have to press "H" in the intro picture.
  Then you won't be disturbed by the scary part of the game-demo.

- The scary face picture came from the original jumpscare in the tv-program
   "American's Funniest Home Videos" and I think it was inspired by the famous painting
   "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.


Here is a short YouTube video about the game-demo
"The Return of Mr. Hyde"

Wanna try it yourself?
Mediafire / Pcloud




PS: Do not try to download anything from the "freeride games", it's not safe.
---
After complains from SupMSX I tried to run the game-demo on a real MSX-2.
I fired up my NMS 8245 with a Philips Music Module and all screens were very messy.
The main problem was removing old sprite data before creating a new one.
So I removed all the VDP(9) commands, the POKE command for loading the Moonblaster driver y/n and add a command for removing sprite data I found in a very old school notebook full of MSX tips I collected.
I uploaded this new version 1.27 to Mediafire and Pcloud and remove the old 1.26 version.
---

New Blog Background

I was creating some draft posts for the blog and suddenly I just got bored about my background picture. 

It was the second background I used on my TnC Stuff Blog and liked it for a couple of years. Lots of grey cubes. 
I cant remember the first background I used, if I used any...

So recently I changed the background with some kind of blue fireworks. 
I like it a lot, but I found on my Samsung tablet a couple of homemade drawings, some of them are no in use as background and lock screen. 
Maybe I copy them at upload it to my blog for a new background. Maybe. 
Until then, enjoy the blue fireworks.

Of course blogger.com will change from time to time, so I'm not sure for how long this theme will stick to this TnC Stuff Blog. 

PS1: I noticed my Blog is already 4 years old, so on 21th of September 2018 time to party !!!

PS2: I finally found out how to beat a level in the Aackosoft/Bytebusters/Eaglesoft/Eurosoft MSX game ICE (or Penguin), check out: https://youtu.be/kM9Ke_So300

PS3: not bought yet

Google week 40, 2017

I haven't googled MSX things lately, but since I got some ideas about my "Mega Wordstore+ Demo" (about using the MIF package to create new looking converted pictures for my Wordstore+ demo's), I googled again.

Well, there was an interesting topic about the updated MIF package on msx.org. More than that, there was a whole forum about MSX software on msx.org with more interesting stuff.
And that is what this post is all about, just forum posts about MSX software from msx.org.

* To take off, of course, the topic about the updated MIF package, currently v2.3 but not for use in MSX-Basic anymore
* Then a new feature of Google, you can search for similar pictures, mentioned in the topic about finding the name of some MSX games
 and so I found this website full of MSX cassette images of a lot of commercial games and magazines  this is a real treasure chest, maybe some are good enough to be translated for my 112 games list
* A free new MSX game (2 games into 1), this is really good platform game(s)
* Next, a Dutch MSX magazine which was also famous, the MSX-gids, it has not an online archive (sadly), but in the topic, you find some links for some issues
* A list of the weirdest MSX games can be very amusing, so here is the topic, you will find also videos and download links
 * An MSX-1 demo made by an Amstrad CPC coder. Well, it's a little better than a Commodore 64 coder, but he really shows what MSX-1 can do, where are the MSX coders now?
* I also found a topic about every pinball game ever released on MSX. Most of them are MSX-1 and look a bit crappy. I still love Rollerball of HAL, not Fireball and sometimes Pinball Blaster. Some of the pinball games you can play at www.file-hunter.com
* A topic about free race games got me download 2 free games, Car II and Lotus F3
* Last of all I found out the MSX-2 point-and-click adventure ZOO of Radarsoft was translated in English and French, I still have the original Dutch version somewhere.

TnC Collected works : TnC ZoundZ and DemoZ Disk Part 8 (Final !)

Part 8 final ? Yes, it is.

When I was compiling Part 5 and 6,
I was sure I had enough stuff for at least
10 Parts.

But when I looked closer to the FAC SOUNDTRACKER music files and all the versions I collected of the song "Every breath you take" I began to see that lot of these were not interesting at all.
So I decided to sort things out until I could fill the last 2 disks, Part 7 and 8.

I wanted to call this Part 8,
the "Every Breath You Take " edition,
but when I listen to all versions, all with the same errors or more, I wanted to create just 1 good version, so this edition is named "Soundtracker Edition Part 2".

Mostly cause the main part of the disk is filled with Soundtracker music, players, and info.
However, there are also some nice tools for the Philips Music Module, mostly samplers and a long FAC's FM-FAC sample of the song "Here We Go Again" of the synthesizer-rock band "Mad At The World" ( see Part 7 for more info).

The FM-PAC demo "Every Breath You Take" of the band The Police has a long history.

Originally was the song made in Synthsaurus V2.00 by Elko Duijm and when it was converted to Basic, it was too big to fit in the memory of any MSX computer.

Later there was a converter made BIT2BGM, but after conversing the tempo was wrong, instead of 120 it played 80!


I liked the song Elko Duijm made, so I cut the song in SynyhSaurus V2.00 in 2 parts and converted each part into a Basic listing.

More problems came to the surface,
when I played the 1st part in Basic.
After the refreins, the whole song got timing issues and the drums, the bass melody played out of sync.

I believe Elko Duijm tried to fix some of these issues in SS2 later, but I could not find any better version than the onces I collected earlier.

Anyway, for Part 8 I wanted to create
1 complete version by getting rid of all the same strings with music data and put together part 1 and 2 after that.
I listened to part 1 and I heard so many out of sync channels, I had not the courage to start fixing these.

So I made a cut-off sped up version with only the intro and 2 refreins, cause after that all the errors began.

 I had already converted pictures for a menu with "Every Breath You Take " versions, cause I decided to use only 1 version, I took the best picture merge it with the cut-off spec up version and voila there was the "Every Breath You Take" FM demo.

Now I  forgot there is a lot to read about FAC SOUNDTRACKER on this Final disk, like info about the music files , tips for use, my Basic replayers and info about all samplers.
Again I tried to find some info on the net about these songs:

Some of these songs are from the FAC Demo 4 "Facmanschap is Meesterschap" and MSX-Fan magazine  (via Unicorn Coorporation - Library #1)

But the song "Diver" (of Unicorn Coorporation again) came from a listing in MCCM 41, see page 29 or the screenshot on the left.

"Dremo 2017" was original a song in MUSIX (with drums), but was used (without drums) in Booty or Kick It  ofcourse all published by Aackosoft.

"No-Acid Part 1" was the pre-version of the song you hear in NO-PROMO demo  
What can I say, except unfinished?

 "Because" was a song of The Beatles of their best album "Abbey Road". And I found lots of good covers, remixes of this (mostly) acapella song. Even a movie "Across The Universe" that had a story based o the lyrics of 33 (!!) Beatle-songs.

But here are some "Because" treasures
I found on YouTube:

- All You Need Was Luv
  (still impressive see someone play all instruments and sing in perfect sync with the video)
- Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets Trailer song
  (yes, it was the trailer song of an action movie, The Beatles with an orchestra well done)
- Across The Universe
  (from that movie I mentioned earlier, acapella and not sang by The Beatles themselves)
- The Hit House
  (another from that Valerian movie, but this time in sort of "Terminator"-style)
 - DMA Reggae Mix
   ( lots of dub or echo, it turns the song into something even better )
- The Zap rmx
  (sort electronic techno style, very non-pop, Kraftwerk vs The Beatles remixed)
- Reggae Remix of tomseal76
  (more reggae, what if The Beatles recorded "Because" as a reggae song ?)
- SHIHA Remix
  (if The Beatles recorded "Because" today, it would sound like this, house music)
- Because the world is round
  ( a spoken version of "Because, but the relaxing music and video makes it soo special)


I don't have to tell you there is "Every Breath You Take" remixes, covers and other stuff related to the song on YouTube. I took a deep breath, dived into the pool and this is what
I found at the bottom:

- Reactable Mix
  (you can watch how the music changes, just by moving some electronic blocks
   on an electronic table)
- Harp Twins - Camille and Kennerly
  (2 beautiful young girls with 2 harps and very talented, impressive)
- Deep Chills Remix
  (lounge version, very relaxing with a bit of saxophone, fantastic)
- Alex Giudici Remix
  (a bit synthwave and a bit Ibiza, go slow dance)
- Scenester Synthwave Remix
  ( I can't help it, I love synthwave 80s style)
- Rush West Bootleg
  (uplifting house version, yeah really)
- MINOR KEY VERSION
  (very creepy version, for playing at Halloween)

And so we come to an end. TnC Collected Works is finished now.
All I can do is make new  MSX stuff ;-)

The disk Part 8 is on Mediafire / Pcloud