TnC versus MMM Free

Magic Music Maker is a music composing program of the company Magix since the 90s and in that era I bought Magix Music Maker Video Jam and Magix MP3 Maker.

Both programs where user-friendly, though I never liked Video Jam. There were some different music-genres to choose from, only 1 or 2 had nice samples to play with. The Video Jam was more fun with short clips of people doing something off beat. While I tried a couple of times to create some tracks, I never saved those attempts. So it wasnt worth to preserve it for the future.

I used Magix MP3 Maker for converting wav-files of ripped music-CDs, at that time there were no free mp3-convertors. It had a good graphical interface, I just wanted a fast convertor. However it had 1 very nice feature, it could speedup and convert at the same time, without changing the pitch.

Enough history.

I stumbled into Magix Music Maker again via an add somewhere and this time there was a Free Version ! I installed it asap and started dragging and dropping from the soundpool.

At first I had only tracks from 30 seconds, later I noticed how to create longer ones. In one afternoon I created 8 different songs and a couple of early tries, still too good to delete. A very nice feature of the new Free Version of Magix Music Maker is the loopfunction, which is on by default. That means you can easlily created looped songs for mainmenu's in games.
In fact all songs I created can be looped and with my trusted Audacity I did, cause I was convinced that 30 seconds is very short for Soundcloud.

Of course the Free Version has lot of features disabled (cant create video's) but it had a lot of good sounding samples in the standard Music Pool. You have to buy more Music Pool packages if you want to create other music styles. I didnt, I'm still happy with the default samples I got with the Free Version.

Try it yourself by downloading the Magix Music Maker Free, from the original site.
And here you find my attempts for creating music with this Free program.


But beware...you cannot use the songs commercial, if you use these loops of Magix.
For more info this page.

Lucky for me, I am such a bad composer
I will never create any money from these tracks I made...
Here you see a track I have been working on lately.

Jeroen Derwort MSX Basic Games Colection

At Google week 20, 2017 I mentioned Jeroen Derwort website already, about his music composing and programming.

Now I found out he was also a very skilled MSX Basic Games programmer. Need proof? Check out this page



Yes, he also uses WebMSX so you only have to press START on the picture of the game you wanna play.
I really think WebMSX is a unique way to play MSX games without installing any software.

Want some "editor picks"?
Here are some: Airplane, Letter Attack, Flying Doctors, Island Adventure.

Watch out the difficulty of most of the games is hard, sometimes because of the lack of a manual in the game itself, mostly cause in MSX Basic games, timing is more important than fast reflexes.

There were a few games that stopped with a syntax error, mostly a question mark, that must be replaced by a comma.
I tried to download them and lucky for all of us, Jeroen Derwort allows it, check out the map with all the MSX Basic games here.




 

Other Music Stuff: Ladies First (TnC Tapes)

I had enough of all dance/house music so I searched in my old Tape Collection for a bit of less electronic music. Found: the Ladies First tapes.

Four tapes full of female singers in different genres, like grunge, trip hop, rock, pop-rock, pop and down-tempo. No idea which artists or which songs were on the tapes (probably I had noted only the tracknumber of each album on a piece of paper in the original tape-box).

So I listened to each converted tape and listen to the lyrics to find the title. It was very time consuming and I was also not happy about the audio quality. First I normalized the volume and it sounded like playing a CD under a woollen blanket. So I cranked it up with a compressor in Audacity. 

The result was: the volume and stereo sounds got maximized and sometimes even clipping. However I decided to keep it this way, raw sounds fits the music and after all...it's still a ferro tape conversion with it's limitations. 

Before I started uploading it to Mixcloud (without tracklistings, cause I was afraid Mixcloud would banned it if the same artist is more than 2 times in each tracklisting), I had an idea to create an image for each tape, with pictures of the albums of the artists on each tape. Photoscape  had the perfect solution for this, called "Page" and within 15 minutes I had created the 6 pictures for these Ladies First tape sides.

Here is the link to first tape. In total there are 6 sides to listen too. Have fun, I hope you enjoy to listen to this 90s music as much as I did, when I tried to find the title of each track. 
The Ladies First collection contains following artists (in random order):  Alannah Myles, Zoë, Sass Jordan, Madonna, Ruby, Natalie Imbruglia, Meredith Brooks, Alanis Morisette, Niagara, Portishead and Garbage.

I posted more tapes on Mixcloud, check this page.

Shooting Stars by Bag Raiders

This song came to my attention when I watched with my son an endless series of memes on YouTube. I didn't know what memes are, but it's mostly a short video with a duration of less than 1 minute, that should be funny. In lots of those memes, the original audio is replaced with some music. So when I watched the funny "Fat man does amazing dive"  


I just liked the music very much, which was "Shooting Stars" by the Bag Raiders   . from 2009 !! And the original video clip in Synthwave style (=80s style) is very enjoyable.

The original song seems to have 2 different parts that glued together by the 2 guys from Bad Raiders and not very good.
Part 1 was a bit sad and part 2 very happy.
So I had a plan to break down part 1 and 2, so you would here the refrain (part 2) more often and make the couplets of part 1 less monotone.

I made some preparations with Audacity, but then I started to search for remixes/mashups and this (Sol James Remix) seems to have the same idea and more, so I stopped with my own "radio edit".

However, I found lots of remixes/mashups and memes from 2017 !! So after 8 years, the song is still very much alive on YouTube.
Of course lots of rubbish, stolen ideas and failed trap music attempts, these below are my favorites that are in my opinion much better than the original.

Best Mashups:
Bag Raiders Vs. Amy Meredith - Shooting Stars (Double Trouble Mash Up) - YouTube
Smash Mouth - Shooting All Star - YouTube

Best Remixes:
Bag Raiders - Shooting Stars (POOLCLVB cover) | Deep'Paradise - YouTube
[Melodic Dubstep] | Bag Raiders - Shooting Stars [Refract Bootleg] - YouTube
Bag Raiders - Shooting Stars (Elephante Cover) [Premiere] - YouTube
Bag Raiders - Shooting Stars (Sol James Remix) - YouTube

Good remix, but when Kuba Te sings, it's awful:

Bag Raiders - Shooting Stars (Kuba Te Remix) - YouTube

Just like the original but the colors and the road follows the music awesome.

Bag Raiders - Shooting Stars ft. Rhys (Audiosurf Video Remix) - YouTube

As always if you want more: wiki

MSX Google week 20, 2017

Today I wanted to see what Google could find when you search for MSX and sample. With sample I ment digitized voices or music, but Google's first result was a bit weird.

Check this: http://msx.website/msx-vitus .

Are they selling viagra pills ?

I got a couple of real MSX result back, so here we go:


01) https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/trading-and-collecting/rare-msx-sample-carts-ebay
Well, this had nothing to do with audio, just raw versions of the official games.
You really must be a fanatic MSX collector to buy these. I prefer original second hand version in the original box with a manual.

02) http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/toshiba/toshiba-home-computer-hx-10-sample-program/release/4080/
Another none audio sample, but I really like to see those Toshiba demo programs.
The MSX-1 graphics are not bad at all.

03) https://supersoniqs.com/projects/
These guys make new additional hardware for MSX, the PlaySoniq is their biggest project.
You can play with 2 monitors, better audio, play old Sega Master System games and...
Commodore 64/128SID musicfiles. Can you believe that ? Play Commodore 64 music on your MSX ?

04) http://www.grauw.nl/projects/#msx
Again not much samples, but some free MSX Musicdisks and Magazines are always welcome, dont you think ? I am not complaining.

05) http://smecers.appspot.com/SDCC_msx/index.htm
I am not sure what this is, it seems some kind of new program-language to create MSX-DOS programs with MSX-1/-2 graphics. Maybe just like Philip MSX-Logo.
The main page is linked to another website with some dull chess game.
I dont know, where this MSX page came from, a lazy webmaster forgot to delete ?

06) http://www.jeroenderwort.nl/muziek-programmeren/
This guy made music on MSX with Moonblaster and Moonsound, programmed his own music-editor and made some nice songs. He quit years ago, but from his first attempt
( Jer Musix Disk ) he made a video with 37 views and nobody liked it, so now he got 38 views and 1 thumbs up.

That's al for this week. It's a lot of different links, but I hope you find some of them special
enough to explore.

MSX Google week 19, 2017

I was in no condition to program/compile or edit music/videos, so I decided to look for MSX listings witg Google. Back in the days if you wanted new software cheap, you could buy a computermagazine and type over some listings.

If you were lucky the listing works all at once, most of the time you were tryiong to find typos. I did a lot of typing over listings, I even bought a couple of books full of listings when I started with MSX-ing.
It was very educational to see how those listings work, so I could improve them.

01) http://msx.hansotten.com/magazines/mccm-disks/
Yeah, there are more sources to download those MCM/MCCM disks, full of listings and other MSX-stuff. It can be handy before you stsart to type over a listing from a MCM/MCCM magazine, right ?

02) http://www.amusementfactory.com.br/msx/kmg/?p=0&l=en
Not much to do with listings, but free download of a MSX-2 remake of the original KONAMI Knightmare is hard to resist. The music of level 1 got several remakes in the MSX music-scene. The best one I found on YouTube was this: https://youtu.be/y0b-bi7TMd4
(not made on any MSX...)

03) https://msxcassettes.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/toshiba-home-computer-hx-10-sample-program-19xxtoshibajpen/
I searched for samples, but in the end, this link fits more at the Google search for MSX listings. If you look in Ficheros , you find a lot of Spanish MSX games I never heard of and also a couple of listing compliations, I hope.
Start you Google translate and play those games on your MSX-Emulator !

04) http://members.ziggo.nl/the.incantation/
Again MCM/MCCM disks full of listings, but also a nice collection of MSX/PC tools you never knew they existed. Take a good look around here, I really liked FDsave and FDload, but a manual or something is not included.
Too bad, now we have to try and hope for the best.

05) http://www.illusionware.it/msx%20LD.html
Nothing to do with listings, but this rare website had some info about a very curious MSX hardware combo, a Palcom MSX-1 computer and a Pioneer LaserDisc player. There were a couple of (NTSC) games made for this special MSX, so in Europe you could not play those (PAL standard). Search the titles on YouTube, great cutscenes, but great gameplay ?
For example check out Astron Belt of Sega . Or search on YouTube with "MSX Laserdisc" to get plenty of Laserdisc gameplay

Well, that's enough for now, if you weant more links, check the next post.

Hollow Talk - Choir of Young Believers (The Bridge Opening/Closing Theme)

Recently I watched not only 2 "Death In Paradise" seasons, but also 3 seasons of "The Bridge" ( or should I say "Bron/Broen" ). They are very different from eachother, however my wife and I liked to watch both mixed up on our TV. The dark "Bridge" with the funny "Death" made our TV evenings very enjoyable.

Note: I watched the original 3 seasons from Denmark/Sweden, not any remake. I never liked detectives that need 10 episode to tell a story. But in any season of "The Bridge" every episode reveals part of the solution and leave you with new questions. That is impressive story-telling. Ofcourse the main-actors Saga, Martin and Hendrik play their roles amazingly true and you could believe they are real people in a real-life serie. It's not my intension to tell you what happened in Season 1,2 and 3, but I will give you a brief description.

Season 1: Saga and Martin work together against a serial killer, who turns out to be a ex-collega of Martin.
Season 2: Saga and Martin work again together again a eco-terrorist group, Martin gets arrested after murdering his ex-collega.
Season 3: Saga and her new partner Hendrik work together against a serial killer, who wants to destroy his family and everybody around it. In the end both dont work for the police anymore.

Not only the script, the actors, etc are excellent, the Opening and Closing Theme is really a tune you wont forget. It starts slowly and fits in the dark adventures of Saga and her partners. Then all at once at the end of each episode the second part of the song hits you like a hammer (and you have to adjust the volume of your TV).

The song is called Hollow Talk from Choir of Young Believers , I listened to the original on YouTube, but I believe the edited (shorter) version used in The Bridge is much better.
So I search for an ending with good audio, here is the ending of the final episode of season 2, when Martin got arrested. Check it out, and you know why "The Bridge" is such a great detective serie.

In November 2016 they started with season 4, the last season. Martin, Saga and Hendrik will be present, but we have to wait until in 2018 the serie can be seen.

Finally, even the car of Saga is as famous as the actors, an old Porsche 911.
There were plenty discussions about which model was used in "The Bridge" (all 3 seasons).

Try to watch this serie, if you like detectives, this is the real thing.

You're Wondering Why - Magnus Fiennes (Death In Paradise Opening Theme)

Now it's time for a feelgood song !!!

I already explained on YouTube why I created not a 10h version, So I will only say something about the serie itself.

Its basicly every time the same thing, on a tropical island there is a murder commited and in the end all suspects are gathered by the English inspector and this local team and the murderer is revealed.
I saw only Season 1 and 2 with Ben Miller and Sara Martins, they were a perfect team cause they were totally different characters and it shows in every Episode.
Sadly Ben Miller left in Season 3 (he was killed in the 1st episode).

Kris Marshall came along to solved it and stayed in the serie until in Season 6 Episode 6 he decided to stayed in London, so the other 2 Episodes of Season 6 were made with Ardal O'Hanion.

More changes were made, in Season 4 Episode 4 Sara Martins was replaced by Joséphine Jobert. She will be in Season 7 also I guess, together with Ardal O'Hanion.

Of course the local police officiers must be changed to, the younger Gary Carr was replaced by Tobi Bakare in Season 4 Episode 1.
Well I hope all those changes didnt effect the serie, meanwhile I have only good memories of Season 1 and 2.

I borrowed the pics from DVD boxes and the music from a YouTube clip of 45 seconds.
Then I started cutting and pasting with Audacity, until I had repeated the music 6 times.
I tried to start change the picture of the season everytime the music changes, but that didnt work very well.

 When published the video on YouTube, I had an idea to create maybe a better long version (better loop) so I started my Audacity and start cutting and pasting. The result was just as good as I expected so I decided to upload it to Soundcloud.

Soundcloud responded direct and the audio was removed due to copyright issues with Sony. I Googled and found out there was a CD released in 2011 by Sony with the theme song of Death In Paradise by Magnus Fiennes.

So I decided to upload it to my Mediafire and Pcloud if you want to hear an alternative long version.

BTW I found some interesting links I will share with you:
* Death In Paradise  - The Soundtrack
* Magnus Fiennes - The Composer/Cover Artist
* Death In Paradise Wiki - All you need to know

Or you can search at the BBC for short clips of each episode

My Music Memories: The Hedgehog's Dilemma of 8bit bEtty

I post this song earlier on my Facebook (I forgot) and when I was looking to the video's ZooiTroep liked, I found this one again. It's a really sad song about 2 people, both too shy to talk to each other. Yeah, I'm still sky and doesn't like crowds full of people I don't know. I don't like being in the spotlights and when I had to talk in public I am still blushing.


Now something about the music, 8bit bEtty uses sounds MSX-ers are very familiar with, I am talking about the standard sound chip PSG. That's not all, he also uses male and female robotical voices (sort of text 2 speech) and let them sing along. 
It's really impressive and it makes the difference between other chiptune or bitpop artists.

This song "The Hedgehog's Dilemma" comes from the album "Fake the Bitters" and you can still buy it on bandcamp.com. 

I must say not all the songs are great, but you must listen the whole album for yourself to judge. And here comes the sad part, after the album "Fake The Bitters" 8bit bEtty stopped publishing.

According to his latest tweets he is in the game-industry. 
However I guess he uses an other alias then 8bit bEtty here.

Here the link to the album: "Fake the bitters" to listen.
If you move your mouse pointer over the titles you can click on lyrics too.

But for this track "The Hedgehog's Dilemma" I make an exception, here are the lyrics:

I am just a shy girl at heart
I wish I could say hi to you
why am I alone again tonight
when I am in a city filled with possibilities

I am just a shy boy at heart
and I know you expect me to say hi to you
I guess I'm afraid of what you'll say
so I guess I will read another book tonight by myself

And sometimes I wish things weren't this way
that I could change
but then I'd lose a sense of myself
Oh what a shame

I am always the girl alone at the show
I start to sweat when you say hello
I will make a reservation for one
I don't think that eating alone is fun

And sometimes I wish things weren't this way
that I could change
but then I'd lose a sense of myself
Oh what a shame

Someday I will find someone shy just like me
Someday I will find someone shy just like me
Someday I will find someone shy just like me
Someday
Someday


Someone shy just like you

Note:
About the title, here is a short explanation from YouTube user: my name is.
"the hedgehog's dilemma actually a metaphor . like, when it's cold, hedgehogs would like to cuddle but they kinda cant bc theyll hurt each other."

Life Is Strange - the mix - TnC OST Mixz "The Decision"

It was never my intention to make a 2nd post to any game, but as you can read in the description of the mix on YouTube, making this mix was a some kind of price I had to pay for getting the music and the game out of my head. 
I will use this post to tell you more about the mix itself.

I listened to couple of Life Is Strange soundtracks on YouTube and there were so many songs I liked a lot, mostly the more depressed sounded ones. 
I just wanted to hear those songs together so I started my old Mixmeister Fusion and let the automatic BPM determine how the playlist would look like. 

It turned out alright (I guess) with a mix of instrumental, mixed vocals of male/female and 
a balance in soft beginning and hard endings. 
I mean, most songs in the mix started very quietly and the erupt at the end. 
But it was hard to cross-fade those songs with all different BPMs (according to Mixmeister Fusion, that is). 

It took me 12 versions before all song transitions were fine. I kept on cutting / pasting / listening to the same transitions to find the perfect mixing in key ( in my case, mixing by ear, not by the beat).

So in the end, I had my mix, but it seemed logic, if I want to publish on YouTube I must do more than just showing a title picture during the playing of the mix. 
I made some notes for different versions of the video, and suddenly I had the idea when 
I listen to the mix I made.

What if, the whole video mix shows with short video's and the music itself, the state of mind of Max Caulfield to make in Episode 5 the final decision, sacrifice Chloe, her best friend or sacrifice the city Arcadia Bay. 
I used short videos from Episode 5, where Max walks to the Lighthouse and is reminded of all the good memories she had with Chloe, just before Max had to make the decision. 

So I started the mix with a short video of Max and Chloe before Max had to decide and end the video with a short video of the tornado. It only seems normal to name the mix "The Decision". 

Some of these memories of Max are seen in the mix, I had to cut a lot to get different memories and not let the background noise/music ruin the mix.

But there was more trouble ahead.
My video-editor could only handle 800x600 resolution, so the video quality is....bad. However the audio seems okay, so I uploaded it anyway. 

After uploading I tried to search for my video, but YouTube search didn't find it. 
Maybe it's better, cause there are so many well made fan video clips with scenes 
of Life Is Strange. If you hate the video, but like the mix, I have uploaded it to mixcloud. 

Check the links below for the video and mix.



The video or The Mix

Note: I wrote Mixz instead of Mix, cause it's not really a smooth mix with nice transitions between the songs (and I speed up all songs to 115%)

And finally: I found some other Life Is Strange links I had to share it with you:

A beautiful Wikipedia fan-made
A fan-made story for the prequel of Life Is Strange
A playlist of Life Is Strange instrumentals, each 10 minutes long

That's all folks for today !

112 MSX Basic Games presents: PARAS.GAM (76)

In PARA'S you must take care of 4 skydivers/paragliders, that must land on a small island.
Not easy, cause 3 rockets are trying to hit you and the palm tree is also dangerous.

This was not an easy game to translate, cause the creator "Visser Design" didnt finish the game, so there was no score, no lives, no change in gameplay and a bad sprite collision and the player had no change of getting the para (skydiver) safe on the island. 

Why I tried to improve it ? Cause I liked the idea of the game. I added a short manual, speedup the intro screen, restored the score and lifes count code, make the position of the rockets random, updated the sprite collision and more 
I forgot already.

Be warned. This game PARA'S has a different way of calculating the score. You get 1 life (PARA'S) and if you fail you must try again. 
When you reached the 4 lifes the game is finished but...

You have to save the 4 skydivers before the counter go below zero. And your score is the counter, counting from 10000 til 0.

Very original, but I had to make some changes to make sure only players that resqued 4 skydivers can have a score.

There is not much sounds or soundeffects in the game, only when pressing fire or getting/losing a life. 

I could add some sea-sounds, but is it really necessary ?
You can be the judge by playing it:

Mediafire/Pcloud

 

112 MSX Basic Games presents: KESHISAR.GAM (75)

I never could have figure out what the purpose of the game KESHISAR was, cause it was made in Japan. It had English texts, but without a manual I was lost here.

Lucky me, Jan Hartman had made a txtfile in Dutch to explain what was wrong with the original game and how to play it. That was really something.

Now I could play the game and knowing what to do.

It's of course a puzzle game without any time limit
(YEZZ !!!), but if you make
the wrong decision you need to start over.

The game was by Richard Naka for MSX-2(+) and runs in SCREEN 5.
I really was amazed by the small animation, the fast gameplay and the nice graphics (without loading any additional pictures).

The purpose of the game is making squares and rectangles from the pieces on the screen by rotation them with the spacebar, pressing RETURN make them disappear. 
If the screen is empty, you will rewarded with a nice simple drawing and you may go to the next stage. There are 10 stages, plenty of choice I must say. 

This is the 2nd non-Europe MSX Basic game and I have tried to see how it works. 
It was so complex I gave up and inserted only a manual in it.


I am a little worried I choose too many mind games for my 112 MSX Basic Games list, 
I hope you don't mind.

NOTE: The screenshot on the right shows the solution of STAGE 0, to get you started.

At: Mediafire/Pcloud

TnC on the big WWW

The more I blog the more I come across many links to logos, persons and organisations that are also named TnC, or Noise Collector or even TnC Stuff.

Well when I started the first blog I named myself TnM, that is short for The Noise Maker
and changed it to TnC to be more original. Time goes by and I see I was wrong again.

So if you find me here, you must googled "tnc msx".
Good job !

I have some MSX posts in mind in the near future so stay tuned.
But dont expect reviews of the lastest MSX games, check other websites for that.

If you interested in older MSX stuff, check this blog.

Bye Bye.

112 MSX Basic Games presents: PATIENCE.GAM (77)

At first I didnt want any YAHTZEE or PATIENCE related games in the 112 list, but this Patience version was so different and yet so playable I felt like I had to put it into the 112 MSX Basic Games list.

Actually the full name is C.U.C. Patience, a listing from the C.U.C. magazine specially for SpectraVideo (and later also MSX) users.
All software they published in their magazines or tapes were made for both SpectraVideo and MSX, very nice feature.

I didnt remove all SpectraVideo related codes in the listing, I just translated and added some kind of Highscore. The Dutch manual in Dutch was a bit long to translate and I had to play the game for more than 10 times before I had a proper working Highscore. Last but not least I changed also the cursor into blue, cause the intro-screen was blue too and I could better see where the cursor was (yeah Im getting old).

By the way, its amazing how the letters C.U.C. and word Patience are displayed in the intro. Wow ! That must be tough to make !
The cursorspeed may be a little too sensitive, I removed all spaces and variables after the NEXT-commands to speedup the intro-screen and generating the play-screen. So now it runs faster, but the cursor too, sorry !

I could explain how the game works, but I think my translation in the game itself will be enough. Like any other Patience game you have to make rows from 2 until King from the same type. That would be enough to start.
   The game is not capable of checking if the game is finished or if there are no valid moves for you. I guess checking it would make the game much slower and maybe unplayable.
That's the only disadvantage of C.U.C. Patience I could find.

Have a lot of fun trying to beat my Highscore (4975 !!!)

Mediafire/Pcloud

112 MSX Basic Games presents: MINDBUST.GAM (78)

I wanted to continue with the 112 MSX Basic Games serie, but it was hard to select the next game for the list. Mostly cause I didnt want another Pacman/Snakey/Othello clone or another (Dutch) text-adventure, so I had to search harder.

By accident I started a program called "DENKER.BAS" (THINKER.BAS in English), which turned out the be a real mindbuster. It was an old listing from the magazine "COMPUTE",which was also converted to MSX-1 by Jurre van Dijken.

Many cross-platform games are text-only, this one uses the features of SCREEN 1 very well. So it looks fine on MSX-1 and its very difficult too.
I can assure you !!!

Somehow I solved puzzle number 2 more faster than number 1. I wasnt patient enough to solved puzzle 3, it was too hypnotic for my eyes, so I quit early. Sorry.

All other info can be found in the REM lines at the beginning of the listing.
Yes, another MIND GAMES, but one not to miss. What a great conversion, Jurre !

Find it at: Mediafire / Pcloud

The MSX-1 DrumComputer (COMPDRUM.BAS)

Before I owned a Philips Music Module I liked to messin' around with SOUND command and created random-sound-geneators and my own sound-effects for use in MSX-Basic games.

Then I found this program, called DRUM a listing in the Dutch MSX Computer Magazine 10.
It was ( and is still)  an amazing MSX Basic program, made by  Eric Madrange, where you can listen to a lot of different drum-patterns (check out JAZZ ROCK) or create your own.


Of course the last feature, the drum-editor, was the best, cause you could save and load your home-made drum-rhythms easily.

Well, it was very basic, you can only add a bass-drum, snare-drum and a hihat to your drum-pattern. So no tom-tom or cymbal like in other editors (Moonblaster).
Still it impressive how it works, without reading a manual or remembering pages of key bindings.

Specially for this post I created some new drum-patterns and translate it were needed
the listing into English. You find the downloadlinks below.

* Good old Mediafire *
* The new Pcloud *

And I made specially for this post a short video, here.

TnC Collected works : TnC SoundZ & DemoZ Disk Part 2

Here is already Part 2 of the Soundz & DemoZ Disk Collection and is called:
the Parole / Digi Collection.
On this disk you can find some digitized pictures made by mine NMS880 and a collection
of tools (PAROLE) from FRANCE, which still is the only MSX program that can generated Text to Speech !!! I will create a other Post this nice program, so here below is some other interesting stuff (I hope).

Here is a program I worked very hard to make it work but  I stopped working after version 1.7. I still didnt figure out what the differences are between the 1.6 and 1.7 version. The 1.6 version had copyrights of Jos-Tel, the 1.7 version not.
With this program you can create some kind of playlist of FM-Basic listings and it runs on MSX-1 and MSX-2, it stores this information in VRAM in a very clever way. With CTRL-STOP and F1 you can go to the next song.
It was very tough to translated it and keep it working...


Here we have maybe the best FM conversion Elko Duijm had ever made for the FM-Pac (A.P. Duijm is his real name, never asked were it stands for). Of course everybody knows the first notes of Toccata et Fuga, but Elko tried to create an version with an organ that would sound like there original.
So no bass and drums or edited in any way.



This is really painful, my attempt to create Text 2 Speech
for MSX with Wordstore+.
I tried to let it speak Dutch by sampling my own voice.
Due to the limitations of Wordstore+ (it could only handle less than 26 parts of the sample) and the bad recording
it can only say abbreviations in Dutch, like ABN, KLM, etc.
Strangely I made the program in 1990 already in English.
Why oh why ?


Here is one of the only digitized pictures I ever made with my NMS8280. I created those with DIGITIZE-2 program, also on this disk. On one afternoon I just connected my computer to the TV and started digitizing realtime. The results were so good I never did it ever again...
This picture is one of the best, it's a screenshot of the game Boggle on a Dutch TV-channel.
I believe the NMS8280 was very overrated, 256 colours on 256x212 pixels was just not enough to create nice digi's.

So have fun with this Part 2, ofcourse you will find much more programs and music than the ones I mentioned above, just like on Part 1.

Just start the disk and check the menu, if you dont believe me...

Mediafire / Pcloud

TnC Collected works : TnC SoundZ & DemoZ Disk Part 1

This year I started a new collection, called the Soundz & DemoZ Disk Collection.
It's has the same menu as the ToolZ & DemoZ Disks (the text is in different colours) and will contain everything I made (or helped with) for MSX,  related to noise and music.
That's why you hear in the menu a soundeffect and any demo has now some sounds too.

Every Part will be named after the mainpart on the disk.
Part 1 is called "The HaaiDemo Edition". Hereby some more info about what's on thise dfisk.

On the right a screenshot from that demo. I didnt created those pictures full of Dutch shark jokes (Haai = shark), but I made the title screen and the main demo program. I didnt make those screenwipes too, I somehow tuned it to make the wipes a bit faster. Better listen with your speakers on low volume, some wipes takes some time and the noises can be really annoying after a while.




On the left a sort of mozaik generator for MSX-1.
There is some colorspill, here it makes the generated GFX only better and I added some sounds.
On SCREEN 5 it will generate a bit faster (or with KUN-Basic compiler), but I wanted to prove to myself that MSX-1 can generate nice random GFX too.

Next we have the DUST IN THE WIND collection of EMP-Soft.
Of course made by Elko Duijm original, but the FM-version seem a bit boring, so I created the Mad PK Version.
In that version I added a extra voice-channel to the original with specially selected Instruments. I believe Elko liked and hated some of them, to me I succeed in making it less monotoon. The PSG-version with strange combinations of
the S and M parameters of the PLAY command and was translated into German, still don't know why...

Last and least is my attempt to create some original MSX-2 Demo in MSX-Basic It has only 5 parts, mostly modified listings from K&K of MCM. However the introscreen was completly made by me. The sounds were already added in the 2nd version of the demo, so I changed nothing when I included it on this disk.




Now its time to say sorry. I lost my Pcloud account, cause it was linked to a mailaddress, which is now out of order. So all recent files are only available via Mediafire, I guess.

I created a new one a Pcloud so here are the links: Mediafire / Pcloud