Easier way to recreate instruments used in specific SID songs?

[TheDraug]

Hi all,

I got a bit deeper into chiptunes now and finished transcribing my first song, now I'm arranging it and try to recreate the sound as closely as possible (to understand it).

My biggest problem at the moment are the arpeggios. To reproduce them I use a mp3 recording of the original tune and slow it down with transcribe (keeping the pitch), sometimes to <10% of the original tempo. Then I try to identify the pitch steps, which is sometimes really hard due to artifacts of the slowing.

Is there some way that makes it easier for me to find out how a specific sound has been created? I'm rather versed in the musical area, but I never had to deal with writing into registers with assembler.

Thanks and best regards

[Mordi]

I usually do what you do. Slow down the original track and just try to get something usable from that. But did you also know you can separate the different channels? If you use Sidplay (version 1) you can mute and solo channels and then render to .wav. I always do this first when I've decided to remix something. I import the tracks into my DAW so I can always just solo each track and examine it.

I've got Sidplay uploaded here if you need it: http://mordi.ziphoid.com/data/stuff/sidplayw.exe

[TheDraug]

Yeah, I split them up to have better results. I used acid64 with jsiddevice so far, since it allows to mute the voices. I'll have a look at sidplay, thanks a lot!

When searching I found the SIDin magazine and they have articles about ripping the music. I guess this is the exact way to see how the sound was programmed, but I am not good enough in assembler and don't understand the actual chip hardware well enough I guess.

[LMan]

You can also slow down an octave or two without time streching to avoid artifacts, as the notes remain the same.

[Cactus]

SID2MIDI can be quite helpful to find the correct notes.