Arpeggios in Sids

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 21/03/2019 - 8:04

Hi All

I'm after a little help/guidance from some of the more seasoned remixers here (or anyone who has something to offer really)

I have a problem working out arpeggios in sid music.
For example, I'm currently trying to work out the title music for Chimera by Rob Hubbard.

I think I can work out the portamento bits in the bass and the harmonies in the main melody by ear but the arp just stops me dead in my tracks.
In particular, I have trouble with Rob Hubbards Arps as I think he changes waveforms and effects very quickly to get those RH characteristic sounds.

So how do other people work these out ? is there a way to slow the sid down or step through it note by note or frame by frame or something ?

Many thanks for your time.
Sanjo

Post by **LaLa** » 21/03/2019 - 17:36

You have a few tools at your disposal:

SID2MIDI - I've had pretty good luck with this over the years. Not as precise in some cases, but most of the time it nudges me in the right direction.

SIDDump - Honestly, I haven't had the need to use this one, yet, but if I were at a total loss, I'd seriously consider it.

DeepSID - Besides being the awesomest web-based SID player ever, it also has a "Piano" tab which I found rather useful to figure out the chords in some arpeggios!

I also tried Audacity in the past with a WAV dump of a SID file to try to slow it down (without pitch-shifting it), but I can't really recommend this method, because things can be happening in arpeggios so fast, you just won't get the "resolution" in a slowed-down WAV to be able to make out all the subtleties.

But I think that hard-core remixers will just read the hex data of a SID file directly and be able to both disassemble it in their head and memorize all the SID register changes frame-by-frame.

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 21/03/2019 - 19:29

actually ....

Thanks for reminding me about SidDump .. I started writing a tool to visualize the dump in python but got busy at work and forgot about it.. I think I need to look at it again. I'll check out DeepSid, I think I did find it once but didn't know it had a piano view.

But I think that hard-core remixers will just read the hex data of a SID file directly and be able to both disassemble it in their head and memorize all the SID register changes frame-by-frame.

Lol!

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 22/03/2019 - 12:13

JSidplay also has a dump view function

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 22/03/2019 - 16:14

Chris Abbott wrote: ↑22/03/2019 - 12:13 JSidplay also has a dump view function

Cool.. looks like its got a waveform viewer too. Thx

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 22/03/2019 - 16:21

Thinking about it , I might revisit my original idea of "Listening" to memory locations in something like vice.

The problem with arps is that they are often an internal function and only the base note is in the note data to trigger the arp sequence so a lot of visualizers show only that.

If I can find a way to control the emulator I can call the playroutine, capture the state of the SID registers, dump them and loop.(gonna be a lot of data) then it could be visualized on a piano roll or the like.

Mordi · Post by **Mordi** » 22/03/2019 - 22:59

Sidplay is invaluable in these situations. You can solo each channel in a SID. I usually just render out three or four channels as wav when I start a new remix. If you have a hard time telling what the notes are, you can slow down the wavs in your DAW.

http://www.gsldata.se/c64/spw/sidplayw.html

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 28/01/2020 - 9:59

So I finally got around to writing a tool for this.

Basically it pushes the sid file through a simple 6502 emulator and captures the frequency registers on every frame. This is to help me figure out fast changes, portamento and arpeggios for remixes.

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 28/01/2020 - 15:18

Pretty.

Post by **LaLa** » 28/01/2020 - 15:33

Sanjo Ride wrote: ↑28/01/2020 - 9:59 So I finally got around to writing a tool for this.

Basically it pushes the sid file through a simple 6502 emulator and captures the frequency registers on every frame. This is to help me figure out fast changes, portamento and arpeggios for remixes.

Bonus points awarded if you can identify the SID tunes in the above screengrabs.

Seriously, this is pretty cool. I hope you'll release your tool as open source.

So far I've found DeepSID's piano display to be very useful for this kind of stuff. DeepSID now also has a "play tune slowly" option, which also helps a lot to pick apart arpeggios.

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 28/01/2020 - 17:34

I'll probably open source it eventually but still lots of work to do ..
I'm working on a basic synth for playback atm .. it wont be SID perfect but it will at least help with song position indicators.

I've just added the FrequencyToNote stuff and that just gave me a headache :

Dr.Future · Post by **Dr.Future** » 29/01/2020 - 6:54

You rock!

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 30/01/2020 - 14:17

lol .. I think I'm recreating FL Studio .. Hope I dont get sued.

Mordi · Post by **Mordi** » 06/02/2020 - 15:41

Pretty cool stuff!

lol @ recreating FL Studio Sanjo Ride. If it makes you feel better, we will both get sued if they decide to take action.

Sanjo Ride · Post by **Sanjo Ride** » 07/02/2020 - 7:04

Mordi wrote: ↑06/02/2020 - 15:41 Pretty cool stuff!

lol @ recreating FL Studio Sanjo Ride. If it makes you feel better, we will both get sued if they decide to take action.

Hey now that's nice. props for design skillz

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