Fortunately now we can make music for the SNES with a tracker-like editor using Furnace. It basically made Deflemask obsolete, it supports so many chips and systems it's incredible.
So the weird pitch bending abuses the fact that pitch on the SNES can only be from 0000 to FFFF, it goes past those values and wraps around. There's also a noise sample that sounds completely different in EBMusEd, but it's because the amplification bits on each sample block header are (purposely?) effed up, so it sounds like noise on the hardware but the actual waveform is different. (Shoutouts to LMPuny and Pinci for bringing this to my attention!) The rest of the samples are findable in EBMusEd as far as I know
This is fantastic. i reckon about 99% of this is completely new to me and I wrote music and effects for SNES. The sax on the final piece is superb. What an educational resource this is.
1:05 Nerdwriter1's video on SNES music is so full of inaccuracies and flat out wrong information it just destroyed all credibility of that channel for me. Like even basic stuff like "Here is music from Super Mario World" (Plays Super Mario All-Stars music)
Just stumbled upon this channel and my first impression is this: A table of content, a time-stamped list of all songs used, citations and linked image sources? Wow, this makes my researcher heart jump with joy. This kind of stuff takes A LOT of work, so I strongly appreciate you going the extra mile with that. You have my subscription and keep up the great work!
Yes, Harumi Ueko did the soundtrack Turtles in Time, and was also responsible for Gradius 3. Anyone familiar with Bemani will probably know him as Jimmy Weckl. Konami had one of the BEST sound teams in the business during that era. With him, Shoichiro Hirata, Akira Yamaoka, Michiru Yamane, the list goes on. They made ANY sound hardware sing!
Incredibly interesting stuff. I wish more people were into this stuff it's so cool and interesting and there really isn't anything quite like making music on limited hardware :)
This is super interesting....It's such a shame that a lot of the things mentioned are just "lost to time." I guess we should be glad that people like Alberto and Barry have been able to discuss this with the public who are interested in this (mainly, us) so we can kind of uncover SOME of the details. This also explains why NA/PAL territories had so much difficulty trying to get the system to sing like the Japanese could...because a lot of times they weren't even given proper instructions in their language and had to reverse engineer in some cases. Wow. Great video! I need to go watch the Genesis one now.
If you're wondering how the heck those .abr files got identified and utilized in the song at the end... it wasn't through loading them into SLICK/Audio and replicating the hardware setup... instead, I personally reverse-engineered enough of the format for them to be convertible into the BRR file format more commonly used today (I didn't actually create the utility, though, and the sample data was already pre-converted for the most part, just represented in a different way header-wise... and sometimes not properly terminating the sample properly, as I eventually found out), and I even found the tuning info in these files!
Regarding the bass sample issue, the Video Game Music Preservation Foundation wiki mentions that the infamous SYNBASS.ASM sample actually came from the Korg M1 "Slap Bass" patch, and that it was sampled by a Sony engineer, but there's no source on that last bit. The sample seems to be the same from the Korg patch, tho.
I would recommend OpenMPT/Impulse Tracker + SMCONV instead. Not only you can pick your own sample and stuff, you can also make a legitimate .SPC out of it.
@@BBWahoo That's not me! you're thinking of GO-GO-GST, later rebranded as LINE-OUT GST. That's all run by Emma Essex, who does absolutely amazing work. I simply liked the idea of calling "unofficial OSTs from Games" GST, and used that acronym for my own channel.
Great vid as always! Would love to see an Alberto Gonzalez artist feature video. His GB and SMS tracks always make me think "how did you write something that sounds so complex with such little room available." My guess..... magic.
@@jethinabox good point. I mean, it is a VST that emulates the SNES sound chip and creates midi output - so theoretically yes? but I can only guess, since I'm not sure how the other VST mentioned in the video delivers its signals to the SNES...
C700 has a "record" option that spits out an SPC and a SMC based on whatever MIDI information you sent. This is not particularly efficient, but it works 100% on the hardware. Apparently, chipsynth SFC is even less efficient, so they haven't implemented any export at all (yet)
@@GSTChannelVEVO unsure if this only happens to me, but when I do the record thing, the sounds come in random midi channels, instead of the ones they were assigned to
A very fascinating and interesting look at how SNES music is composed! Kinda sad to hear that authentic SNES music composition seems to be a bit of a lost art though
This channel is easily one of the best on RUclips right now. Between yourself, Retro Gaming Explained, and I'm sure many others, this really is the golden age of accessible, well researched, and well presented information on antiquated hardware.
Now I can make SNES music if I time travel to 1995! Wait I don't know how to make music, shoot... Good video nonetheless, very informative! Getting a look at development tools like this is pretty neat.
Funny story: Long after I started my research, but before I finished this video, a website popped with a bunch of details on all the info on kits that I struggled to find. www.retroreversing.com/super-famicom-snes-development-kit/ I'm still pretty satisfied with my my own findings though!
It took my time to find some video that REALLY explained how SNES music was made. This is by far the best one I found and I want to thank you for the gargantuan effort put into this to clarify a bit more the long and windy road 80's and 90's musicians had to struggle with in order to make music with so less information given by the companies about their hardware.
Great stuff as always. Not being impressed by the currently available SNES tools myself, I've been working on a SNES SDK for the past two years or so. I have ported the 65816 and SPC700 architectures to GNU binutils and made tools that allow me to use the Tiled editor for layouts, as well as doing bitplane format conversions. I'd love to also make a sequencer/tracker that exposes all the DSP capabilities of the SNES, including all the low pass filters, side-chain modulation and echo/delay buffer. The only hurdle is that I suck at GUI programming and design. The audio driver itself is no problem. So any fellow hobbyist homebrew hackers seeing this: help needed.
I guess this video already talks about that, but in a nutshell, that cheap slap bass sample you would hear in all these "samy" compositions, compared to let's say, FF6 (to take one of the best) was the same thing as hearing badely converted midi to GEMS compared to beautiful FM soundtracks like SoR or Sonic.
I really really want to finish watching this video but every time you say SNES it makes me want to rip my eardrums out... I'm 44 years old and grew up with a Nintendo and a Super Nintendo and nobody in the world called it a SNES. stop it!
amazing video!, i remember from an article that stated that sony had special tools for composing music on the sp700 for better results, but i'm pretty confident if you didn't found something, might be a thing someone invented... the article was about Ken Kutaragi
1:03 is literally a screenshot of my screen a few minutes ago, except your video about crazy sample lengths was also there! I'm surprised it's so hard to learn about music making on the SNES, thank you for your videos
I always thought the SNES had built in sound samples on the SPC700 given how often that slap bass sample was used. Once again I feel sorry for western developers and their lack of support while Capcoms and Konamis of the world likely got all sorts of on site training
@Donaldo Thomoson An N64 developer also needed expensive AF SGI hardware. The games need to ship on expensive rom carts instead of CDs, which eats into the developer's cut. Nintendo charges out the ass for licenses (they're still in the monopoly mindset of the 80's), while Sony was is eager to get developers onboarded to their system, so they didn't charge as much. All this translates to needing to sell a lot of games just to break even. In the end, the only company that really made money on N64 was Nintendo and their partners. 3rd parties didn't need much of an excuse to dump Nintendo when something better came along.
Pop'n Twinbee Rainbow Bell Adventures used some Mega Drive FM synth in a lot of songs. Like in "Distorted Fantasy", "Run! Run!", "How Did We Do?" and much more other ones.
absolutely fascinating video. Knowing how difficult it was to program music makes soundtracks like Chrono Trigger and Donkey Kong even more impressive technical and artistic achievements.
Thank you for this video, shedding some light on something I've wanted to know for nearly 30 years now (ok I feel old now). Before SNES/SPC emulation was really a viable thing on home computers, Apple's QuickTime MIDI interface v. 2.5 (about 1996-97) somehow sounded pretty dang close to the original SNES music. Version 3.0 sounded way different, though, for some reason.
Ok but how about music like donkey Kong country series? They have very eunique sounds fonts and was always wondering how they made those sounds and how to get them
The short answer: Dave Wise locked himself in a cabin for several days with a few synths and meticulously sampled and arranged them into the iconic songs you know and love today. I talk a little more about that in his own video: "Artist Feature #16: David Wise"
Kinda crazy, if I'm understand this correctly, that there's not an easy and standard way to create music and sound fx for the SNES that really takes full advantage of the capabilities of the console. :-o
It's probably called "ika listen" / "squid listen" because a squid is somewhat arrow-shaped and has many tentacles combining into one, like how all the audio channels must be combined in order to hear the completed song.
I’ve been fascinated by 3rd and 4th generation console music and how it’s made for about 12 years now and while I was familiar with the GEMS interface, I’ve wondered how the SNES composers did it, so thanks!
For as long as the Super Famicom / SNES has been around I've been curious as to the tools used for development + building soundtracks during the period. Thanks for solving this personal mystery in such an approachable fashion ! Jeremy Soule is one of my all time favorites - I didn't have any luck finding anything but a couple references to Wolfgang though. Anyone know if this software is still kicking around somewhere?
Technicly it's like an Amiga MOD file it's also very similare to XM module format too, but 64kb of ram just for an entire soundtrack and wavetable samples it's criminal even with 8 tracks of polyphony, i use to convert module song i made in XM format to the snes Gss tracker it's a real pain in the ass, even if you have a premium sample make by your own or E-MU and akai sample librarie you must converted everything to 5000hz or 3000hz sample in 8 or 16 bit , the neo geo or even amiga and pc have more ram to manage that .
I don't understand why there's any issue in saying the main basic difference between the Genesis and the SNES is that Genesis used FM synthesis, and SNES used something similar to GM MIDI. This makes some sense into the similarities of many SNES same instruments, as GM MIDI had a set standard of instrument samples/patches. SoundFonts, as we would know them from the SB AWE 32 wasn't introduced until March of 1994, so GM MIDI was your best bet for decent for the era instrument samples. You can tell the difference from the 1990 - 1993 era instrument samples/patches to SNES games from the 1994 onward, which I think SB AWE 32 and the higher quality SoundFont samples helped make a difference. They still had to be down-mixed to play on the SNES, but, similar to graphics, down-mixing from a higher quality sample generally sounds better than taking from, say, a sample that's already been down-mixed, and is down mixed further. There's more distortion and other drawbacks to the end quality in doing the latter. I mean sure, SoundFonts may not of made the SNES changes as drastic as GM MIDI to VSTs, but you can tell there was something that changed in the instrumentation, both in quality and diversity after 1994, so something had to take account for that somewhere. And I can't help but hear the similarities between them and what I had on my SB AWE in my early days of composing on an IBM Aptiva 486. While there were SNES sound fonts made over the years, I found if you had a mix of GM MIDI and the factory set of SoundFonts that Creative packed the AWE with, you had very similar sounding instruments, save higher quality sounding than the SNES.
I wonder how many British and European developers created SNES music in something like ProTracker or OctaMED on the Amiga? The Amiga's soundchip was also sample based so I'm sure there would have been conversion utilities written to convert MOD files to the module format for the SNES (or drivers written for the SNES that would play Amiga modules or even OctaMED files) The limitation on the SNES's sound chip was the 64K of RAM which is all it could access.
This was very interesting to watch. I had sometimes wondered over the years what tools musicians used to make music for those games all those years ago.
Love it- but you forgot the one game that haunts my nightmares with its slap bass hook... Paperboy 2. That game should be against the Geneva convention.
I swear to GOD that 1995 was certainly a better time then 2022 and my bet is thaat it will be also better then 2023,and i do prefer the snes over the ps5 all day long😁🤣
This is really interesting. The Genesis gets such a bad rap, but it was clearly much easier to actually write the music you wanted because Sega put in the effort to make solid tools to make developers happy. Amazing how listening analysis does not tend to track much with what was actually going on in the development side. to this day I'm still seeing people find new things about the SPC700 because proper original documentation that isn't a wall of Japanese is so damn scarce: ruclips.net/video/JC0PywZvKeg/видео.html
Probably the most factual video about SNES audio development. It's really good apart from you missing the E from the end of my name. I can answer questions you might have about David Whittaker''s player.
oh no! That's what I get for trusting the credits of an old game, lol. sorry about that! I'd love to know more about David's sound driver, but I have so little knowledge that I'm not even sure where to start. More than anything, I'm curious about how you actually worked with it. Did it use a tracker style interface?
@@GSTChannelVEVO It was all just raw assembler code with very minimal command line tools to convert samples into SPC700 ADPCM format. The music was written in as raw data and compiled directly with the player code, which I modified a bit. There were equates to make things a bit easier so that you could put in note names and command names instead of just numbers, so the music format would end up looking something like: INST, 05, LENGTH, 06, C2, D2, F2, WAIT, WAIT, D2, F2, SLIDE, -1, F3, SLIDE, 0, END You would create patterns like the above of any length and then you could apply any pattern to any channel as part of the sequence. That sequence was just written directly into the data and the code pointed to the appropriate memory addressed. It was sort-of like a much more fine-grained and complicated tracker and the format is pretty much how all of his players worked on all platforms. Most raw playroutines were the same. My Amiga sound effect driver worked in pretty much the same way, and you can see from RUclips videos that Yuzo Koshiro's PC-88 player was also very similar. It's the most data-efficient way to do it and gives the most flexibility. There was also a way to reserve some RAM for the echo buffer and set up its co-efficients if you wanted to use it. To hear what I'd written, I'd have to make sure that the instrument bank was setup correctly and included, then compile it and link it with the test player, and then send it to the devkit. I used a Psy-Q (which I still have). You can find SNES Psy-Q pictures via Google. Because each pattern could be any length, it was very easy for patterns across channels to get out of sync. Sometimes I'd play the finished track and then I'd find that at, say, 3 minutes 30 seconds I'd missed a WAIT command or something and one channel would go out-of-sync, and get further out of sync each loop. I'd have to find it in the code, fix it, compile, send it, play it again and listen to the whole thing all through again to see if it was fixed. It was very laborious. Later, I wrote everything in Protracker on the Amiga instead and then copied the equivalent music data by hand into the code, which was a much better way to work. David sold his player code when he went to EA in the U.S. We (Psygnosis) bought it, and I know that Allister Brimble also had it as well.
@@fromwithinuk Just as I was thinking "this sounds like a tracker format but with extra steps", you mentioned that you ended up just composing in a tracker and copying the data. Beautiful. It's funny how common it was to write music in a text editor back then. It seems less "glamorous" than the custom tracker solutions that some devs conjured up, yet resulted in equally amazing music.
@@GSTChannelVEVO Making GUIs is a pain. Always was and always will be. It's also (relatively) easy to write a playroutine for a sound chip without having to understand how to do any graphics or handle keyboard input or anything on the PC to be able to make an actual app. When you get into the right mindset with the text editor, it's almost as easy as using a tracker apart from the lack of instant previewing.
Wow this is really amazing friend really interested I got to say and yes I do hear the sound effect time to time but since I played the Super Nintendo for a long time that I got used to it but yeah there's some music that is similar to others but the snes has a lot potential and use the snes sound and music to his full power and of course in good hands it can produce great music but yeah some of them can be too simlar to other games but it can get better results with time of corse it can produce amazing soundtracks.
It's interesting to see, hear, and imagine all the hard efforts people went with making music for the SNES with technology being rare to get at the time, unless you're working for a video game developer studio. Also, that bass reminds me a lot like Seinfeld, and I don't want to make a joke about it, but I'M URGED TO DO SO- WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE SUPER NINTENDO?
In 2022, would you still use a tracker or just use a daw like Logic, Ableton, Cubase? . I've used trackers in the past but I can't see the benefit, maybe in this case it's nostalgia ?. (Loved the video! )
it depends on what you want to write, and how comfortable you are with trackers. I'm quite comfortable with trackers, so I use them for any melody-focused music I write, but I'll go to ableton when I want to write lofi hiphop or w/e. if you want to write chiptunes, you can usually find a dedicated tracker for the hardware. it's the best way to write (usually).
@@GSTChannelVEVO talking about melody focused material, do you have videos on music theory? or suggestions? I think this type of music requires artists to use it very wisely
@@felipefs106 what aspect of music theory? I haven't made anything like that for my own channel, and most of what I watch is just exploring random concepts, not building from scratch. but I'll recommend 8-bit music theory, and bitblitz if you want a VGM focus then adam neely and charles cornell for just random thoughts on theory. those are my favs anyway. should be something to get your exploration started.
@@GSTChannelVEVO thank you for the resources. Regarding music theory, I was thinking on how to go beyond minor and major scales, modes, progressions to set the mood depending on the game's theme
I would say that, in my opinion, making chiptune music is absolutely amazing with trackers! If you want to make more complex compositions, trackers can be very limiting in a lot of ways. Most chiptune music making programs still use trackers, (Ex: Famitracker) but there are some digital audio workstations for making chiptune (Ex: Famistudio).
so nice of you to do a follow up video!! too bad the question still remains, haha) well, at least now I see that C700 is usable.. you know, what I would really want to know or see covered on your channel is a legacy of Rick Fox! the track you played is just one of so many masterpieces and yet there's almost no info about it anywhere.. An artist feature with music from Aero The Acto-Bat and Pirates Of Dark Water sounds like an actual dream, tbh..
Question: Is the 64kb limit for ALL music in a game, or just for each individual track? I've read some SNES games like Earthbound had bigger cartridge sizes to fit all the music, idk if that is accurate or not. But fitting ALL the samples and music sequence data of an entire game into 64kb is impossible right?
it's 64kb per track! (plus variations. for example, in Super Mario World, "Overworld", "Overworld (Yoshi)", and both of their "Hurry" versions are all the same 64kb "track", just with some adjustments during playtime.) you can have as many samples as you'd like on your cartridge but you have to fit it into SPC RAM if you want to actually hear it. it *might* be possible to fit the entire soundtrack (samples, sequence data, and sound driver) into 64kb, but I'm not aware of anyone doing that.
What about SNESGSS? I found it not too bad for making SNES music. Though I prefer doing via hex-editing on the Prince of Persia SNES as the writing music portion is relatively easier, as it is done mostly in the text window.
The SNES sound chip had so much potential as shown with games like Waterworld and Power Instinct, but so many developers just used the default sounds, which were poor and generic. It's a shame because the sound chip was expensive with all the channels and the interpolation. Even most first party Nintendo titles sounded generic.
Fortunately now we can make music for the SNES with a tracker-like editor using Furnace. It basically made Deflemask obsolete, it supports so many chips and systems it's incredible.
yup! I'm having fun creating the most ear piercing, incoherent music possible using random samples and soundfonts on old sound-chips xD
Im most curious about how Earthbound did all that crazy pitchbending and other synth sounds where the waveforms cant be found in the sample data
So the weird pitch bending abuses the fact that pitch on the SNES can only be from 0000 to FFFF, it goes past those values and wraps around. There's also a noise sample that sounds completely different in EBMusEd, but it's because the amplification bits on each sample block header are (purposely?) effed up, so it sounds like noise on the hardware but the actual waveform is different. (Shoutouts to LMPuny and Pinci for bringing this to my attention!) The rest of the samples are findable in EBMusEd as far as I know
doood i know what tim follins does its unique, his sounds never get old
@@livvy94 Pitch has a range of 0000-3FFF actually! So it's even less than that :P I frequently get headaches from it.
@@exodustx0 Oh wow! I had no idea
as far asim know you can do it in varius forms usinf ebmused i use it with f4 xx or e3 xx xx so pretty much thats all
This is fantastic. i reckon about 99% of this is completely new to me and I wrote music and effects for SNES. The sax on the final piece is superb. What an educational resource this is.
It's awesome Neil.
"Samey"
I was expecting you to say *"Seinfeldy"*
1:05 Nerdwriter1's video on SNES music is so full of inaccuracies and flat out wrong information it just destroyed all credibility of that channel for me.
Like even basic stuff like "Here is music from Super Mario World" (Plays Super Mario All-Stars music)
Just stumbled upon this channel and my first impression is this:
A table of content, a time-stamped list of all songs used, citations and linked image sources?
Wow, this makes my researcher heart jump with joy.
This kind of stuff takes A LOT of work, so I strongly appreciate you going the extra mile with that.
You have my subscription and keep up the great work!
Adding citations like this was a bit of an experiment, to be honest. Glad to see it appreciated!
@@GSTChannelVEVO It is hugely appreciated, as is your research itself. Awesome video!
Dean Evans and the Follin brothers have definitely got to be my most favourite SNES composers. TMNT 4's SNES soundtrack is a fucking banger as well.
Finally some recognition from these legends other than Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu,David Wise, Jun Ishikawa etc. Those're wizard genius
Yes, Harumi Ueko did the soundtrack Turtles in Time, and was also responsible for Gradius 3. Anyone familiar with Bemani will probably know him as Jimmy Weckl. Konami had one of the BEST sound teams in the business during that era. With him, Shoichiro Hirata, Akira Yamaoka, Michiru Yamane, the list goes on. They made ANY sound hardware sing!
Incredibly interesting stuff. I wish more people were into this stuff it's so cool and interesting and there really isn't anything quite like making music on limited hardware :)
These type of videos are my favorite that you make. Great job!
This is super interesting....It's such a shame that a lot of the things mentioned are just "lost to time." I guess we should be glad that people like Alberto and Barry have been able to discuss this with the public who are interested in this (mainly, us) so we can kind of uncover SOME of the details. This also explains why NA/PAL territories had so much difficulty trying to get the system to sing like the Japanese could...because a lot of times they weren't even given proper instructions in their language and had to reverse engineer in some cases. Wow. Great video! I need to go watch the Genesis one now.
Good news, the music tracker Furnace has (mostly) working SNES support now though no SPC export yet. Still it's a pretty big development imo
Make a video on the GBA sound
It's like a combination of SNES and NES sounds, they both sampled and and used wave forms, it's awesome
If you're wondering how the heck those .abr files got identified and utilized in the song at the end... it wasn't through loading them into SLICK/Audio and replicating the hardware setup... instead, I personally reverse-engineered enough of the format for them to be convertible into the BRR file format more commonly used today (I didn't actually create the utility, though, and the sample data was already pre-converted for the most part, just represented in a different way header-wise... and sometimes not properly terminating the sample properly, as I eventually found out), and I even found the tuning info in these files!
are the samples available online? where did they come from?
Imagine how nice it would be to get a SNES music maker that is like FamiStudio but for the SNES.
Chipsynth SFC 😉
@@jtn191
That doesn't count, because you can't export SPC files for ROM hacks.
how did people ever get started saying snesss when i was a boy we called it s n e s or Supper Nintendo never snesss
donkey kong soundtrack wins
Regarding the bass sample issue, the Video Game Music Preservation Foundation wiki mentions that the infamous SYNBASS.ASM sample actually came from the Korg M1 "Slap Bass" patch, and that it was sampled by a Sony engineer, but there's no source on that last bit.
The sample seems to be the same from the Korg patch, tho.
disappointed you didn't include tim follin music in your examples
Personally, i recommend the Plogue ChipSynth SFC if you want to work with SNES music today.
ChipSynth SFC is the best way to get the SNES sound today, but I don't think it actually exports SPC files. I might be wrong on this though...
@@GSTChannelVEVO It is indeed just an instrument (but it is excellent). It reads spc files very well, however.
I would recommend OpenMPT/Impulse Tracker + SMCONV instead.
Not only you can pick your own sample and stuff, you can also make a legitimate .SPC out of it.
@@MakotoIchinose What's SMCONV, what does it do, and where can I find it?
@@HLRxxKarl SMCONV (actually named SNES MOD) is used to convert Impulse Tracker modules into .SPC files
...you have to be one of the most underappreciated channels in all of youtube.
you are summoning salt tier.
this is an insanely generous comment. thank you
Completely agree
Generous comment maybe, but absolutely warranted! One of my favourite channels and I'm surprised it has not taken off more.
@@GSTChannelVEVO I remember your bubble bobble gst release, and darius burst, you are automatically god tier.
@@BBWahoo That's not me! you're thinking of GO-GO-GST, later rebranded as LINE-OUT GST. That's all run by Emma Essex, who does absolutely amazing work.
I simply liked the idea of calling "unofficial OSTs from Games" GST, and used that acronym for my own channel.
Great vid as always! Would love to see an Alberto Gonzalez artist feature video. His GB and SMS tracks always make me think "how did you write something that sounds so complex with such little room available."
My guess..... magic.
you forgot to mention the Plogue chipsynth SFC VST - actually the most accurate way to produce SNES music nowadays.
Does it export to something you can play back on SNES hardware though, which is what this video is about
@@jethinabox good point. I mean, it is a VST that emulates the SNES sound chip and creates midi output - so theoretically yes? but I can only guess, since I'm not sure how the other VST mentioned in the video delivers its signals to the SNES...
C700 has a "record" option that spits out an SPC and a SMC based on whatever MIDI information you sent. This is not particularly efficient, but it works 100% on the hardware.
Apparently, chipsynth SFC is even less efficient, so they haven't implemented any export at all (yet)
@@GSTChannelVEVO unsure if this only happens to me, but when I do the record thing, the sounds come in random midi channels, instead of the ones they were assigned to
A very fascinating and interesting look at how SNES music is composed!
Kinda sad to hear that authentic SNES music composition seems to be a bit of a lost art though
Well, now days we have furnace
furnace is finally bringing support for the SPC-700 APU
"Remember that harmonic-filled shortlooped bass sample from the beginning of this video?"
**megalovania**
You are the first person I've heard call is "Snes" everyone I grew up around said "S.N.E.S" or "super nintendo"
game dev in the 90s sounds pretty stressful, basically having to build your own tools unless you were working for a big company
You basically had to be an engineer and a composer.
i mean now we have furnace tracker to compose snes music but it has no spc export...... yet
This channel is easily one of the best on RUclips right now. Between yourself, Retro Gaming Explained, and I'm sure many others, this really is the golden age of accessible, well researched, and well presented information on antiquated hardware.
We appreciate the loooooooooong time spent on making these videos! :) Thanks man!
It hurts a little every time you pronounce "SNES" like that.
Seeing Tommy Tallarico mentioned here hits different these days.
Yeah, it's quite weird to look back on. The GEMS video is even weirder. But! I still stand by what I presented in both.
Now I can make SNES music if I time travel to 1995!
Wait I don't know how to make music, shoot...
Good video nonetheless, very informative! Getting a look at development tools like this is pretty neat.
Funny story: Long after I started my research, but before I finished this video, a website popped with a bunch of details on all the info on kits that I struggled to find.
www.retroreversing.com/super-famicom-snes-development-kit/
I'm still pretty satisfied with my my own findings though!
It took my time to find some video that REALLY explained how SNES music was made. This is by far the best one I found and I want to thank you for the gargantuan effort put into this to clarify a bit more the long and windy road 80's and 90's musicians had to struggle with in order to make music with so less information given by the companies about their hardware.
Great stuff as always.
Not being impressed by the currently available SNES tools myself, I've been working on a SNES SDK for the past two years or so. I have ported the 65816 and SPC700 architectures to GNU binutils and made tools that allow me to use the Tiled editor for layouts, as well as doing bitplane format conversions.
I'd love to also make a sequencer/tracker that exposes all the DSP capabilities of the SNES, including all the low pass filters, side-chain modulation and echo/delay buffer. The only hurdle is that I suck at GUI programming and design. The audio driver itself is no problem.
So any fellow hobbyist homebrew hackers seeing this: help needed.
I guess this video already talks about that, but in a nutshell, that cheap slap bass sample you would hear in all these "samy" compositions, compared to let's say, FF6 (to take one of the best) was the same thing as hearing badely converted midi to GEMS compared to beautiful FM soundtracks like SoR or Sonic.
ridiculously high quality content thanks man i loved every second of it
I really really want to finish watching this video but every time you say SNES it makes me want to rip my eardrums out... I'm 44 years old and grew up with a Nintendo and a Super Nintendo and nobody in the world called it a SNES. stop it!
I think SNES as "snezz" is more of a british thing? I do get the impression it's less popular, but also I love mispronouncing words
amazing video!, i remember from an article that stated that sony had special tools for composing music on the sp700 for better results, but i'm pretty confident if you didn't found something, might be a thing someone invented... the article was about Ken Kutaragi
1:03 is literally a screenshot of my screen a few minutes ago, except your video about crazy sample lengths was also there! I'm surprised it's so hard to learn about music making on the SNES, thank you for your videos
I always thought the SNES had built in sound samples on the SPC700 given how often that slap bass sample was used. Once again I feel sorry for western developers and their lack of support while Capcoms and Konamis of the world likely got all sorts of on site training
@Donaldo Thomoson An N64 developer also needed expensive AF SGI hardware. The games need to ship on expensive rom carts instead of CDs, which eats into the developer's cut. Nintendo charges out the ass for licenses (they're still in the monopoly mindset of the 80's), while Sony was is eager to get developers onboarded to their system, so they didn't charge as much. All this translates to needing to sell a lot of games just to break even.
In the end, the only company that really made money on N64 was Nintendo and their partners.
3rd parties didn't need much of an excuse to dump Nintendo when something better came along.
check our the band--"The Advantage" they faithfully play NES songs---with real drums, bass and elec guitar.
That's some pretty good stuff! I really liked your cover of Zelda Fortress; I couldn't help but nod my head to the beat of the drums lol
Is there any music from the snes sound chip that comes close to doing something similar to the mega drive fm, psg and pcm combination?
Donkey Kong country 1 and 2 use a ton of synth samples off of Korg M1.
@@DonnyKirkMusic more examples?
Plok! Snes
Pop'n Twinbee Rainbow Bell Adventures used some Mega Drive FM synth in a lot of songs. Like in "Distorted Fantasy", "Run! Run!", "How Did We Do?" and much more other ones.
6:27 Megalovania from Undertale, is it you?
absolutely fascinating video. Knowing how difficult it was to program music makes soundtracks like Chrono Trigger and Donkey Kong even more impressive technical and artistic achievements.
What the hell is a Snezz?
And yet, the music from the SNES is among the best ever made.
I'd love to know what synths and drum machines were sampled for the SNES games.
Thank you for this video, shedding some light on something I've wanted to know for nearly 30 years now (ok I feel old now). Before SNES/SPC emulation was really a viable thing on home computers, Apple's QuickTime MIDI interface v. 2.5 (about 1996-97) somehow sounded pretty dang close to the original SNES music. Version 3.0 sounded way different, though, for some reason.
Ok but how about music like donkey Kong country series? They have very eunique sounds fonts and was always wondering how they made those sounds and how to get them
The short answer: Dave Wise locked himself in a cabin for several days with a few synths and meticulously sampled and arranged them into the iconic songs you know and love today.
I talk a little more about that in his own video: "Artist Feature #16: David Wise"
Comment for the algorithm.
Kinda crazy, if I'm understand this correctly, that there's not an easy and standard way to create music and sound fx for the SNES that really takes full advantage of the capabilities of the console. :-o
It's probably called "ika listen" / "squid listen" because a squid is somewhat arrow-shaped and has many tentacles combining into one, like how all the audio channels must be combined in order to hear the completed song.
I’ve been fascinated by 3rd and 4th generation console music and how it’s made for about 12 years now and while I was familiar with the GEMS interface, I’ve wondered how the SNES composers did it, so thanks!
Now I'm curious how David Wise and Eveline Fischer did it, because the DKC games are simply leagues above what most western SNES games sounded like.
For as long as the Super Famicom / SNES has been around I've been curious as to the tools used for development + building soundtracks during the period. Thanks for solving this personal mystery in such an approachable fashion !
Jeremy Soule is one of my all time favorites - I didn't have any luck finding anything but a couple references to Wolfgang though. Anyone know if this software is still kicking around somewhere?
Technicly it's like an Amiga MOD file it's also very similare to XM module format too, but 64kb of ram just for an entire soundtrack and wavetable samples it's criminal even with 8 tracks of polyphony, i use to convert module song i made in XM format to the snes Gss tracker it's a real pain in the ass, even if you have a premium sample make by your own or E-MU and akai sample librarie you must converted everything to 5000hz or 3000hz sample in 8 or 16 bit , the neo geo or even amiga and pc have more ram to manage that .
I don't understand why there's any issue in saying the main basic difference between the Genesis and the SNES is that Genesis used FM synthesis, and SNES used something similar to GM MIDI. This makes some sense into the similarities of many SNES same instruments, as GM MIDI had a set standard of instrument samples/patches. SoundFonts, as we would know them from the SB AWE 32 wasn't introduced until March of 1994, so GM MIDI was your best bet for decent for the era instrument samples. You can tell the difference from the 1990 - 1993 era instrument samples/patches to SNES games from the 1994 onward, which I think SB AWE 32 and the higher quality SoundFont samples helped make a difference. They still had to be down-mixed to play on the SNES, but, similar to graphics, down-mixing from a higher quality sample generally sounds better than taking from, say, a sample that's already been down-mixed, and is down mixed further. There's more distortion and other drawbacks to the end quality in doing the latter. I mean sure, SoundFonts may not of made the SNES changes as drastic as GM MIDI to VSTs, but you can tell there was something that changed in the instrumentation, both in quality and diversity after 1994, so something had to take account for that somewhere. And I can't help but hear the similarities between them and what I had on my SB AWE in my early days of composing on an IBM Aptiva 486. While there were SNES sound fonts made over the years, I found if you had a mix of GM MIDI and the factory set of SoundFonts that Creative packed the AWE with, you had very similar sounding instruments, save higher quality sounding than the SNES.
I wonder how many British and European developers created SNES music in something like ProTracker or OctaMED on the Amiga?
The Amiga's soundchip was also sample based so I'm sure there would have been conversion utilities written to convert MOD files to the module format for the SNES (or drivers written for the SNES that would play Amiga modules or even OctaMED files)
The limitation on the SNES's sound chip was the 64K of RAM which is all it could access.
This was very interesting to watch. I had sometimes wondered over the years what tools musicians used to make music for those games all those years ago.
I use MilkyTracker for SNES music. But I don't go over 8 sound channels.
Excellent cover of "I`m a Dick". I would download it in a heartbeat!
11:38 There is a modern remake of that hardware you can buy today.
It is called the Super Midi Pak
Love it- but you forgot the one game that haunts my nightmares with its slap bass hook... Paperboy 2. That game should be against the Geneva convention.
Do anyone know where are the Kankichi-kun samples available? It would be sick to have those samples to add this SNES vibe to tracks!
i'd like to mention furnace tracker, a tracker that works with snes among many, *many* other systems
It's "snes". Rhymes with "mess". Calling it "snez" is obnoxious.
too bad people aren't as interested in making music for the snes compared to the sega genesis, mostly because it's sample based
I swear to GOD that 1995 was certainly a better time then 2022 and my bet is thaat it will be also better then 2023,and i do prefer the snes over the ps5 all day long😁🤣
Wooah interesting..
This is really interesting. The Genesis gets such a bad rap, but it was clearly much easier to actually write the music you wanted because Sega put in the effort to make solid tools to make developers happy.
Amazing how listening analysis does not tend to track much with what was actually going on in the development side. to this day I'm still seeing people find new things about the SPC700 because proper original documentation that isn't a wall of Japanese is so damn scarce: ruclips.net/video/JC0PywZvKeg/видео.html
Tommy Tallarico said in a panel when talking about developing video game audio that he highly preferred composing on the Genesis over the SNES.
Probably the most factual video about SNES audio development. It's really good apart from you missing the E from the end of my name. I can answer questions you might have about David Whittaker''s player.
oh no! That's what I get for trusting the credits of an old game, lol. sorry about that!
I'd love to know more about David's sound driver, but I have so little knowledge that I'm not even sure where to start.
More than anything, I'm curious about how you actually worked with it. Did it use a tracker style interface?
@@GSTChannelVEVO It was all just raw assembler code with very minimal command line tools to convert samples into SPC700 ADPCM format. The music was written in as raw data and compiled directly with the player code, which I modified a bit. There were equates to make things a bit easier so that you could put in note names and command names instead of just numbers, so the music format would end up looking something like:
INST, 05, LENGTH, 06, C2, D2, F2, WAIT, WAIT, D2, F2, SLIDE, -1, F3, SLIDE, 0, END
You would create patterns like the above of any length and then you could apply any pattern to any channel as part of the sequence. That sequence was just written directly into the data and the code pointed to the appropriate memory addressed. It was sort-of like a much more fine-grained and complicated tracker and the format is pretty much how all of his players worked on all platforms. Most raw playroutines were the same. My Amiga sound effect driver worked in pretty much the same way, and you can see from RUclips videos that Yuzo Koshiro's PC-88 player was also very similar. It's the most data-efficient way to do it and gives the most flexibility. There was also a way to reserve some RAM for the echo buffer and set up its co-efficients if you wanted to use it.
To hear what I'd written, I'd have to make sure that the instrument bank was setup correctly and included, then compile it and link it with the test player, and then send it to the devkit. I used a Psy-Q (which I still have). You can find SNES Psy-Q pictures via Google. Because each pattern could be any length, it was very easy for patterns across channels to get out of sync. Sometimes I'd play the finished track and then I'd find that at, say, 3 minutes 30 seconds I'd missed a WAIT command or something and one channel would go out-of-sync, and get further out of sync each loop. I'd have to find it in the code, fix it, compile, send it, play it again and listen to the whole thing all through again to see if it was fixed. It was very laborious. Later, I wrote everything in Protracker on the Amiga instead and then copied the equivalent music data by hand into the code, which was a much better way to work.
David sold his player code when he went to EA in the U.S. We (Psygnosis) bought it, and I know that Allister Brimble also had it as well.
@@fromwithinuk Just as I was thinking "this sounds like a tracker format but with extra steps", you mentioned that you ended up just composing in a tracker and copying the data. Beautiful.
It's funny how common it was to write music in a text editor back then. It seems less "glamorous" than the custom tracker solutions that some devs conjured up, yet resulted in equally amazing music.
@@GSTChannelVEVO Making GUIs is a pain. Always was and always will be. It's also (relatively) easy to write a playroutine for a sound chip without having to understand how to do any graphics or handle keyboard input or anything on the PC to be able to make an actual app. When you get into the right mindset with the text editor, it's almost as easy as using a tracker apart from the lack of instant previewing.
13:42 Seinfeld
makes you wonder how the fuck they pulled off super metroid!
Translation: "Programming music on the SNES was a lawless wasteland." 😅
Wow this is really amazing friend really interested I got to say and yes I do hear the sound effect time to time but since I played the Super Nintendo for a long time that I got used to it but yeah there's some music that is similar to others but the snes has a lot potential and use the snes sound and music to his full power and of course in good hands it can produce great music but yeah some of them can be too simlar to other games but it can get better results with time of corse it can produce amazing soundtracks.
It's interesting to see, hear, and imagine all the hard efforts people went with making music for the SNES with technology being rare to get at the time, unless you're working for a video game developer studio.
Also, that bass reminds me a lot like Seinfeld, and I don't want to make a joke about it, but I'M URGED TO DO SO- WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH THE SUPER NINTENDO?
In 2022, would you still use a tracker or just use a daw like Logic, Ableton, Cubase? . I've used trackers in the past but I can't see the benefit, maybe in this case it's nostalgia ?. (Loved the video! )
it depends on what you want to write, and how comfortable you are with trackers.
I'm quite comfortable with trackers, so I use them for any melody-focused music I write, but I'll go to ableton when I want to write lofi hiphop or w/e.
if you want to write chiptunes, you can usually find a dedicated tracker for the hardware. it's the best way to write (usually).
@@GSTChannelVEVO talking about melody focused material, do you have videos on music theory? or suggestions? I think this type of music requires artists to use it very wisely
@@felipefs106 what aspect of music theory?
I haven't made anything like that for my own channel, and most of what I watch is just exploring random concepts, not building from scratch.
but I'll recommend 8-bit music theory, and bitblitz if you want a VGM focus
then adam neely and charles cornell for just random thoughts on theory.
those are my favs anyway. should be something to get your exploration started.
@@GSTChannelVEVO thank you for the resources. Regarding music theory, I was thinking on how to go beyond minor and major scales, modes, progressions to set the mood depending on the game's theme
I would say that, in my opinion, making chiptune music is absolutely amazing with trackers!
If you want to make more complex compositions, trackers can be very limiting in a lot of ways.
Most chiptune music making programs still use trackers, (Ex: Famitracker) but there are some digital audio workstations for making chiptune (Ex: Famistudio).
so nice of you to do a follow up video!! too bad the question still remains, haha) well, at least now I see that C700 is usable..
you know, what I would really want to know or see covered on your channel is a legacy of Rick Fox! the track you played is just one of so many masterpieces and yet there's almost no info about it anywhere.. An artist feature with music from Aero The Acto-Bat and Pirates Of Dark Water sounds like an actual dream, tbh..
Now today's homebrew emulators and music makers are far ahead of the kits of the day.
There should've been a Seinfeld game for the SNES
Good job using FFV music in the background. Under-appreciated, that one!
Wow! So well researched! For us niche nerds into old console hardware + music writing this is top quality content
🤯
Question: Is the 64kb limit for ALL music in a game, or just for each individual track? I've read some SNES games like Earthbound had bigger cartridge sizes to fit all the music, idk if that is accurate or not. But fitting ALL the samples and music sequence data of an entire game into 64kb is impossible right?
it's 64kb per track! (plus variations. for example, in Super Mario World, "Overworld", "Overworld (Yoshi)", and both of their "Hurry" versions are all the same 64kb "track", just with some adjustments during playtime.)
you can have as many samples as you'd like on your cartridge but you have to fit it into SPC RAM if you want to actually hear it.
it *might* be possible to fit the entire soundtrack (samples, sequence data, and sound driver) into 64kb, but I'm not aware of anyone doing that.
Please I'm begging you make more videos like this.
IM SO GLAD U FINALLY MADE A SEGA GENESIS FOLLOW UP LETS GOOO
Thank you Arlo for showing me this gem! :)
this is way too high quality to be this obscured.
seriously, what the hell
tommy tallarico mentioned 😂🎉
Yooo 0:36 C700 VST. Love using that thing.
What about SNESGSS? I found it not too bad for making SNES music.
Though I prefer doing via hex-editing on the Prince of Persia SNES as the writing music portion is relatively easier, as it is done mostly in the text window.
The SNES sound chip had so much potential as shown with games like Waterworld and Power Instinct, but so many developers just used the default sounds, which were poor and generic. It's a shame because the sound chip was expensive with all the channels and the interpolation. Even most first party Nintendo titles sounded generic.
the absolute level of quality of this video. thanks for posting
Barrycels seethe over Albertochads
5:24 N-SPC, might stand for Nintendo-Sound Processing Compiler?
more likely named after the SPC700 chip. but what that stands for I don't know
Will there be a review of How to make Game Boy Music?
Right now, I'm focusing my channel on just SNES stuff. I'd like to shift that to gameboy in the future, but I don't know when that'll happen
But what did David Wise use?
He used an in-house driver developed at Rare. I couldn't tell you to what extent it was based on N-SPC vs custom code though
Just AWESOME content we have here!
That Tako and Ika bit referencing Splatoon got me. XD
Really reeally cool!
Tim Follin