Drum/Percussion sound library

[elmer]

When it comes to Squirrel & the system Card Player, or any new sound driver, one of the big headaches that any new musician is going to face is in how to make drum/percussion sounds.

Traditionally, musicians working on the PSG-type systems that I'm used to make drum sounds by combining volume envelopes with a fast switching between tones and noise (at different frequencies).

That makes drum kit sounds very, very system-specific to each console's different hardware PSG.

After looking at the System Card Player documentation, it seems like developers on the PCE did things pretty-much the same way, but with the addition of switching between different waveforms as well.

So ... my thought is that in order to promote the creation of music on the PCE, it might be a good idea to have a library of existing percussion sounds from games that new musicians could use, or start from in order to develop their own custom sounds.

This seems like the kind of thing that someone has probably already done by analysing some HES or VGM dumps of existing game music.

Does anyone have percussion examples like that that they'd be willing to share with everyone?

Having them in the Squirrel/System Card format would be easiest, but even register-dumps could be anaylsed.

Does anyone have suggestions for particularly good drum/percussion sounds in specific games, and which ones?

[NecroPhile]

Air Zonk has some great ones.

For some other picks from peeps that may or not still be active, here's some past threads with similar topics: eins und zwei.

*edit*

Er, never mind.  This dumb robot doesn't know the difference between samples and psg ones. 

[Gredler]

These are the ones I used for the track in catastrophy. Some a default from squirrel, and some are from dinking around with settings trying to get something I like:

Code Select Expand

  ;DRUMS .Perc 0
 ;kicks
 C:  E09 W00 P15,15 T250  T500  T750  T750  T1250 T1500 T1500 T1500
 C#: E09 W00 P15,15 T250  T500  T1250 T1750 T2250 T2000 T2000 T2000
 D#: E09 W00 P15,15 T250  T500  T1250 T2500 T2700 T3000 T3000 T3000 T3000 T3000
 D:  E09 W00 P15,15 T250  T500  T1250 T2500 T2700 T3000 T3500 T3500 T3500 T3500 T3500 T3500
 E:  E09 W00 P15,15 T250  T500  T1250 T2500 T2700 T3000 T3500 T4095 T4095 T4095 T4095 T4095 T4095 T4095 T4095
 F:
 F#:
 G:  E00 W00 P15,15 T4095 G#: E00 W00 P15,15 T4095
 A:  E00 W02 P15,15  T200  T400  T800 N15 N20 T1000 T750 N15 N20 T1000 T2000 T3000 T4095 N9 N15
 A#: E00 W02 P15,15 N10 N30 T500 N29 N27 N25
 B:  E00 W02 P15,15 t500 t1000 N25 T1500 N30 N25 N25 N25 N25 N25 N25

[TurboXray]

Air Zonk drumkits are all samples.

[Michirin9801]

Is there a problem if it's a Deflemask .dmf file or .hes export?
Because you know, I have my own custom set of wave + noise drum instruments, and I'm pretty proud of what they sound like!
Oh well, I'm gonna send them just in case...
http://sta.sh/01uw6mnh72bt

Does anyone have suggestions for particularly good drum/percussion sounds in specific games, and which ones?

Xanadu 2, Ys 4 and Magical Chase, those 3 soundtracks do magic with the PC engine soundchip without ever using any samples!

[Edit]
Because Deflemask's .hes exports are s*** it wasn't playing all of the drum instruments, so I've modified the .dmf a little bit in order to accommodate for the .hes export and make it play all the drum instruments...
Here's the updated .hes
http://sta.sh/0aassd8sltu

[NecroPhile]

Air Zonk drumkits are all samples.

Heh, I'm retarded.

[CrackTiger]

Legend of Xanadu II probably has the best drum sounds for the types it uses.

[elmer]

Er, never mind.  This dumb robot doesn't know the difference between samples and psg ones. 

Hahaha ... that's an easy mistake to make if you're a sane person focused on playing the games, rather than a lunatic developer-type tryin to get stuff working efficiently!

These are the ones I used for the track in catastrophy. Some a default from squirrel, and some are from dinking around with settings trying to get something I like:

Thanks, I'll take a look at the ones in Squirrel, too.

I remember Arkhan saying that he'd figured-out how to do some really nice drums, and I hope that he'll be willing to share them.

Because Deflemask's .hes exports are s*** it wasn't playing all of the drum instruments, so I've modified the .dmf a little bit in order to accommodate for the .hes export and make it play all the drum instruments...

Thank you for these, they'll be incredibly helpful!

.dmf format is perfect, because I need to be able to read from that format anyway in order to write a converter.

I can read the basic information from it now, but I haven't dived into the individual pattern information, yet, because I've been busy on the driver instead.

When I get to the point of trying to properly read .dmf files, I'll probably want to pester you and see if I can get an example file from one of your tunes.

I've got the .dmf to JIR-O's "Noroi no Fuuin" cover, but I'd like something of yours as well to make sure that I'm reading things correctly.

When I get to that point, you'll start to see me hanging out in the deflemask forums asking Delek questions.

BTW ... my driver is finally not crashing anymore, so it's on to implementing GameBoy-style envelopes. 

If you didn't see the earlier messages, this is the tune that I'm converting ...

Xanadu 2, Ys 4 and Magical Chase, those 3 soundtracks do magic with the PC engine soundchip without ever using any samples!

Legend of Xanadu II probably has the best drum sounds for the types it uses.

OK, so I'll definitely have to figure out what Falcom are doing in their driver.

Luckily, I have a little familiarity with their code ... for some reason. 

[Michirin9801]

.dmf format is perfect, because I need to be able to read from that format anyway in order to write a converter.

Converter? Does that mean I'll be able to just use Deflemask like normal and then pass the .dmf through a converter and get a good .hes or a ROM or anything of the sort? ;3
Gosh if so I'll be so happy!

When I get to the point of trying to properly read .dmf files, I'll probably want to pester you and see if I can get an example file from one of your tunes.

If you want you can have one right now!
Oh screw it, I'll just pick a couple of my favs and send them
(Note: These DMFs are from a slightly outdated version of Deflemask but they are compatible with the current version)
http://sta.sh/01t77tdrnl37

[elmer]

Converter? Does that mean I'll be able to just use Deflemask like normal and then pass the .dmf through a converter and get a good .hes or a ROM or anything of the sort? ;3
Gosh if so I'll be so happy!

That would be my goal. 

I don't know if I'll get there ... but at-a-minimum, I should be able to read deflemask files and turn them into some sort of simplistic MML that could then go into Squirrel.
 

If you want you can have one right now!
Oh screw it, I'll just pick a couple of my favs and send them
(Note: These DMFs are from a slightly outdated version of Deflemask but they are compatible with the current version)

Thanks, they'll help a lot! 

I'll keep on posting updates as I get things working.

Not much progress today, I'm afraid ... more of a backwards-step in taking something that sounded good yesterday, and breaking things by enabling more of the channels in the original tune.

Such are the joys of software development ... 2 steps forward, 1 step backwards. 

[Gredler]

That would be my goal. 

I don't know if I'll get there ... but at-a-minimum, I should be able to read deflemask files and turn them into some sort of simplistic MML that could then go into Squirrel.

Honestly, if you can make this happen I would be mind blown.

[Michirin9801]

That would be my goal. 

I don't know if I'll get there ... but at-a-minimum, I should be able to read deflemask files and turn them into some sort of simplistic MML that could then go into Squirrel.

Honestly, if you can make this happen I would be mind blown.

So would I!
That's just what I need~♥♥
Even a simplistic MML would already help a lot! (But an MML with all the envelopes and wavetable information would be even better of course ;3)

[Arkhan Asylum]

If you look at the MML that comes with Squirrel, the kickdrums and such are there already.   Shadow of the Beast is a good example for the kick drum.   So is Doom.

The trick is, I am not using the "percussion" mode for the kick drum.  You just cycle back and forth between normal notes for the kick drum, and percussion mode for anything else.

Doom has a pretty OK hi-hat sound, and they're all using a pretty nice snare.   Better than the staticky snare you'll often hear in games, I think.

The perc (hah) to using Squirrel is you can also set the panning for each drum noise, so you can get stereo drumming, pretty simply. 


All of the free files have mostly just hihat/snare/kicks defined, and the rest of the drum kit isn't used and just has Default (TM) nonsense in there. 

[elmer]

If you want you can have one right now!
Oh screw it, I'll just pick a couple of my favs and send them
(Note: These DMFs are from a slightly outdated version of Deflemask but they are compatible with the current version)

Having those files be a little out-of-date was perfect! 

I hadn't seen a "version 22" file before, and it's not documented in Delek's specs, so those files were exactly what I needed in order to fix my converter to read them.

I've created a new project on github for the converter, and checked-in the current source ...

https://github.com/jbrandwood/dmf2pce

There's also a Windows build here, if anyone wants to play with it, and maybe send me any DMF files that it doesn't work with ...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1qvxrp1fw2pupc/dmf2pce.exe?dl=0


It's nothing earth-shattering, yet, but it does decompress and scan through DefleMask files and display the important information.

The next step would be to dump out the actual note and effect data, but I don't need that until I know what output format I want to convert things to.

[Windcharger]

Does anyone have percussion examples like that that they'd be willing to share with everyone?

Having them in the Squirrel/System Card format would be easiest, but even register-dumps could be anaylsed.

Here's the soft quick snare (borderline low high-hat territory) that I used in my Mega Man 2 Dr. Wily's Castle cover if you're interested.

.Perc 0
       C:  E01 W19 P12,12 N20 N31 N10 N8 N5

Most of my other drums are just moderately slight modifications of existing Squirrel drums Arkhan threw in originally.

[Michirin9801]

There's also a Windows build here, if anyone wants to play with it, and maybe send me any DMF files that it doesn't work with ...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y1qvxrp1fw2pupc/dmf2pce.exe?dl=0


It's nothing earth-shattering, yet, but it does decompress and scan through DefleMask files and display the important information.

I don't know how useful this info is, and I know this software isn't exactly 'finished' but it doesn't really work on my PC (It's a Windows 7), when I click on it it spends a long time "not responding" to then be terminated, and when I try to open a .dmf file with it it once again spends a long time "not responding" but this time it does indeed open, for a fraction of a second and then it closes itself...

[elmer]

I don't know how useful this info is, and I know this software isn't exactly 'finished' but it doesn't really work on my PC (It's a Windows 7), when I click on it it spends a long time "not responding" to then be terminated, and when I try to open a .dmf file with it it once again spends a long time "not responding" but this time it does indeed open, for a fraction of a second and then it closes itself...

Hahaha ... you're not old-skool enough, and I forgot to make it user-friendly. 

It's a command-line tool and not a Windows application.

You open up a command prompt, navigate to the directory that contains dmf2pce.exe and the .dmf files, and then run ...
  dmf2pce "Misty Blue Opening.dmf"
... (or whatever you .dmf file is called) and it prints up a bunch of information.

I'll cook up a batch file to make it a drag-n-drop process for the next version. 

[Michirin9801]

I don't know how useful this info is, and I know this software isn't exactly 'finished' but it doesn't really work on my PC (It's a Windows 7), when I click on it it spends a long time "not responding" to then be terminated, and when I try to open a .dmf file with it it once again spends a long time "not responding" but this time it does indeed open, for a fraction of a second and then it closes itself...

Hahaha ... you're not old-skool enough, and I forgot to make it user-friendly. 

It's a command-line tool and not a Windows application.

You open up a command prompt, navigate to the directory that contains dmf2pce.exe and the .dmf files, and then run ...
  dmf2pce "Misty Blue Opening.dmf"
... (or whatever you .dmf file is called) and it prints up a bunch of information.

I'll cook up a batch file to make it a drag-n-drop process for the next version. 

Yeah, I'm really not >w>
I'm a 2000s kid after all... And I'm too lazy for cmd...
a drag-n-drop version would really come in handy!

[Arkhan Asylum]

a drag-n-drop version would really come in handy!

HAAahhahahaha

ahahahahahahaoaaoooahahoahahahhaha

You're a goober