We need a VB music tracker!

I’d really look forward to hearing more proper VB chiptunes! I wanna hear what the VB was really capable of!

Posting this for relevance – popped up in my subscriptions on the way home form work yesterday: https://youtu.be/s9EAzJMMJp4

I thought there already was a VB tracker of sorts in existence, used in homebrew?

Is this to compose your own music or record from current games?

I’m really bad at making music, but I was at a VG convention a few years ago and met up with Brendan Becker (chiptune musician known as Inverse Phase) who was giving a talk on composing VG music, trackers, etc. Anyway, we had met previously when I loaned some arcade games to MAGFest (which he was running at the time), so as we were talking, I brought up composing VB music, making a tracker for VB, etc.

His suggestion was to use MilkyTracker. I’m going from several year old memory here, but he mentioned that you could create a customized set of VB instruments, so at a high level, you could create music that would be 1:1 with the VB’s capabilities. He offered to help me set it up, and even sounded excited about composing music for the VB (asked if I wanted some new music for my Mario Kart game <- I said it needed it very badly 😉 ). Anyway, somewhere it fell apart... I think I was supposed to send him details and audio samples of the VB's audio capabilities, and maybe I did, or maybe I dropped the ball. But after the conversation and a couple emails back and forth, it never went anywhere. But, if anyone's serious about a VB music tracker, you may want to look into MilkyTracker, and if you'd like assistance from someone with a lot of experience in the field, I'd be glad to try reaching out to Brendan again and see if there's anything he can help us out with. DogP

I’ve been learning more about the VB’s sound capabilities, as well as making samples that would be possible on the VB, and then using them in a sample-based tracker similar to MilkyTracker. So it’s more or less like what you’re talking about, DogP.

But there is a limit to this, and that is: you’ll just be making music that *sounds* (almost) exactly like what you can get on the VB. You won’t be able to actually get it on the VB unless you went through the effort of coding a player for every intricacy a complex sample-based tracker provides. Something like Deflemask or Famitracker would definitely be closer to what I’d say everyone wants, because it provides everything you need to both make the music and get it exported into something you can put into your homebrew.

And the video L__E__T posted is exactly that… It’d be VERY exciting if something like that were freely available. 🙂

I am wondering if anybody has heard from M.K. lately and would be able to let us know if he is okay. I’ve tried e-mailing him at an address that he used to use, but I haven’t gotten any reply. It is the only private contact method that I’ve ever had for him.

As one of the higher contributors toward his VB Music Tracker and Bombenleger game, I don’t even care if he is not able to follow through with that project for some reason. Since he contributed so much to the Virtual Boy community free of charge, I would simply consider my support for that to go towards all of the other wonderful things that he did for us over the years.

I hope it is possible that we can find out that he is okay, so that we don’t have to keep worrying needlessly. If something tragic did, in fact, happen to him, and we might never find out what, then that would be really heart-breaking.

Glad he’s ok, I was worried about him too.