tribute to Yuzo Koshiro: Revenge of Shinobi

[kensuguro]

Yuzo Koshiro is easily the best, or among the best composers for game music in the 16bit days. I recently found a youtube clip of the Shinobi theme from Revenge of Shinobi and went back to recreate some of the sounds with my simple 2op fm synth. The original used a 3op fm chip I think.

First I just copied the original, then went on to arrange it a bit. It's still a work in progress.
(edit) new upload, finished up arrangemnt, swapped out the slap bass with Adern's 4op fm synth.


Only problem.. with the arranged version, I guess the track sounds way too epic. Sounds more like the final showdown, rather than a level 1 theme.. lol

[jhulk]

40p synth the .opm standard its the same chip used in the tx81z and dx11 dx21

but used its own tracker style interface on the games consoles

[kensuguro]

ah cool 4op eh. Pretty nice. I can't seem to find a good "simple" fm vsti to add to my usual group of synths... I don't need 6 like in dx7 emus.. just makes things too complicated and I end up not using only 2 or 3..

But ya, like with this tune, I was hitting the limit of a 2op pretty hard.. Like the slap bass.. I had to revert to a 2osc sync cuz I couldn't get the signature fm slap bass sound with just 2 op.

AH, en emu of the exact chip:
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/vopm_by_sam

looks kind of hard to use though..

[jhulk]

i have all the .opm files from games you just load them and play very 8bit chip tune sound

[jhulk]

theres also a modular patch that is based on te same chip

its on ben walkers site but need to load manually

[kensuguro]

I messed with the emulator vsti for a bit.. very nice. 2op is quick to use, 3op can give you more control on punch, but 4op is where I think the routing (algo) combination starts getting very versatile. Though VOPM plugin crashes on me too much and I can't use it.. The structure of the synth is very nice. EG for each osc, and it also ignores the sine fundamental which many other FM don't do. (or most have 1 osc that's directly mixed in) Even has an lfo.

FM never really had a place in my "quick" group of synths that I keep in reach.. I built the 2op just for that purpose but it was to limited. I think 4op may just be a good balance. I know I won't ever use 6op unless for very special purposes.

Sad that free 4op synths are not as polished sounding or lack features, and the commercial ones all go for 6op because they need the dx7 love.

The FM age for games was an interesting one. It was very clear whether the composer knew how to program FM or not.. Many had decent composition but the sounds were horrible.. Yuzo Koshiro definitely knew what he was doing with the SOR series especially.. He managed to get a good range of sounds (congas in SOR was very nice) and still managed to sort of "mix" the whole thing without using filters. Pretty amazing feat.

[jhulk]

it was not just fm they also used pcm samples for drums and noise fx that could not be done by fm synthesis

the modular patch of the 4op game synth chip is easy to program and will do all that vopm can

the guy who does the converting of dx7 banks to other fm banks is doing the .opm format and is doing it to conver to 4op fm sysex patches for all yamaha dx 4op synths like tx81z dx11 dx21 dx5 and others

he says its more like the format that the fb01 uses and he is going to do dx7 sysex conversion for 6op synths

try the modular patch its on ben walkers site

[kensuguro]

lol, it's not on kvr, but a google search for 4 op fm synth lead me to one of the free synths given away at Assaf's synth school.. our very own, Red! So, I guess I found my 4 op synth vsti.

btw, I can't use my scope because the pc that housed it broke down a couple of years ago.

[kensuguro]

jhulk, got a question. I wanted to check out the fm patch for the one particular instrument. I got the vgz files, and ran it through vgm2opm. Though I do get patches, it seems like I'm missing some. I wonder if there is a set of "global" patches that are available all the time, that do not get encoded with each of the songs.. Is this a known issue?

To be exact, I'm looking for the strings patch in the Chinatown theme in Revenge of Shinobi.

it can't be pcm, since the channel is used for drums.. Mr. Koshiro probably also utilized the 4 psg voices as well, and I have no idea how those psg chips work..

upon a bit of research, I guess the TI psg chip just had 3 square waves and a noise channel.. I guess the string sound may be just from the square waves? I think that also solves the missing square wave leads in Chinatown..

[next to nothing]

btw, I can't use my scope because the pc that housed it broke down a couple of years ago.

lol, atleast be honest

[Nestor]

Pretty cool Ken, unusual to me this kind of music. I like most of all the passage that is about 01:16, this kind of sweet and tragic feeling of chromatics against each other.

I found the middle tones to be a bit too loud in the mix, getting the place of some basses, pianos and synths, not a big deal, as this makes it sound truly like those days.

Cool work