PureBasic Forums - English

RETROSTICA

Retrostica is an easy-to-use synth using analog retro sounds. It is not a professional instrument, but a simple tool for playing, recording or editing small masterpieces.
The sounds are pre-generated, the program doesn't use the frequency change feature for the lower or higher tone.

Demo can be downloaded from the Retrostica site.

http://www.retrostica.com

Written in Pure Basic?

IdeasVacuum wrote:Written in Pure Basic?

Yes. v4.61

It looks like a fun program, and I believe it's aimed at people who want to fool around with a musical keyboard in the simplest way (no midi, no vst, pc keyboard only) but the demo it's a little too limited imho opinion. You can't even try the sequencer. And from the video seems like the sequencer does not have actual editing capabilities (select/insert/delete rows, copy/paste of notes/rows/patterns, patterns ordering, the bare minimum...). Maybe they are there but who knows from the demo ?

And it seems to me more a sampler (with fixed samples) than a synthesizer.

But it looks and sounds nice.

What's up with the notes on the Z and Y keys ? They are swapped!

Nice rendition of Oxygen in the demo songs BTW

Congratulations!

About the demo:

Maybe you could enable the sequencer and limit it to only one single pattern. A song can be composed by a single pattern. Stop. Like in your video.

And maybe enable the other instruments as well but at a very low quality (8Khz ? 8 bits ?)

silentworks wrote:

IdeasVacuum wrote:Written in Pure Basic?

Yes. v4.61

The thought hadn't even crossed my mind
Well done!

luis wrote:It looks like a fun program, and I believe it's aimed at people who want to fool around with a musical keyboard in the simplest way (no midi, no vst, pc keyboard only) but the demo it's a little too limited imho opinion. You can't even try the sequencer. And from the video seems like the sequencer does not have actual editing capabilities (select/insert/delete rows, copy/paste of notes/rows/patterns, patterns ordering, the bare minimum...). Maybe they are there but who knows from the demo ?

And it seems to me more a sampler (with fixed samples) than a synthesizer.

But it looks and sounds nice.

What's up with the notes on the Z and Y keys ? They are swapped!

Nice rendition of Oxygen in the demo songs BTW

Congratulations!

About the demo:

Maybe you could enable the sequencer and limit it to only one single pattern. A song can be composed by a single pattern. Stop. Like in your video.

And maybe enable the other instruments as well but at a very low quality (8Khz ? 8 bits ?)

Thank you.

You are right about the the limitations, I'll add more features in the next demo version and fix some of the missing/buggy options and review the instrument availability.
Thanks again.

A musician I am not, but it's certainly fun to play with!

Perhaps the Help could be more expansive, such that the non-musician might have a chance to produce something good enough for a game being developed?

Concerning the demo - I'd activate all the features and just apply a time limit.

It looks nice, is well done and surely it is a good thing to make this with PureBasic. But what are the benefits of your shareware to some freeware like http://www.madtracker.org/ ?

good stuff TOVARISH!

Kukulkan wrote:It looks nice, is well done and surely it is a good thing to make this with PureBasic. But what are the benefits of your shareware to some freeware like http://www.madtracker.org/ ?

I would have thought it would be obvious what the differences are.

This is a fun tool or "toy" to play with, but can also be used to create high quality, retro-sounds (and music too, if you know what you are doing). It is a stand-alone instrument, just like how people might buy a "keyboard" synthesizer for their kid for Christmas at a department store. Only it has more advanced features.

Madtracker on the other hand, is first and foremost, a Tracker. The core program used to plug-in and control instruments and manage them, produce notations (create and arrange patterns into songs), place FX and other such things that are actually involved with making music. Easy Moog just happens to use a Tracker-based pattern assembly system to allow you to create songs (nothing new, lots of independent programs use Trackers, Step-Patterns, or other methods to do the same thing).

It's like trying to compare an Instrument like reFX Slayer2, or SID, or Native Instruments' FM8, Kontakt, Reaktor, or other such similar VsT's to an actual Softsynth Workstation like Orion, Fruity Loops, or Sonar.

Two vastly different things. The fact Madtracker comes pre-packaged with a lot of other independent freeware content (Samples, VST's, Effects, whatever) is irrelevant and is not really a fair comparison at all. The only downside to Easy Moog is that as it has been presented, it does not appear to be a VSTi or other compatible plugin format, which would make it near to impossible plug in to and use with the programs I mentioned (Orion, Fruity Loops, Sonar, and of course Mad Tracker). You could create unique sounds and save them (to .WAV file I would hope) and then use a sampler in your Softsynth to play them, but that really isn't integration.

It would still be a useful tool, or a neat toy for someone to play with.

I've uploaded a new demo version:

- all instruments are available but reduced sound quality
- all rhythms are available but reduced sound quality
- song editor is now available with the limitation of saving is disabled
- added selectable keyboard layout for QWERTY vs QWERTZ keyboards

I tried, nice, now the keyboard (QWERTY) works as expected and the editor seem to have all the vital functions (I saw you can delete (DEL), insert (INS), and delete pulling up the line below (BACKSPACE).

The only thing I really miss is the ability to record in real time what I play. This could be accomplished by not entering a note at the cursor's position, but at the current position of the moving bar you show whilst playing/recording.

Should be easy to add.

And a option "recording on/off" would be nice, to try to play some notes on the part of the pattern you already made but without actually record them. To "test" them.

With those two things I would say it would be really nice and easy to use.

It's really fun !

OH, and needs an help file and some song as examples

Thanks.

I've uploaded the new demo, added your great ideas:
- realtime recording
- record mode on/off

(I've just reloaded v1.2. didn't make a newer version.)
Have you noticed the right mouse click options in the tracker?

ps. I'll make some handy help soon.

silentworks wrote: Have you noticed the right mouse click options in the tracker?

Yep, they seems to work (I tried them quickly).


I tried the new version, it works but I would have added an option for the realtime recording (on/off) like you added for the on/off recording.

Because now you can record in real time (great), but you can add the note at the position of the cursor (not the bar) only when the pattern is not playing (unless I'm missing something).

With an option you would be able to choose, and it's useful add a note in any position even when the pattern is playing (because you hear the pattern up to a point, decide you want a note there, the pattern goes on and you edit its back before the next cycle starts).

All these things are coming from experience

Added. Hopefully that's it.

Actually thanks for the great tips, I really want this a useful tiny synth tool.