Square Waltz Acid Pancake XL+ 2.0 (Extended Chipspace Mix '24)
By ineff on January 14, 2024 11:26 pm
More prep work for next week's Chipspace showcase: extending the 2022 WB45 track Square Waltz Acid Pancake into the "club" waltz banger it always wanted to be.
This turned out to be a pretty tough operation, because the M8 has changed major firmware revisions since 2022―and one of the only breaking changes affected the weird way I had used to write the articulation for all the chip parts. So I had to rewrite the first half of the WB2022 project just to get it to sound (almost) the same, re-balance the second half, and add 2 more minutes of 136(-ish) bpm "club" stuff. Except it's still in 3/4 (or 6/8, or in 2/4, depending on the spot and how your ear susses out the beat,) so probably no one in the club would know how to dance to it.
The irony of all this work is that the track is now too long to fit in the set. When I started re-writing it I intended it to open the showcase, but now I'll probably just play it at one of the open mics between events. 
› M8 Nerd Talk
‹ M8 Nerd Talk
In case you're wondering about the breaking M8 firmware changes: they were actually minor changes for practically everyone else except me: in M8 FW 2.x, I had settled on using volume LFO control the curve on very fast articulation (Using HOLD mode, so the LFO acted like a faster envelope when paired with oscillators like EXPD T). But in FW 3.0, the formula for volume LFOs was rewritten (actually: fixed). Another minor gotcha (actually introduced between FW 2.7 and 2.8) is that the KIL fx now stops instrument tables. The fix for this is usually easy―3.x's new OFF command mimics the old behavior.
I should stress that both of these changes are actually quite nice improvements. However, due to my "style" of tracking precise articulation, the combination really borked the feel of the original track in a way that was hard to fix―it probably took more time and effort to recreate than it originally took to write (mostly due to ear fatigue). Sometimes it still feels like the main motif doesn't feel as tight as the original 2.X version, but there is now a lot more noise to distract listeners so it doesn't need to carry the song as much. But the changes stung particularly on this track, because I considered the original to be one of my high-points in M8 chiptune melodies during WB2022―I put a lot of effort into making basic chip waveforms "sing."
100% made and mixed on a Dirtywave M8 Tracker.
