Return Of Amiga Musicans

Amiga musicans are returning!

Welcome to another new Amiga blog from me! Welcome to 2019! Another hopefully great year for the Amiga!

2019 is going to be another busy year for me in term of some Amiga projects, like music and photo.

As several might already know, I have started work on doing brand new Amiga music for the game Ninja Remix, and I have almost completed all the music for that game! Several of the tracks are already available at YouTube. These are "Lin Fen", "Armakuni", "Hills Of Lin Fen", "Lin Fen Palace Gardens" and "Lin Fen The Dungeon". Work on 2 further Amiga tracks for Ninja Remix - "Lin Fen The Palace" and "Kunitoki The Shogun", start in February, as soon as I receive my left hearing aid from repair, then I'll be ready.

Amiga can truly look quite modern!

Apart from doing music and photo, I keep my AmigaOne 500, also known as SAM460ex, up to date as possible, and keeping a tidy Workbench as seen on the snapshot to the right here.

It's impressive that an AmigaNG system can look truly modern in 2019!

Amiga can STILL make it possible!

Walkabout Music Samples for FREE at Aminet!!!

Unknown to many perhaps, the high quality Walkabout Music Samples were part of OctaMED V6 and OctaMED SoundStudio v1.03c when RBF Software owned the rights. When Commodore went bankrupt, RBF Software disappeared from the Amiga scene and focused on making MED SoundStudio for the PC, with less of a success than OctaMED SoundStudio had on the Amiga. So what is different now?

I was lucky to optain these high quality 8-bit IFF samples from Walkabout Music, as I was forced to register the PC version of MED SoundStudio few years ago, in order to optain these samples. I therefore decided to do the Amiga community a great favour, by bringing up this sample collection in 16-bit stereo RIFF WAV format to Aminet, for FREE!!!!! For the very first time 32 years later! I think it's now time!

16-bit stereo samples used in OMSS!

You will get a huge variant of 16-bit stereo instruments like brass, choir, analog and digital bass, bass guitars, guitars, drumkit, different kind of loops, beats, african, american, oceania, far east, panflutes, violins, saxophones, cellos, pianos, sound effects, strings, normal flutes and more! All in 16-bit Stereo! Great, eh?!

I consider this gift to the Amiga community as very important, and it will help inspire several to do amazing and modern Amiga music, using 16-bit high quality samples instead of 8-bit samples. Long gone is the 8-bit, so 16-bit samples should mostly be used now, until we get a new OctaMED SoundStudio running in native PPC, supporting AHI and MIDI. Then perhaps we can use 32-bit (!) samples?!

Bear in mind that in order to use these 16-bit stereo samples once available, you will need a lot of FastRAM (or high-speed RAM), and not that ChipRAM thing. 16-bit samples take up twice the space as 8-bit, and even in stereo, a bit more. But in the end it will be worth it. 16-bit gives much better clearness in term of vibration and deep bass! You'll surely be able to hear the difference! It's truly impressive, really!

Return of Amiga Musicans

These days, I happen to read on several Amiga groups on Facebook I'm member of, as well as receiving several messages in Messenger from different Amiga users, that I have inspired them to either start doing Amiga music on their own, or that several ex-Amiga musicans happen to return back to the Amiga Music scene!

This is truly awesome to see that Amiga musicans are returning to the music scene, where the Amiga is the main focus and the key instrument in their own music work!

I remember the golden years of the Amiga when it was very popular, like late 80'ies to mid-90'ies. The Amiga rocked the scene with its' awesome music capabilities and on the demo scene as well! Beautiful, instrumental sampled music flowing through the speakers in glorious stereo, together with beautiful music videos or animation!

Those were clearly the time. The best time for the Amiga, and we had many great musicans in the Amiga scene, both doing their own personal music, bringing music to the demo scene and making Amiga music for many great Amiga games as well.

With the increase of popularity of using 16-bit stereo samples in the Amiga Music scene, and seeing that such a legendaric multi-tracker like OctaMED SoundStudio is still mostly used for music composition even today, simply prove that several Amiga musicans are returning back to the Amiga Music scene, as well as inspiring new Amiga users to start with Amiga music. This means a lot, both for the Amiga as a computer platform and for me as the core inspirator as well. Amiga was once a unique but brilliant music computer, and even today, it continues to amaze people!

Lin Fen The Palace Ninja Remix Cover

Speaking of Amiga music, my next Amiga track coming soon, is to be "Lin Fen The Palace" for the Amiga version of the game - Ninja Remix, coming in February. I'm truly looking forward to that. The cover itself however, is not made of myself. I wish I had the talent of doing such beautiful creations like drawing, painting or 3D-creation.

The cover was picked up from Google somewhere, and just added texts to it. Still, it means I have to very carefully not to get in trouble, when it comes to CR - also known as Copyright. That's the tricky part, but it has worked well so far...The Amiga music you hear on YouTube with these pictures, are of course my very own.

Kunitoki The Shogun Ninja Remix Cover

Another Amiga track coming soon in February once i receive my left hearing aid from repair, is the track "Kunitoki The Shogun" for the Amiga version of the game - Ninja Remix! This one will be more of a battle track. Pulsating and making the blood in the veins pumping faster and harder!

All in all, there's much to look forward to. The wait will truly be worth it!

Wazp3D Software Render with Nova3D mode!

Wazp3D Software Render with Nova3D mode!

Wazp3D Software Render is a unique program I'm experimenting a little with these days. The latest Beta 57 provides a unique mode called Nova3D. It means to emulate some Shader effects that Warp3D Nova provides. Although, I have yet to see that in full action. Still, it's very useful to have when not having the "right" 3D driver to run Warp3D Nova itself. Therefore, the Wazp3D Software Render instead. It's not that bad, really. It could be a smart thing to use, and might be handy.

When using GIMP, i first run the Wazp3D Software Render and turn on the settings, as seen in the snapshot. Then I run programs like GIMP. It's a smart way to use that software render. Otherwise, I use the Composite2D mode in Wazp3D for all other programs, being surfing the net with Odyssey Web Browser or playing retro adventure games in ScummVM.

Well, that covers just about everything I'm doing these days, so enjoy the read ;)

Written by
Helge Kvalheim