Hello, new forum user here. I've been playing with computer music production in various forms for several years, and have used ModPlug Tracker on and off fro a long time. However only recently have I started to get serious with it, in preparation for a potential game soundtrack. I've studied several late 80's to mid 90's game soundtracks and found a few techniques they use that I'd like to try to mimic. One of these being creating a detune effect simply by playing the same thing on two separate channels, but with one shifted slightly in pitch. Another being creating a delay/echo effect by playing the same thing on another channel but quieter and at a certain time delay (as well as sometimes at a different pan position, or sometimes even with a slight pitch shift ala the detune effect). Sounds simple enough, right? But I find myself running into various limitations that make this harder than it would seem.
For example, in MIDI once a pitch bend event is set it will continue across all following notes until it's modified by another pitch bend event. However in mod formats, the portamento commands seem to apply only to the note that's active at the time the event is encountered. Well, I figure I can just use the fine portamento commands (EFx, FFx) at the beginning of each note, right? But then I run into the problem of needing to use the effect column at the beginning of the note for other things. For example, a note that doesn't begin at the very start of a line, for which I have to use the note delay (SDx) command.
I though that perhaps I could get around this problem by using some other setting to do the pitch shifting. I tried making a duplicate instrument and using the pitch envelope to shift it, but it's resolution is far too course. Setting it even one increment off of the baseline causes a very harsh shift in pitch. It seems that theoretically I could create a duplicate instrument
and a duplicate sample, whose pitch I can finely tune in the sample properties, but that seems awfully wasteful and redundant.
On the delay effect, it seems to work pretty well if I'm satisfied with offsetting the delay by a number of full lines. Just copy the sequence into another channel, lower the volume, and move it forward by however many lines. However, if I want to go more detailed than that and offset it by a certain number of ticks within a line, then I need to use a note delay (SDx) command for each note. Which again leads to the problem of when I need to use the effect column for something else (say, portamento for a bending note).
Is there anything I'm overlooking that could make these things work? I'd like to avoid resorting to VST effects and such and stick with regular IT format stuff for compatibility reasons (as well as out of principle of sorts). Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
