MSX-MUSIC


What is MSX-Music?

MSX-Music is a standard for FM-based sound-generation on MSX. The first device which had MSX Music was the Panasonic FM-PAC (Pana Amusement Cartridge). This is also the most common form of MSX-Music. But it is also built-in in some MSX2+ computers and the MSX Turbo R. Later other companies also produced cartridges with the MSX-Music chip (Yamaha YM-2413 (click on it for the datasheet)) in them. For the sound they are practically the same as the FM-PAC. In the rest of this section I'll talk mainly about the FM-PAC.

[PANASONIC FM-PAC]

Panasonic FM-PAC

What is an FM-PAC?

FM-PAC is an FM sound synthesizer cartridge which was originally made by Panasonic and later clones were available from different sources.

What are the specs of an FM-PAC?

The FM-PAC cartridge contains mainly an OPLL YM-2413 FM sound synthesizer chip produced by YAMAHA. The OPLL is a 'light' version of the OPL1 sound chip. The OPLL was especially made for the MSX system. It provides 9 channels of FM sound without drums or 6 channels FM sound with 5 FM drums. The supplied FM-BASIC gives the user opportunity to make their own music. There are approx 64 preset voices to choose between and more can be made. It's a 8-bit sound card, therefore the output is in MONO, though some FM-PAC cartridges contain pseudo-stereo output (2 * MONO output). The original FM-PAC of Panasonic has also an S-RAM built-in, which makes it possible to save game-situations in the PAC.

There are several kinds of FM-PAC like cartridges:

Which MSX computers have the FM-PAC built in?

Most MSX2+ and all the MSX Turbo R machines have an FM-PAC built in and ofcourse the 16KB of FM-BASIC which allows user to write music and add into their own BASIC programs.

Which music programs are the most used?

In Japan the most known are Synth Saurus V2.0 and V3.0 by BIT2. It's a very nice piece of software which allows to arrange your own songs. Everything is mouse controlled. The graphic is in screen 7 (16 colours) (V2.0) and V3.0 is in screen 6 (4 colours) if I remember correctly. The music can be saved on disk as a READY to run BASIC program. So mainly it generates a BASIC listing, which is almost impossible to create without such editor.

MuSICA is another Japanese piece of software for writing music. It supports FM-PAC, SCC(+) and PSG. It's not so easy to write music for it, but it gives the possibility to compile the music and replay leter by using an MC replayer.

There are several other japanese music composing utilities, but these 2 are the most common ones.

In Europe the first music-program which make a "break-through" on msx-scene was SoundTracker 1.0 (later V2.0) made by Federation Against Commodore. This piece of software supported FM-PAC (6 channels FM-SOUND + 5 FM drums) and another MSX soundcard (MSX-Audio with it's ADPCM unit for replaying samples (drums etc.). Actually, SoundTracker was originally written to make music on the MSX-Audio only). It become very fast a standard tool used by demo-makers, game-programmers and musicans. Music disks were produced as never before.

In 1992 a new program appears which was called Moonblaster and was produced by MOONSOFT. Moonblaster gave until now unheard possibilities, so it become very fast a HUGE SUCCESS. Everyone threw away their SOUNDTRACKER and grabbed the MOONBLASTER V1.4. With Moonblaster it is possible to make a kind of stereo-like music: one channel MSX-Audio and the other channel MSX-Music

[MOON BLASTER]

MOONBLASTER

Lots of music for music disks/games/demos were made in this editor and it is still used by MSX-freaks world-wide.

Which editor is the newest one?

A new software piece from Fuzzy Logic has been released last year (1997) and is being sold by Stichting Sunrise. It is called ORACLE. This program is technically much better than Moonblaster, since it really is able to SQUEEZE EVERYTHING out of the MSX-MUSIC and MSX-AUDIO chips! The only problem is that it is so complex that the replayer is not very fast, which makes it difficult to use the music created in Oracle in other software.

Where can I buy this wonderful music source?

It's sold by several MSX clubs (see the bookmarks). But ofcourse you can always try to get it second-hand: just place an add on the MSX newsgroup or something.

Are there other music composers?

Yes. There were released several kinds of FM-PAC music composers, but they never become so famous. Only the best survived.

Here are some of the music editors which didn't make a career.

Which software does use the FM-PAC cartridge?

Are any of the available MSX emulators supporting the FM-PAC?

The newest versions of fMSX-DOS by Marcel De Kogel and MSX4PC by Adriaan van Doorn are supporting the FM-PAC.


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