Skip to content

your thoughts on mml2vgm?

Technical discussion about the VGM format, and all the software you need to handle VGM files.

Moderator: Staff

  • musicalman Offline
  • Posts: 7
  • Joined: 2017-07-31, 2:36:01

your thoughts on mml2vgm?

Post by musicalman »

Hi everyone. I'm new here, well my account isn't but I mainly lirk instead of post. Hopefully this topic is in the right room! If not, feel free to scold me :).
Many of you probably don't know me so I'll introduce myself here and pose a question. I'm a computer/music geek who loves composing/covering old video game music using various tools. Because I am visually impaired, trackers are difficult for me to use, thus I enjoy mainly mml for my stuff. Open MPT has been made more accessible for the blind as of late, so I do use that on occasion, but mml is most comfortable for me.

I love all kinds of music, but was brought up with acoustic music like classical, jazz and oldies rock. Thus I only discovered electronic and digital music relatively recently, and I find that world fascinating too. My favorite sound chips to work with are sample-based ones. I guess that's because they approximate lush acoustic sounds the best; you can hear the essence of a real instrument in a well-made sample but there's still that digital sound at the same time, especially with primitive samplers. I love psg, wavetable and fm as well, though I am really not at all good with fm and only like the sound of fm in some cases. This puts me in the minority of vgm fans I think, but I digress.

About 6 weeks ago a friend told me about mml2vgm. It supports a wide variety of chips, so whether I want to do something with psg, fm, wavetable or samples, I have quite a bit to work with. I haven't actually done anything with it yet other than test syntax and confirm that things work. It's mostly in Japanese so the documentation was a bit difficult to read in its awkward translated form. I do understand most of the syntax though. Some day soon I want to make something with it, and though I can't promise anything, I hope to make things using many chips and not just sample-based ones. I love samples but too much of a good thing isn't beneficial :).

Anyway the reason I made this topic wasn't really to ramble about myself. I pretty much made this topic to ask if there were any other mml fans, and if so, what you thought of mml2vgm. I also want to see what someone who's more acquainted can make with it. I learn best and am most inspired by examples.
Looking forward to reading your thoughts!