Padme: Hacking the Circle of Fifths With Shepard Tones

[@zaxolotl]

the chord "brightness" setting at the end blew my mind this all works so elegantly, it's so cool!!! I wonder if there are any market synthesizers out there that work similar to this, it's pretty darn unique!

[@batlin]

Yes! That not only sounded amazing but was done in an incredibly elegant way. I have to watch that bit again...

[@paszTube]

The shepard illusion demonstration blew my mind

[@MarkusKaarlonenMusic]

Thanks for featuring Space Debris in the video! 😊 And a great explanation of how we tried to use sampled chords in mods back in the day. A funny (?) little detail I don’t think I have mentioned elsewhere: You can briefly see at 1:32 that I’m calling the suspended chord variation “arrested”. Well, I was still in the very early stages of learning both English and music theory, and I had no idea what this kind of chord is called in English (I barely knew “major” and “minor”). I knew the special chord can be called “pidätetty” in Finnish, and one way to translate that is “arrested”… which is of course totally wrong, and I’m pretty sure I knew it’s most probably wrong. But I didn’t let small details like that matter too much, as long as the sound itself worked properly. 😄 Also, Padme looks & sounds great, some clever programming & interesting music theory in there!

[@PeranMe]

We need a video on how you built the samples too! We need it! Or… well… *I* would be amused by it :-) You’re awesome! ❤

[@AxelWerner]

WOW!!! 😲 amazing trickery!! BTW: i always knew that the Amiga mouse was made to be a foot paddle.

[@vyruss000]

*picks up mouse and holds it in front of mouth* "COMPUTER!"

[@not-on-pizza]

That's a clever way of managing both inputs and memory. There's a fairly obvious gap in chord coverage, with no Dominant 7th, but apart from that it gets almost everything.

[@lftkryo]

That's a valid point! Depending on what other instruments are playing, it might be possible to get away with VII dim, or a V7 without the third. Another chord that's missing (and harder to fake) is the augmented triad. But a trade-off had to be made.

[@suomeaboo]

perhaps you could press 3 keys for that, for example C7 would use the C-G, E-G, and G-Bb keys

[@ufinii]

Your videos are pure gold.

[@Oversat_]

It would be super cool to have a 'legato' mode modifier key that when pressed would keep playing and transposing the same sample. This would result in changing the brightness while also changing the pitch with the correct amount. Resulting in the ability to play connected melodic phrases in the original amiga/tracker style.

[@johansmolinski]

Great work! Is Padme available for download?

[@StripeyType]

oh my goodness - came for the amiga retrocomputing, but subscribing for the music theory

[@DerDanko]

The next step could be to introduce a gate/stutter step-sequencer to automate the rhythmic gated effect and just focus on performing the chords and harmonies. Either by recording your gate pattern live, or through a TR drum machine pattern styled interface where a row of keys each turn on/off 16th or 8th positions within a bar.

[@lftkryo]

Hi Danko! That's a nice idea.

[@Elvenheim]

Having experienced Sonix on Amiga in the 90's, I am really amazed by this! The only thing missing would be a filter to get a sharper/more mellow sound.

[@TheFerdi265]

Att some point lft will have such a large collection of amazing instruments that he can just go somewhere with 4 copies of himself and just go play Space Debris

[@Muzikman127]

So many little clever and intuitive design choices here! Each step made perfect sense as to why that's the way you'd go about it, but I don't think I'd have thought of it all myself! And that's the mark of good design really isn't it? Something that seems obvious in retrospect. I particularly enjoyed the use of pitch shifting alongside remapping there at the end, of course! But also wow! What a fun project this is, and thanks for sharing it with us :)

[@akkudakkupl]

You blew my mind once again.

[@paul_k_7351]

Impressive yet again.

[@LautaroArino]

Amazing. You are a wizard of dark magic when it comes to the old machines.

[@paszTube]

Bedankt

[@yetihehe]

Everyone: Hacking is better than music because you can't use tricks like reusing registers and memory between different instructions in music. Lftkryo: Hold my keyboard.

[@SwedishChef1977]

Amazing as always!

[@Sakanakao]

An Amiga accordion! Neat.

[@awogbob]

Mind blowingly concise and well explained video. Thanks for sharing

[@Ambidextroid]

Awesome! Great design and a brilliant use of the Shepard illusion. One minor correction: at 7:34 you call this chord an E minor 6th chord, when in fact minor 6 chords consist of a minor triad with a major 6th, so E minor 6th would be E G B C#... confusing and inconsistent I know, but that's just how it is. The chord you played consisting of E G B C has no better name than "C major 7th in first inversion" as far as I am aware. Correct me if I'm wrong but this system therefore doesn't allow for minor 6th chords, half diminished chords, fully diminished 7th chords or dominant 7th chords. These could all be achieved by adding tritones to the palette of available intervals (and you would only need 6), then you would have access to pretty much every chord you could ask for!

[@lftkryo]

Ah, I see! Yes, you are right. To add tritones without running out of keys on the keyboard, one option could be to let a modifier key select between minor thirds and tritones. Perhaps I'll explore that idea some day.

[@padc64]

Wow! Looking forward to hearing more music based on this. Concert at Fjälldata 2025? ;) Thumbnail name approved btw. :D

[@OltzUU]

Amazing work as always! Great to see Amiga getting all the love. And nice shoutout to @MarkusKaarlonenMusic there as well. :)

[@arxaaron]

Genius music theory implementation!

[@EeroafHeurlin]

Mind. Blown. (also AMIGAAAAAH!)

[@alkenstein]

🚨 Scener alert!🚨

[@saulcross9690]

That is a brilliant, elegant and ingenious design. Wonderful.

[@spiffywoahitsspiffy]

holy shit i did NOT think the circle of fifths could be effed with that much

[@KC9UDX]

My reaction when I realised what Stradella Bass is.

[@spelmastarn5235]

Nice idea, wonderful sounds!

[@fygarOnTheRun]

You never fail to amaze. This one was particularly fun for the added fourths 😊

[@ATOMICZOMBIEDOTCOM]

This is great! I wonder how it would perform if placed in a hand-pan style configuration with touch sensors?

[@HiEnergyMusic]

This is incredibly ingenious! *Thumbs up*

[@teadrink]

Excellent design! A pad synth that abstract away the concept of chord inversions and replaces it with more/less brightness!

[@paszTube]

Watched the video, enjoyed every second of it.

[@IronFairy]

Amazing stuff as always! Very clever!

[@mannibimmel09]

grande!

[@JonMurray]

Awesome man!

[@batlin]

I was blown away by tracker music when I first heard it on the Atari and later PC, but the memory constraints on 16 bit machines did tend to reduce the variations of chord samples, and there was a big influence of rave music so a lot of tunes sounded a bit samey at that time. In contrast on the C64 people were writing fast arpeggiators to simulate more voices, and there seemed to be more chord qualities being used -- the Follin bros certainly seemed to like maj/min 7s and some altered dominants.

[@justinmohns8279]

Incredible!

[@blaholtzen]

very cool!

[@p07a]

You are a genius!

[@johnsmith1953x]

What is the video allowing the amiga to play hi-fi samples lft?

[@lftkryo]

Thanks for asking! I've now added the link to the video description. And the video is here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqq0naCpeZyDd8k

[@johnsmith1953x]

@@lftkryo Thanks lft !!

[@Meteotrance]

Music on tracker need a lot of patience and dedication, 4 track one note a the time was very limitating, but thanks to the sampling chord trick, it was even difficult to do that on a famicom tracker or C64 one, by using arpegio for emulate the chord, on the SNES it was the memory limited to 64kb that was a pain in the ass to deal for sampling continuous strings or pad sound, you must use a very short and lofi sample for that convert in there BRR format, the megadrive feel more friendly with there FM and master system chip plus sampling for the drum and some extra.

[@MDMvision]

damn you re a genius

[@compucat]

Delightfully clever design! I dig it. On an unrelated note - could you tell me about your piano? It's been a pleasure hearing it over all these years, and I've grown quite curious about it. :)

[@cimerej]

Nice

[@thiesenf]

We already know you're a Wizard... "A Mind Is Born" and the Chipophone... but can you tickle the MC68000 + Paula into becoming a software defined synth?

[@bajsejohannes]

Excellent video! When you're stacking two fifths CG and GD to get a Csus2 or Gsus4, do you hear G more pronounced since two channels are playing it? (And thus perhaps making it sound more like a Gsus4?) I couldn't really make it out myself, but I wonder what your experience is when building it. The trick of stacking chords to make others can be used on an accordion too, by the way, but in that case each note would only be played by one "channel".

[@JakHart]

Is that keyboard the same age as me?! That intro was hott.

[@EeroafHeurlin]

Space Debris mentioned, summon @MarkusKaarlonenMusic

[@KC9UDX]

Best song ever

[@d_vibe-swe]

Laxity will approve your horror chord ;)

[@phaandorpertwee6981]

and sure ... it HAD to be space debris.

[@snowgods2195]

I wish my Amigas still worked... I have to play My music on a fancy Yamaha keyboard.

[@overand]

If you still have them, they can probably be brought back to life! But, if not, alas.

[@KC9UDX]

Whatever you do 1) don't get rid of them 2) cut out the batteries NOW and apply baking soda and water around where the battery was.

[@Ice_Karma]

1:11 No. The stairstep effect is a myth.

[@saltedmutton7269]

I don't believe you. Aliasing in samples is very much a real thing on other systems, and while I'm no expert on the amiga's hardware, I use tracker programs for my music and I've seen some pretty nasty samples through the mod archive... I'm open to being proved wrong though!

[@svofski]

oh well... ...clears throat... AMIGAAAAA!!!!!111111111

[@moroccanlooser6305]

jamil

[@robertpenway]

Honey, look, someone plays music using an Amiga keyboard. And he uses a mouse as a foot pedal. Honey, put that bloody smartphone away, you have to see this. 😉

[@KC9UDX]

I have to make a video recreating what I did thirty years ago, playing vocals on the keyboard of an A500. Sadly my A500 is dead.

[@robertpenway]

@@KC9UDX I had an Amiga 500, too. I loved it. Then I was in a hospital for two weeks. While I was away my father sold my Amiga for an IBM PC. I hated both of them.

[@KC9UDX]

@@robertpenway I know the feeling!

[@deadscenerecords]

Dude!