ZX-Art music news

[moroz1999]

Hello guys!
I'm new to this forum, it's a pity I've never seen it before.

I'm representing a ZX-Art, an online collection of ZX Spectrum graphics and music. We are building a modern ZX Spectrum archive for everybody, now it's limited with music and graphics only, but someday in future it will include the software releases as well - cracks, demos, intros, games, e-zines.
I would like to ask everyone - would you be interested in news and updates from ZX-Art? I can post:
* Game graphics updates (sometimes we manage to complete famous original game artists galleries)
* Demoparties graphics updates (party entries, scene artists)
* Music-related updates - completed collections of musicians, new features and so on.
Would anything be interesting from this list?

There will soon be a complete web2.0 concept on ZX-Art: users would be able to upload their own materials, add games, screens, music. When this is ready, I will surely ask everybody from this forum for help, because I feel like Polish scene is not nearly fully represented on ZX-Art. The only problem is that I only understand in Polish, I cannot write in Polish Will it be ok as well?

One small update from recent ones.
Do you know about ZXTune - a crossplatform ZX Spectrum (and not only) music player? It has a nice Android version, which now supports direct in-app downloading of music directly from ZX-Art. It supports a lot of formats, including .ay, sound tracker, pro tracker, ASC and others.

Please give it a try - it's really nice.


I also would be really glad for any kind of feedback - please post your opinion about ZX-Art. Is it nice? Or dull? Is it buggy? Is something missing? Can something be improved? For example, we could easily add a Polish translation to a whole website interface, if anybody could offer periodical help with translation of existing UI and newly added features.
The ultimate goal is making an open archive for everybody - one of the next steps would be promoting an open and easy to use API, so anybody could use ZX-Art content in their applications like ZXTune did.

[RafalM]

Hi Moroz, Ralf from WOS here. We already know each other

People here are unfortunately not very active, they read but don't write, so don't worry if low response happens

We are building a modern ZX Spectrum archive for everybody, now it's limited with music and graphics only, but someday in future it will include the software releases as well - cracks, demos, intros, games, e-zines.

Is it really necessary to do such big amount of work? There are already sites with such content - WOS, Virtual Tr-Dos, Pouet, Demotopia, ZxAAA...

But I would really like to see a good collection of ZX music, there isn't such thing on the web now. There is a collection on Sergey  Bulba site but it's just one huge .zip file. I'd like to see a database of music where:

- you can search by author
- you can see real names of authors if known, not only nicknames
- music is linked to game or demo
- music is described by tags: "techno","ethnic","romantic","joyful" etc.
- if music is a cover of well known song, then the original name is mentioned.

and probably some more features I can't think of now.

Good luck with your project!

[moroz1999]

Hi Moroz, Ralf from WOS here. We already know each other
People here are unfortunately not very active, they read but don't write, so don't worry if low response happens

Hello Ralf!
It's not a problem - to get high response we should make something really outstanding It would be good if people here would just now that there is ZX-Art and it's been updating for the beginning. When we get more outstanding features/content, the response will come

Is it really necessary to do such big amount of work? There are already sites with such content - WOS, Virtual Tr-Dos, Pouet, Demotopia, ZxAAA...

I believe that it is really necessary.
WOS was not updated for some time. It has some promising changes now, but at the moment it's not openly moving anywhere. It still has nice chances though.
Virtual TR-Dos is just too old. No comments, no ratings, no authors, no screenshots. It's even hard to select the game release sometimes. It surely should be updated, but no one is willing to.
Pouet is a demoscene only. No system tools, almost no games. It's also crossplatform, so it's hard to make a good easy focus on ZX Spectrum there.
Demotopia is not updated. Demozoo is great, but it looks like pouet2.0 to me. It's crossplatform and only demoscene-related. For someone it's a plus, for many these are minuses.
ZXAAA is demo only. It's a great archive, it even got RSS feeds on last week, but overall its development is too limited by its owner, who is already happy with what he got.
I think more about great systems like CSDB, but more user-friendly and modern, utilizing the best of modern web technologies.

But I would really like to see a good collection of ZX music, there isn't such thing on the web now.

There is an impressive database of music - zxtunes.com
Unfortunately, it's not updated since 2006. It's author - newart - was planning a new version, even made some prototype like I heard, but never showed it anybody. We had a nasty online fight with him in January, it's not a really beautiful story to tell, and full of drama as usual
However, since the zxtunes.com wasn't updated for 8 years I decided that I should stop supporting only graphics and made functionality for music playing, since I already had most of structure and navigation for graphics, I could easily adapt it for music. Nearly same time I decided that I won't be able to make everything alone and I asked some of well-known sceners for help. Now we work as a team and we try to make a portal which would not depend on a one person's desires and opinion.
Next steps on ZX-Art would be:
1. Content editing by registered visitors. This way everybody would be able to upload/edit/delete his own works at any time.
2. Open API for everybody to use the information freely everywhere.
3. Integration with other ZX-Spectrum related resources. Info from ZX-Art should automatically appear in Demozoo at least.

These steps would guarantee that ZX-Art will become really community-driven. I will even give server access to well-trusted sceners for the case I become mad or accidently die, so the portal with all data would be safely copied, alternative version would be started and gathered legacy would not be lost in vain.

There is a collection on Sergey  Bulba site but it's just one huge .zip file. I'd like to see a database of music where:

- you can search by author
- you can see real names of authors if known, not only nicknames
- music is linked to game or demo
- music is described by tags: "techno","ethnic","romantic","joyful" etc.
- if music is a cover of well known song, then the original name is mentioned.

and probably some more features I can't think of now.

We already have search by author.
Most authors already have real names.
Music is not yet linked to demos, but can be linked to game.
We already have visitor-edited tags for music.
There is no possibility to set a original name for covers, but I will add it really soon.

By the way, I've implemented most of your suggestions from WOS. In fact, almost everything can already be edited by registered user, I haven't just yet made an official announcement

Good luck with your project!

Thanks for the kind words!

[Ziutek]

Fajnie by było, zanim muzyczka zostanie zamieszczona to dopytać się autora jak powinna grać. Timmy jest w stereo ABC jak większość europejskich prodek a została wrzucona z ACB co brzmi nieco gorzej. Zasadniczo to wszystkie muzyczki są wrzucane z klucza w ACB.

[moroz1999]

Fajnie by było, zanim muzyczka zostanie zamieszczona to dopytać się autora jak powinna grać. Timmy jest w stereo ABC jak większość europejskich prodek a została wrzucona z ACB co brzmi nieco gorzej. Zasadniczo to wszystkie muzyczki są wrzucane z klucza w ACB.

Thanks for noticing - I've switched Timmy to ABC, it will be automatically reconverted to ABC in 10-15 minutes.
I'm developing this mechanism at the moment, to make tunes inherit channel layout from author, if not assigned specifically. We will surely make this right in time.

[Tygrys]

Hello moroz, welcome in forum.

It is possible to generate mp3/ogg files with ID3 tags?

[moroz1999]

It is possible to generate mp3/ogg files with ID3 tags?

I will ask Vitamin, who is an author of zxtune, whether it's possible or not. I think that it should possibly be.

[moroz1999]

It is possible to generate mp3/ogg files with ID3 tags?

Vitamin responds that ID3 tags should already be added if original tune contains this information.

[ZbyniuR]

What kind of card you need to play MP3 on Spectrum?

[moroz1999]

ZX-Art is only offering mp3/ogg as possible format for downloading, and all of tunes are stored in original formats (Sound tracker, ProTracker and others).
In fact, an upload process looks like the following now:

1. User upload ZX Spectrum compatible tune to website (AY, STC, PT3...)
2. Website sends request to conversion server
3. Conversion server uses ZXTune player via command-line to  produce MP3/OGG from original file and sends it back to ZX Art.

BTW, there is one music card capable of playing mp3 if you are interested - it's NEO GS, a successor of General Sound.

[matofesi]

BTW, there is one music card capable of playing mp3 if you are interested - it's NEO GS, a successor of General Sound.

And it's not really a "card" - Neo GS is more-or-less another computer with own CPU, memory etc. connected to new russian clones

[moroz1999]

And it's not really a "card" - Neo GS is more-or-less another computer with own CPU, memory etc. connected to new russian clones

Exactly. There is even a demo, which uses Neo GS CPU resources for additional calculations

[moroz1999]

We regularly have some smaller updates:

CC Winter / DiHalt Lite 2015 music
Complete collection of Estonian ZX Spectrum musician Jaan