Sound Club

Infobox_Software
name = Sound Club



caption = Screenshot of Sound Club's interface
author = Bluemoon Interactive
latest_release_version = 2.03
latest_release_date =
operating_system = Windows 95/NT/98/XP
operating_system_desc =
genre = Tracker
license = Freeware
website = [http://www.bluemoon.ee/history/scwin/index.html www.bluemoon.ee]

Sound Club is a "piano roll-type" music tracker that was created by Bluemoon Interactive. It is currently available as freeware at the [http://www.bluemoon.ee/ Bluemoon Interactive website] .

History

Before Bluemoon Interactive had been conceived, two students in Estonia named Jaan Tallinn and Ahti Heinla began to construct Sound Club in their free time in 1991. Sound Club was released as shareware in 1993, and was meant for use with MS-DOS. In 1996, by the time Bluemoon Interactive had existed as a company, Sound Club was re-released for Windows 95 and NT. This release contained most of the same features as Sound Club for DOS, as well as many new features. After a few years, Bluemoon Interactive released both versions of Sound Club as freeware.

Features

Although Sound Club offers a wide variety of voices (instruments) to use, it does not contain many features that change the sound of the voices it uses. However, it does include the default features that every tracker should have, which are:

* volume
* balance
* tempo

Among these features, it also includes:

* Virtual keyboard
* Standard keyboard entering method "(ZSXDCVGBHNJM)"
* Support for multiple formats (see below)
* sn/sn2 to wav conversion
* Lyrics (DOS version only)
* mid to sn conversion (DOS version only)

Formats

Sound Club supports a small variety of formats. In fact, each version is capable of using at least four different formats:

* "MS-DOS" version: mid, rol, sn, cmf, mod
* "95 & NT" version: sn2, sn, s3m, mod

Limitations

While Sound Club is very user-friendly in terms of being able to write music, it "does" have its limitations.

"Limitations of MS-DOS version":

* for 1-voice pattern, max 16384 ticks; for 32-voice pattern, max 666 ticks
* maximum 32 voices
* maximum 30 ticks per beat/beats per measure
* max 200 patterns
* max sequence length 200
* max 64 instruments
* max 65501 bytes samplelength - 8 bits only

These limitations were fixed in the windows version:

* unlimited number of voices
* unlimited polyphony
* no pattern size limit
* can export flawlessly to .S3M
* 16 bit samples, no sizelimit
* can directly import .WAVs/raw data for samples
* comes with an instrument bank of over 500 instruments

Well-known Sound Club artists

Terminus

Terminus (real name: Jaanus Kase) is a Sound Club artist from Estonia. Seven of his songs that were made in Sound Club, as well as many other songs he has composed, are available for download in both sn and mp3 format at his [http://www.scene.ee/~terminus/music/ website] .

Porrey 61

Porrey 61 is a Sound Club artist from Germany.Fact|date=October 2007 His compositions display a great amount of time and effort, as well as great use of volume control, balancing, echoing, and special effects. You can visit his website [http://www.porrey61.de/ here] , although it is in German.

Hergiswi

Hergiswi is a Sound Club artist from Massachusetts. He has released a number of "albums" on his [http://theplatune.com:8082/soundclub.html website] , among other Sound Club-related things. He has also been a part of other Sound Club-related projects such as Buttdong Machine and Kakao

Buttdong Machine

Buttdong Machine was a band that consisted of Ben Winters, Hergiswi and Gabriel Willemsen. The band released only one album, entitled "Dead Clown Cum." As one would guess, they were a satire band that focused on racism and offending people. In 2006, Buttdong Machine broke up and members Ben Winters and Hergiswi went on to form Kakao.

Kakao

Kakao (German for "cocoa") is a satire band that uses Sound Club to compose their songs. Their songs, while often composed merely by slamming the keyboard (therefore producing notes), also contain many hints of musical aspects and proper construction of songs. Kakao's songs are often frowned upon, due to their controversial song titles, such as "Buttfucked by Penguins" and "Arabian Skunkfuck," as well as other odd song titles, such as "Adhesive Pork Of The Mind And Soul" and "Get That Frog Out Of My Crapper." Kakao does not currently have a website.

Kakao's first full-length album, entitled "Milk," is planned to be released early in 2007.

Pussy Beat

Pussy Beat is a Finnish electro artist. He has done his songs completely with Sound Club. He's been doing music since 2003. Pussy Beat's songs can be heard in myspace: http://www.myspace.com/pussybeastard

External links

* [http://www.bluemoon.ee/ Bluemoon Interactive homepage]
* [http://www.scene.ee/~terminus/music Terminus's homepage]
* [http://www.porrey61.de Porrey 61's homepage]
* [http://theplatune.com:8082/soundclub.html Hergiswi's homepage]