Used to make music on a C64

[Muz]

I stumbled on to a thread about the SidStation, and although I had skimmed a review of it a while back, for some reason I forgot about it. But now I realize I should probably get one.

 

You see, when I was a kid, in the mid 80s, I used to make music on the C64. I don't know if anyone else here ever had this program, but there was one which presented a simple piano staff, and you could point a click notes.... wait there probably wasn't a mouse.... so I guess it was all on the [computer] keyboard. Maybe the joystick but I doubt it. So there were three voices available and a small assortment of "instruments." I had been taking piano lessons for several years, and I fell in love with the experimentation of seeing which notes, chords, and melodies fit together. It was the first time I made music on a computer, and simply did it for fun and experimentation. As I got better at it, the challenge became how to make three voices work for me and sound full. And often I would apply "rhythm" tracks, by using the primitive percussion sound on one staff and (it was pitched) a low one for kick and a high one for snare. If I remember correctly each instrument had different colored notes on the staff so you could tell them apart.

 

Some of the sounds were cool but the program didn't utilize the best that the C64 sound chip had to offer. (Anyone remember the music to Green Beret? Or Neuromancer?)

 

Did anyone have this program?

[J3RK]

I know what editor you're talking about, but I don't remember the name. It seems to me it was a Br0derbund product, but I can't be sure.

 

Anyway, I do a lot of work with the SID. A friend and I are developing a new SID-ish chip, and synth based on it. (More on this in the original threads.)

 

You may have trouble finding a SID Station. Real SID chips are in short supply right now, so Elektron only releases small batches of them. I bought a couple when they were only $480 new. Now they go for nearly $1000 when in production.

 

Luckily there are a few alternatives.

 

You can get a HardSID card, which is a PCI card that accepts SID chips, and then has a software interface for editing sounds. This is a nice option, and allows you to use multiple SIDs for more voices.

 

You can get the ReFX QuadraSID plugin. As the name implies, it's four software SID chips. This is a nice plugin. It sounds good, it doesn't have the noise that a real SID does, and it's easily integrated into a nice sequencer package like Cubase (among others.)

 

You can get a MIDI interface for a real C64, and edit SID music from a PC (using the C64 as a MIDI instrument.)

 

You can wait and see if my friend and I produce more than a small batch of the synth we're working on. (We're around 40-50% done currently)

 

Anyway, if you want to write music on a real C64, (if you don't have one, you can find them for next to nothing,) get the music editors by JCH of The Vibrants. They are the best editors on the 64. (They basically work like a tracker in that you create a sound, and then trigger it in a pattern.)

 

Hope this helps a little.

[keyman_sam]

I had the C64 when i was a child!!! and green beret was my favorite game!!!

 

i never did music with it though. too young. i'd say 7 or 8.

 

YOu remember jump-man boot? and RAT RACE!! wow, it was such a cool game !

[BillyWa]

Neuromancer was like the bible to me. William Gibson is a GOD! Too bad Mr FN Gates stole his coining of the word microsoft. MS Bastid anyway. I hate MS crap////..... :mad: :mad:

[Yoozer]

Originally posted by keyman_sam I had the C64 when i was a child!!! and green beret was my favorite game!!!

Paradroid for me, as well as Pharao's Curse. I've only finished Paradroid once, but what kind of sucks is that you don't get any new 'droids on the other ships, and that the next ship (Falcon something) looks the same as the previous one.

 

Hah, being 999 for a while and then finding out that you've totally killed all the lower decks so staying up high & mighty with a security droid wouldn't do you any good. Those 302's were fast, and the 476's were a very good step up because of the superior laser. My fav was the 821, fast, lasers that totally wreaked havoc, and any lesser droid to take over totally pissed its pants.

 

YOu remember jump-man boot? and RAT RACE!! wow, it was such a cool game !

Ridge Racer for the Playstation Pocket has a Rat Race-like minigame at the start.

 

What's great is that Nintendo is bringing back all its old SNES and NES games because the Revolution can run 'm without breaking a sweat... but the C64 has a lot of great games too, I'd love to see updated versions of them. Fact is however that when the C64 died a lot of the companies around it that didn't look forward died too, so there's all this intellectual property floating around and you can't touch it. And excellent music, too.

[BillyWa]

 

Originally posted by Yoozer Paradroid for me, as well as Pharao's Curse. I've only finished Paradroid once, but what kind of sucks is that you don't get any new 'droids on the other ships, and that the next ship (Falcon something) looks the same as the previous one. Hah, being 999 for a while and then finding out that you've totally killed all the lower decks so staying up high & mighty with a security droid wouldn't do you any good. Those 302's were fast, and the 476's were a very good step up because of the superior laser. My fav was the 821, fast, lasers that totally wreaked havoc, and any lesser droid to take over totally pissed its pants. Ridge Racer for the Playstation Pocket has a Rat Race-like minigame at the start. What's great is that Nintendo is bringing back all its old SNES and NES games because the Revolution can run 'm without breaking a sweat... but the C64 has a lot of great games too, I'd love to see updated versions of them. Fact is however that when the C64 died a lot of the companies around it that didn't look forward died too, so there's all this intellectual property floating around and you can't touch it. And excellent music, too.

 

 

Wow, I am feeling young again!

[new_voodoo2]

i used to play a pirate game where you were in the cariibean, i am not sure what it was called.

Green berets! hah! taht one i got via my first experience with file trading/sharing on a modem in like 1988 or so? My modem actually had a space for the phone to be placed in a cradle.

I should have kept the c64.

I did keep my Atari ST.

dammit.

[B E T S]

Hey! Retro computers and/or consoles for music, now you're talking my language

 

+1 for the ReFX QuadraSID plugin, one cool sounding soft synth.

 

 

C64, those were the days.

 

That plastic mini keyboard thing you put over the computer keys, those massive floppy disks and hard drive, the software that turned it into a mini synth, and the games were awesome too.

 

For those who want to make music in a similar way to the good'ol C64 days, use todays consoles to make music. You can even sample today with the playstation 2 and Music 3000. You can get a mini USB sampling kit and mini keyboard. Quite a few titles out their for todays consoles.

 

Music 2000

Music 3000

Ejay Club World

Mtv Music

 

What about the Amiga 1200? The King of music making back then.

 

What about the Atari 1040 and Pro24 version 3 sequencer package, one super duper program.

[Yoozer]

 

Originally posted by B E T S For those who want to make music in a similar way to the good'ol C64 days, use todays consoles to make music.

 

Uh, excuse me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the C64 composing software more like a tracker? Those console things are more like ACID/Ableton, right - dragging and dropping samples in colorful blocks?

[new_voodoo2]

yeah, trust me, they're nothing alike.

the 1040 program bets is talkig about is not the best atari program available in my opinion, either. I'd found the atari was really ahead of its time in pure sequencing software though.

Norman Cook used it exclusively up until his work with blur about 2-3 years ago. His entire HUGE hit album was sequenced on it.

[Big Fish]

Actually I had a C128 that I used in C64 mode to sequence. I got a midi interface for it, got a program, that was real sequencing. Not blocks or drag and drop. You could actually record and edit lines with different quantization and everything. I was so happy, until I saw the Atari 1040 ST and Cubase. After I got that, it was all over. I knew what sequencing really was at that point.

 

I still have both computers put up in a closet. Using Mac and PC now. I might fire them up to see how the stuff I was doing back then sounded. We've come a long way baby!

[J3RK]

 

Uh, excuse me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the C64 composing software more like a tracker?

 

 

The more common ones were. Like the JCH editors etc. There were also MIDI sequencers, staff-based editors, etc. A lot of people (game musicians especially,) wrote their music right in the machine code monitor. (I believe Rob Hubbard did this.)

 

There were a ton of editors from different demo groups as well. I still think the best ones are the JCH editors. They work a lot like a tracker. There is an area of the screen where you set up your voice, ADSR, waveform, ringmod, etc. In the other area there was a pattern editor to define your notes. Pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

[J3RK]

What about the Amiga 1200? The King of music making back then.

 

Back when I had a C64, and the A500 came out, I was so impressed by the music on the Amiga because of the "real" sounds it used. At that time I hadn't used a sampler, so it was all really cool. I have to say that in retrospect, the C64 is WAY cooler. A 3 voice analog/digital hybrid subtractive synth on a chip. Good stuff.

 

As far as the STs go, the internal FM synth was somewhat interesting. The sample playback was pretty bad. Using it to sequence with Pro24 was pretty cool though. A friend and I used to write breaks on his dad's Pro24/ST setup. I think it was attached to a Casio somethingrather rack synth maybe a CZ or something, and a bunch of other interesting items. (drum modules of the time, etc.)

[Yoozer]

 

Originally posted by J3RK Back when I had a C64, and the A500 came out, I was so impressed by the music on the Amiga because of the "real" sounds it used. At that time I hadn't used a sampler, so it was all really cool. I have to say that in retrospect, the C64 is WAY cooler. A 3 voice analog/digital hybrid subtractive synth on a chip. Good stuff.

 

Depends. I should still find a proper cable + monitor so I can get my A500 on the road. I've got a sampler module for it, too! The waves are so lo-fi they get charming again. Okay, the lack of a resonant lowpassfilter spoils it, but some of the more metallic bleepsounds are really great. I think they just recorded a very short fragment of an analog wave with a resonant overtone, at different cutoff settings.

 

And with a few tricks you can still pull off the SID-like sound, too. The really fast arpeggio (better - the typical SID waves) - that's still present in some mod files. Probably because they didn't have any other sample source handy.

[J3RK]

They used to call them chip-mods. They'd take a "chip" of a waveform, loop it (to make a solid tone.) You can actually do this with just about any sample. It's pretty fun to do. Just zoom in and cut most of a sample out (down to around a couple of cycles,) and loop.

 

I wish I still had all the mods and xm files that I wrote.

[Rasmus-DK]

Now I can feel the Amiga/MOD-nostalgia too - maybe I should find my trusty old Amiga 600 in my mother's basement..

- but if you want to feel those classy old 4-track MOD-beats once again I'd suggest that you take a look at www.modarchive.com

- there, you can still find most of the old 4-tracks from around 1990 - badly rewritten "dance" hits of the time eg....mmmmm...nostalgia (at the age of 24 I suddenly feel quite old..*cough*)

[Jez]

I used to love Creatures and Creatures II for the C64... rockin' music too.

 

Sadly I was too young to appreciate making music on the computer, but it could do some astonishing things considering how limited the hardware was. I always thought it was 4-voice though... or was one of the voices a noise generator and so not counted as a proper voice? O_o

 

I wish I had one again. And I wish I hadn't got rid of my A1200.

[J3RK]

3 oscillators, and the fourth "voice" is the digital channel, which wasn't really a channel at all. Back when these old computers were popular, most cool things were achieved by doing tricks. Sampling on the C64 had something to do with "misuse" of the output volume register. I guess on the original SID chip there was voltage on the input of the volume register that allowed it to act as a 4 bit DAC.

 

(On later SIDs you couldn't do this (8580)) In order to do the same thing on these chips you had to set an oscillator to pulse-width, then stop it, and then there would be voltage on one of the oscillators that you could play back samples with.

 

As far as noise goes, that was just a selectable "waveform" on one of the oscillators if I remember correctly.

[J3RK]

Oh, and I think that really old sound editor where you drag the notes around was Music Contruction Set (or something like that.) Probably an Electronic Arts product, not Br0derbund like I was thinking earlier.

[J3RK]

For those inclined, it looks like the Commodore DTV (the joystick that plugs into the TV) is quite hackable. People have hacked them to work with C64 disk drives, PS2 keyboards, etc. They also seem to be able to load their own data. For $30, and a little bit of work, it seems like this would be a good way to get a C64 to write music on. I just grabbed the schematics and guides for doing the mods, so I may make an attempt at this sometime soon.

[logicprofiles]

I made music with a C64, Steinberg Midex, and Steinberg pro 26 and 24.

Apart some crash, it was nice, especially during the break, when i loaded my fav games!!!!!

[Yoozer]

 

Originally posted by J3RK Oh, and I think that really old sound editor where you drag the notes around was Music Contruction Set (or something like that.) Probably an Electronic Arts product, not Br0derbund like I was thinking earlier.

 

 

Hey, I remember Music Construction Set. No modulation whatsoever, preset instruments with ADSRs (which I had no clue about what they'd do), and a pain to operate without a mouse. But, it came with some songs that were bearable. Took a long time to load though.

[J3RK]

Yes, I remember hating it. I was probably not more than 7-8 years old when I had it. I remember trying to copy my sheet music (piano lessons) into it, and getting mad because of its limitations. (not enough polyphony etc.)

 

Luckily I discovered the other editors (from the demo-crews) when I was a bit older. (Followed by trackers when I got my Amiga.)

[Muz]

Music Contruction Set, that was it. Here's some more info with some screenshots:

 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/music-construction-set

 

My favorite part is two back to back quotes from users:

 

"A wonderful piece of software."

 

"An offensive abuse to the ears."

 

 

This was pre mouse times and I didn't know any better but I must have made 100 "songs" with that thing.

 

Never got into Amiga, but when my family got an IBM compatible (386) I switched over to a similar but much more powerful program. Maybe the one made by broderbund. I was used to the notes on a staff method of composing by now and it was basically the same concept with more voices (and better sounds, I talked my parents into getting me a Roland LAPC-1 sound card (or LAPC-I actually) which had the MT-32 / MPU-401 chips in it ).

 

Meanwhile I got into external sequencing with my Yamaha SY55, using some sequencer made by Brother no less.

 

Eventually I got Cakewalk and I'm a Sonar user today.

 

The music for Neuromancer the game (based on my favorite book) was actually composed by Devo. There was a sampled song which was about a 12 second loop that you could only hear by somehow executing it outside of the game. There were vocals with harmonies. It was pretty neat back then. There was also some cool in game music (which was based on SID three voice chip).

[Muz]

 

You can get the ReFX QuadraSID plugin. As the name implies, it's four software SID chips. This is a nice plugin. It sounds good, it doesn't have the noise that a real SID does, and it's easily integrated into a nice sequencer package like Cubase (among others.)

 

 

I'll have to check that out. I suppose I could do without the noise, and anyways there aren't any SidStations available right now (last one sold in May).